A thread every content creator must see.

http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/general-sl-discussion/34420-countdown-starts-now.html

The next generation Copy Bot is on its way in the form of a new client and it has content creators over at SLU very nervous...it appears for good reason.

Read the OP and these two posts in particular, but be sure to check out the whole thread.
http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/787496-post99.html

http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/787483-post90.html

Did anyone warn Linden Lab already? this looks like a serious threat for the entire Virtual World economy, and not only SL!

hope that some serious RL legal action can be taken against the sick individuals that created this piece of junk.

Check the post that I added to my OP. They have been warned with lots of documentation. It will be interesting how they react and if they will make any public statements at any point soon.

One thing we non-content creators can do, beside voicing our concern, is to make sure we only buy items from residents who are known as the original creators of what we are buying.

But should one be disappointed if no one ever copies your stuff?

Content thievery is the sincerest form of flattery.

Now this is very worrying.

Surely Linden Labs have to stand up and start trying to prevent these things for their own sakes even if don't care about creators and their lost income. If everyone were to start using a viewer like that, hardly anyone would be buying, meaning that businesses would fail and land would not be needed. I wonder what percentage of the land is currently for business use or land owned by business owners they wouldn't be able to keep if their business was to fail.

I'd get rid of my land except for 512m. All my tier & all my premium is paid for by what I make inworld. I'm not sure I'd stop making things, but output and quality would probably suffer.

Same here, I only hold land that I can afford out of selling. At present that is two homesteads for my shops and one homestead for my home. Obviously the home one would be the first to be cut back on, but if nobody is buying content, the I would have to get rid of it all.

I think our goose could be cooked very soon, still 6 years isn't a bad run I guess nowdays.
Hopefully Blue Mars will be ready about the time we start the downward spiral.

Seen this indeed before (wasn't it mentioned in another thread here?). Now I am not worried about my furniture business, neither of my animations business, but the plants could easily be copied by copybots. It is about freaking time that LL does something against this kind of behavior, else it is fast down the drain with SL content creation.

As for me, as soon as I stop selling what I create, I am gone. Simple as that. It is fun creating, it is fun setting up business, but the day it is starting to cost me, instead of paying part of my bills (actually I only buy fun stuff with SL money ), it is over. Probably I would not know what to do with all that free time

The "avatar textures" floater (the one showing all the individual body part/clothing layer textures) is actually part of the official viewer (the "clothing backup" one obviously isn't).

One of the good things about 1.23 was that it was supposed to be the start of a push by LL to only send baked textures around and not individual body part/clothing layer (they do still need to get sent to the person who's actually wearing them since your own puter bakes the textures for your avie).

Then the "Viewer 2009" came along and we're stuck with no change until mid-2010 or whenever they manage to finish the silly thing.

One of the biggest things LL could do right now is likely to finish the work they started and release a new viewer (if it's even needed, I'm not entirely sure) and deprecate the older official viewers (many - most? - legitimate third-party viewers already have a "clothing protection" option right now) and that would stop copying *other* people's clothing (you could still grab other people's baked textures but as far as content theft goes that's really not useful).

It wouldn't stop anyone from being able to copy clothes they're already wearing, but that's always been possible since the very first viewer. Which doesn't mean it's not a concern, but if someone has to actually buy something instead of just grabbing it off someone else that's a net gain and LL was/is already working on it so it's something that can be done *now*.

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Stroker's post (#99) actually seems to be the biggest worry since it talks about a permissions exploit which falls squarely in the realm of what LL can (and should) fix and a sim update should be all it takes to get rid of it so that's "easy" to get done too.

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Jesse didn't actually point out whether the "clothing backup" actually reuses the original texture UUID or reuploads a copy, but it's probably the first (no upload fees) which makes it rather similar to "copybotting" prims.

While it would likely add some load to the sim there's probably no good reason why the sim shouldn't be treating "texture setting" from the viewer as inherently untrustable: ie when you texture the prim the sim would make an extra call to check that you actually have the texture in inventory and if you don't then disallow.

Since there should be no way to get a copy of the original texture in your inventory (if there is then that's an exploit so see 2) that makes limiting the damage after a copy is found to exist a whole lot easier.

Since the original texture can't be reused by its UUID (the sim would check and notice that the avie doesn't actually have a texture in their inventory with that UUID) but requires an actual copy then it doesn't prevent copying in any way but it does require anyone wanting to copy something with a texture to have to upload a new copy of it.

A new copy means a new texture UUID and since that texture UUID would not be used in the original, legitimate copies it would be rather safe to simply remove it from the asset server.

For clothing/skins: it doesn't vanish from inventory but since the layer texture(s) are gone it can't actually be worn.

For things like what happen to Rebel Hope: it won't make the furniture copies go away, but they'll at least be completely gray/textureless which isn't ideal but certainly not usable for further resale or distribution either.

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Just as an attempt to suggest three things which are completely doable in a short amount of time (the first is already in progress so they just need to finish it, the second is a grid exploit which they know they should fix and the third only requires one added check on code that already exists) and would have an actual impact.

