Now what do I do?

How would they know it's my stuff? They didn't buy it from my store. They didn't pay me for it. I wasn't listed as the creator.

"Sorry, that wasn't my stuff. It might have been copies of my stuff; I'm sorry that happened to you and I understand why you're upset. Perhaps we can discuss a discount, if you'd like to purchase a lot of it at once? I'm an established vendor in SL, as you can see from (xxx), so you can rest assured that this won't happen to you if you buy it from me."

Of course, the discount wouldn't be any more than I'd give anyone else who wants to bargain for a bulk discount.

Glad to hear that!

/me facepalms.

Just nevermind.

(Maybe you will believe someone else, that it does happen.)

And in SL, there's truly no way to tell a 95-percenter from a 5-percenter.

In non-virtual life, there are generally clues of some sort (though not always). But in SL...


(Not long ago I logged on to find an avatar just standing on my land. Recent 'born' date and blank profile led me to ask if he was a person--answers didn't seem bot-like, so I think there was a human operator. Was he doing some copybotting? I don't know. If I see some of my items for sale elsewhere with another avatar's name as Creator, then I'll know that that guy was a 5-percenter.

(But on the other hand, he could have been a genuine newbie who was just sorting through the freebies in his inventory on any handy parcel, which happened to be mine.)

I'll bloody facepalm you in a minute!!

Maybe you'll believe somebody that it hasn't happened to:

Hmm I can understand people taking a hard line here. And I don't believe a business owner has any obligation to compensate them for their loss when their item is deleted.

But assuming their attitudde was good, I would probably offer them a copy of the item at halfprice and hope the goodwill generated worked some karmic balance for everyone. It's not like I'm making a loss on materials to sell a copy at half price, if they are willing to meet me halfway.

...and class.

You know, I've been tossing around the idea of getting new furniture. I am going to have to pay Woodshed a visit...

The latest server update to v1.30 was pushed as hard and as quickly as possible well ahead of the intended schedule. As I understand it, it was an emergency rollout to deploy a security fix, presumably to do with a permissions exploit. It would certainly explain the rash of "copybotted" items turning up lately. Hopefully this latest rollout fixed that.

I sympathize with these people, but only to an extent. While it is certainly possible for good, honest people to purchase stolen merchandise without any reasonable means of knowing the stuff is stolen, I believe that, particularly in cases where the stolen items are being sold for a fraction of their value, the people buying this stuff *have * to at least suspect something is not right. After all, if a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is. The people who buy this stuff thinking, "These things are so cheap, they have to be stolen.... but they're so cheap!" deserve to lose what they've spent without compensation.

I think this argument makes a lot of sense in non-virtual contexts, such as when buying a Rolex watch or a Wii system or some other item that has a value that's fairly well-known in the developed world, at least.

In SL, though, I don't think it's fair to assume that any random avatar will know the 'accepted value' for an animated baby or sex bed or system for scripting a tour of your parcel or any other item, really.

If someone sells you a box of stuff from their inventory, and charges $100 Lindens for an enormous list of furniture and all sorts, it's a pretty good bet it is stolen. It's hard to believe no one would suspect a deal like that.

You know I tried just now to think of a scenario when people who bought stolen goods would deserve to actually be compensated for it, but I can't think of one. Doesn't happen in real life, why should it happen here?

The $200 Lindens that IIRC someone suggested would be a horrible amount for some poor shmoe to lose, is not even a real dollar. But imagine the actual creator of those items, that actually retail for $1000 Lindens, having to send the real thing or sell it half price to hundreds of people? So now in addition to being ripped off, having to deal with the firestorm and having to fill out all those DMCA, and losing all that money - NOW the creator also has to lose more money by giving or nearly giving away the real thing to the same people who supported the thieves?

...LOLwut?

You bought a copy of 1984 from the Amazon store for your Kindle, and Amazon deactivated it because they decided the publisher selling it through their store didn't have the rights to sell it.

That was a HUGE pie in the face for Amazon, particularly given the particular book involved, and they eventually gave everyone new copies.

No I didn't.

I thought about buying Kindle until that happened. I still think it was not publishing rights but an experiment, in censorship. The two book titles - 1984 and Animal Farm - both criticise government.

But the analogy isn't really exact, since the publisher did not have to reimburse for someone else's mistake. The person who BOUGHT the stolen goods originally, (Amazon - allegedly), actually did the reimbursing.

Of course the analogy isn't exact, what analogy ever is? That's why they call it an analogy.

The key take-away from the analogy should be, I think, that it's bad public relations to penalize people who had no reason to expect that they were buying a "hot" item. Whether it's "fair" or not, if people get jumpy about buying stuff that's gonna hurt the SL economy.

They're not that hard to come up with:

* well-known and popular skin creator turns out to have used improperly licensed base material in their skin making the end product copyright infringing material. At least hundreds of people if not more paid several L$k each to buy the skins. If all those copies were to go *poof* then consumers are to blame for being stupid enough to buy skins from a well-known popular seller?

