Systems we can implement in world to make it harder for "fly by night" scoundrels.

there are a number of things you can easy check already.
want to know how long a shop has been around? check the about land, unless it is on land with a rentgroup it will show when it last changed owner.
want to know how long the account has been around, check profile, the info is right there as wel.

simply put, we don't need another system, we need education to use the system we have already.

edit: there is also a way to see when someone was online the last time, join a group they are in and check the member list, it will say right there. a bit more work I agree but I do it regulary to see if someone that is late with paying has left sl (not logged in a long time) might be away on unforseen problems (not logged in in the last few days) and friends need to be contacted or simply forgot to pay and should be reminded.

Unfortunately "active" time is easily fooled by running the account under a bot client 24/7 for a moth or 2.
Though it may stop some of the lowerer level cheats, it won't stop determined ones.
You need to prove thy have done something that isn't easy for a bot to do. Maybe they have to buy a certain number of items from a certain number of different places or engage in chat for a number of hours with a certain number of unique avatars, or use voice a few times.

I can't think of anything that couldn't be botted once they worked out what they needed.
I'm leaning towards a US$10 licence to be able to sell items over L$0. In conjunction with a solid announcement from LL that all stolen content will be removed from inventories as it is found, replacing the items with a notecard like "deleted stolen content # 6789" that contains the name of the item/creator deleted and the name of the original creator so people can source a replacement from them. One advantage is as long as people kept the notecard, iff a wrong decision was made for whatever reason it could be reversed by replacing the notecards with the item again.

If a content theif has to invest US$10 for each alt to sell stolen content they are going to be risking that they can recoup that US$10 before they are caught. Currently they can flood the grid and X-Street with 50 disposable alts selling the same stolen content for free with little fear or care as to whether they get caught. Catch one the other 49 are still selling and they just create a replacement. It's impossible for a theif to lose money because it's completely free to sell stollen content.

Education is great but it doesn't stop cars being stolen, "fancy gizmo's" like locks do though
Multiple measures need to be taken as any one particular measure will probably be completely useless against a particular kind of content theft.

The answer is not regulation, as regulation begets even more regulation. This will inevitably lead to "$10 to register your trademark" or a similar thing. And once people start policing this, some of the fun of spontaneous creation is removed from Second Life.

I didn't come here purely for the business opportunities. I came here to enjoy myself. Getting more and more regulations in place to restrict what I can do here does not lead me towards that goal. Eventually it may just cause me to leave.

I will not buy a license to give away or sell stuff in SL. I will cease contributing to the economy here, instead.

You are trying to educate everyone on how to accurately check out an engines condition before buying a car. Education won't stop people buying a lemon if it is more than they can or want to comprehend.

The average resident and even many business owners don't know how those tools work. These are shoppers we are talking about not content creators, they have possibly never used land tool in SLeven if they have been here 2 years, some of them have never even created a plywood cube other than by accident. And my experiences are mainly with the ones can speak english. You can't expect every resident in SL to have knowledge on how all these tools work.

The last online one is good idea if my proposed system perhaps showed the last time the owner was at the shop it may be useful too.

What I am trying to do is incorporate the tools you have mentioned in a low level user friendly simple format.

Well people will just buy their stuff from someone else, we don't exactly hqve a shortage of content creators nowdays. Odds are many people will leave anyway once they find their stuff was selling as pirated copies all over the grid for L$10.

The content theives are also here for the fun business opportunities and we are making it a smorgasboard for them to destroy other people who also came here for the business opportunities by protecting their rights to trade freely.

We keep sticking our heads in the sand and the theives aren't going to get bored and leave. Content theft isn't dropping, it's climbing, every goldfarmer on the internet will have their army of pirate content sellers eventually.

The answer here is not to make it harder for the average person to get involved as a merchant or to create content.

Once you have positive proof of infringement, then yes, by all means, go after that person, get his account banned. The L$ he made will still be in his account, or if LL transferred it out it there will be traceable information on their end for this. No matter how you make money in SL, only LL can pay you out, and they can trace the money they send out, and that can be done by a court order if needed. L$ can be tracked in the system, so an infgfringer can't transfer it to an alt and just let it vanish either.

Creating content should not be made harder indeed, as it is one of the strengths of SL, in my opinion. Most merchants probably started creating for fun, long before realizing they could sell their creations.

Getting involved as a merchant should definitely be made harder. Want to try and make a buck? Register your RL information with LL. Maybe even pay a small amount, but probably we can do without that. Restrict all merchant rights to verified accounts only, even the right to sell at 0 linden. Too many ripped items ended up as freebies. Not all thieves are thieves for the money, some think it is just fun to be an @ss. Let's see how much fun they think it is to do so, when their RL info is listed and actual action is undertaken.

