Loni Arado - Passing on problems to endusers

Can any sculpt textures by this person be trusted is the real question? She has been busted for at least 2 different sets of stolen textures there is no reason to believe that any of them she sold were legit.

I know of at least one person who lost an entire nearly 200 prim build because she used sculpts from the "gems" pack of textures.

and no rezzing a new one didnt fix it. The entire build will not rez.

My best advice to anyone that owns any of these textures is play it safe. Delete them from your inventory. Write off the loss. Move on.

I know its miserable. You are allowed to growl as much as you like while deleting and creative language use is expected.

Or make our own stuff. It's already been pointed out that none of the skills involved in content creation is beyond the abilities of someone with average intelligence and perseverance. Before, I was thinking that this event signaled the end of any hope of an advanced economy with a value-chain of specialized content and expertise, reverting to the earlier "cottage industry" model of individually crafted goods by sole-proprietor creators. But end-users have absolutely no way to know which of those to trust, either (which of those shining reputations is in the next scandal?). So, we're reduced to a system in which all trade is suspect, and homegrown is the only brand worth owning.

So maybe that will prove beneficial to in-world education services.

This is a rather bogus argument. Yes, probably anyone could learn to build or script or texture given enough time, but the reality turns out that some people are simply better at these things than others, and everyone wants the best content.

Even if this wasn't true, exchange would still be valuable for two reasons - creative variety (even if two people are just as good at building, they'll have different ideas about what to build, and each will have ideas the other doesn't), and specialisation (if you spend 5 hours building and I spend 5 hours scripting and we work together, we can make two things which are both better than we could have done if we'd each individually spent 2.5 hours building and 2.5 hours scripting)

Incidentally, there's an ongoing case that might be relevant to this. A published game called "Limbo Of The Lost" has been found to contain content copied from several other games, apparantly without permissions. It's not known what's going to happen, but I suspect that the people who bought the game won't have their houses raided. (They might send the game back anyway, but only because it's not very good )

*looks for a dunce cap in her inventory and doesn't find one*

Does anyone know where I can get....? Oh... right... I'm supposed to make my own .

LOL!! Nope, I'm a shoemaker myself, and my husband in rl and sl makes all my scuplt maps btw. I found a shop selling some packs of sculpt maps and thought they looked very familiar. A quick check on the edit window revealed the name of the original creator, and it is a matter of public knowledge that Photon made sculpt maps for Stiletto Moody.

As a content creator however, I will add that it can be difficult to know that anything we buy is legit. Whenever I buy textures I am as careful as I can be to ensure that the seller is entitled to sell them. I really don't want dozens of disgruntled customers telling me all their shoes have 'texture missing' all over! Consequently I am making more and more of my own textures.

Rez A cone.
Attach to Skull
Stand on pose stand and adjust

Just kidding of course

But... but... I need a cute texture to go with it... .

http://commons.wikimedia.org/ ... we don't need no steenking textures!

I just said the following on another thread, but really, the skills required to produce a professional product are becoming more and more specialised - SL is moving rapidly away from being an area where one can do everything oneself and expect to compete. In my professional capacity I mostly script things composed of components that other people have put together - I am able to do this without worrying about copyright breach and so on as I always know the source (well, I am pretty confident about the source, and in any case it would not be my liability as I am not working for myself here).

This is not because I am incapable of building and texturing things on my own, it is because other people will be able to do it faster and better. In some cases they are able to do things that I simply am not able to do - I am terrible with sculpts for instance, and cannot make clothes to save my life.

And on the other side of the issue, as for scripting itself... well. I encourage people to learn at least a bit of basic scripting but I am quite aware that to the majority, scripting is terrifying and blasphemous and they will just drop scripts into objects and hope they work, perhaps slightly modified. Expecting the average creator to know how to make even something simple like a networked item-giver is not very realistic. That is what has caused the problem here, really.

I got sucked into this fiasco 2 weeks ago when the whole thing hit the fan. One of my giftcard customers asked me to come take a look at the offending merchandise to give my opinion as to the origin.

Arriving at the shop, I immediately recognized some maps, that are for sale in world, by another creator and then a variety of others of which I know were not the work of 'the offender' The one thing i find curious though.........

