Just to be clear...

Why is Linden Lab not banning the accounts making this tool available on the market in SL? Please don't tell me that you believe that this thing will be used for anything other than ripping off content?

This CopyBot is nothing but the nail in SL's coffin.

It can only be used to "Steal" items instead of purchasing them, or to modify thier permissions beyond what the creator wished to allow.

I dare LL to name one legitimate use for this thing.

I also emplore LL to freeze sales on this item until a full investigation can be undertaken.

Faliure to do so will result in the collapse of the SL economy and SL as a whole. Not "may", will. Already content creators are speaking that there is no more reason to build. People are speaking of using it to "obtain" items without paying for them. No new products means SL stagnates, then crumbles as creators pull thier current works out, then dies when the numbers drop too low to sustain it.

If LL wants a way to destroy thier own product, you just found it.

Now, what is LL going to do about it?

~Jessy

If I am breaking a TOS or anything, please IM me (Lindens only!) and I will cease. We have taken every step we can to inform people about the crimes of stealing content with the Codybot program, and include links to the Linden Blog, and how to file a DMCA report with LL. Please Contact me in-world if I am breaking any rules. Thanks.

I had great respect for Linden Labs and I truly loved this world you created- the creativity it unleashed in me made me feel more alive. I believed it when you said we owned the rights to our creatiions, even believed you would run this world for the greater good of all- not the few!

For the last (almost) 2 years, I have invested 14-18 hours EVERYDAY designing, creating, building my business. You and the minions you support at LibSL have just destroyed it in the blink of an eye.

What a sad world you will leave in the path of your destruction!

It strikes me as odd that a while ago you took the grid down because of a permissions exploit "emergency", and now you seem fine with the a program that copies any in-world object/avatar and gives it as full permissions to the user of the program, infact even makes the user the "creator" of the item.

Yes Ive read the blog entry on this, and Im aware of that "its not the gun, its the person" argument etc etc, I have one question:

What is the purpose of your permissions system?

Id be interested to know what it does now.

Thanks

CJ Carnot posted something interesting:

/327/77/148836/6.html#post1334177

I was wondering if you guys would be able to share your thoughts on this?

Thanks in advance for your reply

Please be aware that the possibilitly to earn money by creating virtual items is what makes SL attractive for content creators. Without a broad variety of content the game will lose a lot of its appeal. With an easy method of copying content speading widely now I see just one solution to rescue SL:

Pull down the servers now and secure the client-server communication - even if it takes some weeks offline. Additionally rollback the world to a pre copybot time before coming back online.

How are the chances that this or other effective steps are done to protect SL as we know and love it?

really sad,
Distar

Gotcha Covered!!

Hello:

Please provide Linden Lab's interpretation of Section 1201 of the DMCA as to why the creation, sale, and/or use of the computer program commonly referrred to as the SL Copy Bot is not a direct violation of the DMCA.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS SECTION OF THE ACT DOES NOT REQUIRE THAT THERE BE A SALE OF A PROTECTED WORK FOR THERE TO BE A VIOLATION.



"Sec. 1201. Circumvention of copyright protection systems

`(a) VIOLATIONS REGARDING CIRCUMVENTION OF TECHNOLOGICAL PROTECTION MEASURES- (1) No person shall circumvent a technological protection measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

`(2) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that--

`(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological protection measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;

`(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological protection measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or

`(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological protection measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

`(3) As used in this subsection--

`(A) to `circumvent a technological protection measure' means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological protection measure, without the authority of the copyright owner; and

`(B) a technological protection measure `effectively controls access to a work' if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.

`(b) ADDITIONAL VIOLATIONS- (1) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that--

`(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing protection afforded by a technological protection measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof;

`(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent protection afforded by a technological protection measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof; or

`(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing protection afforded by a technological protection measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof.

`(2) As used in this subsection--

`(A) the term `circumvent protection afforded by a technological protection measure' means avoiding, bypassing, removing, deactivating, or otherwise impairing a technological protection measure; and

`(B) a technological protection measure `effectively protects a right of a copyright owner' under this title if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, prevents, restricts, or otherwise limits the exercise of a right of a copyright owner under this title."


.

Firstly: I am dismayed with the current Linden Labs response to CopyBot. This is a world-breaking problem, and to say "Well, we are okay with it, because sometimes copying isn't stealing" is incredibly, intensely, astoundingly wrong. I am tempted to say patronizing, stupid, ignorant, and unsupportable, but that's just my anger speaking.

It is bad enough that this "tool" copies items: any item. What is worse is that it apparently makes the copier appear as the items *creator*. So not only do they get to steal the item, they get to make it appear as if they created it in the first place.

The long term solution would be to devise a set of permissions keys associated with login accounts. An object would be signed by the original object creator's keys, and then cross-signed by the purchaser or anyone who takes/is given a legitimate copy. An attempt to rez an item without these correct keys should fail. But I can imagine that the LL development team has a lot of priorities to deal with, so perhaps this isn't currently on the list. It should be, though, if Second Life is to become any kind of legitimate platform for commerce.

