Loni Arado - Passing on problems to endusers

So I own some of the textures/maps/object from Loni Arado. ALL of which are still rezzable and usable So my question is..... >>>> Am I under the radar from the black list AND if so...should I delete what should be black listed?

Thanks

If the items are rezzable, they are not blacklisted and, since LL has said nothing about it, I see no reason not to use them.

Hmmmm well you just announced that you have them, so it would probably be unwise to use

Yeah, using that stuff on anything new is really begging for trouble, best to write it off as a loss.

Or bad laws (DMCA) produce worse policy. Anything you have suggested fails to penalize the original infringer because of the SL veil of anonymity.

So by all means let anyone *but* the infringer be penalized. How is this supposed to deter infringement?

Well im not here to cause trouble...plus I am an honest person so I have no problem "announcing" I do have them. I was just looking for advice thats all. And thank you for the responses

In fact, I have one of the illicit Eva Capalini beds in my inventory. I rezzed it last night, and it's still sitting around, with the pirated animations, MLP scripts with Eva Capalini as the creator, and everything.

So it seems quite accurate to say that these items haven't been blacklisted. All we know for sure is that a certain group of rezzed items were deleted from the grid. No other information suggests that they were deleted for any reason other than some arbitrary one.

Also, a couple of people have said that Lindens told them to rez a fresh copy and carry on.

It isn't about "penalizing," it's about protecting IP rights. Whether or not the person who is in possession of a work of intellectual property knows that it is pirated is arbitrary.

Let me give an example: someone buys a copy of Windows XP from a flea market, not knowing it is a pirated copy. After the pirated key is distributed widely, Microsoft disables the key and the software. It isn't a matter of "penalizing" anyone.

If you don't like Windows, substitute it for OSX, or the software/game of your choice.

Then LL is liable to be sued, since they have not complied with the law. Putting up broken content is not "replacing" or "re-enabling access to", and the creator can feel free to file suit for damages accordingly.



Yeah, but they /didn't/. If it isn't restored to the state it was in before it was removed, then they have not fulfilled their legal obligations under 512(g)(2), and are thus not protected under 512(g)(1).



I don't know the details about international DMCA requests, but from what I have read, it seems they are a tad murky. It would be a legal call by LL's lawyers whether they would honor such a request or not. Regardless, they still don't have to just take down any content based solely on a DMCA notice. If the request is in any way improper, they simply do not have to honor it. If it makes claims that aren't substantiated by facts, then they do not have to honor it. They can push back and ask for clarification or correction, pointing out that the request is not valid, or is otherwise flawed.

I'm investigating what happened and will post more information when I have it.

Thank you!
-- Katt Linden

Perhaps buy the legal ones now? As if I suspected the content may be stolen I would not wish to run the risk of using. Note I state suspect.


Nice to see you posting Katt.

Oh cant wait to hear form you guys

That example doesn't make any sense in the current context: a pirated copy of Windows XP is still called Windows XP, it's still something that's going to be marked as created by Microsoft. No one is going to pirate Windows and try to sell it as an OS called Doorframe created by a company called Butterscotch.

Content theft in SL isn't about reselling something with the brandname intact at a lower price than original creator, it's about appropriating someone else's creation under your name which is why your example just doesn't apply.

A silly example would be walking up to a newspaper stand and buying a magazine that has a cover story you're interested in. You pay for it and start walking away but suddenly someone comes up to you, grabs your copy and tears it into shreds. When you ask what's going you're told "sorry, but this magazine plagiarized us, your copy had to be destroyed for our own good, tough luck for you though".

The reason the example is silly isn't because plagiarism doesn't occur, but because no one would think to go tear up every copy that's already sold. They'd have unsold copies recalled and a court or private settlement would award damages based on how many copies were sold.

Another example is music: you buy a CD by a certain artist who later turns out to have stolen the track from another artist. No one is going to come knock on your door and demand your copy back. They'd be forced to recall and pay damages on the amount of copies sold.

Nor would anyone come yell at you how it's all your fault for not having realized that what you were buying wasn't on the level, you had no way of knowing. Nor would anyone be crazy enough to let the infringer off the hook by only destroying all copies and letting them keep the proceeds of the sales.

There's constant complaining about content theft this and content theft that, but precious few seem to actually be willing to do anything about it other than complain and find an easy way out that doesn't require too much effort. Stop further distribution by all means with a DMCA, but sue the infringer for damages based on how many copies sold and leave what was sold alone. They have the money, not suing and making excuses instead of how it's sooooo hard and not worth it just seems tantamount to actually quietly condoning infringement. Every creator could do something about it, but most just can't be bothered to protect their IP/copyright, it's "too hard".

Also, Microsoft go to great lengths to ensure you can identify Microsoft software as such (hologram CD labels), and - so I'm told (although I haven't experienced this first hand) - they are fairly lenient if a person can actually prove that they paid full price for a pirated copy from a dodgy vendor. Especially if they can supply Microsoft with the dodgy vendor's contact details.



