Questions Re: Creation Theft in Second Life

there is....set your land permissions so that people can't rez items on your land. I know many store owners allow this so that people can drop their boxes and get the contents out right there in the store, but I've also noticed quite a few stores as of late that don't allow it.

When I see something I want to steal I buy it and take it to the privacy of my own home to check it out but, since I can't build worth a crap, all is in vain.

I would have banned the person as well, simply for the sheer rudeness of what they were doing. Copying is going to happen in SL, but doing it right there in the store in front of other customers... that's just too much. And I don't think the "measuring tape in a lexus showroom" analogy applies to SL for a number of reasons, not the least being it would be damn hard and expensive to copy a lexus.

Katykiwi's post was also illuminating. I am not surprised to hear that people got pissy that she didn't want them to copy her original artwork. There are a LOT of people in SL who do not understand and DO NOT WANT to understand intellectual property rules. They want what they want and morality (and in some cases, law) be damned. It's one of the more disappointing shows of human nature in SL.


/TANGENT: There are a lot of designers who also make the mistake of thinking what they built was a "first" or more unique than it actually is, and then the accusations of stealing/cheating/copying fly where it's really quite silly. For example, I made a mouse/rat avatar long ago, and then Lusk came out with one. Was I going to be mad at the Lusk team? Hell no... lots of people will come up with the idea of creating a mouse avatar. It's the detailed execution that's important, not the broad concept. /END TANGENT

In my opinion, no, it is not ok.

ha ha ha...that made me laugh out loud!!

Aww Taeja i cant believe they did this! your stuff rocks

Maybe you should do an untexture basic sofa for the ppl to "practice" lol and give it for free, so you will know that whoever does that again is stealing... LOL

I'd just like to say that this really isn't fair to the person in question. They have no way to offer defense, and who says that a newbie can't know how to build? I had some previous computer modeling experience, and I could manage pretty well. My friend made some quite interesting avs quickly.

It's not fair to just flame people based on one person's story.

Of course, I'm not as effected by content theft, because I'm a programmer. LSL is not nearly as easy to copy as an object.

There are actually some holes in the client that allow content theft to be REALLY easy, but LL doesn't seem to care about them, seeing as I've reported it twice in the last 3 months and they haven't done anything about it.

Meh, their loss.

Personally, I think that the dimensions of links in linked objects should probably be hidden. Then people would have to actually guess at the sizes which isn't nearly as easy.

But really, people steal content all the time. Basic shapes are copied, styles are copied... It's how the human mind works. We assimilate things and then vomit up something slightly different.

Ultimately, this is a problem with the Internet and will continue to be a problem in SL. People can view source, copy and paste websites; people will be able to do the same in SL. We can try and make a viewer that hides more, but ultimately if we're building a Metaverse we need to have an open standard.

How do we protect copyrights? I think perhaps the best we have right now is to set a stiff example of those who abuse it. If someone copies an item, and there's proof? 1st time 7 day suspension, second time permaban.

But it's not enough. I dunno, I wish there was a better way.

I completely agree. LL needs to stop writing code and simply start banning people.

I think it only makes sense that in a virtual world, copyright infringement is the ultimate crime.

Ah ... can't they do both?

The problem with writing code is that it creates unreasonable expectations. Suddenly everyone freaks when there is a bug.

Well of course there is going to be bugs. This is software after all.

blaze, you're an assumption fool!

from my understanding, people can no longer view paramaters of individual primitives when they are linked and are no modify. this is a wonderful protection for the efforts of the incredibly complex or subtle designs.

copying the work by eyeballing prims is a process that already requires the appropriate modelling skill to build it. what is silly then is that having the skill to model it, it only takes a little more time to do it independantly from photographs and technical images unless the design is very complex (ex: miniature jewelry and attachments) or subtle (ex:andrew palmerston or stever whiplash's cars). in the case of the later, the nature of the object protects it from easily being duplicated.

there is nothing that can be done to stop someone from doing this. even if LL succesfully implements the feature to reduce an object to a single polygonal surface object, people will still be able to to this if they are determined to shave 10% of theri time to do it from scratch. in fact look at the real life furniture market and you will see this happening everywhere.

i do believe it's in bad taste and rude for someone to emulate someones work in their very store, but i think the notion of copywriting prims is just absurd. it defies the nature of SL.

blaze you made my day
er.. night...