* the stolen sculptmap issue: shoe creator buys a shoe lace sculptmap which he/she incoorperated in their shoes. Some time passes and suddenly everyone who bought the shoes finds they will no longer attach because the purchased sculptmap turned out to have been copied.

* textures stores selling stolen textures: well-known texture store turns out to be selling someone else's work. DMCAs get filed and the textures vanish from the asset server resulting in rendering anything that uses those texture worthless

* unlicensed animations: at one point or another a content creator got passed a ton of "freebie" full permission animations which they end up reusing in their creations without bothering to check whether or not they shouldn't be paying to use that animation (particularly for resale). This one is unfortunately extremely common and should deserve no less than any other kind of infringement which means that any creator found to be using an unlicensed animation needs their content wiped from the grid. Silly consumers should have just known better, somehow...

I'm sure you'll notice the pattern here: the sellers in those cases aren't shady characters but established and supposidly trust-worthy content creators who either turned a blind eye to copyright because it suited them, or because they had no idea that the person selling them a building prop wasn't dealing in good faith.

Of course you can argue that consumers should be informing themselves before making any purchase but then the burden is on anyone selling anything to not only provide indisputable proof that they created what they claim to have created, but that every other piece of content they reused is not only properly licensed but licensed from someone who is the undisputable creator.

Since consumers can not make informed decisions because content creator can not actually provide indisputable proof of copyright ownership they need to be protected and provided compensation.

If you buy a DVD from eBay from a legitimate looking seller, the police is not going to show up at your door demanding that you return the pirated DVD that you purchased. They'll setlle for closing down the pirates' operation and that's it.

Copyright/intellectual property isn't something you can steal so real life examples that involve theft of actual, physical property do not apply.

My vote is LL should delete all items created by the copier

For those people who lost stolen items - that is what happens in RL

LL should provide all info they know about the copier for a joint legal action against the copier by the people who lost items

Unfortionately we know it will be a no payment info account (which leads onto that idea that you shouldnt buy things from no payment accounts)

If LL want to do an "amazon" and purchase items from the real creator to replace the deleted ones, that is up to them, but I wouldnt expect them to do it.

I would *guess* that this new Verified Content Seller is going to be the way around that. Verified sellers would likely agree to replace or refund customer purchases that are later found to have been created with stolen/improperly licensed 3rd party materials. Or those sellers are able to guarantee their products are fully licensed or owned. The policy might end up being: buy from a Verified Content Seller and there is a guarantee of support, buy from anyone not verified and you takes your risks. Not unlike the way a BBB works in RL - a business owner has to verify that they will resolve all customer displutes to be a part of the BBB. What will be interesting is that there are a couple of high dollar content creators who famously do not support their products.....if I were a gambling woman I'd bet LL lets them slide on the support because of the dollars they bring in.

Thank you to all of you who have been so supportive during all of this mess. I've never in my almost five years of being in SL seen such a blatant act of vengeance. This person called RH out and accused him of some things but RH and myself did not deserve this. I think of us as being very conscious about giving back where we can. We've learned that there are some people out there that have zero morals and will go up and beyond anything else to hurt someone that they "think" wronged them. Sometimes such an irrational thinking person honestly needs to get a grip and step away from the computer.

We sat down and took the last big theft we went through, but I'll be damned if I let that happen again. We are honest content creators who pay our bills and abide by rules and TOS. We went through proper channels and did appropriate paperwork. We used our civic rights to file the appropriate documents with a Federal court of law to handle that situation. My company, Rebel Hope Designs, Inc. because a corporation, obtained the federal and state trademark and copyright tools to protect my work because SL is a real income for me. For this to happen seems like all was in vein.

Whoever did this has no brain, heart or morals. They were strictly out to inflict pain and to show their level of stupidity. For the few moments of thrill you got out of this you coward, I hope it was worth it.

LL did what was right and I give them very big kudos for making it right. Charlene Linden, Keira Linden and those behind the scenes that took care of this, we thank you. We hope that in the future this will be the case for others who this happens to. RH and I are not unique in this theft attempt, as we know there are others who have suffered loss as well. Let's let this be an example of what should happen in each case of copy theft. Let's hope that more copyright protection is taken on blatant use of copyright material. If you are selling obviously copyrighted material please consider who you may be harming by doing so.

For whatever reason this person did this intentionally and we hope to God this does not ever happen on this scale to anyone again. There were 104 items of ours in that box full perms. Between the other three creators there was probably close if not equal to that. Susan Ramos and Xtrojan were hit hard as well. We pulled together as a team and did whatever we had to in killing it as fast as we could, including staying up all night going to reseller locations to see if it was out and asking if they would please remove the content.

