"profesional Skin Ripper For Hire !"

I'll tell you: The answer is yes. They would have to, to do what they claim to sell as a service.

So you know 100% they didn't delete it afterwards................

I see this one as a pretty simple matter. No ambiguity, if an item, any item is sold no-mod then bypassing the permissions system should be treated as an ARable action. I am not a skin maker, I am a scripter, but if I found out someone had broken the premissions system and messed with my script I would be highly upset.

Textures and prims are the most vulnerable of the lot in SL. Scripts are nearly completely invulnerable, it has happened but is extremely rare and the holes are plugged quickly. Animations are pretty safe. Prims can be copied by just setting one down and tweaking and playing till you have it right(may take a heck of a long time though to replicate a building). But as for textures; SL uses openGL and anything that uses it is vulnerable to the same tool. LL has always known about it and of course there isn't anything they could possibly do to stop it. It all occurs downstream of the flow of information between SL and your computer. It would take a keylogger to know someone was doing it.

That being said, someone using it to bypass the permissions and then offering a service using it is breaking the TOS. AR the heck out of em. Send a copy of the conversation when you file the report.

Doesn't matter if they kept it, they had it.

Would like to point out that OpenGL and the tools with which these textures are accessed have been around LONG before SL was even imagined. These are the same tools by which that one website service offers to "rip" your avatar mesh and all the textures with it, and then print out a 3D replica of it on a 3D printer... same exact tools. I wish people would stop acting like SL is a closed, proprietary system that was reverse engineered (hacked) to do this... it is not. Unless someone is using this OpenGL funtionality to BLATANTLY (and i DO mean blatantly) make and sell copies of someone elses obvious work, LL probably wont touch it.. AR or not. It's not a hack, exploit, cheat or anything of the like... it's 3rd party software that LL can't touch. These functionalities are part of what LL agreed to when they used OpenGL in the first place.
As long as SL is based on OpenGL, these tools will be available and will always work. The best defence against everyone and their dog finding out about them and using them to steal stuff is to stfu about them.

Actually there is a RL service that masks out objectionable content from DVDs that you own. You send them your DVD and they send you back your original plus the censored copy. That sounds like a reasonable service to me. Hollywood does not like this industry, as you might imagine- but the primary objection that I've heard expressed is not the fact that it involves duplication of the work, but that it modifies the content from the director's original intent! Again, I do not have a problem with the concept here- although I do understand the possibility for abuse. I just don't understand all the vitriol, as if this skin modifier person had kicked a puppy. You don't KNOW that this person's a crook. It's really down to that individial and her or his ethics.

Good one, Wildfire.

There are plenty of real problems that cause harm. This is not one of them.

Move along. Get a life. This is such a non-issue I don't know why people get their dander up about it.

sorry folks. still dont feel guilty.
and its ironic that those so opposed to this are the ones turning this thread into a texture-thieving goldmine of information.

What if someone had an item that they just wanted the channel changed on so it didn't conflict with other items or wanted the particale output reduced or LL introduced a LSL code change and it no longer worked and the original scripter refused to mod it for them or wasn't contactable? Bad luck, I guess?

I`m curious to know how many people standing up for this person is a content creator in second life?

No, i`m not trying to prove some point, I am in all honesty just curious.

The ratio of content creators versus non content creators in regards to saying what this individual is doing is ok.

If you are a content creator, you feel comfortable with having your "raw" art files in someone elses hands? Why?

Again, not trying to prove or disprove anything, I find it interesting and am curious.

Personally, as someone who spends hours of his time in photoshop, and having had his items "stolen" and redistrbuted on the grid, I am uneasy at the thought of someone ripping my textures and having them in their posession and just find it hard to fathom how someone who creates content would be ok with that.

As a content creator, why are you ok with it?
Have you ever had your content "stolen" and redistrbuted on the grid?

As a content creator, hell no I never want my raw material in someone else's hands. I won't even give my partner my things for fear they will accidentally turn it lose. Those things as a content creator, you keep them precious. Once those get out to everyone, what good are yours anymore? I'm sure you feel the same way..

**

Seriously, you people who sit around here saying content creators should just NOT CARE if people rip their things obviously have no idea what it's like to do the kinds of things you guys rip in one minute. It takes weeks and months to create a nice line of skins...you guys just treat it like it's trash, ripping it and spreading the content around for free. You make me sick.

I would feel comfortable with people moding my work, the more freedom to mod my work the more people would use it and expose it more to public, and perhaps help promote it, I would sell them no transfer versions with mod rights. But I'm not a serious business person in SL, I do it for fun and pocketmoney.
My problem here is people judging, sentencing and executing someone as a THEIF without knowing they are. I can perfectly understand peoples reactions to contend being stolen and redistributed but these people also react aggressively to people who aren't stealing and redistribuiting their content.
The question in this thread I see is how do you feel about people using these techniques BUT aren't stealing your content? If someone you thought of as a good friend announced they were doing this would you suddenly label them a THIEF and eject/ban and AR them or stop asscociating with them because they were EVIL!

i am not a content creator, and if i were i doubt i would like the idea of people having full perm copies of my product (skins & tattoos in this case).
but that still doesnt alter my feelings that what i have done has hurt nobody and benefited myself greatly. the tattoos are now part of the skin and i have all my clothing layers free to use.

Well, Yes we do. It is simple. They bypassed the permissions system.

Bypassing a permissions system does not make you a thief.

Actually, copying and redistributing a skin would not make you a thief either, it would make you a copyright violator. But bypassing a permissions system is not the same as that in any case.

