Why do you think it's LL's responsibility to enforce your IP Rights etc?

I was just reading the comments on the blog. A few of them including a JIRA entry caught my eye. It would look as though many SL residents feel that LL should have an in-house system in place to enforce IP rights of residents without having RL law involved.

What it looks like is people stepping forward saying "Hey he stole my (fill in the blank), do something about it LL!" when it should be more like "Hey he stole my (fill in the blank), here is my DMCA complaint or here is my trademark registration number, remove it LL!"

Is this right or am I reading it wrong? A scenario comes to mind. Resident 1 comes up with a store named "BIG COOL SHOP" and is in business for a good 4 months or more. Then another resident comes along and opens a store in SL called "BIG COOL SHOP". Do you think LL should respond to Resident 1's request to enforce some imaginary trademark policy and remove the 2nd "BIG COOL SHOP" from in world?

Another scenario more involving IP theft would be resident 1 uploads some custom artwork and uses them as textures and also uploads some sculpt textures. Another resident somehow gains these textures and uses them. Do you think LL should have some in-house system in place to deal with this without involving DMCA law?

That is what I am gathering from looking at some of the comments of the blog and that JIRA entry.

If you feel this way, please voice your opinion as to why you think it should be LL's responsibility to enforce YOUR IP rights and not your own responsibility.

http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/04/01/more-on-the-trademark-policy/#comment-593663
http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/04/01/more-on-the-trademark-policy/#comment-593657
http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/04/01/more-on-the-trademark-policy/#comment-593734
http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/04/01/more-on-the-trademark-policy/#comment-593739


JIRA Entries regarding IP:
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-1446
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-962
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-2591
(You can type DMCA in the quick search box for many more)

Simply put, because LL has made some decisions that created or amplified these risks (such as open sourcing the client), and because other platform technology companies do so (for example, RealPlayer traded for a long time on the strength of its encryption).

I'd argue that Second Life depends upon user content-creators to keep our world interesting. Without them, it wouldn't be the same world. So - on that basis alone, I think its in Linden's self-interest to try & mitigate disincentives to content creation.

However, I think the best way Linden can help us in that regard, is by revamping the permissions system. Creating some sort of "Virtual IP Registry" tied to TOS sounds like something that could turn into a quagmire really quick.

You are confusing two things I believe: enforcing IP law, and acting on IP breach within SL.

Clearly LL cannot enforce IP law; it is a job for the courts. However, the DMCA is ineffective to prevent IP breach, since not only can people counterfile and have whatever it is put up again automatically, but they can and do use alts to put up another copy. It is also the case that legal action is impractical in the vast majority of cases.

However, LL could, on their own part, act within their terms of service to remove items and suspend or ban accounts without jeopardising their DMCA safe harbour status.

I don't think it should be LL's responsibility to enforce my IP rights.

I DO think that it's LL's responsibility to HELP protect my IP rights, and to FACILITATE my enforcement of those rights.

A better permissions system. Better protection against copybots and the like.

Faster, more effective enforcement action.

Enforcement should not be toothless. If someone is enjoined from copying and reselling my stuff, they shouldn't be able to create an alt, come right back, and start doing it again.

Enforcement should not be expensive. I shouldn't have to hire an attorney, get a subpoena, force LL to disgorge the offender's RL identity, and spend thousands of dollars, to protect my rights in a property that's worth tens of dollars, or a few hundred dollars at most. Enforcement that's not cost effective is no better than no enforcement.

Isn't removing items that Resident 1 claims are copyrigthed without proper DMCA process in fact "Enforcing IP law"? Whether a lawyer is involved or not or whether a DMCA complaint is involved or not...if they act on someone else's complaint of IP theft, aren't they "Enforcing IP law"? That would would be taking the law into their own hands correct?

It would not be enforcing IP law, because that is not what the law says.

Well - I suppose it would be enforcing an "SL law" that relates to IP. It might even use current legal terms relating to IP, for convenience. But it would not need to bear any resemblance at all to RL IP law, and would not make any difference to the RL process. LL already have all sorts of things in the ToS that have no or only a passing resemblance to RL law.

As an analogy in this case: LL prohibit certain types of harassment. Follow somebody about, grief them, pass round notecards with their conversations in; one can be banned for that.