We won't lay down to this and may be even a bigger target of this kind of crime now. This is NOT a game to those people here making things with the talent and skills they have to make money as any other job. We work just as any other person out there, ours just happens to be in Second Life. This platform may be a source of entertainment for you, and that is most excellent and what a cool thing to have for that. But I ask you to please not think of this as just a "game" and have respect for those who have created things for this "world" to enjoy. Things that we content creators put many many hours into making quality work for those who admire and respect it. Think about the "real life" people you are affecting and how would you feel if someone "stole" your income and took from your family. Also, think about how colorless SL would be without the beauty that the content creators give to SL.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. To us it's close to our hearts and we so much appreciate the outward show of support, love and heartfelt sympathy for what happened. Thank you for taking the time to send the notecards and the blogs about it. I hope that we can return that respect to anyone who this happens to.

Much thanks,
RH Engel and Rebel Hope

LL did this once and it backfired very badly, by deleting a lot of perfectly innocent and non-infringing content.

It began when Stoker filed an action against Eva. I don't know the exact nature of the original (valid) complaint, but I know for a fact that Eva distributed the content of at least one other animator in violation of licence agreement (selling anims copy/xfer, which then became freebies).

LL deleted all content created by Eva.

Next day, all hell broke loose, because many makers happened to have used just the (open source) MLP scripts with Eva showing as the creator, or MLPV2 scripts that also showed Eva as the creator (due to an innocent mistake on my part). IIRC, the engine object and ~ball also happened to have Eva as the creator.

In my case, it was a "freebie full perm sex bed" that got my interest in MLP and animations in the first place. After fiddling with the freebie full perm one for a while (but not selling or passing out copies other than to a few friends) I realized that the animations were license violations. I started making my own, and all my products contain only animations created by me.

Meanwhile, I had modified the scripts, adding features, and creating MLPV2. Though in retrospect, I should have known better, it never occurred to me to replace the scripts and box with ones of my own creation.

LL didn't exactly delete all of Eva's content from inventory. Instead, they deleted it inworld and when rezzed (thank goodness). Still, it was a red letter day for quite a number of furniture makers (who'd used the same MLP scripts I had, since they had spread so widely over a number of years) and LL, dealing with the complaints of those whose beds disappeared or stopped working.

LL quickly revised their policy and stopped deleting content created by Eva. I learned a lesson and changed the MLPV2 distribution to my own creation. Stoker graciously offered a free item of his wares for anyone who lost content due to this, a gesture I applauded.

I agree with deleting stolen content. However, unless it's done quickly, the collateral damage can be severe -- untenable by LL -- unless it's caught quickly. Furthermore, only the content identified as stolen should be deleted, not all content of the account (unless it can be shown with high confidence that the vast majority of the account's creations were priated.

I hope Stoker and LL can come to a reasonable settlement.

Personally, I feel that Stoker has often tried too hard to protect his IP. He's used legally unenforcable clauses in product sales (though maybe no longer, since it's 2 years since I checked), and as used DCMA and trademark mechanisms to block SLX sales that were NOT violations of these, but rather reselling actual SexGen beds (in violation of the license agreement, which abrogates "right of first sale". But, that's just my opinion, and I don't know any of the details of the class action suit. I do feel that it's important that LL take IP rights seriously and combat IP theft as effectively as possible, and I hope that's what Stoker's suit achieves -- and I'm sure he would agree with me on that.

Meh. I'm biased here. Language should be as exact as possible. No less so than a script if possible.



I think it is much worse public relations to passively or tacitly encourage stealing by NOT nullifying stolen objects such as happened here. Would you have RH pay something to each person who either sent or used his stolen items?!

People won't be jumpy about buying anything. The buzz will always supercede any fears. If people are shopping in this economy, that should tell everything about fear vs. thrill.

Kitty: I suppose those things could happen but in most of those cases, what would happen is sales would cease. It's a bit different to rip off someone's entire inventory and just hand it out or open your own shop with it.

I see those scenarios you mentioned - except shops selling ripped textures - they should know better - and perhaps people using proprietary labels in SL products - the writing is on the wall - as deserving their own thoughtful rule making within SL. As for what should happen with the goods already bought, I don't know. You are talking about permissions mistakes mostly.

If something I bought turned out to be ripped, or permissions leaked, I would not be upset if the decision was made to nullify it (make it inoperable or unrezzable.) As long as someone told me why. Why would I want to use something stolen, knowingly?

Yeah, I'm no poetry fan either.

'ey....

Lol.

(Actually, good poetry is exact and abstract at the same time.)

That's why I don't like languages like COBOL and Perl. Human languages aren't exact, and using natural language to guide the design of a programming language is a lousy idea.
No, I think LL should discourage stealing by acting promptly and appropriately so there's hardly any such content out there. As it seems they did this time.

Are you saying that word-language is not as exact as scripting language - or replying to the (mistaken) notion I am saying they are (or should be) the same?



I can agree with that.

What I disagree with is the idea that people should continue using the stolen goods or that (legitimate) creators should somehow reward or reimburse others for their own victimisation.

Yes.

Been there, done that, got the new happy customers and follow-on sales.

I'm not saying that anyone should be required to do this.

Just that it's the smart thing to do.