Require all accounts to provide ID? Yes, I can get behind that.

Nerf accounts with no ID, but leave them in world as a kind of underclass? No. There's already too much of that as it is.

Argent I would not say a kind of underclass. Being a merchant does not make you upper class does it? And the only reason to require people to verify, is to make them able to be a merchant. Since the majority in SL are consumers, and not merchants, the majority would not require more verification as they already do now if they want to visit adult land. For the minority that wants to do business, even on small scale, identification is required. To protect the merchants, but the consumers as well.

Myself, I am a merchant, and a premium member. But my customers are the upper class for me, they provide me the sole reason to even be in business, after all.

If you need to be "a merchant" to do so much as give someone a "Hooo" gesture, if that's what "being a merchant means", yeh I think it does.

Why do you say that? When the whole issue of unverified accounts came up, the big thing wasn't content theft, it was griefing. Which still goes on, and still spoils SL for a lot of people, scares off newbs who come to an infohub full of tubgirl particles, and so on. What does LL do to people who repeatedly grief? They eventually ban them, by IP, by MAC. It would be better if they had to be verified to get on in the first place, since they could block them more precisely with less collateral damage (like they guy who bought a used laptop and found it was machine-blocked).

Same argument as "why should content creators be verified".

A lower class is created when some people have more abilities than others. Example: As a Premium member I can create an item and sell it or give it away. However, my friend that joined a year ago cannot do that because he's not a Premium member. This is discriminatory. Either anyone should have the ability and opportunity to become a successful merchant, or like Argent said, require ID for all accounts across the board. I am definitely opposed to creating artificial entry barriers into the market. Once established it's way too easy to abuse them into a "only this group of people may create animations"-type of setup. Regulations are abused daily, once they come into force.

I still think the benefits of free Basic accounts outweigh the issues people have with them, but that's my opinion. I don't join games where I have to pay to see what's going on, and I don't register on forums where only members can search or post, unless it's something I REALLY want to do. Again, personal opinion. Too many places online have personal details about me already.

And for the record, I am a Premium member in SL, and I do have PIU and I pay tier fees to LL.

SL has always had Basic accounts, and they had free Basic accounts a year before they opened the floodgates to free unverified accounts. Originally, you needed to pay US$10.00 per account, premium or not. Then they waived that fee for the *first* account... you still had to pay $10.00 per alt after that (and according to the ToS you still technically do, though they make it more or less impossible to do so) up to four alts. Then, in June 2006, they threw it all away and opened it up to as many anonymous griefer alts and traffic bots as you wanted, but you can only provide payment info for (and make premium) five of them.

It all seems kind of backwards to me.

Yep, I remember that. And I remember the things said on the forum at the time. My first account (which I don't use any more, except for testing) was free, and this one was $10. I also remember the things said on the forum and in-world at the time. And yes, some of the predictions have come true, I will admit to that how they would enforce it right now, as you can sign up with a throw-away mail account.

Policing alts is hard to do, as you can sign up with a throw-away email account. Perhaps your machine ID (since it's already calculated), can be stored in your account? A person that creates multiple alts will then trip over this.

Of course, not too long ago one of my friends that don't like SL had his machine compromised by a botnet, and they used it to run what I suspected to be a traffic bot.

There will always be fly-by-night scoundrels.....even ones with verified accounts.

In RL people will copy the successful every single day, and legally, too. You always have to be a few steps ahead, and you always have to offer that extra special touch. Copiers are lazy, and can't offer that touch, and they won't take the time to use the marketing tools that you have at your fingertips.

Keep your nose to the grindstone....offer services that a fly-by-night does not have the capabilities to....keep your service/product/prices at a level that will keep your customers loyal, and they won't go anywhere else. Make new and better and more unique product - a copier will never keep up. Yeah - it's work - there's no free ride, for the copiers.....or for you.

It appears that some are underestimating the power of customer loyalty in SL. It is alive and well. People bring their RL concepts to SL. You already know this.....you do, too.

It also appears that some are underestimating the contributions of the unverified accounts. They are playing and shopping and contributing just as you are, if not more so. Take that away, and you've got more problems than people copying. There are reasons that they choose to use an unverified account, and some of those reasons have nothing to do with spending/shopping habits.

You put limits on the new ones exploring.....and there will be no reason to stay. Think back to the first time you created something, and whether or not you would have continued to create, if there were a dozen restrictions. Most people do not come to SL thinking...."I'm going to create X, and start a business." They have no idea what X is the first time they log on. All that happens later.....during the exploration. Don't take the exploration away.

Bullpucky.