However... I believe that LL have no choice here. A DMCA requires them to remove _all_ copies of the material on their servers, and they don't have any choice about that bit.

I'm not trying to argue against what you're saying, I wouldn't know either . Several people who posted gave the impression that it's the filer who determines how much and what has to go through?

Ie "all infringing copies" vs "all infringing copies owned by...." wouldn't make any difference?

Yes, but they do have a choice to actually inform residents about these things. At the time of writing there has still not been an official announcement.

That is what angers me. I have customers who bought, say, my gypsy caravan, in good faith. It has the MLP script in the couch and the bed. With mostly my OWN poses, together with ones purchased from reputable sources etc. Suddenly their item is not working. They don't know why. They hoot at me, of course. The first one to do this was before I knew what was going on.

What is wrong with the concept of communications? Some of us pay large sums of money for this 'service', you would think that letting us know that they are about to severely affect our businesses would be a decent, logical thing to do?

*remembers VAT coming in* - ah, perhaps not for the Lindens

This is not correct. A DMCA notice does NOT carry the weight of a court order. It is a request by a private citizen for a voluntary compliance to prevent POTENTIAL liability for contributory infringement by a service provider. If the service provider has reason to believe that the request is invalid or bogus, they can opt to not honor it. This has already been done several times; ISPs have refused to honor DMCA takedown notices filed frivolously against what is clearly fair use. It just takes a service provider with a bit of chutzpah and backbone to evaluate the request and decline it when is more than amply clear it is improper. Are they taking a chance of being added to suit? Sure, but just because someone brings suit doesn't automatically mean they win.

Kitty Barnett:

Your analogy is false because it is a qualifiably different situation. The essential difference is this: use of SL content is inextricably linked to the SL service itself. SL content is provided _through_ the service. Reading a book, or listening to a CD isn't linked to a service in any way. That alone shows that the analogy is invalid; to make it fit would require adding so many fictional hypotheticals and qualifiers that the analogy itself would be more complicated than the issue at hand.

Here's the actual issues:

1) Content is stored on LL-owned hardware, and LL ultimately has _physical_ control over all SL content.

2) When someone purchases something in SL, they are purchasing a _license_ to use it by the content provider, with it being _hosted_ by LL. Nomatter if it is full perms or no perms, it is a license for use.

3) Individuals who purchased content that contains pirated materials (or is wholly pirated) do not have a right to use such content because they never formed a contract (license) for use by the actual holder of the copyright.

Therefore, it is legally and ethically acceptable for a content creator to request LL (the party in possession and control of the pirated content) to remove _all_ content that was pirated. It is also legally and ethically REQUIRED of LL to fulfill such requests. It isn't a manner of "punishing" end users, it is a manner of upholding creator's rights.

With that said, there is one recourse that could be very useful in such situations. In the case of pieces such as sculpts, scripts, and textures, the original creator could work out something with the second party content creator to buy a valid license to use the content, and request LL not to remove the content in the new licensee's work.




Most content creators in SL who work _full time_ in SL barely make enough to survive. When you say that "they" can afford it, you are severely overestimating how much content creators make. Compounding this fact is that in many cases the infringer may not even reside in the same country.

But yes, I agree; sue the infringer if possible and you can afford it. However, if it is so easy to sue as you suggest, why not have the end users who purchased the content form a class-action lawsuit against the pirate? After all, they are just looking for "easy fixes." Of course I don't really mean that, but I'm making an example of how your emotionalist argument can be construed both ways.

The fact is this: when I make art with my own sweat and blood, I expect to have full rights over it. You don't own it, society doesn't own it, and the government doesn't own it- that is, unless I grant them that priviledge. If _any_ service provides pirated content, I would demand that they remove all instances of unauthorized use of my content.

The more I read and think about this, the more I'm coming to believe that we content creators really just cannot afford to own our IP here.

What I mean is that, because the DMCA is so hopelessly brain-damaged, our content "protected" by it is really a time-bomb set to destroy us with off-shore bogus take-down notices. If a false DMCA claim is made by a citizen of the US (and maybe a few other nations with a very specific kind of reciprocity agreement?), there are very severe penalties for issuing a false DMCA notice, including jail time. But that protection doesn't apply to every nation with residents in SecondLife. So someone can file against me and I can counterfile, but if the original filer is not a US citizen, they and their compatriots can just file again and again until I'm out of business, at least as long as the service provider responds to each DMCA notice automatically and without prior notice.

Because DMCA is unlikely to be changed or repealed any time soon, I now think that the best way for SecondLife to remain safe for creators is if we sign away our IP rights to SL-hosted content, and rely on some yet to be defined protections specific to this service.

