Skins texture theft: How are Lindens going to deal with it?

Not at all. Assuming that there's too many reports to be checked by humans you'd use a visual comparison algorithm.

Copyright applies to everything you make as soon as it's published anywhere. When you register it with a third party all you are doing is getting yourself evidence in case you need to take someone (or someone takes you) to court. So you're quite within your rights to demand LL deletes the offending texture if you can prove you're the true owner. Of course, it may not be worth it to them to do it until they're faced with lagal proceedings which, for most texture artists here, wouldn't be worth it. Thus, we need sensible suggestions on an easy way to deal with the issue and a large backing for it.

You message is very funny to be sure! Legal proceedings? Against who? How are you going to serve papers to someone located in a foreign country? How much is it going to cost you and that is if you can find the real life person. What if they are located in the Peoples Republic of China or even Japan?



My RL firm loses billions of Yen a year though illegal copying of or products throughout the world. You will just have to live with it. There is no iron clad defense against anything and that includes copying products that another has made. You should be happy that the other product is being sold under a different name. Otherwise residents would be coming to you for a refund!



About the courts, how much money do you want to give to a Lawyer to start proceedings? I bet it would start at 1k American just to get started. Unless Linden Labs comes to your aid, it will cost you more money to go after the perpetrator than it is worth and you still might come up empty-handed and poorer!

The legal procedings would be against Linden Lab - an order to remove the stolen copies of your copyrighted work from their servers. I think I've already addressed the other points elsewhere in the thread.

Well, in the end, especially textures are a field that noone dared to look at too closely yet, for it bears a bottomless pit...

I could bet you'd find every texture unreal, halflife and other 3d-game textures ever had somewhere in Linden's texture storage...

*meow*
Sheila.

I don't know why LL does this, they just throw up excuses to make you feel like the burden's on you.

1) "Prove this is yours." If you can't, case closed. Otherwise, step 2.
2) "Did you set the perms correctly? We can't do anything about it if you made the mistake." If you made the mistake, case closed. Otherwise step 3.
3) "Was it our mistake entirely? Oh, sorry, we can't do anything about that."

At any rate, my point is that LL never ever does anything about this.

I see that you are located in the United Kingdom. Where are you going to bring action against Linden Labs? It costs money to bring action against someone. Unless you have a lot of money and can prove it in court it is a waste of time. How much money do you want to spend in order to secure your product?



I am not sure if bring action against Linden Labs in the UK would do any good at all. I would say that they lack jurisdiction to act against an American firm operating wholly within the United States. Then again I might be wrong but this is untested law. Even if they rule in your favor how would they enforce their decision? The best you could hope for is to have SL blocked from the UK unless the American government gets involved. Then another problem is the product is being paid for in Lindens...



Are you starting to understand the problems?

I have done some checking and it might be possible to bring a case. However unless you have done all of the correct things the case can be turned aginst you for violating their copyright. I have noticed that none of the products in SL have been labeled as copyright material. Just look at a product and what do you see? Yes a notice of copyright and by who and when. Are you doing this helpful process? My firm copyrights our products not just in Japan but the United States, Europe and other nations.

I've understood the problems from the start and have already stated that. Obviously any action to impliment a system like we've been discussing would be a good will act on LL's part since it's not something they're going to be forced into through legal pressure (since it's not going to be worth it to people to take legal action).

And, I've not looked into the actual procedures, but I believe, if I were to take legal procedings I would take them up in an American court.

Sadly, I've thought for a long time now that the solution to theivery and plagiarism in SL isn't necessarily enforcement or technology. It's cultural.

In my first week in SL, I was a shopping demoness. I cruised around looking for anybody selling anything interesting and ended up buying a lot of items I thought were cool toys, only to find the same thing later for free or $1L in someone's newbie gift shop. I was angered, but instead of raging about it I've tried hard to educate new SLers since then. The first job on creating an account should be to hit places like Yadni's and other welcome centers so you at least know what's out there. If LL can't or won't patrol this, maybe we need more notecards handed out in WAs that list the legit freebie places.

