How to React to Texture Theft

I didn't really understand the implications of texture theft until I read this post at Linden Lifestyles:

http://lindenlifestyles.com/?p=99

In response having their textures stolen, HCT and ETD changed all of their hair textures. In doing so, they dissappointed several fans who relied on those textures. Changing the textures doesn't hurt the people who stole them. It only hurts the fans.

If my textures get stolen, I’m not going to make any changes. Even if a pirate opened a store with identical products as mine, there are several levels in which they won’t be able to compete with me:

1. Customer Service and Support
2. Customization Options
3. Image and Reputation
4. Marketing
5. Store Atmosphere and Environment

Copying is not a replacement for talent. In any industry, It’s pretty difficult to sell what you’ve stolen. People are always uncomfortable about buying black market goods.

Also, do not worry about the casual copier who isn't trying to resell your products. They wouldn't have bought your product anyway. Those people aren't concerned about image and fashion. People who care about image and reputation are willing to pay for it.

If the problem continues to grow, Some of the more reputable designers/critics may want to consider forming an organization that tracks authenticity. We could create a “blacklist” of people that sell stolen products. As a culture, we could create a strong incentive to not steal.

Copyright law is not the answer. You can't expect LL or the US goverment to enforce it. This is a problem we can fix on our own. Asking an outside party to handle this only takes away our freedoms.

It’s time to set an example. If you find anyone selling a stolen texture, raise hell. Tell EVERYONE. Make sure they never have any business ever.

Texture theft is coming…so rather than continue to create new textures for theives to steal..keep twisting those prims as only you know how and do what Stephen Lightworker suggests. (great idea Stephen)

The only problem I see with this is: someone can accuse another of theft, but there is no burden of proof, no judging by one's peers, just a bunch of people ready to hang someone. This isn’t the wild west, so there needs to be some kind of system to control it from both sides. That is why we have laws in real life and that is why total freedom won’t work in the second one.

On the other hand, SL is not another country; it resides as part OF "real life". The same laws that the RIAA use to combat file-swappers can be used by you. Granted, being we aren't multi-billion dollar megacorps, it's a lot more trouble, but here, LL is the only one that can take meaningful action to improve the situation.

Don't flatter yourself too much. This is fairly untrue. A large proportion of the world's population won't even bat an eye buying something similar to an original. There is a reason why the US economy is falling behind and having large trade deficits with countries like China, for example. SL isn't that much different either. If I bought some clothes, I don't actually need any service like knowing how to wear it, or customizing it or buying into some 'brand' that it has.

As long as it looks as good as the original, I'd go for the cheaper option. Remember, these aren't tangible goods which have some sort of durability or perishability attached to it. The only way, for now, is to get around it is to move on to more intelligent items or services which do not rely heavily and solely on textures alone.

I'm missing something here.

1) Low life scum steals your textures.
2) You change your textures.
4) Low life scum are not able to just steal your textures again.

What's step 3?

There is no "step 3" and there is no result 4. If there is ever going to be a "step 3" it will have to be from Linden lab. SL residents have absolutely no control over texture theft.

This is how I would handle it if I were calling the shots at LL:

Institute a "Content Developer" status for all residents wishing to participate in uploading content (including textures, animations, sounds) into SL. Disable the "Upload" features for non-content developers. This addresses most of the direct Open GL loopholes. Not everybody uploads thier own content, and there is plenty of content in every new residents inventory to begin with. Also, they can go BUY it from other (Content Developer) residents if they need more to work with. Make this feature a privilage, not a given. Make all residents apply for this privilage, read a license agreement, sign, and fax it into Linden Labs (so they have it on record).

If a resident that has "Content Developer" status EVER has a legitimate DMCA notice filed against them by another "Content Developer", thier status should go up for review. Depending upon the case, thier status can be revoked for a probationary period, or permanently.

I think that would provide incentive enough to think twice before stealing and uploading copyrighted textures, animations, and sounds. For a content developer, SL would be a pretty boring place if all you could do is work with what other people have created. For a hack, I imagine SL would be a pretty boring place too if they couldn't make use of thier ill gotten booty (in SL at least).

If you really were calling the shots here, I'd fear the worse for the future of SL. Theres a reason you're sitting there toiling at some photoshop workstation earning a fistful of dollars, while someone else is at the helm of Linden Lab.

