The Content Thief & The Nice Estate Manager

A DMCA take down claim can do nothing when the content is already removed like in Porky's case or mine.

With a slam-dunk theft issue like Porky's, I can't imagine an estate manager not contacting the Lindens about it. That was exactly the correct thing to do; I sure would have responded in exactly the same way. Blatant copying is serious, and the concern would be that the estate would become accessory to the crime.

Yet I've had issues that were shades of grey before, where it wasn't clearly a scam. I.e. people had sold items to residents and then came by to say that there should have been stricter permissions on a properly obtained item for sale.

I offered to participate in the discussion, but in no way was I going to declare myself an arbiter of justice simply because I had leverage over one of the parties (land reclaim ability).

Ability does not equal authority. In the end however, it seemed that discussion was precisely what was needed and the situation was largely resolved.

That's a horrible thing, Porky So far I've only had to look at "knock offs" of my stuff. I'm glad that you got the assistance you did in shutting the guy down (until next week I guess with a new alt).

Was it copybot do you think, or painstaking re-creation prim by prim with your textures? That's the downside with selling mod- it's only a case of copying the prim values.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Ear%20/4/218/453/

Thanks Marty!

As one resident answering a question not specifically asked: I have bought several prefab builds over the time I've been on, and I have never bought a prefab that I could not first explore.

Well I am assuming that it was copybot based on the following.

The estate owner told me that when the culprit first bought the land he put up a casino and it was a terrible build. He then built a house and its was a terrible build. He then started producing prefabs out of thin air they were of top quality so she was already suspicious at this sudden overnight jump in abaility as she is a builder herself. Ive seen people copy my stuff prim for prim before and they still make a mess of it, I've never seen a perfect replica before now.

Also allot of the textures are custom made by me and have never been available with full perms to anyone.

All door and tint and TP scripts were exactly the same as mine right down to the guidlines notes and the request that people contact porky gorky if they needed help editing the script!

He stole my build description that are advertised in the shop. He must have just ripped the textures straight out of the game as I noticed he'd included a spelling mistake that I rectified a few days ago, after he'd purchsed the builds that he copied.

And lastly and most convincingly, the underside of one of the floors that would not be visible had a 'hydro homes' texture on it, must have left it there by mistake, but it is only visible once you pull the build apart. I pulled the fake apart last night and there is was!. pulled my original apart and there it was. Didnt even know it was there until last night.

So I'm left in no doubt that he used a bot or some other tool to copy these designs lock stock and barrel rather than recreating them himself.

I am on a mission to scour SL in search of other rip offs so I will keep an eye out for you Ace as I generally recognise your work without having to check the creator.

See, I agree with you, I wouldnt buy a house if I couldnt explore it either.

But I sell hundreds of builds per month just from the images and rarely get requests for viewings so go figure.

However i realise that people like yourself and the gerenally older population want viewable models which is what I have been working towards. Just taken a while as I keep getting distracted by custom work. Should be up and running by autumn though so will be interesting to see what happens sales wise

By the way, I submitted a post earlier regarding the conception of an organisation to locate and report copied content. in that post I stated that Robin Linden sat on the board of the SLBB. I've since discovered this is not true. She only interacts in a purely advisory capacity. Ive deleted that post to avoid any confusion as my whole concept is pretty poinless without Linden support.

Thanks

I certainly agree that first a discussion is needed in cases like those. However I’m not sure if you are referring to Porky’s case when you write that “discussion was precisely what was needed and the situation was largely resolved” or in another incident that involved you personally. Because, from what I read in Porky’s case, there was no discussion with the thief whatsoever but a prompt action from the estate manager and LL.

As for my case, the incident was even more blatant in nature since it involved stolen products of major skin designers as well. However, despite of the very obvious theft, despite of LL suspending the account of the resident who stole the textures and despite of the *confession* of the resident that he indeed stole my products, the management team of that “land baron” did absolutely nothing, not even a simple discussion on the subject. They first came with the “we can’t do anything about it” when I contacted them in-world, and when confronted if this is really their policy and if their boss/land baron agrees with that stance, I was asked to e-mail all the evidence to their support e-mail. And guess what: three e-mails later, I still haven’t received a simple acknowledgement that they even received my e-mail.

And after my experience with the management of "one of biggest private continents of SL", my question and my concern are very clear and they are of general nature. If the incident that happened to me, didn’t occur in the past but would have been occurred in near future when the management/AR keys will be handed from LL to the estate owners, what I could possibly do and what would have been the outcome?

Maybe SL will go thru a Feudal System level of justice first as large land owners become the pathway to the Lindens and correcting things.

WTG Porky and i am glad You stopped that fool.
my question is this and its general: how do You stop someone from ripping you off? i saw one posters idea, and it sounds great, but in the case of clothing(which i have bought a BIAB, but only as a guideline to making clothing and how it fits in realation to the ava), where would you put the, for lack of a better term "alarm" that your designs were being ripped off?

