Philip Linden Teaches People How to Steal Content

So your standpoint in front of unjust treatment is accept and shut up?
Good for you. Not my pair of shoes though.

There's only so many times you can ask for more porridge before you're beaten and sent out of the orphanage.

The simple, and very obvious (to me) fact of the matter is that LL has no plans at ever policing or punishing content theft, even if they could. The excuses Philip gave were, quite honestly, ridiculous. Yes, I suppose it is possible that the majority of SL content thieves are software engineers with added degrees in graphic design, but not likey to any logical thinking human being that doesn't also assume someone will invent a time machine and go back and steal your textures right before you can upload them. Since either of those scenerios could mess with the process of deciding who the original author of a psd file is... best not to try and determine any guilt, ever, anywhere. (I wonder if LL applies those same incredibly loose standards to their own IP?)

LL doesn't give a shit. Sad, but true. That being the case, we all have a few very simple options... Keep doing what we've been doing and suck it up while pocketing our meager paychecks... Continue trying to fight the good fight and begging for the LL authorities to hear our pleas for more porridge... Pack up our balls and go home empty handed with a bitter taste in our mouths... Or speak up loud and clear where it really matters to LL, the media. Grant those interviews, and say what you really feel.

While I recognize and agree with most of what you are saying, it also doesn't mean to roll over and play completely dead just because Linden Labs puts up their hands and says "sorry, can't help you" and comes up with some rather lame excuses. It is a problem that does need to be addressed on many levels - creators do need to find ways to accept the liability of doing this type of content, but it doesn't mean that Linden Lab does not also have a responsibility and that they are doing their level best to help. Content theft is never going to be stopped completely - but it also doesn't mean that efforts cannot be put in place to further discourage it and make it more difficult and less attractive of an option.

Chip, what about this. I mentioned this in a previous post.
This is about someone faking a PSD from a ripped texture and
comparing it to the original PSD yes?

How does the person who stole the texture remove
the compression artifacts from jpg2000?

The original PSD was never compressed, its full quality.
So I was wondering if you had considered that?
(and yes a photo-sourced(jpg) file would have artifacts,
but compressed twice, you get more artifacts)

Quoted for absolute truth.



Wich is, in fact, what i believe in, and as such the option i will always chose.

hmm...read this trivial dribble if you wish...

After reading through this post, it is obviouse that a solution from LL is not possible nor would it be easy to adapt into SL if there was one. But after looking more into the issues at hand here, if it is proven that a texture is stolen (big IF) LL will deal with it via DMCA, so it boils down to proving it.

How could you prove it though...watermarks can be hacked I can agree with but how about this idea (pardon if it is nonsense, just thinking here)

What about a watermarking system that can't be hacked, a system that uses the UV mapping for it?
Say you create a texture for a flat surface and implement a system like this into it, wrap that texture around a sphere and the watermark shows up, but indecernable unless it is wrapped around a sphere? And a reverse possibility that if the texture was created to wrap around a sphere, when you plop it on a flat surface, the watermark shows up?

I know this may not be possible, but many here have strong Kung-Fu with textures and if something like this is integrated into a texture before it gets flattened at the right spot, any attempt to "wash" the watermark out will result in a texture that looks like crap say with a skin the ummm...well.... the umm... (can I say nipple here?)come up missing or sooo distorted that the theif wasted their time doing it and a direct rip that has been untampered with , pending a DMCA, LL could search the suspect's inventory, get that texture and wrap it on the proper prim to see the watermark then that could be a proving point?

Or LL could provide us with a special prim / UV mapping feature that we could use for watermarking?

Sorry if I am off base here, but it seems that there has got to be a way to protect the work and the rights of the creators, and the SL community as a whole may be able to figure that out as a whole which could be beneficial to all of us.

I don't disagree with anything you're saying, and as I've said several times in this thread already I wish as much as anyone else that there was a solution to this problem. The way I see it though, there isn't. We're asking LL to take the place of the courts in matters of intellectual property disputes involving real money. If someone follows their suggestion and goes through the legal process (filing copyright papers, DMCA, lawyers, and ultimately court) that still leaves that person in uncharted territory arguing over something incredibly difficult to prove in a medium the courts haven't really dealt with before. To expect LL to become the judge and jury is asking an awful lot... it's asking them to put themselves in the position of being sued.