Which leads to my question: can LL not at *least* alter the asset systems to make it impossible to replace the original item creator data via this method?

On YOUR DMCA page it clearly states:

After filing a valid DMCA complaint, having the content removed by you, Linden Lab, I contacted Linden Lab regarding additional content that the alleged same individual reposted in-world. Reading the statement in RED below, I can see that LL does not allow content to be reposted by the alleged offending individual once it has been removed by Linden Lab.



After contacting Linden Lab, I was given the following response in part:



So then since the content has been removed...it is OK for the other party to continue dropping the alleged infringing content wherever they please in-world?

I respoded to Ginsu, and never received any response back. So should I take that as LL is ignoring the situation? Is LL ignoring their own TOS and guidelines? What is the point of providing these guidelines if you yourself have no intention of enforcing them?

Perhaps you should change that paragraph to read:



So in allowing the content to continue to remain in world and continue to be rezzed in world and perhaps even be sold in world, are you then relieving the alleged infringer of their liability and responsibility to comply with the guidelines and TOS that you created?

Is Linden Lab relieving itself of its responsibility to comply with DMCA law?

If Linden Lab does not wish to be involved in copyright disputes and does not wish to engage in placing judgements on such situations where it has no jurisdiction, then why is Linden Lab allowing the questionalble content to contibue to be rezzed on its servers by an alleged infringer?

Warmest regards,
M a d d y

First off, I think you all just need a big hug! Not sure what's going on over there but I'm keeping LL in my happy thawts!

Questions:

1. Was this copybot created under Linden Labs' noses? (Were there Lindens involved in the development process?)
   
2. Was this copybot created and distributed under the LL "reverse engineering" protocol? (Sorry if the terms are wrong, but you know what I mean.)
   
3. Why is Linden Lab claiming that it cannot stop what's happening when you are intelligent, resourceful, and talented individuals who CAN stop it. Why not issue an emergency update to block SL from running if this "copybot" is running on the system. Yes, it can be done. (P.S., the same for GL Intercept)
   
4. Why is Linden Lab allowing this to continue when it clearly is an exploit that violates your own rules and assists others in violating U.S. Law.
   

Unfortunatley I think I can already hear your answer to that LOL...which brings me to my next set of questions:

1. Is Linden Lab prepared to deal with the flood of DMCA complaints that this will create?
   
2. Is Linden Lab prepared to deal with the flood of complaints that will be created when the offending residents continue to re-post the copied content after it has already been taken down? (My experience says..."No" /invalid_link.html)
   
3. How will you deal with the DMCA complaints that are created against these alt accounts that have no valid info on file. The offending individual can always provide bogus info, which is against DMCA law, but nonetheless time consuming for you to deal with and frusturating for the creators.
   

Although I would like to believe Robin's display of concern over the release of this copybot, recent events clearly justify cause for concern. So with all due respect, I would love to hear your answers to these questions.

Thanks,
M a d d y

If someone copy-bots my creations I spent days and maybe weeks on, I have lost one or more sales & no matter how you fool with the semantics and word games or try to sugar-coat things, it IS stealing. If they copy items I have no desire to sell, that is stealing too and worse because those items I was keeping for me, for their uniqueness. There is no fair use here. If I want someone to have something, I either sell it to them or give it to them. No middle ground on this exists whatsoever. Aditionally, noone has any business having anything I made without the permissions **I** set for the itme(s). Its mine, you get it my way or not at all. In any of the above examples, I have either lost a sale or part of my personal uniqueness to someone who has done no more than use a stinking script. Now I hear someone is selling the infernal Bot in world, and you guys have your fingers in your ears.

Its the same as if someone hacked your billing DB and set themselves to have a sim of land without buying it or tier payments: Stealing. If it was your profit skating out the door here, I can imagine things would be different-- SL would be shut down and no Linden would go home tonight-- until the security hole was tightly sealed.

Your DMCA procedure is a joke with all the international users, and totally useless with the wonderful full anonymity of free accounts. It is cumbersome and close to impossible to get anywhere. You need to just get militant on abuse reports of such thefts and Linden investigation should be aggressive based on asset ID's and datestamps, etc. It is possible to do this, you and eveeryone here knows it is. The time for excuses and evading the issue is past. If you continue along with your collective head in the sand, then when you look up, many of your paying customers may be elsewhere. I want SL to continue, myself, but this makes my work worthless for resale in 10 seconds flat. How many talented people will you allow to be hurt before you do the correct things?

Hovertips on garments & items? Oh that is useless. Anyone sleazy enough to steal anothers hard talent will not care if they are caught with a rip-off, and most of us have the hovertips off as they are distracting.

