A request to all content creators

Hi, folks,

As part of an attempt to improve the security of content in SL, I would be very grateful if you could take a few moments to send me a notecard (not an IM) with:

- The names of (or a general way to identify) all full-perms items you make that are genuinely freebies.
- The names of (or a general way to identify) all full-perms items you make that are *not* freebies and are subject to a deeper license forbidding distribution.
- The names of (or a general way to identify) any items that you believe to have been stolen and placed in freebie circulation with full perms.
* Please send the notecard from the avatar that created the items.

My goal is to compile all this information into a single data source which can be checked by groups which offer freebies (such as Mentors and other newbie helping groups) to ensure that content which is not supposed to be free doesn't leak out.

Pictures are worth a thousand words. Might want to include them in your criteria.

Good idea!

The problem is that in many cases (eg, textures) distributing pictures would be equivalent to distributing the product! Plus, they'd have to all fit in the notecard (difficult) and the user would have to manually check against every one (really difficult)!

It would be nice if people who made things that have to be full-perm, either as freebies or as for sale, would put a note in their profile.. "Nothing I make is free!" or "Everything I make it free!" or "If it doesn't say 'free' in the name, it's not!" etc..

It would be nice if there was a flag you could set for this, so by checking the item yourself, it was clear what the intention was. Why LL refuses to do this I don't know. I don't buy the "we can't do it" excuse. A friend and I were talking today about how a "redistribute" flag could easily be added, and not break existing content.

Got a JIRA? I'll vote for it.

I'd like to see a third owner option. I make something. The next owner, my customer, can copy mod and transfer, but the NEXT owner after that, my costumer's customer cannot both copy and transfer.

I'm willing to bet over half the content providers inworld don't bother with these forums (or did and stopped)

to my knowledge nothing I've ever made has been redistributed w/o permission, but then I mostly script, and then mostly custom jobs. but I feel the pain of those that have had this problem.

I think the standard problem with adding a new permissions flag is that it would have to initalised somehow.

If it was initialised to "distribute ok" then all existing textures would be wrongly flagged as ok to distribute.

If it was initialised to "distribute not ok" then all existing freebie textures would be marked as forbidden from distribution, and thus everyone would start ignoring the flag because, after all, everyone knows that (for example) the Torley Touch textures are free.

The other problem is that if a thief downloads the texture and re-uploads it, they can set the permissions on it to whatever they like, no matter what permissions boxes are available.

I think that in most cases, the item made full perm is made so deliberately and the creator doesn't care how widely it's distributed.

Is there actually a way for people to steal stuff and make it full perm? If so, there's a big problem here.

actually, the way they've made textures and their permission system, pretty much require full permissions ffor resale, but I doubt those seller want their customers underselling them at half the price, they just don't have much choice to make the item usable, and the market won't bear a price related to real world full rights copy media.

as for the second question, yes there is, linden labs showed people an example of how to do it, and it has been a big problem... but this thread isn't about exploits, if you want to know more search for 'content theft'

Those are all valid concerns. I think initializing all existing content to "allow redistribute" would be the thing to do. It would not change the permissions from what they are now. But it would allow redistribution to be turned off on future items, and of course on current items, sold from that point on. Far from perfect, but The problem will only continue to grow. I was thinking however, LL may balk at doing a database update to, what did they last say, several tetrabytes worth of items?

"- The names of (or a general way to identify) all full-perms items you make that are genuinely freebies.
- The names of (or a general way to identify) all full-perms items you make that are *not* freebies and are subject to a deeper license forbidding distribution.
- The names of (or a general way to identify) any items that you believe to have been stolen and placed in freebie circulation with full perms."

Sorry , but i fail to see how the name of an item or any brief description, could be used as a positive identifier for any item. The only "real" way to identify an item would be a visual comparison between the two, and even then you have the problem of supposedly reputable stores who have taken another stores textures and are reselling them. (for instance, Linda's Latex is reselling outfits which use direct copy textures from Bugshit).

Its a good idea, but as stated, nobody besides the people in the forums, will bother doing a check up. I know textures are getting ripped from me where i spend a while on in photoshop, but I kinda accepted it as a 'cause of nature' it just happens, and there is no way to stop it.

I just accepted the fact that my work aint authentic anymore and if i make something in SL or photoshop, tomorrow there will be a duplicate somewhere else....

There are tons of ways to actually copy textures while not buying them... I seen people standing in my old store, taking litterly snapshots of textures and primwork i worked on, and 2 days later, i am in a new opened store and i see the texture on the floor, and clearly see the mark i use in my texture on it.

I can see how flat textures could easily be ripped off - but what about clothing textures? Aren't these significantly harder to copy because of the alpha channel work? I wonder if people will try to rip off my stuff, and hope they don't...

I'm sorry to hear about this. It really sucks. There should be a way to stop people from doing that.

harder than taking a snapshot? yes, harder than downloading a program and sifting through textures, only slightly... depends on the number of clothing/tatto layers on that part of the av mesh, and whether they're baked together or not... the hard and fast rule is 'anything seen, can be ripped', sad but true

That is very true where the casual user is concerned. Most casual users flat out won't pay competative prices for custom content, but corporate interests will. Casual users don't have much of a stake involved in thier clothing, skins, or textured builds being rip-offs. Corporate interests do. Most casual users probably don't even know if they are buying rip-offs or not (thus the reason for the OP's request). They get them in freebie boxes, from friends inventories, or from some of the highly successful KNOWN rip-off artists, with advertisements on page one in Search All, that have full sims devoted to selling stolen content. Corporate interests, on the other hand are interested in branding with a RL purpose behind thier content, so it is much more to thier advantage to maintain and defend thier copyrights on content they have purchased from a professional designer. Personally, I will only sell full perm content to a verifiably responsible third party, like a corporate interest, or someone that is willing to pay up front for the license to sell or privately own one-off content in a manner that does not directly compete with my custom service. The rest of my content I sell to SL users in general until I reach a sales quota where I have covered my time and compensated myself adequately for generating that content. Only then do I feel justified in producing similar new content which is either No Mod/Copy/No Transfer, or Mod/Copy/No Transfer.

I see more and more pro level designers just doing custom content exclusively (especially where texturing is concerned) either on a freelance basis, or through one of the major high end content providers/world builders (ESC, Millions of Us, etc.). It won't be much longer until SL has competition with SERIOUS corporate backing swithing to other platforms. Those competing platforms will undoubtably have a much more sophisticated business edge over SL (read the latest Gartner reports). For individual content providers that are good enough, it's a no-brainer - Get hired by one of those corporate interests. That leaves SL with mostly die-hards and casual users selling, trading, and ripping off one anothers (mostly second rate) content. Not a pretty picture for SL.

I think the OP's heart is in the right place. I think it has to have tangible and actionable backing from LL to work.

I tried to get a new flag created to separate tarnsfer from resale and I got shot down. the reason. It will break the bulk of the content.
So the solution is that someone is going to have to do the coding themselves and release it into the wild. Think about this: The Patriotic Nigras (the large griefer group here and elsewhere. Google if you don't know) have coded their own client to do things to allow easier griefing.
This can be fixed. But LL wants use to do the leg work inworld. This is why nothing has changed.