If they ban someone who was innocent (or even just a vindictive person who was guilty) is a real court going to take LL's verdict as difinitive? Not bloody likely. The two parties are going to be right back at square one with one of them already having lost their right to participate in SL's marketplace, perhaps wrongly. It will revert to a case where the question of authorship is going to come down to copyright and DMCA anyway. That's a worst case scenario, but that's the scenario LL has to look at. They have a lot more at stake than we do.

When it comes to trying to divine original authorship, I guess I differ with many of you in seeing LL's point. With digital media there's simply no easy way to tell in a large percentage of cases. Even if I believed otherwise that doesn't change that LL sees it that way, and I don't believe their reasoning is illogical or unreasonable. I think they try and do right by us in what ways they feel they can, but SL isn't a democracy and its mission is to provide a fun expansive environment that serves a broad range of interests, not to protect the profits of CMFF by inventing some technology that doesn't even exist outside of SL.

It's obvious LL wants us to come up with our own solutions. So far I haven't heard many suggestions that don't amount to pushing it right back in their lap. Is the solution to turn SL into some kind of police state where you might get hauled off to some hackneyed in-world court just because some competitor doesn't like the way you looked at them or thinks your product looks too much like theirs? Are we going to define standards that say "you have to create your work this particular way to mitigate the danger of getting wrongly tossed out"? Do we want a system like There's where we have to submit new designs for approval before we can put them up for sale? Is a little bit of lost profit worth that? Honestly? I think I'd rather live with the risks and eat a bit of profit.

People want the security that comes from a completely closed system with rigidly controlled content and rules that a world like WoW has, and at the same time is completely open and free where we aren't limited. We seem to endlessly bang our heads on that dichotomy. Perpetually making LL out to be some kind of incompetent enemy does nothing to help. Hell, when I started making clothing and skins we didn't even have a permissions system!

Yeah, it truly sucks that we get stolen from, but are we really looking at all the consequences of what we're asking for?

A real court won't have ANYTHING to do with LL's ban, since LL has the right to ban whoever they wants for whatever reason. A real life court has absolutely NO say in it.
And looks like you really never stop with the usual, overused, ultra-liberal talk of the "what if they punish an innocent?".
Errors happen with EVERY kind of regulation, it's a part of regulation itself.
Let's live without laws because an innocent could be prosecuted due to a judging error? I really don't think so. Let's try to get real please.



Keep your source materials and originals (wich a designer should ALWASY do) and that won't happen.
Still not tired of crying about the "police state" i see. Better than complete anarchy i'd say.



Yes i am, and they all look better than a world in wich thieves and devil's advocates run free to do their misdeeds

What have LL done regarding theft that is "right by us"?
Have they actually done anything at all other than try to pass it off as a non-problem?
And as I keep saying, but people refuse to listen - its a very simple process to have material removed and peoples accounts terminated on the internet;
/108/4b/125525/1.html

Why should SL be any different?
LL sold SL to me as a trading platform - how can you have a trading system that is based on hope and trust that another person wont steal your created stuff and sell it cheaper?
At the very minimum people who buy into this should expect protection agaist this happening.

Phillip Linden has said people should deal with this issue locally - which is utter bollocks.
LL cannot expect people to enforce rules that deal with the problem locally - unless they give every sim an asset server then it is a grid wide problem and requires them to deal with it.

It *is* a good question to ask. And if the only answer you can give is "hey, shit happens, live with it" ... then it's absolutely no different from LL's response to what you perceive as the problem, i.e. content theft.

Or, to put it bit different. Will you be as eager to brush off possible negative consequences if they put *you* out of SL because someone provided PSD files, you provided PSD files, and the person responsible for decision made a mistake and decided *you* are the thief? As it is now, all suggestions how to fix things hinge on "a good artist will be able to tell original from the copy". Well, take a look at LL record as far as making flawless products and decisions go. Do you actually trust them enough to be both your jury and executioner?

because simple as that, i don't.

As Wanda and many others already stated, any expert texture artist would recognize a forged PSD if confronted with the original one. There are simply TOO many detectable elements: (compression, resolution, layers, alpha...). And the same expert texture artist would even be able to easily tell if BOTH textures are original (may happen, common inspiration?) So your counterpoint is actually a moot point.
Not to mention upload date, since if i uploaded my texture BEFORE Random Avatar, then Random Avatar will have some problems demonstrating i stole his. If LL can't afford or doesn't Have the ability to hire qualified personnel to do the judging (since after all they don't have to pay for a content team, so maybe they can put some money to protect their REAL content team, namely US), they can as well change job.

