New item theft exploit.

yes, this was in fact the very first thing I thought about. I don't particularly mind about my email address, it's already been compromised on JIRA and all over the web no doubt, but the passwords to my vendor servers are a concern. They have already been changed.

Well, if I may put on my tin foil hat for a moment, I would suggest that LL probably doesn't care, as this whole Interop/virtual worlds flung to the 4 corners will likely end up with everything becoming open source whether you like it or not. I have stopped creating new content until such a time as I see LL truely intends to protect it. I'm not going to work my ass off for the benefit of other's pockets.

LL isn't an IP protection agency, the burden of enforcing your IP rights always has been and will be on your shoulders.

At best LL can meet you halfway by implementing a permissions/DRM system and making sure it's robust and at the same time ban residents that use an exploit, but ultimately it's your content and your responsibility to enforce your rights.

And yes it's not quite as easy as that, but that's a problem the real world needs to solve to lower the barrier to go after copyright infringers. There is no way that LL can or should judge over who created what because even some high-profile content creators themselves turned out to be less than honest. Real word offenses need to be dealt with in the real word, not in a virtual one.

That's like saying a store isn't an inventory protection company. I would dare say they are.
Stores don't make what they sell, they buy it from people and sell it at a profit. If they let people walk in and take it without paying, they would go out of business fast. LL makes it's money from people coming in and buying Lindens to buy the things creators make, and by renting land to use these things. Now the issue is, LL can still make a fair amount of their money even if people are getting the content for free. So their best interests aren't necessarily aligned with creator's.

LL needs to stop letting people walk in and take things. It's not IP protection, it's just common sense business. And that is all I'm asking. And it can be done.

That analogy fails in several major areas:

1) LL isn't "buying" your IP to resell.
2) Real Property doesn't equate the same type of handling as Imaginary Property.
3) LL is protected by LAWS which make them immune from prosecution as long as they operate under the "safe harbor" provisions.
4) LL's currency and exchange is tangential to any kind of infringement. It is simply an additional service they provide to facilitate trade. They are in no way operating as a reseller of your goods.

The closest analogy would be a Flea Market. The Market owner rents out booths to you for you to make and sell the things you create. If a thief comes by and steals your stuff, the Market owner is under no obligation to "protect" you or offer you any kind of reimbursement for your loss. Now, a savvy market owner may install some security gates, and hire an off-duty police officer to stand around in a uniform to deter crime, but really, that is all voluntary, and it STILL doesn't make them liable or obligated to you if someone attacks you or steals your stuff. *YOU* still have to initiate the police report, and show up in court. The Market owner may be indirectly involved in your case, mainly to provide evidence and testimony, but he/she in no way is obligated to be your proxy.

Hence, as it is with LL. The DRM they offer is a voluntary effort, because they are savvy and realize that some deterrence is a good thing to encourage people to participate. However, it does NOT make them liable OR obligated to go to bat for you in court. In fact, by LAW, they CAN NOT initiate any kind of legal proceedings on your behalf. Not the least of the reasons is because they DO NOT own your IP. Only *YOU* can initiate legal proceedings with respect to your creations. In addition, them getting directly involved can cause them to forfeit their "safe harbor" protections; something their legal department just isn't going to allow to happen, because one bad case, and that's all she wrote.

I can see and understand both sides of the debate - whether or not LL should have warned everyone - and, for me, it would be a very tough decision to make. I would want everyone to know and to take precautions, but at the same time, I'd know that telling everyone would cause major disruptions in SL for some time. It's not just a case of people not wearing no-copy items. Stores and places are full of items that could be ripped off, and place owners wouldn't really know what to do, or they would be working hard to change things as quickly as they could.

I am sure it would have caused major dispruptions because we would all assume that loads of people are acquiring the method and using it. I am sure that many people would have been complaining loudly at LL for letting the information about the exploit out.

It was a tough one for them, and I can't criticise them for their decision (even though it was probably made from an attitude of couldn't care less about the people). I *can* criticise them for their blunder in writing the programme so that it was that easy to exploit. That really was a huge blunder.

Well i'm afraid your analogy is way off. LL gets a cut of everything I sell, through Lindex fees. So it's not like a flea market at all. Its more like a store, making a % profit on sales, as in my original Analogy.

Stores make their profit exclusively this way, and do a lot to deter theft. One place where we can perhaps agree is when I said, LL doesn't make enough this way to justify taking the necessary steps to deter theft. They make far more from land and Tier.

In fact, I would say they would prefer all content was free, it would leave more money per user to be spent on land and tier, and fill their pockets. This is the problem we face. It's in LL's best interests that theft occurs.

That's an interesting thought. I don't have a comment about it either way - I just wanted to say how interesting it is.

I respectfully disagree with you Darien. The income content creator's receive for their products is how they can afford to pay land tier fees, buy classified ads, etc. If LL allows their products to simply be stolen content creators will stop creating content and perhaps many of them would leave sl altogether. I don't see how that is in LL's best interests at all.

I don't know, but shouldn't the stolen items show up in your transaction records showing the deviants names who stole them?