Ethics in SL

I think the recent "creator nobody & anyone can copy" bug certainly gave clothing designers an illuminating insight into how people will act in what some would term an ethical grey area.

Some people let the owners know there was a problem, and some let their friends know there was an opportunity.

I was especially impressed with how many of the designers took the time and effort to IM each other with news of the bug. I got IMs from designers I barely knew who wanted to make sure I had heard about it.

Is exploiting a bug or mistake to get free stuff stealing?

I think so. One person when confronted however gave the favorite "well I can do it, so I will do it, and since you can't stop me, it must be OK" defense.

Another recent example. A fellow designer had a vendor bug that gave away free stuff that was obviously not meant to be free. A fairly sizable cluster of people decided that was a fine thing and rushed down to get their share.

I think they forgot one thing... unlike the "drag copy from box" this bug was not anonymous. So that designer now has a list of people who think it's cool to exploit. And she has a shorter list of people who IMed her to let her know about the problem.

These kinds of incidents continue to remind me that SL is a microcosm of RL. Some people are honest, and other are honest only when watched closely.

Thoughts anyone?

Surreal

I'd say yes, but there are always going to be people who take advantage of such situations.

Speaking as a builder and seller, I have noticed both of these bugs cropping up in items created by my partner and myself.

I understand the potential problems with the 'anyone can copy' bug, and have rectified this where I have spotted it in our items.

I have not however, managed to work out why the 'creator: nobody' bug occurs, or what the implications of it are. I know that several of our items have been sold as creator: nobody, because I am unaware of how I fix it.

The line "Is exploiting a bug or mistake to get free stuff stealing?" now makes me worried that our 'creator:nobody' items are open to exploit. Does anybody know if this is the case? And for future reference, how does one go about avoiding this bug, and is it possible to correct it once it happens?

The Creator Nobody bug seems to have been fixed in the last patch. I'm still a bit paranoid about it, so I check my stuff at least 3 times before releasing it.

I thought it only happened with clothes. My solution was to recreate those items from scratch. New clothes, reapply texture, check, save.

The "anyone can copy" bug seemed to go hand-in-hand with Creator Nobody. The only remaining problem that I can see, is that you lose credit for creating the item.

Surreal

Not fixed totally.

I was feeling Preenish, and noticed there was an "anybody can copy" bug with one of Aimee's item's. I purchased it anyway and IM'd her afterwards.

This was.. Monday

There was another popular designer who had items messed up as well. But unfortunately she is on my mute list So the problem is still very much "a problem".

Briana Dawson

I have seen this happen on several occasions... it's a shame Alot of hard work has either been passed out to everyone for free, or resold ...

If someone is made of the aware of the fact of this "bug" and is informed that it is most certainly NOT in accordance with the designer's wishes, but yet continues to perpetuate copying of said clothing, then I have really little to say apart from considering this to be downright disrespectful. It says a lot -- negatively -- about the person not listening to the original designer.

hmm
where am I when free stuff is given away!! j/k

I am more concerned with the scammers, used car salemen type people who try to screw people over.

If you have ethics, you won't win the game!

If LL's doesn't have time to take the stolen items back, dev's need control over this. We need to be able to take back inventory items from people at a whim.

Great idea. A lending feature like in There would be really handy sometimes. Being able to lend land and objects while still retaining full control over them would really kill all of those problems we have with the crappy group controls that allow anyone to take our land and sell it, among other things.

One of the common responses I've gotten from folks about this phenomenon is,

"It's your problem, you should have seen it coming." or that since they are a "hacker" and you are the "hacked", they deserve whatever spoils they get from their cleverness.

The TOS says little about this, I believe, and I'm not even sure that it would be a violation, if the system allows it.

Unfortunately, when the day is done, nefarious ethics may indeed win out. I'm not so sure that community 'boycotts' would work with such things -- people will simply go to the cheapest (or "free-est" route.)

Also unfortunately, Eggy, I believe people would kick and scream and cry over an option like you mentioned above. Since people don't want to be assumed to be dishonest -- even the dishonest ones don't want to be called as such.

What can be done? I don't know. Just hope LL keeps patching the holes, I guess. Meanwhile, seller beware.

Quit being so grumpy and jaded, you are beginning to remind me of... me!
The lending feature would allow people to GIVE AWAY EVERYTHING!
Have you never been to There? I got to play with lots of cool stuff that I would never buy. This chick I met lent me just about everything she had, and said, dont worry about returning it, I can recall it in a few days.
It was great fun. Wouldnt it be awesome if I could sit at the welcome area lending vehicles and games to noobies? I think it would.

It absolutely would, Eggy. (And I have been to 'There'.) Though my cynicism kicks me in the vinyl pants, saying that there'll be a strong cadre of folks who don't want this feature.

