Sales Counter

No, not just another feature for vendors.

Instead, this would help LL crack down on copyright infringement.


Since LL can track sales figures and transfers, place a counter by object name and/or key at the backend. This would compile a list of the most common sales and gifts in a set time frame and allow a liason or two to check them regularly.

This would be interesting. While it would still allow for "low profile" infringement, huge sales of "Metallica CD 3" or "Coca Cola Avatar" (fabricated) would be easily traceable and dispelled by a couple Liasons.

Thoughts?

I would like to see this done out of curiosity not just infringement issues. It would help see whats a hot item and what kind of things people are interested in.

All this talk about copyright infringment has me wondering. Since what you create in SL is obviously yours, and LL specifies that all IP belongs to the creator. If someone lives outside the US and their country doesn't acknowledge our patent and legal system, then how can they be breaking the law?

At a guess?

Because LL exists within the United States, and acknowledges US laws and the DMCA, they are perfectly within their rights enforcing the US patent and legal system by proxy. QED.

It is not "them breaking the law (of the United States)" so much as it is "them breaking the laws SL and LL adhere to." Of course, this issue has some curious crossover on things like tax evasion... but for now, that's my take.

not an issue for us to worry about.

It's a nice idea, but LL would have to actually make sure that they don't actually have the licence rights to make these things ;0 I'm pretty sure Metalica and Coke have not licenced their stuff to people in SL, but are you absolutly 1000% positive? Can you imagine the cost of CS every time someone calls a Linden about removing their "Do the Dew" poster?

That's why they ask that the creator/owner invoke the DMCA rather than just remove stuff. They already say if they can't easily verify the owner they will just remove the content and let you argue about it outside of SL.

;0

It's less effort(read $$$$) to verify.

I don't think the idea could be implemented successfully.

How would this work anyway? If it tracked items For Sale using Buy, copyright thieves would just use vendors.

For vendors to be tracked, all money transactions would have to be tracked. If that was done, the vendor could be named something like "Music vendor" or something even more innocuous. And since there are a thousand different ways the vendor's money event could trigger the item to be given, that sort of makes tracking impossible.

And even if by some miracle of programming the code was searched and the resulting item given found, there's always XML RPC to some remote code (hello, SLB / SS / SLEX) where LL has no jurisdiction or ability to examine.

Um. Hiro. Because every object goes through an asset server when given, sold, llGiveInventory/llGiveInventoryList'ed, etc etc., all one would really need to do is configure an output feed on these servers and store a fair deal of data.

Given how inventory is then "filed," you could compile a list based on sender address, DB query id (the hard reference to the item before it is rezzed in-world), or name of the object with case matching.

This would be excruciatingly difficult to "game," because residents don't have a large degree of control over some of these options, and some would even enjoy being seen at the top of a sales chart.

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As for "licenses" to use particular products, I do not think we are yet at the stage of development where we need to worry about that, Baba. Because a rough 95% (at a guess) of resident sales of high-profile items are probably unlicensed, it falls as burden to the resident to show proof their items are legitimate.

I happen to be a good exception to this rule myself. While I generate nearly all of my content myself, I do use many sound files from SoundDogs. I happen to license these files prior to using them.

If LL ever contacted me about IP infringement, I could easily furnish the emails SoundDogs sent me when I licensed their sound files. I could also show them the transaction IDs from my logged in account.

So I honestly think this is a non-issue. While it might fall as burden on Linden Labs to reconsider their policing methods, I don't see "nailing everything that moves" as a huge issue.

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Another good thing I forgot to add. Gaming by sending a LOT of the same items to alts or repeatedly to the same people would be a red flag. This also has the side effect of seeing things like that terrible "D-Bomber" and similar "kill the asset server" devices before they get out of hand.

As for cost, optimally I'm talking having a liason watch a window every so often (once a shift?). That's fairly low maintenance as well.

I'm assuming people care about copyright violations because some copyrighted items compete with their own items for sale, my assumption may be wrong. If the assumption is right my questions are... Do you report these violations to the copyright holder?... If you do, are they not responding? ... If they aren't responding would that suggest the owner of the copyright doesn't mind? ... I'm just wondering...

Another question would be... If the company did respond, do you fear it would start selling in SL and become an even larger competition?

I doubt Coke would sell anything in SL, but who knows

My cousin is an executive at Pepsi Co., I'll see if they are interested.

I ask because I'm wondering... if there are many people reporting these violations... yet the items remain... does it show a lack of concern on the part of the copyright holder?

Serious question

What I think might work is LL post a list of companies that have filed a complaint with regard to a copyright, that way when we see Disney on the list we can assume making a Mickey shirt bugs them. It also would give creators a heads up before there is a complaint filed against them.

Just an idea.

Personally, I don't see a need for such a list. If a developer is using mickey mouse and didn't get permission, then they know they are in trouble if they get caught. So I don't think LL should be the official "look out" for trouble.