I would say almost everyone in SL uploads their own content at some point and its one of the selling factors of being a resident in SL. Just because you've done a handful of content, it doesn't mean that it sets one apart from the rest of the masses who use SL. To think that way is both a naive and self centered approach to things.

Isn't it such an elitist way of solving problems to negate everyone elses rights and force them to jump through hoops just to protect the few who think that their profits are being affected?

The more you fight it and say things like these, the more it motivates people to think lesser of you and it encourages them to copy your content just to annoy you.

A large part of the other content developers are protected not because of some technicalities, but by trust and confidence from people who know them by their reputation or they know them personally and would not want to rip them off even if they knew how to.

If LL really wanted to solve the problem, they have to make the SL client aware of the presence of the GLintercept tool which simply just prevents the .dll from running. Very similar to an antiviral or antispam tool.

I understand where you're trying to go here, Nam, but what's to stop any old thief from trying to become a "Content Developer"? What about people, like myself, who have been creating their own non-commercial content for the last year -- everything from t-shirts to guns and cars that aren't quite good enough for me to sell, but they've given me valuable experience in creating sellable content when I'm ready?

What about people (again like me) who have a few personal RL photos we've uploaded to share with our SL friends? Is that content too? It's never going to go on a prim, and it certainly will never be for sale in a vendor.

What your suggestion really does is to remove the open, populist approach from content creation in SL and stagnate it in the hands of an elite few. It would discourage future content creators from trying, and if you want to know how bad that could be, take a look at the exceptional designs that have burst upon the SL scene just in the last 6 months from people who hadn't even heard of SL a year ago.

The other thread on Texture theft raised some very critical points - mainly, to me, that you may see something you believe to be stolen but that does not automatically make it stolen. (The Poser artists who have come to SL, for example, and are recreating their Poser clothing here). Without a fair judicial system to weigh evidence and impose official sanctions, you're only talking about vigilantism. I don't think we want that.

There is no "tool" that SL client can be made aware of, because it's not what glIntercept is and it doesn't work this way.

It's custom-made openGL call library, which replaces the 'standard' libraries and allows game/application developers to debug their openGL applications in easier manner. It wasn't written to allow lazy kids "steal textures" from some game, just like debugger in C++ compiler isn't there to help crackers write teleport hacks for WoW or whatever they try to tamper with.

As such, i'd be quite surprised if LL hasn't already been using glIntercept to help their own work on the SL client, because it certainly helps to spot and fix all the easy-to-make errors in one's code. And because of this, making the SL client actively 'fight' glIntercept in any manner would be counter-productive for LL's own developers, if anything.

Well this isn't good at all and quite upsetting to the creator and their loyal customers. Elika is my favorite hair designer with a few others in close proximity. I haven't heard of this issue until now and haven't been in her store recently to see the texture changes and if it will effect my tastes any. I must say tho, apart from the wonderful styles she makes, the textures are a big part of my loyalty to her store because I really like them. I'm really hoping my fave textures haven't been taken away.

It really sux that someone has to redo things because of others inability to make their own items. But, I wonder, as a few others have...who is this hurting? It certainly can't be hurting the thieves as much as the loyal customers who have a favorite texture. I don't see how redoing all of the textures would prevent it from happening again. In reading that blog shown on the OP's post, it seems Elika has already gotten complaints about the new textures so it doesn't seem like a wise move to have redone everything and in essence, let the thieves win. I'm sorry she had to come to that decision and I'm sure it took forever for her to redo everything.

I'd like to know who did this (in PM) , if anyone knows, that way I don't buy any of their items as I don't support thievery.

Don't fool yourself Stephen. Look at the forums. Look what the population wants. Moneyballs and dwell. People will buy what's cheaper, even if it's a clone of yours. Then they may even go to -you- for customer service on it. And then they'll raise hell if you don't give it to them.



Unforutnately, in SL, it is.



Not here. Sometimes texture thieves are seen as liberating heroes.



This is correct. This is also why folks know its "ok" to rip and sell stuff now.




