BEWARE: Stolen Textures In Second Life!!!!!

Of course you could steal it; but it's much easier and faster for any existing member of such group of skin makers, or even regular customer... to verify if the seller displaying the seal is actually member of this group... than it'd be for them to verify if the skin has been copied from someone else's work ^^

No arbitration is necessary. A complaint is made and the vendor is allowed to put in a response. The consumers can judge for themselves. Reputable vendors will have a large number of positive responses and few, if any, unresolved complaints.

I think you misunderstand how the BBB and the SL BBB are used. If I am looking for a skin I will go to the SL BBB and look for all the vendors who are listed and do not have a high number of complaints. Or perhaps while shopping I will notice the SL BBB seal (and group tag) on a shop and know that it has some history that I can look up to verify that it is not shady.That is indeed primarily a reward for the honest merchants and also an incentive for dishonest merchants to boost their business by playing fair.

How is the "guild" better? You say there are "simple qualifications" but you don't specify what those are and that is by far more subject to abuse because it is obscure. Will the guild not allow skins that are purely photosourced? Will it reject members who charge low prices or whose skins seem vaguely like another? Will it expel members who have treated their customers poorly (e.g. had bad signage, did not deliver what was advertised, promised refunds that didn't materialize, etc.) You have all the problems that you claim the SL BBB would have but none of the transparency, thus leaving decisions in the hands of a small group who have their own agenda.


There certainly is room for both systems. As a consumer, I don't think I get much benefit out of the "guild" system and if I were a vendor (especially one who was not in the top 3 or 5 in popularity or sales) I would be very concerned that I would not be part of the "in crowd" unless I wanted to play by their arbitrary rules.

Don't forget LL had to remove negative ratings from SL because it was so widely used as a form of abuse. Complaints can't ever be resolved without arbitration. Some neutral third party has to arbitrate or you just have a useless he said she said system where there'd be nothing to stop competitors from creating a lot of alts and writing a lot of bogus complaints costing their target a great deal of wasted time, effort, and most likely a smeared reputation. I'd rather spend my time creating content, personally. Having a system like that function well and fairly depends on the people who use it being honest in their comments and complaints. If people were honest we wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place.

I assume that the SL negative ratings did not list who gave the rating and did not give an opportunity for the user who was dinged to respond. That system of very limited info is far more open to abuse.


On some of this I'm not very clear. How many alts can a user have, how much does it cost in time, effort and money to set up a single alt, and is it possible to tell the last time a user connected?

Given my assumptions on the above, I think it would take a seriously pissed off and dishonest competitor to adversely affect an honest vendor and I think that will be rare and extremely dangerous to undertake for the mudslinger.

In the SL BBB model the complainant's name and account status would be there for the consumer to see. If the vendor has no record of selling to that alt they can indicate that in their response and if they are suspicious they can assert that this is a competitor slamming their business. As a consumer I could weigh those factors in deciding to buy or not. In egregious cases you could always post to a forum such as this to make your case.

But I'll repeat, how does the guild system improve on any of this? If one of the guild members rips me off, how do I complain and do they get removed from the guild? If I create an alt and complain to the guild about one of my competitors, how do they differentiate that from previous case?

How is the guild better suited to protecting consumers? The guild, as outlined, gives consumers little protection and little recourse. When I see a merchant who is not in the guild, what am I to make of that? Does that imply that they are dishonest?

I'm not ruling out the possibility that in some industries a benevolent guild adds some small assurance to consumers, but I think the benefit is negligible in most cases and the "benevolence" is too easily corrupted. (The casino/gaming device market is one where I think this would work since consumers get a huge benefit which increases confidence and therefore sales.)

It doesn't necessarily improve on it. It avoids the pitfalls and does what it can with the resources we have available (which doesn't include LL's logs). Don't get me wrong. I'd really like to see an ebay style feedback type thing for merchants and creators but until something like that is implemented by LL so that it's completely tied to in-world transactions I'd be very wary of it. I don't want someone to be able to comment unless they've specifically purchased the product about which they're commenting. Anything else is just going to be too dilluted by friends talking up their friends and enemies flinging poo to be worth much as objective information for consumers. One thing to keep in mind when considering the difference between how effectively ebay's system works and the potential for the same thing to go horribly wrong in SL... most people aren't going to spend RL money on something from an ebay merchant just so they can grief them. In SL we're dealing with anonymous people trading what many in the population consider to be nothing more than play money and to whom SL is just a game. The classified forums here had to be made post only to stop all the petty flamewars that were going on there, most of which were just pissing contests and not valid or useful feedback.