In some cases, this sort of behaviour would also be illegal under various laws - stalking, libel, threatening behaviour and so on. In some cases it wouldn't, and in some cases illegal behaviour would not be prohibited (one can libel somebody in SL, for instance, without it being a breach of ToS). It is generally difficult or impossible to actually get any sort of prosecution on this basis, and LL have terms of service which balance this, but we don't generally talk in terms of "LL enforcing harassment law".

To the OP: the question is framed in a dubious way. It is a leading question, which makes me suspect that you have some sort of axe to grind.

An objectively phrased question would be: what balance should LL maintain in regards to policy and technology regarding creator's rights, fighting piracy, and maximizing usability and preventing abuse?

Issues involved:

Content creators are an essential part of Second Life. They create novel content through innovation that drives much of the end-user experience. LL benefits from the work of content creators because it enhances the value of the platform as a whole. Customers benefit from the work of content creators because they have a wide range of products and experiences to choose from. Content creators benefit because they can do what they love and make a bit of money as well.

Content piracy benefits nobody except for the IP right infringer. If content piracy is widespread, it creates an environment where innovation is stifled because innovators have less motivation to continue their work, or cannot devote additional time to it because it is not their primary source of income.

If the digital rights management of SL products is too heavy-handed, it can diminish usability and even innovation itself by limiting legitimate uses.

Possible actions LL could take:

1) A more robust permissions system. Most of my own products are full-perm sculpts sold to other content creators. However, by the nature of it being full perm, it makes piracy very easy, and so I have to price my products high enough to deter pirates, at the expense of not being able to sell to casual users. A permissions system where the next user can choose certain permissions but not all on transfer would be very beneficial and not reduce usability.

2) It takes LL 1-2 weeks to respond to DMCA notices. This is an unacceptably long time, and in that period much harm can be done.

3) Ebay's VeRO program is an excellent example of a program that enables IP rights owners pro-active control over violating content. You can learn more about it here: http://pages.ebay.com/help/tp/programs-vero-ov.html

What it does is allow verified rights owners to remove infringing Ebay listings (for example, pirated DVD's) themselves. Abuse of this system is negated because verified rights owners are required to sign a document that makes them legally liable if they abuse the system.

It doesn't really matter if its happening here whether something has been stolen or not LL gets profits from it and if they had to do more they make less profits possibly and that is why they haven't done anything more.
It is good deal they don't have to hire content being paid for, they just charge for hosting and we are responsible for everything else but we got to use their monetary system in return which may or may not pay nor protect our ip or copyrights,
Anything on internet is open for theft.
Only record and film industries usually have the money to really go after the theft of their products but it doesn't stop the theft.
Even then its not about protecting the writers, actress, actors, artist or musicians its about protecting their own bottom line and protecting the machinery of the system.
Average content artist here unless they have some type of exceptional skill and clout really doesn't have much ablity to do anything except file dcma notices which often do only limited
amount of things against the theft.
Majority just don't earn enough for the legal fees.
The majority of products I see out there with few exceptions have all ripped or borrowed someone else's content off in some way anyway.
My friend who had file several dcma notices say it usually takes few months and they don't
do much except tell the person to stop selling the content, but they usually continue with another alt account.

I think eBay probably is more equipped to deal with IP rights. I can only imagine the team of lawyers they have to deal with these issues and to create that program.

The difference between eBay and Second Life is that on eBay the sellers are selling as real people. They aren't masking their identity with avatar names. If you buy something from USER10001 You are most likely getting a tangible item in the mail (in most cases) and it's easy to request the names of users on eBay. When I order on eBay I always have seen the persons name when they send mail. eBay is not a playground for anonymous people or a pool of fantasy businesses. They have to use real laws because real money and products are being exchanged.

In Second Life real identity is not known unless the users discloses it. How can we expect LL to put a system in place to enforce real laws for people who don't want to be known? I would think there may be some people like you who would not care to have their names known but most people use sl to be anonymous.

I agree there should be better permissions systems in place.

One of the reasons that eBay is wildly successful as a business platform, whereas SL is a Mickey Mouse operation at best, is that eBay provides dispute resolution as an alternative to litigation.

