Rant: About respect of other people's effort and people that can't mind own business.

It took a lot of work? Irrelevant.

They came from crappy scans? Irrelevant.

You think the law doesn't matter? Irrelevant.

You think it's not worth pursuing? Irrelevant.

People are being hater? Irrelevant.

The Lindens didn't act properly? Irrelevant.


What IS relevant is that the logos and brands is/were/are being used without permission of the intellectual property own. Plain and simple. No amount of making excuses, misdirections, claims of foul play or ulterior motives change that fact.

It never ceases to amaze me that no matter how many times this point is made, no matter how many people make that point, the people using these stolen logos continue to point and blame others, but never make the slightest to answer the point. Why? Because to answer the point is to have to admit they stole the material, and have no intentions of using them in any legal fashion.


- Newfie

To be more specific, I don't draw any distinction between filing a junk AR, sitting on the forum and deconstructing our work, and being a sandbox griefer. And to answer the question, yes, if you un-create, I consider you inferior to someone who creates.


Self-righteous forum barons? You probably consider yourself too good for my cars, anyway. I don't think I'll be losing any sleep over alienating you.

Roleplay?

No, Cereal, it's not roleplaying. I prefer to obey the law, thank you. This is not "choosing to roleplay 'obedience'".

If you choose not to respect the law, any negative reprocussions of that are your fault.

It is always interesting that people are panicing about stolen scripts and stolen textures - but if a similar sort of theft happens to a big mega corp like toyota or pepsi co... well, that doesn't matter - they're a big mega company!

These are opposing ethics - you cannot have it both ways.

Okay Newfie, I admit that I created products that contain logos which are trademarked to other, real-life companies. And then I sold those products for L$.

Did that admission change anything? No. Does your destructive finger-pointing and accusation of theft change anything? No.

Do you decide what's relevant and what's not? Apparently, no.

Sure it is. I could choose to wear a Victorian dress, and that would be roleplaying. Because Victorian dresses have about as much to do with the SL economy as real-life trademark law does.

Thank you for your admission, I will be forwarding your admittal of guilt to the Lindens so that they may investiage further.



Well it's been maybe 30 seconds since you posted. This might take an hour or two. In fact, it may take even a few days to see if it made a difference. I'm patient.



I didn't make any statement that the relevance was my decision. That decision was made by the legislature and enforced by the courts for quite a while now. I was just stating the general standard interpration of copyright/trademark law. If you dont like it, please feel free to let your congressman (or local representative, whatever they are called in the country you live) know that you'd like an excemption from the law.



- Newfie

Actually, besides the real laws, there's the LL Policy that makes using RW trademarks verbotten.



And you obviously choose not to compete fairly in the SL economy by using a RW trademark against the ToS for your own purposes. Understood. But it's fair because that's the Law in SL. And besides, it's ripe for gaming. I half expect that either Shiryu or the original person who submitted the AR on Shiryu, will now turn his/her attention to you. I'm actually sitting back waiting for that to happen, tbh.



I didn't accuse you of "littering". I was merely stating that there was a vehicle on some property that I came across. And I wasn't the landowner (please reread my post - I believe "near" is the word you'd be looking for). If it had been left on my land, I most certainly would have AR'd it.



As a matter of fact I do. And do you have any idea of what it takes to create CAD and then render it so that you can THEN take it into Photoshop and do all the things you mention? I know that as well. I use Pro/ENGINEER for the CAD, render it in Maya (using orthographic views) and then go through all the texture skewing and distortion filtering and the rest. The only difference is that I've not bothered trying to sell anything yet because I'm not sure SL is worth all THAT effort.



Given this comment, I'd very much like to see your CAD files for generating the realistic textures you're using. Please post screenshots of the original CAD geometry or your money tree... whichever is appropriate.



I'm saying you're illegally using someone else's reputation. How much money you make isn't the issue. As for "slander", I'm unaware we've ever spoken. If you're claiming libel, please quote the comment I make that qualifies as such.



No. But I expect someone will eventually get around to forcing you to justify your use of Toyota's trademark to the Lindens.

well, i'd buy nylon's drawing of juro, but that's beside the point

I agree that we don't need a tattletale culture -- perish the thought. I'm just saying creators need to think about their own actions and decisions. I thought Arcadia put it well too -- "do unto others" kinda thing.

The RL model car analogy was a better one than a painting -- if we think it is just that plastic model car companies should get permission from Toyota and Porsche before selling replicas, then why not SL?

On the L$, to play devil's advocate:
Tax collectors typically like to deem something of value if it can be converted to cash. If you inherit an asset like a house, even if you haven't sold it, to the taxman, you COULD sell it, and so to them you have received something of value. The same thing might apply to Lindens. It doesn't matter that it might be worthless in a week -- so could your stock, or your house. Now, personally, I don't like this argument, but this is the way tax bodies think... and possibly our future (thankfully not our present).

Lastly, I think LL is trying to take the ISP approach to safeguarding themselves. ISPs say, "while we have the right to remove things, we really can't and don't control the content going through our network, so you can't sue us." Similarly, Linden Lab claims that we own the IP on our own content on their network/platform, even if we can't download it to our hard drives.

Do you really think that our months of creative work are the equivalent of hacking a free Seburo, or are you just making an opportunistic and utterly impotent jab?

Then you are ignorant of RL law. I can't say it any more politely than that.