Forgive me if this has already been mentioned, as I did not read the rest of this thread after the above post. I agree with this option to help curb rip-offs. I know a lot of stores have rezzing allowed for the reason above, but if memory serves, this will no longer be needed when the new version of SL is released. One of the updates I read about is that we can now look in the contents tab of an object within the inventory, without having to rez it. I may have misread this, so correct me if I'm wrong. If this is true, then stores would no longer need to allow rezzing. This would solve the problem that Taeja (sp?) had. It's not a perfect solution, but I think it's about all you can do.

All of this is a little ominus for me. I am new to SL, relativly. I started about 3 weeks ago, and I would like to get into furniture and possibly fashion design. I need the money from any sales I can make because I don't have any right now, except what I bought. The last thing I want to see is, after I go through all the work to create my own designs, then see someone else with more experience copy them and rob my sales. Hopefully, I won't have this problem.

What we need is something to prove when you made your design. Something like a picture taken of the design and dated. Then you would not have problems like in the case of Cubey's stolen modules. You have the proof right there. I think I saw something about a notary starting in SL, maybe something like this could be possible. Once you design something, take several good snapshots of it and have them notarized. Then if anyone claims that you copied their design, you can show them the snaps and prove if you did it first.

This would really apply more to textures. Trying to copyright the actual design would be pretty hard, since there is only so much you can do with the limitations of modeling in SL. With so many people building things, you have to expect a lot of them are going to come up with the same basic design. Copying textures and art, now that's a whole other ballpark. I am an aspiring artist, and I had thought about selling some of my art on SL, but I'm not so sure I would want to do that now.

One option to solve the people ripping off textures would be to put an option for the store owner to ban snapshotting. The owner could then selectivly allow someone to take pictures, if they feel the person is not going to use them for piracy.

Again, if any of this has already been mentioned, I apoligize. I haven't read the entire thread yet.

JMHO
Branson Bailly

This is, as mentioned by others, a big problem with RW design. I once walked into a potential vendor's R&D lab during a tour where they had another one of my employer's products sitting on a bench and their knock-off was right next to it... the CEO proudly saying how a very large big-box retailer had given them instructions to rip it off (the big box then cancelled orders for the original of course). Today it's still mostly hands-on reverse-engineering. But with the new 3D scanners (most coming out of medical companies where they're looking inside people's bodies), there's not going to be much from stopping IP theft in the near future. Effectively, anything we see - real or virtual - will be as easy to replicate as an mp3. For those with a firmer grasp on economic systems, this is obviously an issue.

That said, all that's really left is trade mark. Someone can scan a 3D object - can pirate a movie off the screen - but is the product they sell as good? Most likely not. That scanned RW object may be (probably will be) replicated using a lower-quality material. That pirated movie probably won't look or sound as good (and may have timecode junk all over it). The only real way consumers have of knowing what's the real deal and what's fake, is the creator's mark.

I'd suggest that the original purpose for trade marks (branding - with a hot iron) be on the minds of content creators. Put your mark on your work. Identify it as coming from you. There are work-arounds for people who effectively copy designs; shapes and textures and whatnot. There aren't any effective work arounds for using someone else's mark.

In response to your statement, I'd like to say first off that no one's name has been mentioned in this thread. The only identification that anyone has about this person is that they are female, that is all. I mentioned in my very first post that I was not going to name drop because I did not want to start drama. I'm definitely not a confrontational person unless I feel it is necessary, which is why you hardly see me post in the forums in the first place. But I did feel the need to bring this this subject to the forums, to find out other's opinion on how the situation should be handled, and to listen to fellow retailers and get their ideas on the issue. No harm in that, right?