Likely, they'll say it'll devalue the $L. (Though I could probably argue the opposite.)

Yeah I'm jaded -- I really wish SL wasn't about "winning" these days. But that "river" has already been "cried". No sense in adding any tributaries. They'd probably be purple, anyhow.

This is always sad when things like this crop up.

As far as I know, the Creator: Nobody bug with full permissions on objects has been fixed GOING FORWARD... in other words, items from the past needed to be re-created. Any items that were changed are still available to everyone who's ever bought them with full permissions... nothing we can do about that.

As soon as I found the solution pre-patch, I made sure to forward a notecard of the conversation I had with Phoenix to every designer I knew of on my calling card list, as well as keeping Live Help apprised. I was in many IMs with many of the designers in games discussing it and helping debug how it happened. Its just common courtesy people, even if you're in competition. We're all in this together, and we are a community - don't forget that.

Surreal is correct, as usual, that is would be nice if the list of people who bought from a broken vendor was equal to the number of IMs received concerning the vendor being broken. Most vendors I know would hook the people notifying up with free stuff just for letting them know. Honesty and goodwill pays.

Regards,

-Flip

Actually this is a pretty cool idea. It would allow people who create things for sale to lend their stuff to people on sort of "try then buy" basis.

It could also help with the "black hole" of SL inventory.

If the object was set up where the creator could automatically recall the it in 'X' number of days, the "renter" could buy it before that time or if not, it would simply leave their inventory and return to the creator. That could be a plus for both parties.

Newbies would get a chance to try things out in SL and creators would have more control over their IP as well as having an avenue to "advertise" their products.

LENDING, EGGY? THAT'S A SIMPLE, OBVIOUS IDEA... and I LIKE IT!!!

Doesn't There have a feature like that? Called a Try-O-Matic machine... you can sample clothes or vehicles and stuff for a few hours, up to a maximum of something like 10 (not sure if this is configurable) times. Try-before-you-buy, in fact.

http://info.there.com/idx/0/080/article/Using_TryOMatics.html

I really, really give the thumbs-up, and The Donald Hair to this. It's YUGE!

Isn't that precisely the definition of hacking? I'd say we can argue that existing anti-hacking legislation could protect us vendors from this sort of blatant abuse.

The problem is that people can always plead ignorance. If an item slips out into the general public with copy and transfer enabled, it's going to get copied and transfered... a lot. Once it passes from the person who knew it was ill gotten gains to the next person, the next person probably won't know. There's really nothing LL can do about it as far as the TOS goes until we have a much more robust permissions system. The good news is that the honest people (and those without a friend who has the item to give) will always outnumber the others. At this point we just have to accept that a bit of leakage is inevitable and do what we can to look out for each other.

Good point. Perhaps vendors could explicitly state in business cards what their object uses are, at least then anyone who profits from the exploits could be forced to hand over the L$

And although backhanded, at least one side effect of unwanted copying of designs will be the increased propagation and popularity of them -- which brings to mind, I wonder, will we ever see a Thailand-ish counterfeit market arise, copying the work of well-known SL designers at a cheap-ass price? (Or would that not be worth the trouble?) This could go in so many directions.

Wow great thread Surreal!!

I think we can come up with a million analogies that show that this is CLEARLY stealing (If i forget and leave my apartment door unlocked, is it OK for people to take my stuff? etc)

But when I found out that I was victim of this bug i basically wrote off all the mismarked clothing as "public domain" I didn't spend alot of time fussing over the people that would knowingly copy my stuff. Bad people are out there. We know this. They will eventually get what is coming to them.

I was however a little dissapointed with Linden Labs. Knowing that this KIND of bug may be lurking in the code somtime in our futures is very discouraging for anybody who is contemplating being productive in SL. Every hour us designers expend creating something for SL now comes with the nagging feeling in the back of our minds that with one code slip up, we could lose all the reward for our work.

I think Linden Labs needs to be more sensitive to this or else nobody is going to want to populate thier world with nice stuff. Perhaps a reparations package for confirmed victims? ANYTHING to let us know that if LL screw up our work, they wont leave us hanging out to dry.

OH and super special thanks to Briana and Aru, both having done the right thing on this issue.

-Aimee

I dont know about a reperations package neccesarily, but I do agree with you wholeheartedly here aimee.
This isnt a case of "well, you didnt set your perms right, reap the consequences." this is a linden issue, and it affects the seller's confidence in them.
I hate that that is so, but it is.
And it's not like bugs turning items copyable is a new thing.
This latest specific problem has even been going on for some time now, without being fixed.
Many content creators are doing everything they can to avoid it, and everything they can to fix it *when they realize its a problem*.
Is our service provider doing that too?

Personally, as a content creator, I dont want reimbursement from LL for any income lost due to this bug. I just want the bug fixed.