That's the last time I bother trying to help a creator with identifying stolen conten

Every time I see this sort og thing, or see an American cop in action, I think of the Vogons.

These creatures appeared in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".
Extracts from Wikithingie:


"Vogons are one of the most unpleasant races in the galaxy. Not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous. They wouldn't even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters."

Sounds familiar???

"In the series it is told that, far back in prehistory, when the first primeval Vogons crawled out of the sea, the forces of evolution were so disgusted with them that they never allowed them to evolve again. Through sheer obstinacy, though, the Vogons survived (partly by adapting a misplaced, badly malformed, and dyspeptic liver into a brain)."

It sounds like it was mass mailed to anyone who bought the car.

It might be safer to simply alert the content creator who has been duped to the page or store. You might "loathe writing note cards" but it's a lot safer than buying stolen content.

Your intentions were good but not so very well thought out in advance perhaps.

Um....did you read the beginning?

*I* sent the content creator a notecard in the beginning that told him that I thought this particular item was stolen.

I was doing him a favour.

In the past, I have received as much as a "thank you" from the creator. Won't bother again.

The wording in the letter sounds accurate.



If you bought something you believed to be a copyright infringement, then rezzed it, you would have infringed on that copyright. That would not be some passive thing that accidentally happened. Willfulness comes into play when it comes to damages, but good intentions don't stop an activity from being copyright infringement. If you went ahead and notified the copyright holder that you did this, that's just a bad plan, with the way the laws are. It's one thing to point at things that don't look right, but once you touch them you've invited trouble.

So you're saying, for future reference, the prudent (and, indeed, cheaper) course of action would be simply to contact the creator with the slurl or slx details of the item in question and say, "I think you might want to take a look at this, because it seems rather similar to something of yours" and then leave well alone?

yep.
that's exactly what you should do.

and I shall do NOTHING

I shall just look at it and think, that's stolen and ignore. I won't waste a moment of my time trying to help again.

Call me bitter but yes, I feel no incentive to help in future. Content creators can look out for their own stuff, myself included.

Irrespective of any process/procedure, there is still a right and a wrong way to deal with people and some continue to demonstrate that they have no clue.

And there's a right and a wrong way to react to bad treatment.
WRONG: "Just see if I try to help anyone ever again!"
RIGHT: "Well, I sure won't be buying from either ot THOSE jerks again. And I'm going to send both LL and the original creator a notecard that says just what I think of them."

Sassy, if you ever buy anything from me, or even see me in possession of something you believe is stolen content, I want to hear about it. Most creators do.

I still don't get what's wrong with not having IMs sent to your email? I would really hate it if every IM I got when I am not spending time in SL came into my email.

Also, why would someone who knows how to identify and inspect a Ferrari mind typing up a notecard?

Ferraris are red, sleek, low to the ground and have handsome young studs driving them. Or sometimes they have me driving them, since said HYS has given me the keys.

In SL vehicles the main work is the scripting, so if someone sculpt a copy of a ferrari and put inside them a freebie script he can't do nothing about copyrights. Be original and script&sculpt your own vehicles lol it doesn't matter if no one will buy them, I have more fun owning chicks running on 4000 l$ bikes

I did your RIGHT part already. *smiles*

In turn. Have a separate email account, add filters. It's really not a problem.

Notecards, I just find tedious, personally I find them a drag to create. I'd rather just pop up the destination and send an IM. I can read my IM's offline, I can't read notecards.

I just dislike being drawn to sending notecards. Example. I was asking someone who auto joins shop visitors to his spam list merely because they visit.

I was in IM dialog and asked him to remove me. His response, send me a notecard, i'm busy. (note, not a BUSY response, he couldn't be bothered to deal with it, but wants ME to waste my time sending him a notecard to ask him to remove me from his spammer when I had already asked him and add that if I asked him again he'd just mute me. Nice shop.

I'm confused on some of the facts.

Sassy, did the e-mail stating that you have been accused of infringing include a copy of the complaint made against you? I'm wondering if the complaint did actually accuse you of infringing, or if Linden Lab mis-characterized the complaint in the e-mail to you.

It was exactly as copied above in the post where I pasted it in entirety

It is not only possible but probable that the content creator had no knowledge of the letter sent to you.

Since LL cannot comment on who made a report, to anyone, it's almost guaranteed. Also, the person in charge of sending out a letter to everyone who bought the item might not be privy to the name of the person who made the report.

Your blame seems misplaced, although I understand the anger. Did you incur any fine or punishment or did you merely have to delete the stolen item?

Unfortunately intent does not always count 'in the eyes of the law.' Or maybe 'possession is 9/10 of the law' cuts both ways.

You might feel less angry if you placed at least 1/10 of the blame upon yourself, for buying a stolen item no matter how well intentioned you were. (LL cannot know 'why' you did, so they must apply rules equally.)

(And by the way I think it would be prudent of LL to not allow proprietary brands or logos to be used in content creation. This same dance will be done as soon as corporations move into SL only it will be grid wide and more harshly enforced, most likely. If the car maker does not have Ferrari's permission, they had better not continue naming their creation a Ferrari.)

There is a real risk that if this situtation is automated, that the OP could face a lifetime ban, for repeated violations.

I would advise NOT to report any more IP violations, but to raise a jira on this, and do no further good deeds until the jira is closed satisfactorily (ie no action taken against whistleblowers). As a previous poster has said, this is not the first time this has happened, and there have been other recent examples.

Rock

Yes, but there's no reason that the legalese, in this case, can't be softened with customer relations language. Being accurate doesn't excuse being confusing or rude.

/me doesn't buy it. The text was clearly LL frowning at the OP.

Saying "you have infringed" isn't legalese.

Saying "you have infringed" isn't even correct. It's not an infringement under US copyright law to receive unauthorized material, just to distribute it.

DMCA doesn't cover trademarks. Also trademark registrations are use specific. I don't know if Ferrari has use in a virtual world covered under any of its registrations, but prosecuting trademark infringement claims in a virtual reality context is difficult because of potential fair use and collateral use defenses, and it's seen as free advertising by many companies in any case.

It's also infringement if you duplicate it, which is what you do when you rez any prim that is copyable.

Except, IIRC, for copies made as inherent part of the normal use of the product.

True but if the creator never meant for it to be copyable then duplication isn't really part of the inherent part of the normal use of the product. Most of the vehicles I bought are copyable though, but I doubt Linden Lab has the competence or the drive to make such distinctions when it spams out copyright infringement notices.

Indeed. This is yet another case of LL doing the exact wrong thing. Sassy did the right thing and got a gteam demerit on his account for his (her?) trouble.