The maps were water marked with 'the offenders' logo and alpha'd ( a method we use to hide the maps so they can't be screen grabbed) So this means that the original textures were taken out of world and run through pshop or some other graphics program and then uploaded back to SL. The boxes were repackaged with new pictures depicting the content. At this point, who is to say who the original creator was? I know, Forget original Blender, Maya, or whatever files -- they don't count because their origination can be disputed also. Its not like the Halflife texture fiasco that went on about 6 weeks ago -- those origins are very real and traceable.

But with a visible sculpt map, its real easy to take out of world and send it back in. But, like I said, personally I know that shop was filled with maps being resold against the original creators wishes( I met her while I was there) and number 2 -- this person is notorious and is a repeat offender. Multiple AR's have been filed, DMCA, etc -- he/she just materializes a few months later to do it all over again.

CC

Let's break this down further. Legal issues involve conflicts of rights between two parties, and law is the process of resolving those conflicts.

The arguments along the lines "SL taking down all instances of content is like companies ripping CD's or books out of other's hands" is fundamentally flawed because the potential conflicts of rights are completely different between SL and the analogy. In the analogy, the owner of the pirated content has a right against unreasonable search and siezure (and such for a simple CD surely is unreasonable), a right to property (in posession of the actual physical CD/book item) and a right to privacy (a search and siezure of a CD would violate this). However, users of SL have zero rights (in the legal sense) to use SL or any component of it. They have no rights granted to them by the creator by purchasing a license to use the content. Moreover, privacy and search and siezure do not apply because the content in question resides on hardware owned by LL. This is why I say that people who have pirated content on their SL accounts have no rights to it, legal or ethical. Thus, when there is a conflict of rights between people who have pirated content on their SL accounts, and creators who have very strong legal and ethical IP rights, the rights of the creators will always trump.

Given this, I wonder how anyone can still make the claim that people who are in possession of pirated content in SL, whether they know it to be pirated or not, have any rights to use the pirated content.

A completely irrelevant point; it is immoral and illegal to try to force a contract on a party without their agreement (which would be the case.) A very fitting analogy would be party X forming a contract with party Y to rent an apartment, when party X doesn't own the property or has any right to rent it out. The actual owner of the property is not contractually bound with Y because of the illegal contract.




No you can't. Because the content is provided via a service hosted by SL, the means to access infringing content via the service must be completely disabled if the owner of the intellectual property requests such.




See above post. The consequences are irrelevant because the owners of the infringing content HAVE NO RIGHT to use it, whereas the essential liberty and right of a content creator to own the rights to their own work trumps.




Again, this isn't about punishing _anyone_, and I'd argue that the proper place of law isn't "punishment" or "retribution" but upholding and protecting rights and liberties, and (in the case of criminal law) trying to correct the behavior of law breakers and provide disencentive (fear of incarceration) for breaking the law.



Suing isn't the only recourse for protecting copyright or settling civil disputes. LL following the law by disabling access to infringing content is another solution. Filing multiple DMCA's against a party builds up a case record that, if a lawsuit is eventually needed, helps because it shows repeated intent to purposefully steal and profit from it.



Like many issues in SL, this is blown widely out of proportion. Most of the arguments I've seen so far are emotionalist, appeals to fear, or absurd slippery slope arguments. I've seen the same sort of reactions from age verification, the casino ban, and the banking ban, which all were supposed to destroy SL.

In the future, for people who provide full perm content for creators, I can see cooperation and self-policing happening to provide content that is trustworthy and original. For example, recently the sculpts only mall in Dylamon announced it was closing by the owner. A lot of the top sculpt designers had spaces there and policed it to make sure that no pirates got spots; the sculpt community is quite tightly knit and we have a good knowledge of who are honest creators and who are pirates. We're trying to organize a new mall to replace it, perhaps with free spots, that would provide a consolidated environment for content creators to go to and see the selection of offerings by sculpt creators who have good reputations.

In the past I've criticized Linden Lab when they did dumb things. I'm sure I will do so again.

But not today. Linden Lab has just taken the first round of the kind of decisive action against content theft that people have been demanding for over two years. Content has been removed. Accounts have been closed.

And now people are whining about it. I genuinely feel sorry for LL on this one. They just can't win.

