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

A Linden recently brought up the case(s) where one resident filed a DMCA only to have the alleged infringer counterfile and proceed to file a DMCA on the first resident.

What should LL do when you have people who are crazy/careless enough to sign a legal document asserting ownership (or a license to use the content) they don't have other than to step back, restore the removed content and suggest both parties fight it out in court? One is obviously submitting false claims, it's also possible both are.

First use for textures does not work in and by itself: there are many examples of people trying to claim ownership of public domain or freely/commercially licensed work to prevent others from using them, or texture creators who come into SL only to find their work is already being resold without permission.

The current creation date timestamp on prims isn't usable at all: if you shift-drag a copy, the copy has all its prim set with the current date. Faking a creation date is also relatively easy: rez multiple copies of a prim you created say sometime back in 2006 and build with those instead of rezzing new ones. The end result will have metadata that would seem to support any "I built this first back in 2006, obviously the other copied me" claim.

There's also no need to overdramatize people who create something they later sell: the motivation is monetary, not an imaginary desire to make SL a better place for all. "The hand that feeds" is consumers, not creators. Without consumers, many if not most of the currently popular creators simply wouldn't bother creating in the first place.

Someone can knowingly purchase 'stolen' content, but it's also likely they had no idea that the person they were buying it from infringed in some way. The creator may not even know he/she is actually infringing if they're using a texture they bought in good faith from a texture store that's actually reselling textures it has no rights to.

It's very easy to demand things such as the popular notion that content that infringes should be completely removed from the grid, but the one and only victim of that suggestion is consumers. Whoever they paid the money to still gets to enjoy the ill-gotten funds while they end up with the cat in a bag. If that were to happen regularly it is going to make people cautious of spending money anywhere, especially new and unestablished stores, since there is absolutely no way of knowing who is using only properly licensed source or original material and who's not.

Any enforcement LL can do is also relatively meaningless in a world where it only takes a new email addie to create a brand new 'anonymous' alt. If I had to guess, I doubt too many thieves are using an established account they invested hundreds or thousands of $ into. I'd also guess that Stroker's determination to actually take people to court made a far bigger impression on anyone who was remotely thinking of ripping off his work than anything LL could possibly post on the blog.

Individual creators with far smaller profits can also come together and designate an entity to sue on their behalf and share the costs. Even if you're contributing to sue someone who didn't rip you off, you still reap the benefits of sending a clear "we'll do what we have to and it doesn't matter if you rip off the big names or the small ones" message which will be far more effective than waiting for LL to come up with some magical solution that will suddenly stop infringement in any significant way.

As long as they believe that SL is some "anonymous internet thingy" where they can do as they please with no worse effect than having to create a new avie if they get caught they're not going to stop and think twice.

Doesnt LL know which items are created first?

In the case of a texture (skin, clothing, etc) it should be fairly easy to know which is the first example and which is the copy - unless there is conflicting outside evidence.

You would think Colette.

But even more telling would be to simply look at the inventories of the parties involved. Generally speaking, there is a creative progression that leads a creator to create the objects they ultimately create.

Absent of anything else, how hard is it to discern who the original creator of an item is if when you look at their merchandise, creator A has a store full of the same type of design style and creator B has a few limited items for sale with none of them having any similarity with the the stolen creation they are claiming to have created.

The above is usually the case.

So that in most instances, all any objective investigator has to do is look at each content creator's creative history. It is very telling.

This is just one of a number of examples that can be taken into consideration when discerning ownership of a creation. I can offer more.

Again, this is not rocket science.

But how much you want to bet we'll get more excuses?

The biggest culprits steal this skin from X and that skin from Y and that skin from Z, a Linden wouldn't need the entire set of CSI seasons on DVD and a supercomputer to figure out whats going on ...

A used Encyclopedia Brown Book and some ripped out spiral pages should be enough.

You want consistency in approach (rather than the odd random one off) and presumedly you want LL to properly investigate *all* complaints - not just the trivial cases (or ones LL decides are trivial), and presumedly you want LL to fairly investigate to avoid both incorrect judgements and litigation against LL.

If LL did announce such a system, how many complaints do you think they will get? Where will LL find the staff to deal with these (given that support requests even at concierge level can take days or weeks to resolve/likewise ARs - and getting a Linden to show up inworld for a support request or AR is a rare occurence these days)? Hire more people (without increasing costs) or pull people from fixing the grid or the other support options?

These aren't excuses - these are valid questions that need to be addressed if what you want is to be viable!

Matthew

Agreed.

The thing is, just like most other things, LL doesn't really want to take a truly active role, for whatever reasons. Could be an "Ewww, NOT fun type work, I'll pass." thing (I can imagine that their loose management style renders certain positions nearly impossible to staff), or perhaps it's just a desire to avoid responsibility (or to avoid indicating that they feel at least some responsibility, because then it will be expected of them). Maybe both - they have a history of both. Whichever, it's going to continue to be a a major sore point from an SL business person's POV, being that LL has at least partially marketed SL as a place to come in and easily start your own business.

I don't have the answers, but then, that's not my job. If I were LL though, I would start with a permissions system revamp. It's lonnnnng overdue, and people have been clamouring for it for years.

Yeah they seem to want to take a reactive approach to EVERY problem associated with Second Life.

Where in this case (like others) doing some (probably less overall) proactive work could send a pretty clear message to residents.

Linden will never implement a system that requires them to spend hundreds of hours or more manually reviewing IP complaints for authenticity, because it makes absolutely zero buisness sense.

However - programatic tools that don't require manual Linden intervention are realistic. If I wanted to focus my energy on something realistic, I'd focus on getting them to finish what they started nearly 18 months ago:

From: Linden Blog: http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/11/14/use-of-copybot-and-similar-tools-a-tos-violation/

Yes, that was mentioned in a recent open hour was it not? I was talking about it with somebody who was there.

I don't attend the things personally, they make me too cross these days.

Traffic Cops don't manually check EVERY speeder.

But they do try to be visible enough catching speeders to give people pause before they decide to speed.

At least that way people speed 5-10 Miles over instead of 30.

Except the MI drivers who drive 10-15.

One Linden cutting a swath through the most blatant IP thieves every few weeks would do some good, if even just perception.

Because it's LL that made it easy for the bots to spread, and doesn't have a strict banhammer about scams and crookedness. They've made it easy

hehe - your perception of Michigan drivers is spot-on I'm completely guilty of treating speed limit signs as a 'Suggestion'

I think you're absolutely right in theory - and it probably would make a difference. But the cold buisness truth is that it'd require man-hours to do it, which are already scarce. Linden is more likely to assemble a team of paid Liasons to moderate these forums 24/7.

By my watch, Linden is already behind schedule in implementing the new tools quoted in their blog post above. I'd think resident time & energy would be better spent fighting for something that Linden has already agreed to do - rather than ideas with chances slim to none.

I think one employee skipping the weekly "kumbaya Tao" session every week could get the big names.

Its not "America" inside Second Life they don't need a Grand Jury to go all Elliot Ness on em.

Then next week another Linden can skip donuts.

ALthough I bet there are Lindens working full time on ARs already.

An ounch of prevention and all that ..