Policing texture theft. One possible solution everyone will hate!

All right. I have ONE solution so far for trying to deal with copyright/IP abuse in SL.

We know that LL reluctant to get into the act of policing copyright/IP abuse due to the time involved watching every case and dealing with it. That time equates to money and payroll, and would take the current Lindens that deal with griefing away from their already excessive duties.

So I have an idea. We pay for it.

I advise this: A $1 per month fee for the right to upload textures, animations, and sounds to SL. This fee is specificly to pay for the wage of those that will be policing copyright/IP abuse in SL. They are not there to deal with anything else, and deal with all reports coming in.

They then deal with situation by banning, dealing in providing SL evidence to lawyers in the case of legal disputes, and the like.

The $1 fee is the same regardless of the amount of uploads the person does, and only has to be paid upon the 1st upload during a month. The person can pay with money in the account just like paying tier or premium.

This will have the following effects:

It will reduce the number of uploads, since many will not want to pay it.
Those that do, are generally paying to have their rights protected, and those who upload stolen textures will have full forewarning that what they are doing is going to get them caught and punished.

Voice in and tell me your opinion!

Simply enough, no.
We pay LL more than a decent buck to deserve this and many oher services that LL doesn't currently provide. Not to mention, we shouldn't have to pay LL to protect the content we create from wich THEY get the most benefit.

Nope why do I want to play a fee to upload snapshots so LL will police YOUR textures?

I would have no problem with this suggestion and i would even be willing to pay more if there was some kind of guarantee.
What I've seen so far from LL however, doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
Having said that, many people don't make enough money for this and it affects them as much as someone who earns 1 billion a month.

Good point. Let's say that photo's are still free for now. Not sure how that would work, but I'm not sure how that could be abused easily.

1) Why make texture users pay for policing costs that should fall to content creators?
2) Even assuming that 10,000 users upload a texture in a month, that only nets 10,000L$, or about $30, which is only an hour or two's pay for an admin to track down texture/content stealing Residents and ensure justice is done.
3) Given #2, you'd have to make the fee, say, 10L, or 20L ($300-$600) to get a person or two on call for this.
4) Given #3, this won't pass because fees for uploading already discourage content creation and we really, really don't want to discourage first time uploaders of a single texture.... simply because that is bad for encouraging creation in SL's economy.

Ok, what would work?
Paying: Content creators using part of their profits to pay LL more to police texture theft?
Bug fixes : fix the bugs/loopholes that allow texture theft in preventable ways?
Punishment : Automatic 1 week suspension for a person and all their alts on the first time they're caught stealing textures?

I don't know the answer. But I'm interested to see what people come up with.

Umn. So sorry. $1. Not 1L$.

One real dollar. Per month. Total month. Not per texture.

Your other points still stand, and I think you have a point. Taxes though (and this WOULD be a tax of sorts), are about paying for something that needs to be done in the view of the majority of people. Road repair. Paying police. Etc.

The real question is this something the majority wants or sees needed.

Sadly, a poll only gives a superficial view of this. You know, if LL wanted people's opinions, they should build them into the first login after an update, where they have to answer before it will run, like the TOS updates! It would be annoying, but you can be sure that EVERY SINGLE PLAYER saw it and had a say...

someone suggested a while ago (sorry i dont remember who you are) that maybe different clients should be made a availible. A player client and a content producers client. Those who dont want to build get a smaller download without building options.

A fee such as an insurance tax like you speak about could be added to the content producers client, and of course things like CC validation etc.

Naw. Not needed. They already have the framework in place with tier. Just have it do a similar thing for uploading information.

Were I cynical, I'd sign up for this just to quash several hundred potential competitors every season.

They would give up on creating before they even started!

Anything that raises the barrier to start as a content creator has economic benefits to those of us already doing it.



Also, how would anyone know, for instance, if what I was uploading was really mine or not?

Okay, maybe it's obvious that I'm not Picasso.

But would it be obvious if a Second Life account had rights to this art or not?

http://www.strangeling.com/

Just an example of a legitimate artist who may or may not be in Second Life.

Just how would they be protected from violations by a wage-drawing Copyright Policeman, if they were not a member of Second Life? Would every texture's original creator have to be located on the internet and beyond?

Welcome to the nightmare. I have not a clue. I would assume that since they would have to know about and complain about the theft, that it would be the thief that would be paying for part of it. He had to pay to upload.

As to culling out new blood, so that us old timers can stay in the lead...

Yup! That WOULD be a side effect now, wouldn't it. Like I said. Nobody is going to like this solution.

thats not really relivent.

I have been ripped off in real life and until it is brought to my attention it means nothing to me. However, once I do know about it i should be able to have said content removed quickly and easily.

