Philip Linden Teaches People How to Steal Content

Starting up a new business "in the real world" is just as "unstable" as having a business in SL. Most new businesses in real life fail within the first year.
Do you regard people who start their own (real life) businesses as being "irresponsible"? What would you prefer? Everyone goes and works for MacDonalds?

Really? When was the last time you couldnt log into real life for hours at a time? when was the last time you did a bunch of rl work, had your office crash and rolled back to before you started working?

For me it's my only choice at the moment. Owning my own business that is. Some of us are just forced into that situation.
Personally SL gives me a nice secondary income. I'm not putting much weight on SL's enviorment just yet. Because of it's instability. But, you bet, thats just as risky as RL.
I applaud anyone trying to make a business in SL.
But just like real life we have to build a business around the long-term problems that present itself.

Such as copyrights.
For me personally, if a design sells and market tests are showing a possible long term income from it,(in and outside of SL) then I'd probably fill out a $20 form and get it copyrighted and register the media.
But having a copyright is just one step. A person must be willing to fight for what they copyright. If a person doesn't plan on using that copyright, when a problem comes up, then they probably shouldn't bother.

Personally I'd have to make more than double the cost for registration, on that particular design/media, before I'd even think of doing so.

I would guess texture artists would have a different story because copyrights on every texture could get pricey? I'm not sure how those would work exactly.
You could maybe switch media types, put them on a disk, and copyright the disk itself that contains all your textures.
I think that would still be classed as digital media?
Maybe. I dunno. So many different forms for that stuff.
It's probably best to have someone else take care of that for you.

It would be nice if it was a lot easier.

There was an old poor-mans copyright where you'd mail yourself documents of your work or drafts of your design. Then never open it. The post time-stamp was a form of proof.
Only now it's easy for people to resteam envelopes so it doesn't hold up in court as well.
Again, if it was even worth going to court over in the first place.

I think people should stop comparing an SL business with an IRL business.

an SL business = virtual cash...
No possibilities of being bankrupt.

an IRL business = real cash and the huge loans you had to get to invest into your new business.
And the possibilities of being bankrupt.

And then LOADS of other diffirences.



I think SL is a nice way to make some extra cash...but it's very risky to quit your real job for an SL job.

Since online games don't last 10 years...while a real job does.

I buy birth controll rings and contact lenses with my SL money.

So think before stealing my textures...cause you're making me blind and fertile if you do !

Philip copies everything I say. One day I say something on the forums and the next day philip is regurgitating it in his town halls...

How do we stop this theft of my intellectual property?

1. Stop posting in the forums.
2. Change your signature; it has links to other posts by you.
3. Go to every one of your posts and delete the content.
4. If you are on #secondlife and see that any of people with names that start with ll are online, exit. They might relay what you say there to Philip. Especially exit if llPhilip is online.
5. Stop sending Philip PMs and IMs and email.

He's very compelling.. I don't know if I can resist him.

you fell for the old "the fact the you guys are all so beautiful... that is a part of the challenge here isn't it" routine, huh?

For what it's worth... I do find it interesting that Phillip Linden would make a statement that it doesn't matter what the TOS says, it actually does.

The Terms of Service apply to LL as much as the users of SL. "Terms of Service" by definition set the terms by which LL will provide the service, and the terms users must adhere to while using it. It is as legally binding as any contract.

If LL wants to do something contrary to the TOS, they need to change the TOS before doing it, or be in violation of a binding agreement.

I see alot of references to decreased sales and the implication that said decrease in sales is due to theft.

Could it not also be a product of increased prices and more competition? There are alot of new creative designers coming on the scene and I'm sure that is impacting sales of many of the established folks.

Is it possible to make a dent in the sales of counterfeit goods by reducing the price of the originals? Would it also be possible to make up some of the additional revenue through volume?

Could it be that is why Phillip referenced ITunes?

Just wondering...

OK. I will acknowledge that an automated, foolproof technical solution to texture theft is unlikely to ever be created. You can't scan every texture asset and do an automated comparison of them. So let's not even worry about arguing for that. Most artists and content creators are not asking for that. What they want is for Linden Labs to do something substantial to those who are *caught* stealing other people's work.

Phillip's comments on how easy it would be to 'reverse engineer' a PSD multi-layered file from a flattened image are badly misinformed, at best, and criminally negligent at worst.