SL doesn't have to help when it comes to enforcing the IP rights of content creators. But as long as it does not have any such protections, it will never live up to it's high aspirations, and it will continue to be a Mickey Mouse business platform.

There are plenty of amateur (digital) content creators on the web who rely on their site (income from sales/advertising) to make a living.

As devastating as the loss of income is for them to have their content stolen and made available for free somewhere else (or their posts copied ad verbatim on someone else's blog resulting in a loss of advertising) none of them think that their host is somehow obligated to assist them or protect their content in the first place. Nor do they march to the Microsoft campus or Mozzila Foundation offices blaming them for putting "View Source" and "Save Image As" into web browsers.

They have to file a DMCA or send a cease and decist to the host that is hosting their content and hope for the best. When that doesn't work, the blame is with the real life IP system which makes it prohibitively expensive for small budget creators to enforce their IP rights.

I do agree with the OP... other than a few exceptions people seem remarkably intent on blaming LL for their own unwillingess to protect their own IP and are too caught up thinking of SL as a world where RL doesn't/shouldn't matter (ie if you want to protect your SL business name, you register a RL trademark, that's the whole point of them and why they exist) to realize every content creator faces the same problems, regardless of what medium they create for.

In Second Life, the "bloggers needing to file DMCA" are hosted on the same servers by the same company as the people they are chasing. If the only resolution is DMCA followed by legal action against the hosting company... well, blogs are easy to redirect to new servers I guess seeing as the account will be suspended. That's not the case with SL.

I pity the content creator who follows through with their legal rights and sues Linden Lab for copyright violation. Cutting off your nose to spite your face indeed.

As has already mentioned, LL provides the hosting as well as the software, and hosting has always been subject to being DMCAd.

Web browsers don't (for example) require the providers of images to click buttons saying "this may be freely copied and transferred" in order to make those images useful to legitimate buyers.

Finally, I think the open source shift was a significant one that has worried a lot of people. It's a little like if RealPlayer had gone open source, saying that doing so wouldn't reduce the security of RAM streams because there was already StreamBox.

It is always amusing reading these threads where non-content providers spew their garbage in an effort to what amounts to a vicarious attempt to somehow support content theft in SL. And while doing so managing to casually tell content providers to basically "stuff it" when it comes to their desire to somehow have their IP Rights protected.

Try seeing it from the other side for a second. Spend hours upon hours creating something in SL only to have some low life simply rip it off in seconds and begin selling it as their own, before you begin to so vigorously defend this injustice.

The bottom line is that it is the content creators who make Second Life what it is and they should be protected. Where there is a will there is a way. Linden Lab, as well as anyone involved in SL (unless of course you are a low life thief), should be rallying for some type of effective IP Rights protection to better protect the content creators of Second Life. It doesn't have to mirror real life IP Rights laws.

Linden Labs owns these servers. They can do and/or implement whatever they want withing the Second Life grid. And seeings how SL would be nothing without its content creators, nothing should be more important than the vigorous protection of their IP Rights.

The problem is that many of these people dismissing the issue of content theft have never experienced pouring hours on end, sweat and tears, over a creation only to have their beloved creation ripped off by a thief who all he/she had to do was use some copybot program for two seconds to rip off their creation, and immediately go into competition with the creator with their own product.

Try defending content creators for a change instead of vicariously supporting thieves with your ridiculous legal arguments. Again, SL would be nothing without its content creators. Try protecting the hand that feeds you instead of letting maggots continue nibbling at it until there is no hand left to feed you with.

Hello Cheyenne

I agree to an extent, but I think we all have to live in the real world.. even in SL.

I started an RL software business 10 years ago in my bedroom, put in the 120 hour weeks.. and came up with a suite of products which sold nicely.

We're still only a small company but we have to set aside a sizable chunk of revenue for R&D to help us create new things to sell.

Is that fair? I'm not sure.. it is however how the world works and if I have to deal with it, I'm pretty sure you should too.

Protecting trademarks, brands, names etc is hard but do-able. Deciding what, in any new product, is truly new and can't be replicated anywhere else is a nightmare. It costs a bundle and at the end of the day unless you're protecting a multi-million pound idea.. not worth it.