My old clunky copy of Poser 4 comes with a bundled BVH animation, "Sexy Walk". Guess how many Lindens that's garnered for some people in SL?

It may never be wiped out, but you can do a great deal by just telling new folks the score and that there are some unscrupulous types in SL.

Yup. That's pretty much what I've heard from various people that have suffered theft in any respect - including a time when LL apparently introduced an exploit that meant pretty much anything could be copied full perms regardless of its current perms.

So if you give a no copy no mod item to someone and they end up receiving it as a mod/copy item... tough shit! prove it! Hell, prove it's even yours to begin with! (well actually don't cuz we dont care).

And hell, perms have always been flakey - I took down my vendors partly because I couldn't keep up with the various bugs introduced by LL that crippled them with every release, and partly because I got sick of stuff randomly changes perms! It works fine for a day, a week, two weeks, a month... then decides to change perms to no copy and therefore vends the original content. Heh, I actually wrote a version that had multiple copies in there, used a backup if it found the original gone and alerted me to the problem. But I didn't write an auto updating networked vendor system so I could go round visiting them to replace content that decided to change it's perms.

And I've seen loads of items change perms between owners and stuff - both ways round. I once had to give a copy of an item to someone 7 times before they got a copy where the perms matched mine.

And Francis is a case in point. Hands up who doesn't know that Francis created the Seburo? And yet when she was ripped off due to an exploit that was LL's fault, LL do nothing. There are people selling Seburo ripoffs that were spawned from this exploit inworld right now. And LL do nothing.

Which is why OpenGL interception - or anything else you care to throw into the arsenal - is no more threat to anyones business than before; there's fark bleedin' all you can do about it and fark bleedin' all LL will do about it.

I asked Pathfinder about this exact thing about a year ago and he said it would be a TOS violation. It requires some technological knowledge which also means anyone doing it will probably be bright enough not to copy directly and be on the lookout for watermarks too.

I tend to agree that legal options for something like this are effectively worthless. Companies spend millions of dollars going after cases that are much more clear. The ROI simply to go after someone isn't worth time, trouble and expense.

As for attempting to stop this activity using some other form (perhaps similar to WoW's), one problem is that some people are using the tool to do legitimate things. I capture the geometry of objects I've made. Nothing illegal there. Are my legal activities now going to be curtailed to protect someone's business? I hope not.

The real solution imo is to disable uploads {edit - AND take other internal steps like make the permissions system work}. Right now the best protection against 3D model theft (like from other games being uploaded into SL) is simply that SL doesn't a) use polymesh geometry and b) doesn't allow uploading models. It can do that because it has inworld tools for 3D creation. And that barrier is pretty good. Ergo, if LL wants to protect this space for virtual businesses, they need to remove uploading entirely and build tools into the client (or perhaps as separate downloadable plugins to the client). If you're a texturer/skinner, you'd use an inworld painter. If you're an animator, the animations would be done in SL. Nothing would be made outside SL.

Now, the minute this happens, Second Life as we know it ceases to be. The world is rampant with images harvested from videogames and online image galleries. And there are many businesses that currently depend on this IP theft. There are more than a few animations being sold that can be found online. I'm guessing the original creator is neither being credited nor receiving any money for their work.

In the end, the casual practice of violating intellectual property rights will come back and bite everyone in the ass. If SL grows to 1 or 2 million, what are the chances someone could set up a business dealing only in stolen IP and not be caught until the damage is done. Pretty good I'd think. But imagine this person runs their shady business and, by some luck, is discovered. What would I expect? I'd expect them to say "f*ck you" and put all that content out there for free, thus entirely destroying the market.

If in RL you have any illegal music or movies or software, you have nothing to say afaic. If you spend time in arguments justifying the activity, afaic you're a contributor to the overall problem. This isn't a technology issue, this is a cultural issue because it's all of us who decide what is and is not acceptable. We reap what we sow folks.

It's pretty much a given that the permissions system is completely useless against determined thieves. The only tools to combat theft
in SL at this point in time are good marketing, a loyal customer base, and a spotless reputation.

Most people (not all) in SL are not sociopaths, and thus have an interest in preserving their reputation as it relates to their business and social connections. It's very hard to establish a successful business and loyal customer base without advertising your products, getting repeat business, and establishing trust.