Since this person isn't here to defend themselves, I will post what their initial profile description said before I asked her to change it. My friend's name has been removed for the sake of privacy:

"Taeja Diaz and ------------- rated me because I was building on Taeja's property unknowingly it was frowned upon. My public apologies *smiles*"

That was her first statement. After I contacted her and told her that I didn't appreciate her not only mentioning my friend and I in her profile, and lying about why she was given a nagative rating, she changed her profile description to the following:

"About my negs: Taeja D and ----------- rated me because I was building on Taeja's property and getting dimensions for part of a couch so I could make a personal King's Bed w/ Bench. I never meant to duplicate her couch... But Taeja and my friends told me about rights in SL and that only copying can be done when the object is a freebie. I am publicly apologizing, it's taking me awhile to get the gist of this game.
Taeja please accept my apology and stop the .... er just IM so we can talk about it. Thnx"

Not only does this person mention the names of both my friend and I again, she tries to insinuate with her last statement that I am in some way causing some sort of problem or drama with the statement "...and stop the .....er just IM so we can talk about it." She claims that she wanted to make something personal for herself....how are we to ever know that? By taking her word for it? How many of us have been burned after giving somone the benefit of the doubt? The only time that she mentioned that this was for personal use was in her second profile description. Her dishonesty in her very first profile description as to why she was negative rated proves that she is someone that cannot be trusted.

And you're right...perhaps this person did have previous 3D building experience and could pick up building in SL within a couple of days...anything is possible I suppose. But whatever the case, the fact remains that two people, myself included, witnessed this person doing this. Common sense should tell a person that standing in the middle of someone's store and making prims into the shape of another's design isn't kosher. You wanna talk about fair...that, my friend, is hardly fair. I mean, why is it that in this world, and RL as well, things always seem to be set up to protect the wrongdoer in a situation? I've never been able to understand that. *sigh*

Two things here, with all possible gentleness:

1) Common sense isn't.

2) You're chumming the water.

I'm hardly chumming the water. Keknehv Psaltery made a very valid point when he said that the person who committed this act was not here to defend themselves. I'm not here to whine and complain about it. I'm here to tell my experience, and get the opinions of fellow players and listen to how they would handle a prob like this and to discuss what, if anything, can be done about people who do these sorts of things. However, I felt it was necessary to present their side of it in order to be completely fair. Was I taking a risk in how people would possibly perceive my last post? Yes of course. But, "Chumming the Water" is definitely not my style.

I for one have NO IDEA who Taeja is talking about, and don't need to know, but I think the topic is a relevant one and the discussion here has been interesting.

don't really see it as a case of everyone pilloring someone who can't defend themselves since the person's identity has been protected.


This all reminds me of the days following wynx's release of the tinies. We had a lot of people show up in our store, drop their wares on the ground using up our prim count, and start selling their own stuff in the store to all of our customers --including shouting messages around the plot. In almost all cases, the people doing this were perfectly nice people, but they were just clueless when it came to what I could call "business manners". They saw what *they* wanted but didn't stop to think about their actions. Some of these folks were clearly young and just were not thinking on the "manners" wavelength. But others, who I bet NEVER would have acted in such a way in an RL store, just never made that mental leap between RL manners and SL manners.

It is interesting how some people handle the transition from the real world to the virtual world, and which elements of their moral compass they manage to keep and which ones they lose (hopefully temporarily).

I think you missed my point, but ok.

Anyone can view something for sale and get a pretty good idea how they can make a reasonable copy if they so desire. There is nothing the Lindens can do about it and I don't see why they should. In this case Second Life mirrors First Life.

When I was operating a shop I couldn't have cared less because only a total moron would try to duplicate our stuff.

Anybody considered doing a vendor "shopper rating" agency database? If the negative ratings are going away, someone could still set up a database whereby vendors (hey, set up a chamber of commerce if there isn't already one?) could give their personal experience of an individual. Basically, a database for vendors to log if they have to ban someone for copyright infringement.

I'm an author. I make my living in RL off of intellectual property. I believe in sometimes giving stuff away as a marketing tool, but I also would be quite hacked, as would my publisher, if someone started printing up knock-off copies of my books.

