Texture Theft? Is It Worth Pursuing?

I see that someone is selling one of my free flowering trees that I've made available in SL. It's a pink apple tree, but this person is billing it as a "low-prim cherry tree with particle effects." (I just noticed it for sale on SLBoutique.com.) It's been modified to give off particles, but it's obviously my texture. I own it legally, I made it from my own pictures I took a couple years ago.

Is it worth pursuing a texture theft claim on something like this? What do you think? Does anybody know what I should do if I do decide to pursue some sort of take-down?

Beryl, See this recent post on the subject.

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It seems like a lot of trouble to me, but then I am not the person being ripped off.

SL Boutique is pretty proactive about removing rip offs, you should talk to them.

Best Wishes...

Thanks, ArchTx, I will have a talk with the SLBoutique people first.

I guess what irritates me more than anything else about this is that an item that I choose to make free to the SL public (a tree) is being sold by someone. I don't intend to sell it myself, so it's not affecting me economically. Maybe the value added by the particles is worth the money this person is charging for this item, I'm not sure how I feel about this. *shrug*

If someone is selling your freebie on SL Boutique, contact the owner of SL Boutique, and Flipper WILL take it off his site. He's been very good about that.

As far as taking punative action against the thief... File a DMCA, and Linden Labs should remove the in-world content that you identify from the thief's inventorty and identified locations that s/he is selling it. Anything else is largely wishful thinking.

Using a RL photograph of yours illegally is definitely worth persuing. The first step is asking the thief to remove it, stating they are using a RL photograph of yours. If they refuse, take RL action.

Yes. Anything that punishes these fricking asshat thieves makes it worth it.

Hey Beryl! Long time, no type.

I can't seem to find the offending item on SLB - perhaps one of my mates has already gotten to it. If I've missed anything, shoot me an IM and I'll get it taken care of. It's fairly simple to tell who these scammers are - we simply send ourselves a copy of the item and check the creator on it. People found selling freebies have their items removed from the site and their accounts locked.

We are considering making it so you need permission from SLBoutique to sell items that don't have yourself listed as creator, or that you don't have full permissions on (llGetInventoryKey will not return an item key for any items that you don't have full permissions on, and llGetInventoryCreator gets the creator's name). It's a shame that the recent anonymity provided by LL is forcing us to have to take these steps, and I really wish they'd played the "opening of the floodgates" better. :-|

Regards,

-Flip

I sell Beryl's textures at discounted prices and I find that it is indeed worth pursuing as a SL career. In the future I plan to expand the business to include a wide range of textuers from all the popular designers.

How do you guys feel about people that steal music? Is that ok?

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It's an individual kinda thing. I say yes, but then I am the type of person would spend US$100k to get the US$1k someone owes me lol.

Are they then reselling it to their friends?

Are you saying it's ok to steal just as long as you keep it all? What if you don't resell it but instead you give it away for free to anyone who wants it? Would that be ok?

Nope, they are thieves too.

Send me the name of the seller, a copy of your original source photo, a copy of your SL image/screenshot of the tree, and a copy of the SLB item. I'll post them on my site -- and I'm starting to collect a file of SL thieves for a page featuring them as a regular page on my site.