In the end, the originators, innovators, and REAL content creators will always do better than the copycats and those that constantly have to open new accounts to deal in illegal activities.

I think it’s a fairly simple task to prove who is an original content creator in regard to skins and other texture based content in SL. A 1024x1024 or higher resolution layered skin trumps a 512x512 flat copy any day. 2048x2048 for a flat texture trumps a 1024x1024 copy too.

My 2 cents

If I go to a yard sale and the person there is selling free items I leave without purchasing anything. But! I've been around SL long enough to know what is free and what isn't. Not everyone does.

Face it. If you create something that is free its going to be altered if its moddable and its going to be sold if its transferrable. That's the way of the world. Get used to it.

I don't see how that would work. Let's say you and I get the idea to create a texture for a common item. A skirt for a example. We both get the idea of putting putting flowers on it.
Myself being a bit slower in the photoshop department upload my texture 5 minutes later than you. So I will get the boot because you were faster than me?

People have to realize that since we all work with the same tools in in the same enviroment, with the same finite amount items to work with. IE:clothes, cars, guns etc. It's bound your going to see someone doing the same thing your doing.


Rox

So someone writes a program to draw the texture they've ripped into the client pixel by pixel and you've got the same problem again. While I agree that it'd make it more difficult for people to steal textures it would still be possible. Plus it'd probably be really expensive to get a decent editor into the client. Plus you'd have to have itso that people couldn't paste things into the editor - the average qualiity of textures would drop and it'd piss a load of people off.
They wouldn't be the same skirt though, there'd be differences. There's a difference between things being made from the same idea and actually stealing the work of another.

Oh, Michi, that's awful! How long ago did this happen? I haven't been on much lately, so I'm a bit out of the loop.

Please don't stop wearing that av just because of this. I and anyone who's had the pleasure of knowing you for any length of time associate you with that av; we don't care about the copycats!

Hey... how about using this as an opportunity to create a "new & improved" Michi?

You've been a major player in SL since 2003. Lindens know you and recognize you on sight. Your av is an SL icon, for crying out loud... remember that FIC poster? What about all the artwork that's been made of you? What about the Michi plushie that so many love and adore?

What more "proof" do the Lindens need, when they themselves know how long your av has been around?

I'd guess the whole proof thing is so as not to set a precedent that could come back and bite them in the arse later.

Call me a cynic (and you'd be right) but I think the whole 'your content is your very own IP' thing was precisely to offload any responsibility to creators for this reason, and nothing much else.

Makes sense, and it wouldn't surprise me if that was one reason, but I'd hate to think it was the only one.

kris R, you are a cynic! OMGZZ!!11 im RIGHT!

*holds up hands* ya got me.

Linden Lab made me this way.

So what exactly would the Lindens consider as "proof", anyway? And what types of things would they not consider as "proof"? I'd seriously like to know the answer to these, as I myself intend to start doing some serious content creation in the near future and I want to make sure I'm doing everything in my power to protect my IP.

They might tell you if you ask them. Then again they might just explain why they won't do anything unless they really have to at the moment.

I've been saying for quite some time that anything - anything - can be copied. It goes well beyond simple 2D textures; into the realm of RL products. So any suggestion I make is really only made to raise the difficulty in pirating something, not stop it entirely.

And yes, overall quality would drop sharply in the short term. That would just mean that the best original content fetches the highest price. I don't have a problem with that. Let the market decide what the work is worth. At least this way, there's a better chance the content is created by the person getting paid. That might even encourage an increasing number of talented people to create content. Right now, I don't doubt there are plenty of capable people who are hesitant to get involved. One could even argue that SL's quality is already being dragged down.

I have an official statement of what Linden Lab will and will not do in regard to any kind of proof/evidence, but I think I'm only allowed to paraphrase.

Linden lab remains a neutral party in copyright disputes, and they do not police any of the content that gets uploaded. They are obligated only to take down the content with a valid DMCA notice, and are obligated to put that content back up with a valid DMCA counternotice. That is what I've been told directly from Linden Lab.