Textures are the intellectual property of the designer, in RL as well as SL. So are stories, original music, and dance animations. I don't see a thing wrong with posting a notice saying that the textures, etc., in this shop are the RL intellectual property of the proprietor and copyright infringers will at the very least be banned and may be sued. Or is there something in the LL rules that says you forfeit the right to sue another user?

I'm a newbie, but I can tell you that if I posted a short story for sale and someone copied it and started selling it, I either wouldn't post another (if we forfeit the right to sue), or I'd go through the process to take them to small claims court. Writing is my RL job. Even if I post my work in SL for sale, I still retain the RL copyright to that work.

As do the rest of the vendors.

When someone steals your original texture for resale, it's copyright infringement, and it's illegal. If they make their own similar knock-off, that's legal. But if they copy yours direct, it's not.

It's not just immoral or unethical. It's illegal in RL. Only the vendor's job and numbers and moral indignation level (as well as the rules, I guess) dictate whether you can/should take the claim to court.

It seems easier just to have an intellectual property version of a credit bureau. You could even have a pay database where you could log the creation data of your original IP and register a copy, so that if you later made a complaint, the credit bureau could verify the complaint and have verification of IP theft flagged on the thief's record. The only issue with textures to copyright is how you tell the original ones from the public domain ones. I think you'd have to have some ability for someone to contest ownership of a particular piece of IP, if they could prove it was PD predating the registration *or* that they or someone other than the registrant had created it before the registration date.

Then vendors could go through checking the IP theft lists and "I banned them" lists and use whatever rating they decide to choose whether to pre-emptively ban a known or suspected IP thief from their store.

I'm new. So I don't know whether IP theft is a big enough problem to warrant database tracking of IP copyrights for material sold in SL, and database tracking of IP thieves.

I do think all potential defamation issues would be resolved by hypothetical participating vendors putting a "Intellectual Property Shoplifters Beware" sign outside their door with an attached notecard explaining that by entering the store, the customer is agreeing not to steal the vendor's IP and waiving any right against being listed in the chamber of commerce database if banned or caught in acts of IP theft, and a link to another notecard clarifying what is definitely IP theft. IP theft in SL is the same as IP theft in RL.

In a previous incarnation of my RL, I was a database programmer. What kind of demand do you vendors think there would be for a "Chamber of Commerce" tracking database for bad customers and thieves?

What would you pay, per item, to register an item of IP? What would you pay to join a "Chamber of Commerce" (or some other name if that's taken) and be able to report the folks who steal from you and--more importantly---be able to ban the folks who steal from others *before* your shop gets hit.

I've got a web domain, I've got a server, I've got the database software. What I don't know is two things:

a) would it be illegal, immoral, unethical, against the rules, or in execrable taste by community standards to set up such a database as a product for vendors?

b) is there enough demand to make it worth my while to create and maintain such a utility?

Of course, this doesn't protect vendors from really determined IP thieves creating alternate accounts, but for your average IP thief--who is probably just lazy---it would make it too much trouble to steal from *you*.

And I think it would be a bad idea to list users for ripping off for private use, since it's arguably "fair use" under copyright law. But ripping off for resale or to pass around to others is clear IP theft and makes them fair game.

What say you? Did I just reveal myself as a clueless newbie, or is that something people would pay for?

Julie

Well personally, I don't have a problem with you creating such a list..might even be beneficial in the long run. Technically, I don't think there is anything in LL's TOS for SL that would prevent you from doing so. But after consideration think on this...I think there would be some people, more than likely the very ones that you put on that list, that would protest your efforts. There will be some that claim they are on the list falsely and may even request proof of the vendor's claim against them. They may involve Lindens, crying wolf and making accusations of harassment...then what? Without proof you may end up having to remove the names on that list anyhow. In addition, you'd get a reputation for unjustly putting people on some sort of blackball list, which probably wouldn't make your whole SL experience very enjoyable.

This idea has great potential, but it may end up bringing you much pain in the end. Definitely something to think about.

**And now I'd like to do something that has nothing to do with this subject:

A special Thank you! to all who gave compliments and feedback to Taeja Vu Designs. With so many designers out there, one can get lost in the sauce so to speak..so it feels awesome when you are actually recognized and acknowledged by the public, so thanks again you guys