Business in Box Stores & Texture Perms

Linden Labs are quite frankly rude and piss poor at dealing with things that SHOULD be of priority...allow me to explain.

Textures ( and I think its fair to say ) are as important as prims in SL.
Point 1 :
Try and imagine if possible of no texture stores ever exsisted in SL EVER. So all you had was the few crappy ones LL provide and those you find off the net and if your skilled enough those you can make yourself.
I think its fair to say, without texture stores there would be a massive decrease in commercial building business and original and diverse rich content.
textures are the paint in SL without them it would be plywood cubes.

Ok.. now bearing in mind anything made of prims can be protected by the perming system LL provides for content creators.
Texture artists ARE content creators. And yet here we are year 4 and STILL no protection for us.

OK so we're nobody ...what we make isnt important to LL apparently. * go back to point
1 again and give it some thought * and I'll accept that. In the grand scheme of things a hand full of texture artists arent important to LL
HOWEVER

Point 2:

I have known 1 RL texture business try and make its pressence in SL and left due to the constant theft of their art work being resold around SL. They packed up and left. That being TiledTextures.com
I now know of another RL texture business in SL who is under the misguided concept that he can sell his textures at L$1.99 each No Transfer as in his words "I don't think its correct that people can just pass about textures to other people free to end up being in the hands of someone who will then resell them" And he's right of course. But as someone whos been in the business for 3 yrs, I know w/o transfer or 'full perms' consumers wont buy txtrs much less at L$1.99 each.
I know w/o full perms consumers cannot resell their work. Save to PC to modify for clothing or building projects and of course w/o Copy they only get to use each texture once.
I Imagine he will give up in time as hes well aware of the txtr theft in SL and refuses to sell his work with transfer. And who can blame him?

Point 3:

I am an unofficial copyright agent for Total Textures. I have with success closed down 2 stores that had their entire collection of CDs for sale in sets and singles and I know they have had many other issues not relating to me were residents were reported as selling their work in SL and Total Textures filed DMCAs with LL and SLX to have it all removed.
Lynette at TT is pissed of with LLs lack of responsibilty on this subject.

Point 4:

BIB ( Business in Box ) stores.
I have yet to inform Lynette of the hundereds of these stores that have all their textures sold in boxes called ' Textures from around the world' for 50 - 500L
ALL sold as ' FULL PERMS MAKE L$$$$$ BUSINESS IN BOX ' concepts
Of the 500 or more BIB stores selling their real artwork to literally thousands of other SL residents who go on and set up their own BIB stores and sell the same illegal textures to OTHER thousands of BIB wanna be residents...they will NEVER ( not will LL ) be able toever trace down each and every single box of their textures now...they chain is too big and it never stops
You find one store and they remove but as I say how many hundereds of residents have already bought those textures prior to them being removed? And how many have set up stalls and stores selling them to even more residents?

I have a commercial Poofer kit with 100 alpha 128 x 128 txtrs I made along with a poofer script I paid to be made to allow ppl to make poofers with and sell them. It was sold with a license clearly stating the txtrs must not be sold as textures
That very kit is in ALL BIB stores all over SL.
I gave up and removed it from my store.

When I inform Lynette from Total textures of the state of this mess I dont even know how she will go about Identifying all the residents and BIB stores..it would be a job that would last a lifetime...constantly tracking new stores as they crop up.
This IS costing that RL business a LOT of money as each person can save to their PC no need to buy from Total Textures is there?

What REALLY makes me sick is I and other older txtrs stores have asked Philip Linden to PLEASE simply add an extra perm on txtrs such as ' Transfer When Rendered' Thats all it would take
We could tick that so ppl could sell what they create BUT canot sell the txtr as a txtr.
His reply? " we cant work out a way to do this, if you can think of one let me know"
I even placed a post in the forums 2 yrs ago offering $150 for anyoen who COULD work a way to do this that LL could impliment. Not one reply.

BUT! lol LL HAVE managed to do it! by accident. There was ( is ) a bug that allows a txtr with no trans perm to be applied to prims and the prims can be passed around or resold.
Its a bug so we cannot do what we've been begging for for 3 years and thats stop selling our unprotected work with Transfer without it effecting commercial customers who sell what they create using our textures as LL will 'FIX' it!
Jesus Christ!

Leave it be! remove the screaming ' YOu cannot modify this item' that apparently comes with this bug and put an end to the constant Texture theft!

This isnt JUST effecting SL business its effecting RL texture businesses who arent even IN SL!

Its preventing RL texture businesses who would be delighted to make a pressence in SL if it wasnt for the PISS POOR lack of protection or responsibilty LL have on giving texture artists the right every other content creator has in SL...thats protection.

Its effecting LL business too!

Im insane with confusion! What are LL not getting here????
Total Textures WILL be informed of the mess in SL with their txtrs all over the place being sold and resold over & over and I hope they SUE LL because Lord knows they need to sit up nd take this issue seriously for the 1st time ever!
~

I partially agree with you, LL could have done more to protect textures, sculpt maps and other things. But a lawsuit against LL is as pointless and unjustified as sueing Microsoft for making it possible to steal web images with their Internet Explorer.
It's the people behind the SL accounts that commited copyright infringements who you could take legal steps against.