No, it isn't, not really. It's hard to talk about a thing without revealing at least what one badly-worded Google search would tell you. It's not like the information is secret by any means.

Bypassing it, in and of itself doesn't. If people will do a search in the forums for my name and and the name of the program. I have come out 3 or 4 times before stating that it has been around forever but isn't something to worry about. The texture business has grown and grown over time in SL even with that ability around. But, and this is a strong but, if someone takes and copies your textures and then turns around and opens a store to sell them then it is actionable. This case is somewhere in between a casual user seeing how the program works and someone selling stolen textures.

In this instance someone is taking and ripping the textures, modifying them and then giving the mod back. But this is still a major no no. You can not base a business model on illegally ripping skins to mod and expect to get aways with it. You have violated the TOS and there is no ambiguity in the language about it. In the persons inventory is now a skin that was created by someone after several hundred hours work that now shows that someone else is the creator.

Example. I have a skin I bought from Jesseaitui Petion. The person rips the texture, puts on the tattoo and returns it to me. I am not the creator, Jesseaitui Petion is no longer listed as the creator, the person who uploaded the mod is listed as the creator. Plain and simple, you can not do that.

Actually, the one and only time I heard about this was, IIRC, in relation to it being a copyright violation.

Of course, Blockbuster used to do it all the time, so...

And I (for one) have no personal vendetta against a person who modifies something for their own use. Yeah, I would prefer if it wasn't unnecessary to do circumvent the permissions systems to do it, but since it is, I'll accept that. But I have a problem when you involve an otherwise-uninvolved 3rd party for the profit of said 3rd party in something like this.

As a content creator, I'm uneasy with it, certainly, but at the same time I recognize that LL's system is far from perfect, and there are more or less innocent reasons to do something like that. If I found that someone had circumvented the permissions systems to modify something I made, it probably wouldn't bother me too much. I might do the same thing in their position.

If I found someone was bypassing the permissions on my stuff - in effect stealing it for themselves in the process - and selling the final result? Then, boy f-ing howdy would I be pissed. DMCA notices would be flying faster than you can say "But I'm not a thief!".

As far as the question of how comfortable I am having "raw" copies of my work in other people's hands... mixed. There are people I trust to have such things. Business partners, for example. I would prefer other people not have their hands on such things, but theres very little (Read, absolutely nothing) I can do to prevent it, and in most cases it's done innocently enough, so I'm not going to throw a fit over casual extraction of textures.

Yes, I've had work stolen and made free before.

And this is the doubly strange part. As I posted I am ok with the tool, just not with using it for something like this.

I am a more then fair scripter and have several items that blows away the competetion in the marketplace and yet.................. I sale absolutely nothing, nada, zilch, not interested in it. All of my time and energy goes into a combination of learning, having fun and helping others in the scripting forum.

So put me in another column.

I am not a content creator and I am not alright with this.

I am a content creator. In fact more than half of my creations can be stolen using glintercept. I support the tattoo artist's position based on the information shown here so far.

I reserve the right to change my mind if it turns out he is reselling skins. But i haven't seen anything here that makes me suspect this is the case. Wouldn't that kind of activity be detectable if it were profitable for him? I mean... he'd have to place and ad, open a store... at some point wouldn't the skin creator notice?

I am watching this thread very closely. I have a product that is greatly inhibited by this lack of a skin-layering feature in SL. I have waited OVER A YEAR for LL to implement skin-layering in order to make my product play well with other creator's products, so people can enjoy both products at the same time. How long am i expected to wait? Meanwhile the other creators refuse to work with me to create a combined product that everyone who wants to can enjoy both products. It is extremely frustrating because it puts me in competition with a completely different product... I'm not a skin-maker, but I am effectively in competition with one because of a quirk in the system.

I am.

This doesn't threaten content creation or harm content creators in any way.

Note that we're NOT talking about redistributing content! That's another matter completely. Note that we're also not talking about copybot per se. Like I said, if there was a way to shut that down completely, I'd be all for it, and services like tattooing skins would be impossible and too bad.

But I have no problem with people making personal adjustments, or paying an agent to do it for them. It's troublesome that the technology required is easily abused. But it's the abuse that would bother me, not responsible use.

Follow up
Every item i sell that is relevant to this problem includes a notecard with a link to this JIRA entry: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1449
Before JIRA, it had a link to the Feature Voting Tool for the same topic. Along with the link is a detailed explanation of the problem. This has been in place for over a year.
Additionally, I have offered a collaboration with my favorite a most popular skin maker, and she has flatly refused, saying she wants to do a product like mine on her own. This was over the summer, I have waited patiently, but she has not yet released anything. So, effectively i'm in competition with a product that doesn't even exist yet.

My customers cannot enjoy both my product and her product at the same time, even though it is what the customer and I both want.

To the skin-makers... I have attempted to do everything the right way. What to you suggest I do now?

We're not talking about redistribution here, so this point is off topic.

I understand that you're bothered that someone *could* redistribute it. Nobody here has advocated that, so your comment about "you guys treat it like it's trash" is inaccurate, condescending, and insulting. Your comment would be valid only if we were defending redistribution, but we're not.

The fact that it bothers you that your content is in someone's hands, and potentially redistributable -- that's valid, and it's a consequence of the fact that copybots exist. Yes, it would be nice to make them impossible, but that isn't feasible.

Did i mention the only reason i've ever had for a return of this product is when the customer can't make it work with their goddamn skin?