And you'll end up being the bad guy. It's not right, but it's how it is. I don't disagree with your intentions, Stephen, but I disagree with the reality. In SL, pleny of people see content creators as 'villains' and theives as heroes. It seems to be vaguely tied into some bastardized mis-interpretation of the 'open source movement'. (Which, actually, *is not* "pro theft". but people seem to cherrypick what they want, and lean on the righteousness of it and the 'free stuff' part of it, and kinda dont bother with that whole accreditation and respect part of it. That's just a nuisance anyways, and has nothing to do with getting free goodies.)

Maybe I'm a little bit jaded, but I've seen too many people who have -gotten- ripped off as the recipients of accusations of 'elitism' and 'capitalism' by the SL residency. Plenty of folks whose attitude out there is "what's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine".

I agree.

Also, SL is *not* just about buisness. I know lots of people (and I know the capitalists will be shocked about it), that spend just as much time as some of the biggest "content creators" making stuff that they NEVER sell, and never want to sell. Selling stuff, making money and being an officially listed content creator (read "business" in SL is just what some people use SL for, not all.

Actually, it would be pretty easy to have the SL client detect the glIntercept dll, and refuse to run if it is being used to run SL. Many MMO games do some client-system inspection to prevent hax. This seems like a VERY simple and non-controversial approach.

The "it will hurt SL developers" is a straw man. They can just build a DEBUG version that turns off hack prevention.

What "glintercept.dll"?

there is no such thing. there's just regular opengl call library, just like on the system with no debugger, hence there is nothing "unsual" for client side thing to detect.


If you leave a backdoor to switch between modes, it will be utilized. If you build completely separate client versions which acts differently on the end user's computer, you are putting yourself in situation where funny errors don't show for you, but affect your users. And when you try to debug the exact runtime your users have in order to fix these errors, you have to do it by hand.

All is "pretty easy to do" for these who don't have to actually do it.

I take it you are pretty new to anti-hacking. Disclaimer: I only have six months experience in anti-hacking but I was a professional reverse engineer for a while which is up the same alley. glIntercept and OGLE are open source tools, meaning not only can all the strings and filenames be changed and executable files be packed beyond recognition, but the entire flow of the program can be altered at a recompile's whim. The only nefarious thing the code is doing is playing middle-man in DLL calls, which there are dozens and dozens of different techniques for, you don't even need a DLL sitting in the same directory. Code can promote itself in to RING-0 long before SL ever launches and modify the Import Address Table for all of the GL functions it wants to intercept, completely undetectable by SL. LL realizes this and has already stated what computer scientists and engineers have known since day one; if data is displayed to the client, the client has that data. Eventually people will be able to dump prim information and rebuild them as well, so enjoy that "protected" feature of the platform while it lasts.

The solution to copyright infringement in SL will not be a technical one, it needs to be handled on the social and legal level.

until you use some other dll...

In your case, I'm sure you think you speak for everyone. What makes you think you have legs to stand on or arms to keep you afloat in this discussion? Your credibility detached from your body (here, here, here, and here) leaving you more of a problem bobbing in the water rather than a believable voice for any type of solution. Or, am I just wrong in thinking you care about a solution at all?

Good luck with your new skin shop. I like the name. Don't listen to those other suggestions. The first is usually the best.

Won't work. There's more than one way to skin (or de-skin ) a cat in this instance. It's probably better that you don't know. Besides, the tool you describe is FOR developers, not hacks.

Anyone could still upload all the content they want under these rules, only this way they are asked to sign an agreement not to abuse that privilage. If they want to steal and risk getting caught, that is their choice. Where is the risk now? How will we deal with people who live outside of the US? What is the platform common to all of us (in SL)? Would you be upset if someone stole the T-shirt you don't currently sell, and started selling it?

Yes, that is content too, and if you think it's safe from theft and copying because it sits in someones inventory with No Mod, No Transfer permissions, or any other allowable combination of those permissions...Umm, nope. You're much safer emailing it directly to them (if they are very good friends in RL) rather than risk having the wrong person get a hold of that potential "content".

I respectfully disagree. All this does is hold people responsible for their own actions. I certainly hope that honest people are not an elite few!