Most texture artist's do NOT work at the final resolution when creating at texture for SL. They start at least twice that size, and then shrink the result to 512 x 512 before uploading. There is NO WAY that you can take a 512 x 512 flat image and restore the full level of detail that was present in the original 2048 x 2048 image! It's like asking someone to scan a postage stamp of the Mona Lisa and create a replica of the original painting at full size, with all the brush strokes and other fine deiails. Or like asking someone to start with a photocopy or scanned image of a US $100 bill, and expecting them to be able to reproduce from that the microprinting (too small to scan), sub-surface-embedded value strip and watermarks (shows only when back-lit), and other features that are intended to prevent counterfitting. The detail simply IS NOT THERE in the starting material that the texture thief is working with. Therefore, even if a thief uses every trick that Phillip suggested, the thief's faked-up multi-layer file can't hope to match the original artist's master file in detail or quality. Any person with functiioning eyes would be able to tell which was the original and which was a copy.

The challenge that one resident threw back at Phillip, to credibly replicate her multi-layered PSD clothing texture file from a 512 x 512 flat image, is one I will happily watch him fail miserably at. Too bad he is unlikely to eat his words once he does fail. More likely, he will ignore that challenge and go on making blind, uninformed assertations about a texture artist's work. And that means we get NO protection from Linden Labs, short of unaffordable legal proceedings.

It is completely impractical for a texture artist to file copyright on every single texture that they create. For somone like me, whose textures for building sell for maybe L$30 to L$50 each, I would have to make profitable sales off that texture for YEARS to get back the filing fees for a US Copyright. And even for skin artists, who get thousands of Lindens on the sale of a single skin, the actual cash income doesn't come close to what the filing fees and legal costs for defending those copyrights would cost. Especially if you figure into it how many hours they worked to create those skins.

If a texture artist can identify a thief, and can show Linden Labs that they have the original master files that created that texture, that should be sufficent proof for Linden Labd to act in defense of the content creator's intelectual property rights, and to suspend or ban the thief AND their alts. Yet Phillip seems to think this is not suffficient. Does someone have to take it to a court of law to prove that it is?

The vast majority of these texture thieves are doing it because it's got absolutely no consequences. They can rip something off, make a few bucks, and be assured taht ar worst Linden Labs slaps an alt on the wrist. To say that Linden Labs won't act because there is a theoretical possibility that thieves could produce 'fake proof' of original creation is to allow 99% of these oppourtunists to get away scott free. Most of them don't have the skills and wouldn't put the effort into making such forged 'proof'. As stated above, even if they did, it couldn't match the real original material.

So long as Linden Labs refuses to protect texture artist's rights, I certainly won't bother to produce any high-end clothing or skin textures, or any complex avatars. I'd like to expand in that direction in content creation, But Linden Labs is making it clear that a person who does such work will be denied even the most simole protection for their creations. If I create textures for my building work that have resale potential, or if I can create simple stuff that people will buy, I will sell those as textures. But I'm not going to count on clothing sales or texture sales as a source of SL income. I'll stick to sim building and large-scale terraforming. I'd like to see some thieving idiot 'steal' a sim-wide construction project. They can't, without doing just as much work as I do to create a beautiful sim.

Did you consider for even half a second that he was complimenting the quality of texture work on display, and that it's exactly that quality work that the assembled texture artists are wanting to protect?

Personally I view his comment as a complete trivialisation of the problem he was there to discuss.
Had I been there I would have been very tempted to hit an orbit button. Not one of the best comments to open a conversation with bearing in mind the circumstances as to why he was there.

That's definitely stretching it. I just think he saw a bunch of pretty avies and threw a compliment at them that landed with a thud. And considering how the rest of the conversation went, even if he was intending it in that sense, his lack of support and willingness to work out a solution with them makes that comment really lame.

Well it definitely went over like a lead balloon, but it just seems that everyone is predisposed to take everything in the worst way possible these days.

It's a MMO rule of some kind iirc, actually. "Any piece of information coming from developers that leaves any room for interpretation, *will* be interpreted in worst way possible" ;s

While others are predisposed to take everything in the best way possible, even at the price of stretching the facts quite a bit in the realm of fantasy. There are good things with SL, and LL DID make some good choices, but there are big flaws as well, and LL IS guilty of some absolutely senseless (i would have used another term, but i'm trying hard to be nice) management choices. Hiding or ignoring that won't do any good, if not encouraging LL to do more errors.