But you haven't explained how it avoids any of the pitfalls. Maybe how this will all work out is all clear in your head, but I just can't see it. Is the idea to protect vendors from malicious complaints just by swallowing them up? Do we rely on the guild founders to determine when there are sufficient "real" complaints that they bother to kick someone out?

I really don't understand how guilds do anything other than act as an extension of the game for the sole benefit (fun + profit) of guild members.

I'm eager to see someone write up a guild charter and outline exactly all the requirements for being a member and the procedures for complaints. I don't expect it right now, but look forward to it in the fullness of time.

BTW, isn't your proposal for waiting for LL to implement this system which includes the "I don't want someone to be able to comment unless they've specifically purchased the product " feature directly contradicted by "In SL we're dealing with anonymous people trading what many in the population consider to be nothing more than play money".

The article contains statements that haven't been updated since April 2005. Anyway, it was just reviewed by me and I say it's wrong. I can't be bothered getting into an edit war with the authors over this however.



There is and this is the sort of thing VAC does (albiet very poorly). The tricks with moving players around and heuristics aren't used on VAC servers because despite being quite a weak type of protection it's sufficiently good to have shifted cheating out onto unprotected servers. They are used in 3rd party anti-cheat systems that can't modify the game itself except at well defined bridge points, which only exist due to the nature of CounterStrike itself.

There are a limited number of places you can easily stick a GL detour (entry point, code offset, TEB, TLS dispatch etc) and they can be checked for. Creating a truly modified driver hasn't really been possible since the video card hardware interface got too complex to reverse engineer; instead people are limited to bolting on their modifications and just like in real life even the best jobs can still be spotted.

This doesn't really address what am talking about, though. It's not spotting that things are perhaps different from 'default' that's the problem... it's determining once you know that, _if_ the modification is malicious in intent, as opposed to being there for whatever genuine and honest to god reasons.

Dammit, Lost, I asked you to email me with the name of this thieving moron -- you know, a skin can look VERY DIFFERENT when worn by someone with a different shape.

Please see my website now for the results.

You assume any modification is malicious. Second Life isn't open source; any attempts to modify its inner workings no matter how well intentioned cannot be separated from malicious changes so they all have to be banned.

No I don't like it either, but going fully open means abandoning the ability to create once and sell many times, it'd require SL designers to move to a web like model where you do custom work for clients.

They weren't direct analogies (you can try to paint it that way to bolster your weak side argument, but the fact remains that they were not intended to be as such), and no, I don't think that they are even close to being on par with texture theft. I shouldn't have to explain that to anyone who isn't just looking for an argument. I used them, in part, to illustrate how silly another person was being with the bank robbery stuff. Hint: I addressed them by name when writing that post. Their name is not "Groucho".

You picked my post out, and responded to it. You went off-topic and ranted about how people who become advocates after personal loss are self-serving jerks. I disagree, in many cases, although there are some where I might agree. In the case of those I used as examples, I think your criticism is misplaced.

One person saying "woe is me" does not constitute a thread full of such sentiment, especially when the OP and others who have had their hard work ripped off made no such statements, regardless of how much you would like to make it seem so by quoting one person who apparently hasn't even experienced being ripped off.

Anyway, arguing with alts isn't something I generally waste much time on, so I will bid you adieu.

If you look through this thread, the person who was selling the copy has posted multiple times - she has stopped selling it, and said she bought the texture from someone else, but won't reveal who.

I saw the original thread, and had other stuff to do -- I did not read every single post in the thread.

And I see only ONE post by this person, Cris.

Let's hope Lost doesn't sell "fat packs" or this could go downhill.

Ingrid, please!

Like you can talk with that hanging outta yer mouth!

Have either of you had anyone you know die a slow painful death from lung cancer?

If not, I sincerely hope you will, and that you'll think it's as funny as you do now.

Do you really think anybody doesn't know exactly how unhealthy smoking is these days, and that cold comments like this do anything but piss them off and want to ignore you? I'd wouldn't have said anything except that little bit about "I sincerely hope you will" ticked me off. Think before you speak.