SO-- my question is this-- what are you going to do to preserve the IP rights of creators of all types? For starters, can we disable this script and erase all copies of it in world TODAY, please? Can we IP ban everyone who hqs used it? There is no way that it can be used that I can see an honest, legitimate use for. Its very existence flies in the face of your desire to see SL used as a place of business.

I have to wonder how your new, rich, better than the rest of us corporate customers are going to take this flagrant lack of attention to your customer's most basic security concerns.

Do not play word games with us, LL. It is insulting.

To do so, you will need to state only that using copybot to make unauthorized copies is against the TOS.

Copybot itself, or other code for similar programs - having it, using it to your heart's content for other purposes, selling it, having it all over SL - is NOT forbidden.

coco

So people can still use it, as long as it's legally?

I'm talking about Prim Revolution, who is named by the Second Life Herald as the maker of Copybot and his profile also links to site hosting the offending software. Predictably, he's an UNVERIFIED account.

What are you waiting for? Ban him and force libSL to disclose all the necessary information so that you'll be able to keep him out of SL for good.

Oh, and perhaps THIS should finally show you that allowing unverified accounts was a stupid idea.

I see a lot of calls for banning copybot and punishing the creators from the residents, and this seems to be more or less what Linden Labs appears to want to do. But how is that going to solve the problem? The whole purpose of the existence of LibSL is figure out what all can be done with the client. As it turns out, the client can be used to steal things. The LibSL team has demonstrated that its possible to do. This is a huge security problem. So what is the proposed solution? Punish the people who exposed it, of course! No. That's retarded. Banning them won't stop copybot. Banning copybot won't stop copybot. Someone else will make another copybot. You know this, because it's been done already. LibSL proved it. So, even assuming it's a verified account, how are you going to find this person? And supposing you do find this person, then what? Will you have stopped copybot? No. You'll have stopped all of one person. This is not even taking into consideration unverified accounts. The problem with the current popular proposed solution is that it's not a solution at all - IT WILL NOT STOP COPYBOT.

You had the chance to work with some great white hats. They offered to keep this stuff quiet, show it only to you, but you wouldn't recognize them or what they were doing. So, instead of hearing about this problem and acknowledging and working to fix it, you ignored it. And this is what happened. Releasing copybot has forced you to acknowledge the problem with that line of thought. The solution, therefore, is to work *with* the white hats who exposed your security problems to you. Keep in mind that they were willing to work for free from the start, and I imagine they still are! So, instead of punishing these people, you need to work with them.

The solution is to fix the security problem. LibSL has just shown you that your front door is wide open, and now all kinds of thieves are running in and stealing stuff. Contrary to popular opinion, they did not open it--it was already open, and they just pointed this out. How about closing it, now? Why am I the only one here advocating fixing the real problem?

My question is as follows: with all of the aforementioned in mind, are you, Linden Labs, going to do anything at all about the security problem, and if so, what? What are you going to do to prevent someone else from creating another copybot? And keep in mind that legal action will do you no good here--you can only press charges after you've been screwed over. Legal action certainly didn't stop LibSL, who you'd actually be able to identify and formally charge, and it certainly wouldn't stop a black hat, who you would not be able to identify, let alone formally charge.

In his blog post Cory says that LL is not in the business of policing copyright.

They are starting to move towards a situation where we might be able to check it, in part, for ourselves which is definitely a good thing.

LL is becoming increasingly international. You are relying on a piece of US legislation to protect us all, which is almost certainly expensive to pursue if you're a US citizen, and is probably impractical to pursue for those of us who are not, whether against a US citizen and even harder to pursue against anonymous residents and other non-US citizens.

Although content creators who rely on textures and prims primarily were, and possibly still are, up in arms about copybot I have to wonder how many will ever consider bringing expensive RL suits under this legislation that may well not even succeed. Just how much money has the most successful ever clothing or skin item made, is it worth it the time, US$ cost etc?

I don't pretend to have an answer, but I do have a question: Will LL consider changing its stance of not policiing copyright?

A system similar to ARing (but with more transparency), a resident jury system or similar so that infringing material can be removed in world, relatively quickly and cheaply, but which also prevents the flood to every liaison is one such solution that enables LL to empower us, the users, to enforce copyright and IP within the world that you provide for us. Would you rather do the right thing, or as little as you think you can get away with?

Hello, I've merged these on the shared topic of "CopyBot". I know I missed a few others, there are a lot and I just hope to draw attention that we're listening loud and clear and responding!

First, I'd like to clarify that we've been reading all the feedback and questions that've come in. Due to such volume -- including IMs and emails, not just forum posts and blog comments -- however, we unfortunately can't reply to each and every one, as much as we'd like to. We've been aggregating the main threads, discussing them internally, and providing regular updates on the Official Linden Blog.

As for "What LL is going to do?" the answer is:
Daniel Linden's blog post here has more info:
and more news will be provided as it comes up too.

I'm a content creator too... I can personally relate.