Screen-Shot Pirates

Yes, I believe the NIV version is also copyrighted. It was changed sufficiently to be considered a new work.

To clarify, this poll is not specifically about any piracy I might or might have not been a victim of in the recent past (although it was certainly inspired by it). Instead, I'm interested in keeping the discussion general.

A special nod to Reitsuki Kojima who made several points I was unaware of. I love it when the forums teach me things.

~Ulrika~

You cannot copyright a design (though the incarnation can be), by definition you must patent it. Music by Bach has been out of copyright for 200 years; while a proformance of his works may be copyright. So technicaly, someone could copy an SL object and aslong as it wasn't a perfect copy it could be argued not to be infringment; of course this is best left upto the courts to decide. Any legal actions between by SL Residents in such a situation, if they were to post about it on the forums would be in violation of Forum Policy. As to the patentability of a design that is commonly used for a long; has long past the time for which it could be patented. Though trademark is an alternative that would be viable.

Like all moral issues, I feel it depends on the circumstances.

Downloading is legal. Sharing (without permission) is illegal.

At least according to the laws in the country which I live in.

Besides, how possibly could you check whether the site offering the download is doing it with or without permission? What if they say they have permission? Or they fake a signed scanned permission? You have no way of checking.

Plagiarism -- IF they take credit, that is, they say they created it, and not the original author
Theft -- IF the texture they take will be absent from the original owner's inventory and machine
Pirating -- IF they do it while sailing ships with black flags
Copyright infrigement -- IF they illegally copy it (without permission)

Yup. Although, in academia at least, simple failure to credit your souce can get you slapped with plagarism... The assumption being, anything you're selling, you made, unless you say otherwise. You don't have to specificly say you did it. I've known people who failed classes for simple oversights, if the professor is particularly strict.



In the modern era, the word has undergone some updating to deal with software piracy. Speaking of...



Get with the 21st century.



Yup. Did that really need defining?

Interesting that a thread which asked the question whether something was wrong should end up with lots of legal definitions.

I think people should bear in mind that what is legal is not necessarily moral. And vice versa.

Save that thought; when the screen shot piracy drama dies down, we can start discussing the theological implication of using a bible that is a "new work" over previous versions. That should keep this thread burning until the mods lock it!

Would just like to add that sometimes, copying another person's work is the best way to learn the tools and techniques. Plenty of developers started by photo sourcing, and this is exactly the same.

You cannot release something into the world and not have it inspire people - Just my 2c.

@ninjafoo

Yes, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery ... as long as it stays private. There is no issue with people who copy works in order to learn how to do the works. The issue is when these same people distribute their work (clones of the original) and claim it as their own or do so without consent of the original creator.

Of course, but the best way to combat out and out piracy is for original authors to increase the value of their products in ways the clones cannot. Support, modification, etc etc etc. (and all for a price of course)

As could logically be expected considering the OP's history of inflammatory posts, this poll is inherently flawed as it is worded and incomplete in structure if one wanted to derive any real information.

"Have you quit beating your wife" makes as much sense as the wording of the limited choices offered.

Screenshotting textures or even clothing for personal use is one thing. For resale, probably another. Yet te poll is set up as an either-or catchall.

Consequently, it's my opinion that the poll is to be set up so as to incite and inflame -- by continuing to feed the flame of dissension and general imbalance that usually follows in the wake of the OP's often incendiary posts. The responses by the OP to comments contrary to her own opinion in this thread illustrates the validity of my point - there is nothing positive to be found in this poll or this thread.

Why doesn't she just stop messing about and make a poll asking us if we want her as the next empress of the universe. Perhaps she feels it's too early and that we're not ready for her yet.

But I'd vote yes. Just to watch all that power drive her crazy.

Come on Ulrika, admit it. You just want to be able to execute people legally.

Isn't there a statement in the TOS regarding this topic? Creators maintain the rights of their creations and products.

Screen shot piracy is against this agreement. But unfortunately there are always people who don't go with the rules. It's wrong - but the world is bad...

Sometimes there is no really big difference between RL and SL...

People who steel and profit from others work suck.
But you know you can not lock up from a thief.
The best lock in the world will only keep an honest person honest.

If someone wants to steal it the true thief will find a way.

Oreo Cookies are the perfect food.

Have a great day

Didn't anybody like my suggestion about an SL driven copyright system.
Snapshots could be taken automatically of textures or models with a time-date stamp and watermarks that will show who created it first, at least from here on out. This would happen at the moment a texture was imported. If somebody used a copy of somebody elses texture there would be a later date on it, that couldn't be altered by non-Lindens. This would hold people accountable. It's not going to stop people from doing it with textures stolen from outside sources, but it will give the originators a chance to hold the user responsible if they have there own proof of copyright. A viewable web database with smaller sized watermarked versions of the images could be seen by anybody who wants to form a grievance, perhaps at a small cost.