There is no eathly reason why content selling can't be restricted to accounts willing to pony up RL information, tie it to RL accounts and willing to act like a good citizen. Even PayPal won't let you play merchant without a verified bank account. It is already a full time job for high volume creators to chase down thieves. How are they supposed to monitor the entire grid for an endless supply of business alts passing the same stolen wares back and forth? It becomes a game of whack-a-mole, which is why Stroker and Munch are filing a lawsuit against LL. Right now there is no way to prove infringement. Copied items list the thief as the item creator. There is no watermark for the textures, no way to verify original ownership by the copied creator. The DMCA process is slow, cumbersome and LL doesn't want to play cops and robbers. Expecting LL to do anything that requires payroll hours better spent elsewhere is folly.

Human nature is what it is. As soon as you bring money into the equation, the scam artists and opportunists will come crawling out of the woodwork. It's pretty hard to shut down the guy on the street corner selling items that "fell off the back of the truck." But it isn't so hard to shut down the one who opened a store front and started advertising. SL needs to have regulation in place as to who can set up a store front and advertise themselves as a business selling content to LL customers. The business owners of SL are part of the community, they are representatives of commerce in SL. Very few residents are ever going to interact with a Linden, but most of them are going to have some interaction with a business owner. Business owners should be held to a higher standard, just like Mentors should.

The same thing is true for many other activities in SL, such as buying weapons, wearing attachments, using voice, some people use all these things to screw over other users for the lulz.

Follow the money. LL needs to follow the money and wipe out the guy's base account. They claim they do this anyway, to combat fraud. This is fraud, and it's not like they don't have the resources in place.

And as soon as you regulate everything, there will be "Oh no, you can't sell a sex bed, that's my business". There's a reason First Life has anti-monopoly laws. If a large corporation can prevent startups, most of them will. And reap the benefits of this. This is simple capitalism. Sooner or later the big boys will want to change the regulations to benefit them. And then how will you guarantee that the small startup still has a decent change to get his business going?

And why should I give my details out to be able to give my friend a present I made? How is this different from being a merchant, in SL? After all, I could still infringe your copyright, even though no money passes hands.

Because if you don't then you wont be able to give your friend a little present.

You're not giving the gift of life here. I'm sure SL will survive without your little presents. The same can't be said for an SL without good quality content.

I suppose the question now is - Does Linden Lab feel that Second Life can still prosper without new content coming in?.

If the answer is "yes" then all the whining in the world won't save us.

No one can give any guarantees for the future. But then again no one is saying that we have to regulate everything. What is being proposed (and I think this will eventually happen too), is that people who want to trade, simply need to verify.
New merchants already have a difficult market to step into. As owner of 3 different businesses I know how hard it is to get a business going. Registering real life information, and paying a small fee would not have made it any harder.


Why should you expect to be able to give your friend that present without being verified?

To be honest, I rather see people unable to give presents they made because they refuse to verify, then see frustrated business owners talking about leaving because their whole freaking store was copybotted. Can you only imagine the frustration of that person whose entire work was copied and put into a freebie box? Do you really think that the right of an anonymous avatar to give a gift he made to someone, outweighs this guys rights? Well I do not.

If people couldn't give little presents when they got started, SL would have a fraction of the quality content it does have. It's a two-edged fish.

What we can answer is the question: does Linden Lab value the opinions of this small community. That answer is definitely no. Some individual Lindens may, but as a company they could not care less.

Still, lawsuits like Strokers, as well as the will to grow and attract businesses, will force LL to do something about it. So I would not be surprised if soon a blog entry starts with: Changes in transfer rights, or: Upcoming changes for Merchants.

Regarding the consumer education comment, above...

I too think that's a tough one, but then, there are lotsa people that read english, go through tutorials and whatnot when they are new. Maybe we can't educate everybody, but it's sorta like when you go to Thailand and see a big sign in english saying "Hey in this country we drive on the other side of the road, watch out!" Maybe it doesn't educate *everybody* but it sure doesn't hurt.

I wonder if it's time that Oxbridge University had a little something about consumer awareness and appropriate behaviour. I.e. that it's risky and wrong to pick up copying tools and duplicate people's stuff, even if it's technically possible, and that it's wrong to knowingly accept such stuff. And that some "businesses in a box" might be too good to be true. Gonna definitely see what Carl Metropolitan thinks of this.

My first draft is reading thus: "ZOMG ALL FREEBIE ARE STOLENZ ONLY USE THESE ONE HERE. NOOB BUILDER U WILL BE HAXX0R3D AN R1PP3D COPYBOT THIS IS YOUR ONLY DEFENCE SAY !QUIT !QUIT !QUIT..."

Does everyone think that text encompasses just the facts, and presents the issue without undue paranoia?