Actually, yes. My Grandad died from Lung Cancer and Emphasemia and my mother went through Chemo for Cancer.

Neither of them gave up smoking, even though me and my whole famliy urged them to, selfish or not it was/is THEIR choice.

So there you go, your sincere hope has come true, does that make you any happier?

Lost, I am really sorry this happened this happened to you. Nothing and I mean nothing is more disheartening than spending an enormous amount of time hand-crafting a skin only to have it stolen in seconds by user with no moral values.

You’re not alone, however. I’ve had my skins stolen and resold more times than I can remember. There is, in fact, a user at this very moment who is actually giving my skins away to people – using them as collateral to get deals on other items in Second Life.

This has gone so far, that I have seen elements of my textures on med-level skin merchants. They barely take any effort to cover-up the fact as well. One could say, “Well they are just using the same photo source”, but this is impossible in my case. My female textures use both hand-painted and photos. The photos, however, are of my own body; so unless I have a twin out there that I am unaware about....

As for the people who purport that two examples are similar…

They need to wake-up.

True artists know their work and true artists can spot the difference between borrowing ideas and stealing elements, (or the entirety), of an image.

I can’t offer you any advice on what action to take. I have had no success with Linden Labs despite several abuse reports against users for blatantly stealing my work. At one point I was ready to quit, but Chip told me to stick it out. I followed his advice but I am far more jaded with SL right now.

As I see it, there is very little incentive to create anything new for the Metaverse at this point. Why?

A) Linden Labs seems reluctant to protect the very Content Producers that keep the Verse alive while failing to take appropriate action against users who blatantly steal and resell other users work.

B) The Linden dollar has dropped to abyssal rates, meaning Content Producers make far less for the same amount of effort.

Linden Labs has a great concept with SL, but I fear they are losing touch with the very thing they created.


Hugs,


Storma

Mantra of the Day:
(breathe in, chant slowly, breathe out, breathe in, repeat...)
IT'S ONLY A GAME! IT'S ONLY A GAME! IT'S ONLY A GAME!

She posted four times in this thread, actually - here you go so you don't have to search the thread for them:

/108/29/110582/3.html#post1066467

/108/29/110582/4.html#post1066507

/108/29/110582/4.html#post1066616

/108/29/110582/11.html#post1068626

Storma,

Have you filed a DMCA takedown notice with LL or just filed abuse reports? If you have not filed one with them, you definitely should - this site has the documents that you need:

http://www.findlegalforms.com/xcart/customer/home.php?productid=28141&cat=1228&page=1&partner=google

It is an important part of the process - abuse reports have no legal bearing, whereas these documents do. Linden Lab has to respond to them and take action. Please consider it - you may not be able to stop it from happening in the first place, but it doesn't mean you are powerless to stop it from continuing.

Wishing cancer on people. That'll get your point across! & once thei'll have it the first thing theill think is DAMN I should have listened to that girl who banned cigarettes in SL!!

Lost - Sorry your skins got stolen. But i'm glad it was ressolved.

& Doc - knowing how to rip off a texture doesn't make you a graphics expert. But thanks for telling everyone how to do it anyway.

Watermarking or no watermarking, untill we have a way to defend ourselfs from theft, the only thing we seem to be able to do is spread the word about people who steal. So that shoppers know to avoid stolen products. Especially if they can buy a better original!

I've had a skin stolen from slexchange by two different people who added stuff but used the same textures. It was fairly obvious so if you sell your skins on slexchange or slboutique, be careful. I started adding the words Demo to the unique parts of the skin and my skins have some photosourcing but then along with that hand drawn or just hand drawn. You can always tell when they don't bother to edit your own handdrawn sections.

How I know that it was stolen from SLexchange is because they were new and not one sold and then two merchants made a skin using the same textures but adding new stuff in with it and one merchant sold it for the exact same price and even had some of the same sentences in with his/her skin and then the other creatively challenged merchant marked his price down way low. They did add more and did a better job in my opinion but it still doesn't feel too great that people stoop that low.

Been there, done that - twice.

Usually people who have experienced a tragedy have more compassion, rather than less. I don't recall "Wishing Others to Suffer Like You Have" as being one of the stages of grief acceptance.

I could have sworn this was a thread about texture theft.