I actually tried writing to Linden Labs last week about the theft and the way its totally mushroomed due to the Businesss in a box concept. I have no idea if they even read the note

Anyhow it would be nice if they would leave the bug in then we can use the textures and upload them? I think? for making clothes etc I used some of the leather ones at one point but needed to export them into photoshop for things.

In any event to be honest I trully dont think anyone actually cares at least this is the impression I get or that its gotten to be such a huge problem its kind of a denial thing. In any event I think only someone dealing with it legally will get anywhere

One of the notes I wrote to linden labs was in regard to the business in a box and the fact that 99% of the time you not only had your textures stolen but basically had to pay what ammounts to extortion money to see them. Third party sites are the worste for this although if its packaged up in those BIAB's with boxes in boxes ingame basically it ammounts to the same thing so its become a double wammy. You must buy the stuff stolen from you in order to make sure its actually yours in some cases as the words on a box or website wont tell you that as you can't SEE the textures etc.

To me its become kinda nuts some people have called the issue petty, but I dont believe its petty mainly because everything in SL is made using textures absolutely everything requires a texture so I dont see how this can be a "petty" thing I think its a huge thing.

Anyhow at least I get to read someone elses post on this instead of writing one for a change this helps because I truly was wondering as to why I was being led to believe that many texture sellers arent that worried. After being called petty when bringing the issue up I started to wonder as to why people dont care?

The only thing that can't currently be copied without an exploit are scripts, everything else can be copied or recreated one way or another.

LL should change the way some things work, but in the end you simply have to accept that digital content can and will be copied.

(Edited to add that that doesn't mean you should just give up, but that thinking that anyone could just make copying impossible is simply not a realistic expectation)

My point is this.

How hard is it to add an extra perm such as ' Transfer When Rendered'?
By adding this perm it will cut down by about 95% (based on my 3 years of issuing take down orders ) of texture copyright breaches in SL as these ppl never bought direct from the store but were given the txtrs as a gift and as such when one recieves something that costs them nothing and has full perms and esp when they are newish to SL they assume ; it mustnt be valuable as the creator has set to full perms so they wont mind me selling'
99% of new S residents arent aware of what copyright is. Why should they?
Add to that the fact they see SL as a 'game' and L$ is just game currency and its an evil mix of ignorance.
So add that extra perm
We can set txtrs to Transfer When Rendered which will stop ppl passing our work to friends and noobs and they cant pass them to their friends and noobs who eventually end up being in some persons stall /store being resold.

This will cut down theft reduce DMCA take down notices which adds to LLs staffing time.
It will encourage other RL and private txtr artists to share their work in SL making it a much richer environment which in turn is better for LL as noobs will be impressed more by the architecture and creativness and added to that.. it encourages RL texture websites and businesses to make a pressence in SL. Its a perfect platform for them after all.

There are WAY more pro's than con's to simply adding that little long awaited permission.

Im sick and tired of their lack of involvment in this.

If its effecting outside RL businesses and loosing them money it IS LL responsibilty and whilst the extra perm wont stop ppl uploading outside textures and selling them when they shouldnt even a txtr theif when given the choice wont sell txtrs with Transfer ticked if they didnt have to which takes me back to point 1. 95% of txtr resellers were given the txtrs by friends.

How much of a need is there for true "no transfer" textures?

You wouldn't need a new permission if you just change how it works: sell the textures as NT, but when a NT texture is applied to a prim it won't make the prim NT. That way you can sell textured prims but not the actual textures with only a very minor change to the current code.

If LL say that adding 'Transfer when Rendered' is too hard; the 2nd option (NT textures don't make a Prim NT) sounds possible. I suggest someone should put in a JIRA suggestion for this. And then add the JIRA Issue link to this thread, and ask all your friends to Vote on it.

I'd vote for it.

JIRA link:

I'm sorry your fine work and others is being exploited in this manner.

One thing I can say is that it's my hope that no self respecting builder is going to use the textures from a BIAB. If something is so freely available, it devalues its worth -- which is another problem really.

I agree that a Jira vote regarding a solution would be best.

And yes, I agree textures, animations and scripts are just as much a backbone to SL as the prims they're often found in. All these should be protected from theft.

Good luck.

I agree that textures are critical to creating SecondLife, and second to land I have probably spent more money on textures from reputable vendors that anything else here. Also, I agree that the work of these artists should be protected. No other merchant in SL is asked to sell their product without protection in order for it to be of any use that I know of.

I like the idea of a texture only transferable on a Prim, but I have a question. How would this work in the case of texture change scritps? Isn't this how alpha textured walls and windows open and close? Also, I use something like this in furntiure. I open the textures and make them no copy, but don't they have to be transferable in order to work like this because they are actually placed IN the prim?

You can set a texture with llSetTexture using the UUID.

You can get the UUID of a texture from any prim.

How would your suggestion of a new 'permission' stop this type of theft ?

Not sure if you meant mine or LillyBeth's .

Nothing would stop getting the key and using that, but it's quite clumsy to build with so very few people would really want to bother with it.

According to LillyBeth the problem isn't so much indirect theft (reusing the key, or grabbing and reuploading - you'll never be able to prevent those) but rather direct redistribution which my suggestion would take care of.

It does change some existing behaviour, but I doubt you'd get something that doesn't require a compromise (especially if LL doesn't want to add extra permissions) but in the end it doesn't allow anyone to do anything they couldn't already do before and I don't think that "no transfer" textures are currently that widespread.