As many have said, if one wants to protect his work, given collaboration by LL, keeping high resolution, detailed, multi-layered templates is a quite fool-proof way to prove the originality of a texture. A texture thief wouldn't be able to bring it back to original conditions from a simple in-world resized and compressed TGA. And the difference is EASILY detectable by anyone put in the position to judge.
I'm sorry, but denying it means (as Ceera said) being blissfully ignorant in the field of computer graphics or wanting to purposedly and maliciously hide a fact to prove a false point (IE: That LL has no way to assess the paternity of a texture).

I know you want to believe that it would be easy to prove authorship but you're simply wrong about that. It would be far from foolproof and the possibility of someone being wrongly accused and consequently unfairly banned would be very high. Much too high. All it takes is very minor changes to a ripped texture to make it impossible to even approach conclusive proof of authorship. If we were talking about things other than skins it would be easier but any good skin by definition is going to closely resemble any other well done skin. This is especially true when people start with the same legally purchased and licensed source material.Your desire to have an easy solution is making you fail to look at this realistically.

While it seems your desire to defend LL (where it's not due, unfortunately) is making you fail to look at this realistically. Of course the process has to be balanced and just EVIDENT theft has to be punished. If two products look fairly similar but still retain a certain degree of difference no action should be taken.
Your claims on similarity are fairly off mark by the way, even for fairly similar products, given the original photoshop files it's extremely easy to spot the differences, even just by watching at the different techniques they've been produced with. Talking about Skins, if you look at the ones made by Storma Amarula and at those made by Munchflower Zaius (just to name two of my personal favourites), it's fairly easy to notice that they don't look similar at all, even while still being all skins.
Since you're so sure of your (honestly fairly misguided, IMHO) point, why don't you take up Wanda's challenge yourself?

I've been making skins here for several years and I've been asked my opinion in cases of suspected theft several times. Not once was I convinced beyond any doubt. I'm not talking out of my ass here. I photosource my skins and there are several other skinners who use the same source material I do. There are skins by Lost and others that are close enough to some of mine that if I didn't know better and was more paranoid I could easily think started out with my textures, and Lost could easily think the same thing. I'm sorry but you're simply not being realistic. I'm not defending LL out of some kind of fanboy attitude. I'm defending them because in this instance they are, unfortunately, quite correct. We could go back and forth on this all day so we'll just have to agree to disagree.

You're talking about photosourced material. Wich is quite a different issue. I'm talking about ORIGINAL textures here. If one photosurces his textures shouldn't even bother accusing someone of theft, since many probably have access to his same source and similar products can easily occur. Photosourced material is not *yours* to begin with, so it's not your position to defend it's originality.
But in this case someone accused in this fashion has an EASY way to defend himself.
"Stealing that texture? No way. Mine is photosourced" *accurate, complete and verifiable details about the source can follow and the issue is solved*

There's not an infinite nuber of ways to make skins, even if they're completely painted by hand. People who use similar techniques (meaning pretty much everyone who makes skins) will end up with similar looking results, differentiated mostly by their skill level. In an ideal world and with a clear cut case of theft I think people should be punished accordingly, however in the vast majority of cases it will never be clear cut no matter how much you'd like to believe otherwise. I have as much vested interest in not having my work stoken as anyone else, and perhaps even more than most. Most months my sales pays my mortgage. That doesn't change reality.

If you want to protect your business and your profits then provide a wide range of products with lots of available add-ons and give excellent customer service. No thief will ever be able to compete with that. Work and plan for the world we live in, not the one you wish we did.

Techniques are never really identical, we are not robots. There's QUITE an infinite number of ways to paint the human body with, and there's quite an infinite number of ways such ways could be arranged in an original, high resolution, high detail PSD file. We're not talking about having the judgement done by Mr Random Joe. But by experienced texture artists that can easily spot such differences and similarities, given the TOOLS to do that, and this meaning being provided all the best sources that the two parties can afford to produce.



Thank you, but i already do that. This doesn't justify any lack of action or research in protection by LL. SImply enough, if they don't want to do anything, they have to take the responsibility for that decision, and understand that the ones that allow them to go by without a content team (because let's say it, LL LIVES on the fact that residents create content for their game, they're the ones that benefit the most from the content creators' work) won't be happy about it. Even more if Mr. Boss decides to behave like a smartrear in public.
Action -> Reaction. As always.

Okay, or just be angry, suspicious, and upset all the time. I guess that works for some people. LL has given us their position. We don't have to like it but bitching about from now to the end of time will change absolutely nothing. It's just a waste of energy at this point. Selling textures in SL is now and forever will be insecure. Accept it and work accordingly or don't. I'm guessing you know which will serve you better in the long run.