GLIntercept captures the texture as a photoshop file.

So a watermark can be repaired or even duplicated with the healing brush.

Since the data is stripped from the video card, there's absolutely no way to prevent or penalize its use without altering the environment, which changes the norm and nullifies the effect of the measure.

It's impossible to police, impossible to prevent, but it is wrong to do so with intent to resell. Admittedly, I've bought demo skins and GLintercepted them to rip the Demo off them and add other features to them, but those are personal use only. Even then, they aren't as good as the real thing, as the "demo" is very hard to remove without looking like you have letter-shaped tanlines when you heal it. I'd never capitalize on the use of that program. I just used it primarily to learn how to draw skins.

One of those cases where some people can use it responsibly where others use it to undercut competitors without fear of reprisal.

Lets not talk about the insecurities of the client. Windows Vista includes Secure Video Paths (and Secure Audio Paths) where hardware encryption is used and required.

Yes but it will be reduced in size, but still doesn't matter because you missed my point.



I am aware of the GLIntercept useage, and this will safeguard against that too. My idea is not to prevent it from happening but to hold people accountable. The image for one would be a very reduced size and even if they were to be copied, or used as reference right off the web page database that logs the textures and dates, this data is on the SL server and cannot be removed by non SL employees. You do not need to alter the environment either.

Okay, to give you an example...
Let's say you make a texture and import it into SL, it gets date and time stamped with your username and posted (in miniature form with wetmark) to the next available slot on the web page that has been designated for this database alone and controlled by the Lindens. Now some chump uses GLIntercept or the like to snag your textures in perfect detail right from his graphics card with no watermark months later. Well you end up seeing them with your design or slightly modified or someone tells you about it and takes a snapshot of the suspect and mails it to you. Well now that you are aware of the theft you can report them to SL and point out that your texture was published on this specific date by you by referring to the web-page that has all the "copyright" (date/time/creatorName) information about your original upload. The other user can't show an earlier publish date, in fact filtering his publishes would reveal that he uploaded the texture months after you did and there it is on record for SL to deal with. The number of times this jerk sold an item with this texture is kept tallied(in my proposal), so now he owes you money that he must be held accountable for, it will be taken from his characters and alt's $L total and given to you along with a penalty. The jerk has learned his lesson and never does it again and you just made all the money for that guys hard work selling your product and then some (or the guy is permanently kicked off if he can't pay the full sum).

A little clearer now?

Much.

The system would be insanely expensive to implement though. Contact the developers of EVE-Online. TomB would be happy to tell you that managing an item database like that is an utter nightmare, can bring the primary cluster down if it b0rks, and will immediately take off work and go drink himself silly if you told him you were suggesting something that updated billions of textures and objects in realtime.

A web page with miniature images is not that hard to maintain or that expensive. It's a single database file that gets appended to that can be filtered by attribute. The cost of storing 100s of thousands or millions of very small jpgs of storage is not "insanely" expensive. The texture data is already kept on the servers in one format as is. The viewer could be made to be viewed in game and only one page at a time needs to be viewed starting with thumbnails uploaded to the "requester" for viewing. If it is a web page, it could use an xml format and displayed using xhtml. It doesn't have to do anything in real time, the images only get posted once, during publish, that's part of the point of the permanence that makes the publish system work. I'd think the Linden staff is more resourceful than you give them credit for. It will take more financial resources, but it is one of the major issues that will eventually need to be addressed to maintain any sort of credibility in the financial structures within SL. Not a bad idea for a use with some of their new money, but I really don't think it would be as expensive or insane as you might think.

I imagine that TomB's frustration is more of dealing with a very dynamic database of ever changing information. I'm sure that this is also true of SL, but the specific system I am talking about isn't dynamic in a global sense, it just gets appended to.

I have had experience with defending copyright in the real world and in SL.

Virtually everything in SL can be considered art and/or software. Both of which are protected by DMCA automatically. There is no need to actively seek a copyright - any creation is automatically copyrighted by US law.

That being said, a "it's based from a real-life picture" excuse is not valid, for the same reason why photographs are copyrighted as art.

In this case, N-burgians seem to have derailed a thread about copyright, which Ulrika seemed content to keep *non-specific*. I would encourage Ulrika to Abuse Report any copyright violations she may see, and actively seek Linden resolution of a matter. I would encourage N-Burg to stop publicly sticking their foot in their collective mouth, and perhaps discuss things privately before you folks make a spectacle in the forums. Again.

/sigh

Best of luck to all of you resolving this.