I suppose SL would be more interesting if copyrights where enforced more. More people would need to have original ideas. I think it could be advantageous of a larger company to get in now, while SL is still small. Can you imagine a Disney sim? I think they could do great things.

I live down the street from Disneyland and I can't say i'm too happy with them basically owning the city, but i suppose thats how it goes.

I'm sure if Disney wanted to remove copyright infringment from SL they would just buy LL and close the doors. It's just that simple.

I care about copyright issues because this week the US Supreme Court ruled that the creators and suppliers of software can be held legally accountable for the misuse of their products if it seems that they have encouraged (possibly even "not discouraged," I haven't read whole text of the ruling yet) copyright infringement. Linden Labs resides in the US and is subject to this ruling. I don't think anyone could seriously claim that SL is the equivalent of Grokster in this department, but I'd rather no one even tries to go there. Getting sued is expensive and distracting (as I have personal reason to know). I'd rather LL is putting that time and money into fixing bugs. In this case, a little prevention could go a long way -- if it doesn't actually stop the problem of copyright violation, it would at least be evidence that LL has tried.

The Mouse has been known to be bloodthirsty about copyright protection. So has the music industry. If they target LL, they could shut them down in a matter of days or weeks, indefinitely.

neko

(Doesn't matter whether I think this is fair or right, btw. This is the legal environment we US citizens live in at the moment.)

I'm thinking of the cost every time they have to evaluate and remove something. And then the cost of customer service every time someone complains about it.

"OMG my metalica CD disappeared I spent 200 L$ on it ! FIX IT!"

You can't be serious. You want to filter every single object transaction? Not only is that awfully draconian and reeking of Big Brother, but it'd be an enormous load on the asset servers!


money(etc)
{
if(paid > amountforitem)
{
giveInventory("Object" // where Object has the goods inside.

}
}

Hard to game? Try sorting through billions of "object" transactions. This is absolutely simple to game!


Incorrect. US Copyright laws automatically copyright content published online. Regardless of whether they have a license behind it or not, the item has a copyright; it's just a matter of who owns said copyright - the builder in SL, or someone who licenses rights to the builder.


But why? Why would LL go after you? Is LL going to now investigate every single texture for DMCA violation? If SoundDogs doesn't complain, LL won't check. That's why the DMCA was written the way it was.

Or, we could be like There, filter every single texture and object, and fail miserably into obscurity.


But "nailing everything that moves" seems to be what you suggest.


Why? What about Zeppi Schlegal or Anshe Chung or FlipperPA or Adam Zaius? Would they be red flagged? How about clothing makers that sell tons of items? Would LL start an "exception" list which is unscalable, or would the threshold be ridiculously high with enough room too game?


SL transactions are far beyond this level. I believe you completely underestimate the load. This is unscalable too as we grow exponentially.

No, this is a very very very bad idea. It's unnecessary load on database servers for a function and security that's half-functional, at best. There's no way to effectively prevent exploiting the system easily, and the bottom line:

It is a seller's responsibility to track their own sales.

At most, I'd ask LL to add some data fields to sales stats and let users access it in a Spreadsheet friendly manner.

Hiro, I think you're completely missing the point here. Perhaps read what I said again?

What "omg, draconian, new load?" We have a "last transactions in world" feed off the asset server already!
http://secondlife.com/community/

The only difference would be to store that sort of data, and perhaps look at other ways of gathering it. I doubt passing a reference and token is a huge load from a programming standpoint, especially if LL is familiar with the concept behind routing tables. The only real problem is finding space to house these references, and assessing how long you wish to store the data.

The main idea is to compile, in spreadsheet form, "Top 100 objects sold in-world for day or week X." This would give you a nice look at what's high profile at any given time, and if you see something up there like "Batman Avatar v.2," you could take further measures. Lower-profile stuffs would never see this list.

And if you feel that is "big brother," I strongly suggest you look at how the internet is already formulated. There is no privacy here. That's partly by design.

The unscalable nature over time is precisely the point - this sort of measure is meant to bridge the gap until assets are decentralized and Linden Labs begins to relinquish server control to residents.

As for "wow, this would red flag (add builder here)," huh? Are you not reading how this would work Hiro? If you're seeing transfer of the same item in the thousands to the same resident in a small time frame, something is very, very wrong. Optimally, the only red flags would be obvious IP fraud and global attacks, which the listed names would not fall under.

Anyway, I think the right solution here would not be to "second-guess" the asset server, and rather ask the Lindens about it. While I've researched the behavior of assets in a small sense, the fact we have an existing transaction feed speaks volumes to me, and suggests something more cohesive might be possible. But this is only at a guess.

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As for CS support, I'm again not seeing where tracking a few items a day/week is causing a huge monetary deficit. You'll hate me for saying this, but people complaining "omg, where's my batman avatar" would likely received a canned response that can be sent out to multiple people at once, even in Hotline to Linden. That's pretty scalable, in my opinion.

As for economic impact, this would take money out of the economy, curbing perceived inflationary pressures by other facets of Second Life.