A partial work-around is for the service provider to be very cautious about taking action on DMCA filings. And it's possible that this has been the policy in the past. But as we see from recent events, even a delayed response to a legitimate DMCA takedown notice can be devastating to the honest customers of the real content creators (the MLP case), and to unwitting resellers and receivers of stolen content (the sculptmap case in this thread).

In this particular case, it's been argued that IP is being protected, and that's well and good--except that content creators may not be able to afford the effects of this kind of protection. And I'm not just talking about the chilling effects of spurious offshore takedown notices. Everyone who understands the events of this weekend should be very much less likely to purchase *anything* now (and *certainly* not content for resale) until some practical approach to this problem has been worked out. If this weekend's actions become standard operating procedure and content regularly goes missing in great chunks, well, there won't be any sales at all, for anybody.

The problem is that even if the great chunks of missing content *were* stolen, there is just no way for the customer to judge the risk of that happening before purchase. As we've seen in recent texture cases, reputation is absolutely no guarantee of anything here: even the most respected names--champions of IP rights, in fact--cannot guarantee that everything they sell is immune from plausible claims of infringement.

And anyway, "reputation" is a pretty primitive basis for commerce, requiring consumers to know that which is unknowable: even Ginko Guy had a good reputation to many, before he was shown to be a scoundrel. If all purchases come to require the same leap of faith on which in-world "banking" used to depend, this virtual economy will become more primitive than a bartering system--and much more risky.

The only solution would be to contact the real creator of the sculpt texture, buy it from them, then updating all your products that rely on it.

If they refuse to sell it, that is up to them, but hopefully they are a sculpt texture seller.

I don't know about all the sculpt maps in question, but some were for a pump style shoe. They were made by Photon Pink for Stiletto Moody shoes. I imagine that they would have been made under some form of contract.

As always, a well considered post.

However, you have to remember the "limit the potential LL liability in favor of the commonweal" principle that caused LL to decline to host the original LSL wiki and I don't think that there is any room for a post hoc wavier of liability.

The irony is in the terms of service which holds:which seems to already handle the issue and then neatly refutes itself.

Music is a license for use as well, the only thing you own is the physical medium, not the bits on it which is what anyone actually cares about.

As far as the buyers are concerned, they did buy a proper license. If the seller had no such right to extend license then that's the seller's problem, not the buyer's (if there was no reason to suspect anything was wrong).

You can argue either way: delete *all* infringing content, or stop further distribution and collect damages from the infringer to retroactively license the items properly.

I can see someone who isn't involved in SL to preferring the first solutions since it's quick and neat and they don't care what consequences their action has on SL, but anyone who sells anything in SL shouldn't support anything but the second action because the first can cause significant damage in confidence.

Of course it's about punishing end users. That's the whole point, you can't argue you're punishing the infringers, you're letting them profit from infringing on you and you can't care enough to sue. Deleting all content *only* harms end users and noone else.

That isn't possible right now though since there's no way to identify the original creator right now. If you sell a sculptmap as full permission, anyone can download it, clear the alpha channel if it has a watermark on it (or substitute his/her own) and reupload it lossless with no quality loss of any kind.

If it was obvious who the original creator was there wouldn't really be any problem because everyone would simply stop purchasing content that is being sold by anyone other than the creator of the item.

Everyone's quick enough to point out how much money is at stake when it comes to content being easily copied, but when it comes to actually personally doing anything about protecting it it's suddenly nothing more than "small change" so no, I don't buy the "content creators don't make money" argument.

I never said it was easy, I said that if you're selling on SL and you wish to protect your financial income then you take steps to protect it and sue to collect what was due to you if someone comes along and "steals" from you.

If "remove everything" becomes commonplace, I'll just stick to buying things from those who can prove they're legitimate which isn't currently possible so I'll likely just stop buying altogether and make do with what I've bought in the past two years.

so if you were inworld and waering the shoes, did they just POOF off your feet?

It won't make anyone happy, but LL could simply make it impossible for the illegal items to be sold or transferred - its an attribute chasing an attribute, so should be doable. Some end-users would be stuck, but we are all the time with the stuff already non-transferable. The honest merchants would be stuck with merchandise that would go nowhere, but at least they wouldn't be dealing with extremely unhappy customers (most would just be scratching their heads and thinking, "I thought this was transferable. Oh, well."

And then LL has to go after the culprits as if they meant it.

By the way, this should also keep LL happy. They STILL make some money on some repurchases (merchants) or additional purchases (new customers). I firmly believe that if the LL part of the economy isn't built on actions like this that force purchases and repurchases (like not being able to change your avatar's name, so you buy L$ when you start from scratch), then their margins are certainly shored up by these actions. The one group that clearly prospers from this action in the real meaning of the term is LL. Now all you ingrate complainers pony up some real money, buy more L$ and repurchase what you lost. If you live in SL, you do it all the time - what's one more time?