Well, no, they can't win as long as they bugger it up, in this case, removing a whole load of non-infringing assets for no good reason, and avoiding telling anyone before, during or after what it is they are doing and why. In fact I would go so far as to say that application of the "whenever attempting to do something, bugger it up" principle will lead to LL being unable to win in general.

People were rightly calling Ginko a ponzi scheme since the begining.

Lots of good points there.

Legally, yes. But the problem is if consumers are willing to continue consuming given the amount of risk involved in an environment where they have so few rights - and, in particular, if creators will be happy to purchase components from sources given the amount of risk they take by doing so. If consumers aren't willing to consume, then creators lose out even more.

Now, I know that they have _never_ had these rights, but previously most people treated this as just a legal CYA rather than an actual reality they'd have to deal with in practice.

There's no question about people not "having the right to continue using pirated content". The question is why only the pirated components of the items couldn't be removed. If the animations were pirated, remove the animations, not the entire item. If the textures were pirated, switch it to Texture Missing. If it was falsely sold as a "SexGen bed", change the name in inventory to "------ bed". If the script was pirated, remove the script, but leave the prims and texture.

As others have said, the problem with this is that the actual pirates essentially escape any punishment at all. They steal some textures or builds, sell them, cash out the L$, then leave SL and when the DMCA finally comes, only the people who bought the content lose. And remember, the pirate wouldn't be selling from the back of a prim truck - if they can CopyBot your beds, they can also CopyBot your STORE!

I think you've missed one of the major points of those unhappy with LL's specific action - the content which has been removed was a script which was being legally used since the oriinal author had made it available for free under a BSD Open Source license.

The content which was being distributed without a license and which was the basis of the complaint - namely various animations - were left intact.

Matthew

Not really. Whole objects have just disappeared.

FREE SEXGEN

I have spoken to my staff and we are willing to replace these broken
beds with a 50 anim SexGen. I feel for the end user here who bought
in good faith, but I also know that LL is limited as to how they can
approach such a pervasive issue. Not everyone is going to be happy.

That being said, if you will point your affected friends to this
thread and its specifics we will do what we can to get our fellow
enthusiasts back in the saddle

1. Contact Andrea Faulkner or Stroker Serpentine and mention this
post.

2. Provide evidence (rez or transfer) of your broken Eva Capalini or
Loni Arado creation to one of us.

3. Choose your style of bed from our shop here:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eros/184/193/23

4. We will provide you with a FREE 50 anim SexGen bed.

This is a limited time offer because we do not want to be doing this
forever. But we feel it is the least we can do to support the
irradication of these agregious con artists. (and its good promotion
!) Stroker Serpentine

ya know Stroker, the whole sex in SL thing was never my forte but I always knew you was good people

Bravo to LL .. keep the assets blocked.. missing in action, naked prims and all.. it is an excellent example to set and hopefully will scare all of the thieves into semi-honest avatars.


FINAL WORD: Beware of freebies and full perms, especially if sold cheaply... especially if they are textures because more often than not, if the creator name is not on it, they are ripped off goods and even sometimes with the creator's name on it, they are still stolen.. I could elaborate further but will not.. IM me if you want to know more.

I agree. You buy a car not knowing that it has been stolen; you don't get to keep the car. What about my money *wail* Umm! what about it.

I, like most people, buy my cars from a LMVD. That way I know that the chances of the car being stolen is like zero. And, should it ever not be zero then the LMVD has a fidelity fund and they are going to make sure I get another car.

As has already been mentioned though, the car industry has all kinds of checks and balances in place (such as the LMVD system) to prevent people from buying stolen cars.

Second Life doesn't have any such system. And moreover, it can't get one without ruining the principle that anyone who creates something good should be able to offer it on sale. If we say they can't sell because it might be stolen, or that they can do so but de facto nobody will buy it because they aren't on a list of trusted merchants somewhere, then we ruin that principle - and with it, break a keystone of SL's economic model.

Moreover, as has also been mentioned, everything made by the creator or using a component they made, was returned. Which is like the police seizing your entire car, even though it is not stolen, because the factory the engine was bought from by the car manufacturer sold stolen wing mirrors on other occasions.

Rosie if it isn't impossible to reimburse all your customers why not give them credit for their inconvenience with items of their choice in your store with something you and your friends made that you know you're not going to have problem with in future?