If people are going to steal you would think they would smart
enough to leave their own neighborhood before doing so.
It appears that the things that people really get fired up about,
are the textures that are lifted from inside of SL.

However Desmond I did read a post of yours once that pointed out the finer points of copyrights and was very educational for me when I was newer here.

Inworld, I would not approve of a tax, as taxes never seem to go away, while the reason for their coming into being fades.

I would add a permission to the land tab of whether to allow
snapshots.
In addition to the prim based texture resell permission mentioned in earlier posts.
It appears that the logic presented regarding the prosecution
of texture theft is fairly accurate and is not just SL but the entire Internet.

I think giving us the tools to prevent easy texture theft in SL
anyway would address a big part of the problem.

I think that would be a waste of everyones time/money considering LL can not stop theft. Why bother putting resources into that area?

Agreed. It's just not possible to stop it from happening. You can only deal with those that do it.

wanda i'm eagerly awaiting Phillip to take your challenge.

/139/e2/125506/1.html

I think the process of submitting original psds of work is one of the best ideas i've heard. this way if artist a accuses artist b, they both have a channel to go through where actual evidence is reviewed. i challenge phillip to send me an original psd and a fake one of any design containing multiple layers. In 60 seconds I will tell him which is which. i'm not stupid. i understand where he was going with his crazy scenario, but i know PS and I assure him it can not be done succesfully with most designs. I know a bonafide genius who creates puter programs to work with the SL templates and the program does the creation of the clothing including alpha channels and even the ads to advertise the clothing are all generated by this program. Still, it is nothing in comparison to what a human does. There is no way a puter is going to generate a content creators raw PS files without being too perfect and inhuman in method. I also firmly believe most texture theives have not the PS skills or programming skills or desire to go through attempting to recreate raw PS files. TAKE THE CHALLENGE PHILLIP!

As for paying a dollar a month, i dont see that as working but if there was more to the idea and it would help, of course i would be happy to. I would also be willing to pay a monthly fee to register my content so it is date-stamped and noted I'm the creator. This idea has flaws, i know. I suppose what I'm saying is i'll do whatever it takes.

Instead of charging the flat rate of $1 across the board to everyone that wants to upload textures, charge a US$ fee for filing a complaint with the arbitration system. It would correlate with paying for a lawyer to take someone to court in RL, cut down on false or malicious charges, and pay for the extra manpower LL puts into operating the system.

that is cool with me cory. it is a scary thought that there would be enough fraud claims to pay a Linden appointed to this job's salary. I think that was the idea of paying to begin with to encourage LL to employ someone dedicated to this issue. (not saying that i agree we should have to pay for them to take action, just pointing out what i think was the reason for the proposed fee in the first place.)

Consider a painter who sells prints, but doesn't go on the internet.

Yet online, someone else has scanned all her work and is selling it cheaper with faster delivery.

She could be quite seriously economically harmed or driven out of business. The fact she doesn't know about it doesn't make it right. This is why I think it's relevant.




The United States Internal Revenue Service has a unique way of ensuring blatant tax fraud is enforced, which may work here.

If I recall correctly: If you report someone for tax fraud and they successfully recover taxes based upon your tip, you get a percentage.

This has overtones of turning us all into secret police though; yet another evil choice on the list to choose from.

Umnnn. Noooo. I think we will have to have SEVERAL lindens doing this. And the number will increase as the world get's bigger.

As to paying, someone has to foot the bill. Pointing at LL and saying "We pay you enough already, so do it!" is really not going to encourage effort.

Won't work. No amount of money can be retrieved from the errant party to pay the reporter. Not to mention, you would still have to have staff lindens processing the claims.

Perhaps there is another way?

My answer: Unequivicacbly NO. As a scripter, I sometimes need to upload textures, and paying $1 for 1 texture is not right. Besides, scammers will just upload MORE textures if they know that they've payed for unlimited texture uploads.

Honestly, what I think is going on is a major shift in how the world works.

Before good recording methods were invented, artists had control.


We may be entering into a time when most kinds of art are defacto near-free, when anonymity (and thus, second chances) are guaranteed.

Like heaven in some ways, but clearly, some pay the price.

I think we'll be seeing a lot of small-scale artists crushed in this brave new world.

Aye. No argument there.

If LL functioned as a de-facto ISP or webhosting service, I would consider paying monthly for textures. However, given we have little-to-no core access to our files, I lean towards no on this idea. The asset server doesn't allow for some very basic features that make my hosting buck worthwhile, including (but not limited to) FTP access, rsync, wget, and several other tools that make online web administration "work."


Without these in place, I wouldn't touch any sort of fee for texture access, simply because the process should work both ways.