I'm sure it took the people who did that a lot of effort to make the cracked version of the client (That also violates both RL law and SL ToS, just as your cars do)... Should they therefor be allowed to reap the rewards of their hard work? After all, who cares if it violates Real Life laws and Second Life laws... They put hard work into it, darnit!

I posted this earlier in case you missed it. I thought thisHotline response was relevant, and interesting and might interest you as well:

/invalid_link.html



Actually, I agree. It goes to my use of the term "catch-22" and LL's recent use of "chicken or the egg". So long as SL is small it's understandable why LL would look the other way; but as SL grows and SL product is sold on websites making infractions more visible to the outside world, the transition to an internal economy that aligns itself with RW guidelines becomes both necessary and problematic.

As I've said before, I suspect the separation of Trademark from the other issues regarding IP has to do with a move toward making SL more legitimate - both legally and economically. In effect, this "tattle-tale" situation seems to me to be intentionally created for the purposes of having SL residents police themselves. What better IP segment than Trademarks to get residents to begin changing their behavior.

We're all guinea pigs, it seems.

I could turn around and say you're ignorant of how things really work in SL.

But that wouldn't be true. I think you're fully and completely aware of the issues, the scope and magnitude involved here. And I think you, and most of the other me-tooers in this thread, are just trying to be subversive for your own benefit and/or your own schadefreude.

Yes, I really do agree with Forseti and Csven on a practical level.

However, we are on the cusp of so many critical issues such as currency valuation, hobby vs. business, representational art, etc. The lines are blurry, and I just don't like the way the community seems to deal with it, ie

STFU IGNERANT OF LAW UR THIEF REBEL SCUM IM GOING TO AR YOUR ASS BACK TO SIMS ONLINE

Your right, it wouldn't be true.



Yup. You, however, do not seem to be.



Nothing of the sort, I assure you. Nothing of either sort, to be specific.

You misunderstand me if you think I sit around cowering in fear of being outed, or if you think you can blackmail me somehow by threatening such. You seriously misunderstand both me and Shiryu if you're gleefully hoping we'll secretly backstab each other. And you're just out of touch with reality if you think "The Lindens" don't already know about what I do.


So what you're saying is that you're not sure it's worth the effort to create. But it's worth the effort to deconstruct on the forums? What makes this worth the effort? What are you getting out of this discussion? What's in it for you?

Defensive, insulting, condescending, dismissive. You have a future in politics.

If somebody becomes upset when their derivative works are reported, the solution is not to launch a broadside on the forums; the solution is to stop being a copycat and start being a creator. Then that person can be righteously indignant (and potentially litigious) when Toyota copies THEIR original design.

Actually I'm interested in several things:

1) How LL handles the transition to a legitimate economy that doesn't put SL's future growth at risk
2) Whether or not the SL economy could or will support the initialization of a 3D product which can then be taken into the RW or whether it will be drowned out by the big brand competition
3) How the resident's react to having their private world effectively forced to comply with RW laws, which - if Philip's future goals for SL are to be realized - probably requires this to happen.
4) What will happen when a RW company takes an interest in SL for all the wrong reasons

For me this is like "Star Trek"'s Genesis project applied to a nation's economy. Even if I'm never allowed to bring in a real brand and even if I never sell a thing, it's too interesting to just walk away.

Okay, so thus far Shiryu and I have been accused of theft, and I've been implicitly threatened with harrassment because of the stance I've taken on this forum.

Well, now that I have your "assurance" that none of this nonsense is personally motivated, I guess that makes it all okay!

I tried to warn you that's what this was!

When did this become about me? I'm not the one breaking the law here.

Nor have I threatened you, implicity or otherwise.

- I don't think this because as stated, I have little faith in LL enforcing their own policies.
- I'm not gleeful, just interested.
- I'm fairly certain LL is well aware of your violations, which is why other posts indicate that I'm less concerned with trademark violations and more interested in their handling of these violations.



- Yes.
- Because it's easy and Shiryu brought it up.
- I get quite a number of things out of this discussion - all of which would apparently be lost on you.
- What's in it for me is the future potential of mating virtual product to real world manufacturing (you can see my comments regarding getting 3D data out of SL in a recent thread). That's why I came into SL. The things I do in SL now are primarily just for fun. But I'm aware that if nothing else, SL can teach me a bit about what to expect from a future Metaverse (and I've already learned much more than I expected in that regard).

May I ask why you decided to bring what was effectively a dead thread back to life?

I think this pretty much sums up how I feel. Yes, Forseti you are right. People who think TM violation is OK are wrong.

But this weekend I spent WAY too much time trying to find a name for a new pair of boots I made for my clothing line (I settled on "Moshies". I checked web pages and domains, and the U.S. Gov Trademark database. At some point during this tedious research I was like...OOF, SL is wound WAY too tight. In my experience most RL small businesses that create RL goods/services and generate far more revenue that SL content creators spend FAR less time thinking about Trademark violations.

Two wrongs don't make a right but there should be some perspective here. I am sure the legal department of any Trademark holder has an official statement on the subject (one that sounds something like "don't you dare". But when it really comes down to it, I wonder how Coca Cola Co. REALLY feels about someone in a video game making an estimated five dollars a month selling a 512x512 .tga in the shape of a t-shirt with the Coke logo on it.

EDIT**: I don't think we matter as much as Pandastrong.

Speak for yourself, Weber!