If you think that someone else is going to do that for you because you've spent an evening or two working on a new pair of pants for SL avatars.. well.

What actually makes me laugh is SL business people bewailing all of this as if it's something new.

There is a whole economic theory which deals with creativity and innovation and a very basic idea within that is "window of appropriability", basically the amount of time you get between introducing a new product and the rest of the market jumping on board with newer, sexier and cheaper (they didn't have to fund the develeopment) versions.

There are exceptions to this, if you come up with a truly creative, from first principles, idea then fine.

On the whole though, my advice would be spend more time developing and creating and staying ahead, rather than protecting yesterday's news.

I think the real issue is that many people still want it to be the case that Second Life provides a protected, or less harsh, business environment. They want a world where they can get on with the bit they like - creating - and not worry about too much else. They want a world where they can run their shop and maybe only make a few dollars a month but it pays their tier and earns them some spending Lindens so that's great.

These are all threats to that. It's horrid to think that you can be doing fine making US$40 or so a month on your tier for a while and then have that wiped out because someone steals your content, but to stop them you have to sue them and the lawyer will cost US$10000.

Many people don't want to run virtual content companies in their front rooms. They want to do some art because they enjoy it, and then contribute it to others and be rewarded for doing so.

Hi Stephen,

Your post is very polite and well-written. Unfortunately, it amounts to nothing more than more excuses.

Frankly, the concept that IP Rights can not be effectively addressed within SL is a myth advanced by those who simply do not want to make the slightest effort to address it. Yes, there are many false claims of content theft in SL. But real content theft in SL is very easy to identify. The average novice can inspect a creation and immediately tell if it has been ripped off. There are certain characteristics, as basic as identical prim counts or the specificity of the originality of the design to name a couple, that can easily identify a copied creation. It is in these instances, that LL can mediate these matters and bring some type of stabilization to the matter of content theft in Second Life. All it would take would be a couple of instances in which LL properly handled these instances of content theft, and then effectively publicized their enforcement and their consequences (bans), before the message got out and the problem would begin to subside considerably. Would it eliminate the problem entirely? Of course not. No crime is fool proof. But at least there would be a deterrence, were currently there is none.

To do absolutely nothing, and simply make excuses attempting to substantiate your reason for doing nothing, does nothing but encourage content theft. Do something! As has already been mentioned on this thread, this DMCA procedure currently in effect is worthless. To begin with, it takes months before anything is done about the theft to begin with. By the time action is taken, if any, the harm is done. And as mentioned, real life legal recourse is just not applicable because the financial resources for legal action are just not affordable for the average content creator in SL. I don't think anyone can effectively argue that more can not be done to address this issue.

The point is do something!

And all it would take would be a couple of instances where LL mis-handled such instances and there would be a major uproar.

Although in many cases, it may be possible to identify copies by comparing prim counts etc. there are also many cases in which it would be a judgement call.

Even when you have identified a copy, how do you tell which is the copy and which is the original? The creation dates of objects as reported by SL don't seem too reliable to me, and even if they were, there is always the possibility the original creator lost the original of his creation due to an asset server error, and recreated it from plans (which they had carefully made just in case) or from a offworld backup (using libSL or a tool such as Second Inventory).

And it could be that both A and B were selling copies of objects created by C, but A decided to try it on and reported B for IP theft.

In general, then, investigating an IP theft claim would involve quite a bit of investigative effort to do properly. A quick but wrong decision could be as damaging to LL, SL's reputation and the trust in any LL provide IP protection if not more so than the current situation.

Given that LL currently do not have the staff to handle ARs effectively (ARs are often slow to be addressed or ignored, there are plenty of examples of people being unfairly punished, and LL is trying to offload ARs to on private estates to the estate owner) - how would they be able to handle IP complaints without a major increase in staff (hence a major increase in LL's running costs and hence a major increase in SL's subscription fees)? Would LL need to take out insurance in case a delay or mistake in resolving an IP complaint resulted in legal action against LL (again increasing SL running costs and ultimately subscription fees)? How would such a mechanism scale as the number of users in SL increased - and if it couldn't, how would the community react is LL withdraw such a mechanism when it became unmanagable?