My counterpoint is actually, you are _presuming and relying_ on "an expert texture artist" to be the one who makes judgement call. So your repeating the same line about the "expert texture artist" is really reinforcing what i said -- it requires someone with enough experience to make this sort of decisions.

And what then? Is such person going to be accountable for their decisions? Or do they get carte blanche to issue bans, and their decisions are not to be reviewed, nor discussed? Look at the current resmod drama all over the forum, then multiply it by 10 when real money, artists' egos and conflicting opinions enter the picture. Fun... not. Except maybe for popcorn makers.

Why would they want to change job? The hard to swallow fact is, few (dozens) content creators don't make nor break SL at this point, with its current growth rate. Will they be missed if they go? Yes. But at the same time they will be replaced, because nearly anyone can be replaced. Just look on 'net on the whole. People steal everything they can from it every day, there is no appointed judges to "ban people from internet" when they copy and sell someone else's work ... unless you can afford to file actual lawsuit. And yet it doesn't make "everyone" throw their hands up in air and go home, to never show (or try to sell) something they made ever again. Sure, some do. But in the end they are the only ones who really "lose" anything... simply because they give up on their chance to have some serious impact on world, by slinking into "am taking my toys home, that will teach them" obscurity. Or to make at least part of full potential profit they could be making.

It should be an offical appointed Linden who knows what they are talking about. Carte Blanche? Why not!

ATM its better than what LL can currently offer - ie nothing






sigh, I think I have said this over 20 times this week by now.
It is possible and VERY easy to have websites removed for copyright violations without any court being involved.

As for the logic of new content producers replacing the old - how many of the people who joined SL since account verification was ended are content producers compared to those that are alts, griefers and disposible accounts?

Why not? because you already have plenty people running around like chickens with heads looped off and screaming "zOMG FIC! zOMG LL playing favourites! ZomG Lindens mingling with residents and acting unprofessional based on their likes and dislikes1!"

Now put a guy with right to ban anyone at moment notice into it. See how long before it turns into "zOMG LL squashing competitors of their FIC residents with fake DMCA claims!"

And you know what? since there's money involved amongst other things, what protection do you have against people (also skilled artist) who would actually indeed go as far as to make fake PSD's and filling content theft claims in hope to get people they don't want to compete against (or plain don't like) banned? A Linden-appointed guy that "should know what they are talking about" and hopefully never ever makes a mistake?

Any system put in place can and will be gamed by people with little ethical concerns. So no, i don't know if that's really better prospect than what LL currently has to offer.

And this removes people who were abusing your work in such manner from the internet and from distributing your work further, how?

What you talk about is equivalent of current DMCA procedure -- you fill a complaint, LL takes stuff down, no court. (unless counter-complaint is filled) What you *ask* for is something entirely different.

I don't see what the *ratio* has to do here with anything -- it's not ratio that makes content, it's actual people. And it would be really silly to presume that no content creators period joined SL since account verification was ended.

Do you ever see the light of SL day?

Take your head out fo the fucking hole and look around, I see chaos everywhere!

I really don't give a crap what players say about each other. LL provides a buying and selling platform. They should police it to ensure its legitimate.




Are you taking the piss or are you genuinely stupid to ask that question?



almost equivilent. LL seem to not want to ban these theives. Why are there people still on the grid unpunished when they have openly admitted they stole stuff?
Web hosts delete accounts - LL can do this too.




as it would be equally as silly to imply lots of new content creators are joining when you have no facts to base the assumption on.


Torley Linden:
I've closed this thread. While thankful for the constructive discussion here about these very relevant issues, the trolling and derailing really didn't contribute. :\

Related, the "first use metadata" project to aid in determining who uploaded a texture first: /139/4a/125258/1.html which I am going to voice out about accelerating if at all possible, since at least it'd be something *more* than what we have today.

As a Linden with an alt who's a content creator (and not the only one), I feel things like this deeply and I've been wanting to get involved further. It's difficult because I haven't been able to find enough time to do all that and I feel stretched very thinly, which frustrates me greatly, but please know that these concerns don't go unheard, and I hope to continue learning and communicate what I find out with other Lindens so when we can do something, we will.