First off, 'discussion needed' was in my case specifically, not Porky's, due to the shades of grey. Anyone ripping people off with copybot - well, that's way past discussion, and the Company should know about it in any case.

I don't think it's the best idea to hand all governance to estate owners either, myself. I don't have any good answers for you there.

Personally, I have no intention of becoming a haven for crime. But I'm not going to seat myself as an arbiter of justice over residents in my sims, either. I'm just another resident like anyone else, unless what they are doing on estate land would also implicate me as an enabler of their crime or something.

Eep @ copybot. I don't know the answer... I would suggest something like Sellers Guild but I think it's closed now, and not ideal for prefabs- it seems to be more fashionista oriented.

Maybe we need some kind of builders association.

Oh, ack. I thought that Copybot had been effectively eliminated and wasn't a threat anymore. They are still around?

Unless he took advantage of the recent script exploit, there's no way to "steal" a script (or a prim's inventory for that matter). Unless you're selling them as copy and transfer in your builds?

Did you look at the creator of the individual prims of copied build (Right click, More, Inspect)? Does it has your name on it (suggests a permissions exploit/problem and not copybot) or his (copybot/manually recreated)?

If the copy he sells has your name on it as the creator you should really take a look at everything you have for sale and make absolutely sure that you aren't selling things as full permission somehow (having an alt buy your builds would probably be easier).

If the copy has his name on it then he went through a lot of trouble to copy over your notecards and buying the same scripts you have in yours and yet clumsy enough to leave your name in the notecards *confuzzled*.

Personally, if a house wasn't on display I'd assume that the creator doesn't want to bother with it, so I wouldn't ask.

When I am/was looking for a house I'd tp over, look for a rezzed build and if one wasn't apparant I'd tp away and move on, I wouldn't even really bother to look at the pictures.

With regard to stealing scripts - I'm certainly not one who would ever comment on exploits even if I knew any, but in general there are lots of opportunities for wrongdoing that pop up during the ongoing development of software.

The copybot scare was round one, and doubtless there will be a 'round two' at some point. Basically, any data sent to your computer in some form (i.e. anything you can see with your client) conveys most or all of the information you would need to recreate it.

Even if some things remain serverside they have to be accessible by tools somehow, somewhere, and there are lots of opportunities for security measures to go wrong.

In the spirit of attempting to be a "Nice Estate Manager", does anyone have a sample paragraph from their Covenant they would share so I can incorporate a robust TOS and DMCA remark into my covenant?

Thanks,
Jacer

Glad to hear it worked out for you Porky!



That might not have been a bad oversight.

I recently bought one of your builds and although the price wouldn't have broke my bank
I did think it would have been good to see a 3D version as I was wondering about how a certain part of a floor went.
In the end all was good. Nice work.

Very nice job by the estate owner this time, but what if the estate owner himself (herself) is a content thief? (A few months ago I already started a battle against content thievery in this forum, but the only thing I "achieved" is that the business now runs on an own island.)

http://secondlife.com/corporate/dmca.php

There's always a chance that the infringer will file a counterclaim which forces LL to restore all previously removed contant although that isn't entirely without risk for the infringer if it ever comes to a trial.

One other step could be to contact a lawyer to draft up a cease and decist letter to send to LL's office (with a received receipt). In the letter point out the (alleged) infringement and address the resident's SL name (LL isn't responsible as long as it can comply with the common carrier status). LL should forward the letter on to the resident in question and hopefully that'll give them more of a scare.

The last option would be to actually take the infringer to court.

If someone is infringing on your trademark, then things are a whole lot simpler. There is no protection for LL in this case and they're liable if they don't instantly remove the content as soon as you notify then.

With license violations you're probably out of luck since that would probably count as a inter-resident contract where LL won't interfere at all. A cease and decist might still work.

Hats off to Porky and the estate owner in question.

I have similar rules against scamming/theft by any resident in my sims. If it is proven to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that anyone is scamming, stealing, copy-botting, etc *anywhere* in SL, they will no longer be a resident in my estates and any evidene of such on my estates will be turned over to LL prior to the eviction of the resident.

Further, I also do not allow the reselling of someone else's full perm freebies for any price in excess of $L 1 per item or boxed collection.

I don't go policing my residents, but if it is brought to my attention and I find hard evidence etc, I will act on it.

Char

I know about DMCA, but I wasn't the creator, I was only a rival, who noticed the content thievery and was forced to spend more money and time to overcome the unfair advantage. I IM-med the creators, but the first answer came yesterday, 2 months after the incident. I also told her to file a DMCA complaint.

Unfortunately a lot of content creators don't do anything about protecting their own rights. Most of them are European so they a) don't speak english very well, b) they are not sure if DMCA works for non-US people, etc.

The scripts were full perm in the version he purchased. My point was that i was still credited in the scripts.

I thought Lindens had approved it's use actually.