The only viable solution I can see if LL were to provide a IP complaint mechanism which had a well documented procedure for investigation involving evidence from both the claimant and the defendent, and had an appeals process. In order to be sustainable from LL's perspective (i.e. being able to afford the staff to manage the process), the claimant would have to pay a fee to make an initial complaint, and any appeal would require a fee from the person making the appeal. To be fair, during the initial investigation and any appeals both the claimant and the defendent must cease trading in the item under investigation.

I'm not entirely sure, however, whether this would be any cheaper, quicker or more practicable than the DCMA process.

Matthew

That's how it works. IN the virtual world when someone steal content you contact the host which is in this case LL but it could be joe blows hosting company and tell them its yours and to remove it. Its just the way it works. IN the real world its slighly different but not that much. You contact the person and tell them to take it down as there is no virtual host. If things persist in both worlds then you contact the lawyer, but you need to practice your "due diligence" beforehand or no one is gonna touch it. Unless you own the server the content is hosted on which you dont then you contact the host in this case which is LL. However lets say tomorrow they start that open sim project and you decide to create your own server in your basement and steal the content from the guy. THEN he would contact you directly because you are hosting the content not LL. In this case LL is involved because they are the ones providing the space for you to use it and store it etc. Its not that strange and the only part that LL is responsible for is the taking it down. If the buy wants to put it back up it becomes between him and you then however the takedown is just a temporary thing. He can then challenge it then he is going to be moving directly to you. Also remember all the names are "fake" LL is the one with the info again the real world info. Since we are dealing with an intermediary there is no choice. UNtil such a time as eveyrone is forced to use their real world identity and owns the server they put things on this will be the case. That's why LL is involved they are the keepers of the info (all of it). When the guy your telling to take down decides to challenge it then they have to start to coff it up and if you want to go further then the take down LL has to cought up the info again. THEN lost of lawyers are involved however no the first step is always the same go and have the content removed pending proving that it is yours and you own the rights.

Maybe people feel its LL's responsibility because only LL is capable of removing content belonging to another avatar on land they do not own.

It would be really nice if it didnt take a DMCA to get LL to take notice of people's IP rights.

It would also be really nice if LL responded quickly to a DMCA takedown notice.

...and yet more excuses?

Keep the excuses coming people.

Listen, in case you are not aware, there have already been instances in which LL has stepped in and made the thieves of obvious content theft not only take down the stolen property but also banned the thieves from SL. The problem with LL's enforcement to date is that it has been inconsistent and selective. All content creators have not benefited from such enforcement action. So that the issue is not so much that LL can not effectively protect content creators from thieves, it is more that they chose not to put forth the effort.

Again, there may not currently be a system in place to discern who the original creator of certain prims may have been, but there is nothing to prevent LL from implementing some type of prim identification watermark that would be able to do so. LL was in fact planning to impement such a system before they were sidetracked and bascally put this system on the back burner.

Trust me, and you know it as well as I do, the issue of content theft in Second Life is manageable. We are not asking LL to actively police the grid for content theft. What we are asking for is for LL to look into claims of content theft when it is brought to their attention. It doesn't have to be a "Sherlock Holmes investigation." Is it to much to simply have a Linden come out and take a look. Some of these claims of content theft are obvious cases of theft. The thieves themselves do not even waste their time arguing the claim. Generally speaking, even a novice can tell if a claim of content theft is legitimate or bogus. In the past, when there have been claims of content theft in the community, we have all been able to discern whether the claims have been legitimate or bogus. When the claims have been legitimate there has been uproar, when not the claims have been dismissed.

This is not rocket science.

If we spent as much time doing something to prevent content theft as we do making excuses for taking action against it, cases of content theft in Second Life would decrease considerably.

This is true.

One Linden working proactively "undercover" could work wonders, really. Its not like its hard to find examples. Since the theft is pretty damn blatant.

The DMCA takedown process is not there to punish copyright abusers. It is there, charitably, to protect providers and conduit services such as SL from accusations of aiding and abetting copyright breach. It is an entirely automatic process; one can have anything taken down, and one can automatically have it put up again, with the correct form letters (or, at least, one _should_ be able to - let's not talk about the delays here, that is not the issue). It is an adjunct to other laws.

After that, all there is is international copyright law, which is not designed for us poor peons to be able to use.