How to React to Texture Theft, Part 2

I'm sorry for starting another thread, but it needed to be done. Forum discussions have a tendency to become off-topic flamewars. However, this issue is too important for that. I'm starting another thread in an attempt to remain on-topic.

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The technical details of how GLIntercept works are not important.

GLIntercept is merely a tool that makes it easier to copy content in SL. Before GLIntercept, people could still copy content. GLIntercept just makes it easier to do so. Unfortunately for us, it doesn't end there. As Cory Doctorow likes to say, ones and zeros aren't getting any harder to copy. Everyday, technology will make it easier to copy content. This is a process that cannot be stopped. Over time, all forms of media have become easier to copy. Instead of trying to stop it, we need to learn to deal with it.

Luckily, this is a problem that we can fix ourselves. We do not need to get Linden Labs or the United States Government involved. As a society, we need to create a strong punishment for selling stolen content. Traditionaly, societies have been very proficient at inventing punishments for reprehensible behavior. Let's see what we can come up with.

There are multiple layers to deterring theft both in digital or physical form. You can not rely solely on rhetoric, set laws and paperwork alone. Its akin to owning a department store with no walls and expecting the full brunt of law enforcement to keep your goods safe.

I laugh at the way people keep posting the name of the tool that does this, making it just that little bit easier for texture thieves whe are getting started.



Yeah, we could have lynch mobs grief alleged texture thiefs 24/7. Don't bother with things like fair trial or burden of proff, let mob rule take over!

The premise is flawed on two counts.

1) We are not a society. We are many small societies - and sometimes a society of one - on a single platform.

2) Even in the unlikely event that "we" could all come together (all 200,000 of us) to agree a suitable punishment for copyright thieves, there's no way to enforce it. None.

Its theoretically possible (though practically impossible) to circulate a list of copyright thieves to sime owners and have them all agree to ban these avatars from their sims to protect future content, but that requires a level of organisation and cooperation we're unlikely to see. It also doesn't punish them for what they've done in the past or provide restitution to the victim of the theft.

The fact is that we have to rely on LL and they're not doing a very good job at the moment of protecting businesses, though they seem to be doing a grand job of promoting SL as a business platform. Which it is - but one with problems LL needs to pitch in to help solve.

you cannot protect SL agains centent theft , period, unless you do not upload a texture in it, how hard is this to understand?

So live with it, create new stuffs instead of selling for months the same thing and whining when someone copy it.

This is an issue that cannot be solved with technical solution, as soon as the textures can be seen they are somewhere on the copier's computer in clear format


i repeat it, no solution

Here's what I would do:

1) Verify the infringement (it isn't "theft"; I wish people would stop using that word for copyright infringement :-/ ).
2) If verified, report it to LL, give them proper proof of my claim of ownership, and allow a reasonable time frame for them to respond.
3) When that time frame expires, post public notice in and out-of-game about the situation, giving the same evidence and proof, asking for community support and a boycott of the infringer's items.

That's it. I don't see any point in using the POS DMCA law against anyone. I also don't see a need to spend 10x - 10000x the value of the ingringed item in pursuing a copyright case that is not likely to ever bear any fruit. I just have to accept that some percentage of people will copy my work without payment for their own use, and an even smaller percentage will actually try to sell my work as their own. *shrug* I think I can live with making them look like the slimeballs they are in the public's eye. Sure, people will still buy the cheap knock-offs; nothing will ever change that, but if there is some public stigma attached to owning knock-offs, I tend to believe that a majority of people would have antipathy towards the infringer, and would join in the boycott, or not wear/use the infringing items. Maybe that is a naive dream, but I will happily continue to dream it.

My aim in SL is to make things and sell things. Outside of someone completely depriving me of the ability to do either, there's not much that is going to stop me. I suppose if the infringement gets too rampant, I will move on to making things somewhere else more "creator-friendly". So far as I have seen, it is a very small percentage, just like it is in RL.