Hm.

I've been in SL for over three years, shopping for all kind of stuff...

And I noticed a few things:

- i rarely see copybotted stuff for sale (once so far)
- Most of the people posting their "OMG my business is so totally going to die because of this new version of copybot" make me go "Hm, and you are... who again?" (as in, haven't heard the name yet).


Why don't I see "OMG the sky is falling" posts from the big shop owners, like nicky ree, hoorenbeek, june dion, stiletto moody, the guys from JCNY or such?

Is Stroker Serpentine not a big enough shop owner for you? I also don't judge not recognising names, some use alts and some can be doing very well, just not places I visit.

AFAIK the change is purely sim-side: they just need to flip a switch. Older viewers (official or otherwise) would still work, kind of; they'd just get a lot of missing textures. I don't really see why LL doesn't do this immediately, unless there's some other flaw in 1.23 that they aren't telling us about. (They sure didn't want to consider making 1.23 mandatory as promised, to go with the Adult Content changes, so maybe they're afraid of it for some obscure reason.)

Of course as you point out, Kitty, this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of copying vulnerability.

This has been possible for years. Even before the OSS client, via LibSL. Copyright infringement (I refuse to call it content theft. You don't LOSE anything, except potential business) has been with us for a long time. Commercial companies deal with it in their own ways, content creators will have to as well. But in the 3 years I have been here it hasn't destroyed the business market at all. And I can't even remember seeing such content in my time on SL. How widespread is it really, and how much of it is alarmism?

I am curious, though ... the content creators that complain so much do protect their copyrights properly, I assume? For copyright to be really enforcible in a court of law in the US, you should register the copyrights.

And you also don't use any pirated software either? I know Maya is a popular target. It would be slightly hypocritical if you complain about texture ripping and you "steal" the tools you use to create this with ...

Me neither to be honest (not even once). I don't doubt they're out there, but from my point of view I'd have to think that if you're not going to go out of your way to look for it chances that you're actually going to come across any are rather minimal.

I'd also think that if a friend stumbled on it they'd either mention it because they were shocked (they know it's copied), or because they wanted to share the store they found with "great stuff and all so cheap!" (they don't know it's copied) but that hasn't ever happened either.

On the other hand there have been a few dozen times I've seen content creators go "zomg copybotted stuff @ slurl-goes-here" (forums, JIRA or groups) and while it's intended as a warning doing it to the general public probably does more harm than good in advertising where to get the same things they sell, only cheaper.

I hear copy bot protection messages saying !quit all the time.... so it must be a problem, right? Hehe

wait... I heard that name...

Ah yes, isn't that the guy who
- makes his business with things that CAN NOT be copybotted (scripts and animations)
- claims that every piece of furniture that has a menu with animations is a clone of his stuff, even when the piece in question uses a different script, different animations, and looks differently, and therefor is suing LL for copyright infringement (pretty much the same as Gucci suing the city of NY over the ripoff artists at canal street)
- hasn't really made anything new lately

Lance, have you not read about what happened recently with Rebel Hope, RH Engel, Susan Ramos, and others who have very large businesses in SL? The designers have all been successful in SL for quite some time, and you may be familiar with them.

/327/e7/340985/1.html

This seems to be nothing new under the sun. Even the panic is not new.

This tool does nothing new. It is maybe only more comfortable.

There will be no technically solution.

If Linden Lab want to do something against the copy-scene, it needs to invest in service-staff and a logistic fit bureaucracy = registered merchants via collecting RL-datas from all creators/merchants and new ones and maybe a kind of watermark technology additional.

When I first read the article, I seriously considered packing it in. Box up my inventory, close up my shops and say toodles to SL. For a minute.

But, my tier is small. If something suddenly happened to my SL income, I could still pay it. But what about all the people who make their rl incomes in sl? How many will feel the need to be proactive and get out before a crash? This aside from the emotional rape of having your work stolen in the first place...

It wasn't his scripts they stole, it was his trademarked name.

They are probably too busy running their businesses to waste time in forums.

*Looks like I picked the wrong time to start up a business.

The VAST majority of people in SL will never know this stuff even exists, they're too busy having virtual sex to notice.

For the ones the hear about it 90% will have no idea how to find the client.

About 10% of those who actually manage to find the client will be able to figure out how to use it.

Of those 10%, about half will log in once or twice, copy their own skin, go "oh cool" and never use it again.

I'm not justifying this stuff, its despicable.

Just saying, this is NOT going to devastate the SL economy or drive anyone out of business.

Unless they just give up and close shop out of fear that it might happen.

I sympathize with content creators (I'm not one), devoting so much time to creating something and then having even one person steal it would hurt, no doubt.

But don't throw in the towel, don't run away, keep doing what you love and we, the majority of SL residents will continue to pay you for it.

We love shopping!

Handy

This is probably a dumb question, but is there anyway to recognise copybotted stuff when your shopping?