Linden Lab does not act as a judge or jury with DMCA notices (which is the ONLY way someone can deal with texture theft at the moment), yet they do when it comes to personal attacks using scripted weapons, offensive language, divulging personal information, and the use of inappropriate content (that would be illegal in RL). So, at best, texture theft is in a grey area, rife with abuse and threat of reducing people to the lowest common denominator (the "you stole from me, ok, I'll steal from you" kind of attitude, or the CM approach, which is "4Q all! If stealing feels good, do it! No one can stop you". If that's not vigilantism, I don't know what is. Personally, I think knowingly stealing someones content is just another form of griefing and abuse of a seriously flawed system. Linden Lab makes judgement calls with griefing, and applies a penalty, so I see no problem in applying a penalty to someone who is abusing other user created content. The penalty can be as minor as a warning, or as severe as permanent banning, just as it is already. If 90% of the SL community is ripping one another off without impunity, then we have a problem that is probably beyond hope.



I'm not shocked. I've got tons of stuff that I probably will never sell. But, wouldn't it be more fun if I did?



Agreed!

Good Lord, all I am personally trying to do is sell enough stuff in SL to pay my tier. I have no "Anshe" aspirations, whatsoever. It just pisses me off to no end that my hours of painstaking work can be ripped off in a matter seconds. But then again, this is real (er, second) life...

How exactly is that different from the TOS?

LL would be getting a RL signature that would be more tangible than the click of a button. It would also lock in a RL location, a RL person with a legitimate credit card, phone number, IP address, and computer signature, or computer signatures.

Sense of elitism surfacing from some oxidation pond again? There are enough adults here who can see and think on their own. I'm sure credibility is on some peoples side since they've self declared themselves 'Content Developers'. Just makes it an easier group to target I guess.

Um, not really.

RL location? laptop computers can run SL, and you can play SL on any machine anywhere the program is installed. RL person? Anyone can already sign in as anyone if they have the password. Legitimate credit card? How is that different from the TOS? Phone number? I could cancel my existing phone number and it wouldn't affect my ability to play SL at all. IP address? Dynamic. Your point is bogus.

Excuse me, Cottenteil, but, "thinking adults" who read the posts that Nam has linked to will understand your attitude about theft, and why Nam (and many of the rest of us,) question your motives in responding to this thread.

Everyone else, I haven't spoken on these threads, because I don't have a solution. (However, I had to speak out in support of Nam in the instance above.) As far as I can tell, theives will continue to be theives until they grow some empathy, learn that they are harming real people by their actions, and care that they are. If there is some way to accelerate that process, sadly, I don't know it.

All I know how to do is be honorable, myself, and expect others to be honorable as well. It seems to me that people often live up (or down) to our expectations.

Robin, I am actually indifferent to theft or any abstract form of categorizing things into distinct lumps of morality. Even if some thief came into my house and stole some of my things, I'd feel only exasperated for a short while, but I wouldn't look down on the thief simply because of their 'profession' of their choosing. Who knows, they might be unlawful, but they might not be evil. If anyone was really a thinking adult, they'd sooner realize I'm not being serious most of the time.

The amount of paranoia that Nam has is comical. I guess she/he doesn't have as much restraint or poise as you have. She bumped one those posts that she listed with a couple of dozen other threads just to hide it. Banned me from her shop even. My point being, its this paranoia and heightened self esteem that attracts the thieves in the first place.

Not counting the casual tinkerer, from the point of view of the perpetrator, there are mostly only two things that motivate them to do it. The obvious one being for profit, for which overly high priced items would be the prime target for being resold or personal use. And the next being the annoyance factor it gives the thieves to cause on the originator of the product. So they do it because they can.

I understand your point. All I said is that the information is "more tangible" than the current acceptance process of the TOS, and pointed out a few bits of data that LL might collect to verify "normal" user accounts. Your point is that the TOS and any other legal jargon, or documentation doesn't mean squat to a serious hacker. I agree, but I also feel your points about circumventing RL detection don't cross the minds of a somewhat lazy resident who happens to know a few content hacks.

I have no doubt a serious hacker could find thier way into any account they wanted using password assault tools, logging key strokes, tempest attacks, etc. They could pick a dormant account that maybe hadn't logged in for several days and start using it without much detection at all. Simple. Let some other sucker take the blame. I've only heard of one instance of this happening (with a not quite so dormant account), and LL was all over it.

How many residents do you feel would to go to those extremes to steal content, or distribute stolen content? I would think a denial of service attack would be more on par with that person's agenda.