Have you closed your store because of CopyBot?

Looks like Pirate's Cove (home of Risque anims, et al) has shut down access.

The Lindens have now pushed back a release. That makes it likely they're adding security.

If the bot was made by professional programmers who wanted to break SL, they'd probably have done it months ago. This is just a debugging program that's been picked up (and possibly modified) by opportunists. If LL make things just a bit harder they'll probably back off.

They just made a new post in the SL Blog about this.

For anybody who wants to know what else is affected, the Pixel Pinup blog here has a very extensive list in the article comments of what's closed so far.

I am not to bright when it comes to this, so I have a question or 6.

What would the purpose of closing the store be? If some one copies my jevn vendor, wont they just get an empty scriptless jevn vendor? The same with the boxes I use, wont they all be empty copies?

Isn't it easier for copy bot to steal my items that are allready sold? That other people are wearing? Maybe display houses right?

And would just putting the ribbons around my store stop it, or would I need to take everything into inventory?

Gene, I think that many people are closing shop as a show of solidarity and protest, and it actually seems to be having some effect.

Others may be doing it because they don't know what else to do

But a great many people are worried.

Lots of shops sell with Linden tools as well. AFAIK, Jevn vendors are safe until they copied the server (though the wouldn't get the scripts with it).

Some were closing as protest, I closed up when it was clear a noob was about to copy the items in my store. Some closed because the bot was coming in copying their items. They can ban the av, but a new alt came back over and over, and frankly, no one wants to sit in their stores all day and night banning noobs.

I picked up everything in my store until an anti is in place, and if it doesn't come, I'm not keeping my land.

I didn't think it was too expensive, well worth it for that realistic raven.

On second thought, I went back and closed down all my shop locations. I may not have a big shop, but I do believe in showing support to the merchant community.

I will repost what I left in the LL blog for all to see, but, this should have not been allowed in SL in the first place.... and people actually make money on here to live on because they are not able to work in the real world.....

I am very disappointed in LL right now... and this should have never been allowed to happen

Rutain

Business as usual for me.


My whole investment of time and effort into SecondLife
was originally made KNOWING that at anytime:

1. my creations could just evaporate...
   
2. or get stolen and sold by others...
   
3. all my scripts could just simply break irrevocably... or
   
4. all of SL could vanish...
   

I'm a control freak. Accepting those terms was *very* difficult for me.

But I did anyway, because I really enjoy doing what I do in SL.

My main source revenue is vulerable to GLintercept...
and that hasn't stopped me from creating more content.

My secondary sources of revenue are partly vulnerable to CopyBot,
and I'm still proceeding with my planned new content release anyway.

I can't blame folks for hunkering down and locking up until the potential damage associated with this is better known... I just
wish folks would do a little more looking into what's going on
before going around fearmongering or making ultimatums.

Has LLAbs stated that they have banned this type of copy device and otehr like it?

no.

Yes, I have closed my store. Well, you can still walk around in it, if you like, and check out the streetsigns for the empty streets! I also left up my Freebies of the Month. (Not making any new ones, though.)

coco

VRchitecture Model Homes is closed thanks to CopyBot.

I am blocking all vendors and models with large prims labled with the attached sign. Copy available here.

I think this is a sensible response, I don't think copybot and similar techniques are preventable due to the very nature and design of SL.

Its a shame, I love shopping.

Temenos Island, all my stores and brands, and my sims are all closed in protest of Copybot and LL's refusal to take real steps over it. At last count I see over 100 other stores closed as well in the search listings.

My businesses are my job. They support me and my children and pay my rent and buy us food and clothes. I take this very seriously. No. I can't afford to stay closed indefinately. this is my only income...but I can close tonight to register a protest with LL and hopefully send a message that we are watching and expect action. Real action.

Siren's Grotto, home to Nymphetamine, Digital Knickers, etc., closed while I was shopping there a few minutes ago.

I think anybody who closes their store is silly. It's like taking down your website because people have web browsers. Sigh.

Honestly, your content has always been copyable. Always. Someone just made it convenient. Unfortunately, that can't ever be stopped. In order for you to see anything in SecondLife, the simulator has to describe it to your computer in precise detail. In a sense, everytime someone visits your store they copy everything in it onto their computer. THAT CAN NOT BE STOPPED. It's technologically not possible, and likely never will be, because it's also LOGICALLY IMPOSSIBLE. The data has to get to everyone elses computer to see it, once that happens copying it is trivial. Sure they could encrypt it, but your computer still has to decrypt it to see it, so very little would be gained.

Linden Lab has already said they're going to make it harder for people to take some things (like only sending baked av textures) and making it easier to prove stolen property, and those are good things. They won't happen overnight though, so I invite you all to keep your stores closed for 6 months in 'protest' while they do that. Not hurting anyone but yourself, to be honest. They've not said they're going to do anything else other than take action against people who get caught using it, because quite frankly there's not really anything else they CAN do. In Cory's words, it'd be an arms race, and ultimately LL would lose that race, so it's hardly worth the energy expended on it. Better to improve in-world tools for discovering ripoffs and dealing with them.

It's no different from the rest of the internet. Anyone with a web browser can copy your entire website including images, CSS, HTML, all of it except any backend code, which is exactly what we have in SL. People can copy anything except the scripts that make stuff interactive. While agreeably very shitty, it's also unavoidable.

If you're protesting the fact that your content can be copied, you might as well just delete your store and never look back, because that will never change. It's been copyable since day 1, it will still be copyable when the lights go out. The best thing everybody can do is just press on with business as usual.

i will stay open personally, it isn't like it's something we will be able to prevent, keep in mind copiers are just doing that, copying, talented peoples create, thus they are always one step forward.
What we need is to put back the ccard verification and that LL help us and fall sharply on ip breaches

/me claps enthusiastically.




Best post I've seen on this topic yet.

Ultimately there will be competitor to SL that will do things better, and SL will die. So why is LL expending energy on even trying to build their "platform"? With your very logic, it's utter waste of time.

The whole jump from "in the end can't win" to "so why bother" is silly, and pretty much a convenient excuse for "can't be arsed, want to play with shiny instead".

If you are going out of business, I would be happy to discuss purchasing your business from you. Please contact me inworld with a description of your product line. I am not interested in adult/sexually-themed items.

They also have to do something serious about anonymous accounts because frankly sanctions have no meaning if losing access to SL has no cost.

I'm not sure about them only sending baked textures. Textures are baked by the client, not the server, because it's relatively computationally intensive for the sim but cheap for the client. Are they going to add a bunch of processors just to bake textures with?