Texture Snagging Using The SL Tools

Lookie, as far as I'm concerned, it is this whole sort of thing that adds up to make participating in SL as a content creator or in-world business person of any kind pretty much a dead proposition.

Once everyone can do and have everything with bots of various kinds - and all contests become a contest of who codes the fastest or best bot - guys, we will have the game called, "Coders' Contest."

Now I don't think that bothers LL too much, because they have long since left the game called, "Your World, Your Imagination," where people come in and make things and share them with others in an economy.

The game LL is now after is called, "Advertising Land," where companies come here not to create, but to advertise and burnish their own real-life brands.

Those companies have sufficient funds and legal departments to take care of anyone trying to steal their stuff. So the parallel game of "Coder's Contest" doesn't bother them, or LL.

The content creators have already made the world that the advertisers now want. They're yesterday's news, and now expendable, as far as the "Advertising Land" game is concerned.

To make fun of those whose concerns are no longer of much concern to LL just rubs salt in the wound.

OK, I'll grant that Namssor Daguerre and some of the others with more experience in Watermarking than I probably have the right of it, and that "Strong Watermarks", at least, can survive upload into SL.

But unless Linden Lab was willing to actively pursue texture thieves and other copyright violators, with measures other than a DMCA Takedown Order, it's still largely academic.

Let's say I make and sell a ten-texture bundle for say, L$450. That's maybe $1.70 USD in real money. I use strong watermarking to tag them all. Some time down the road, I see that "Sammy's Sleasy Texture Yardsale" Is selling copies of my bundle for L$100... What can I do, realisticly?

What good will the invisible watermarks do, outside of a court of law? Can I apply some method to read out the watermark data on a copy of a texture that isn't in my own inventory? Can I show any sort of valid proof to anyone else that the watermark is even there? And will anyone outside of a civil court do anything about it?

If I DMCA the guy, odds are he'll take it down, but he can also be back 15 minutes later in another sim, doing the same thing with a shiny new unverified alt.

If I take him to court? Over what? Theft of a texture bundle worth less than $2.00 USD retail? It costs more for postage to file the DMCA claim than I would be likely to recover in a real world court. It might be worth it for someone like LillyBeth, if she could prove hundreds or thousands of textures were being illegally resold. It might be worth it for Namissor, whose lovely skins sell for thousands of L$ each, and who can demonstrate that each skin sells many, many copies each month. But for most of us, it costs more to pursue litigation than the litigation itself could recover. And these slime balls know that.

Unfortunately, LL just treats the whole thing as a "hands off" proposition. Even when you have chat logs or IM's or notecards in which the thief blatantly confesses to the crime, they won't do anything other than tell you to file a DMCA claim.

LL can't assert who owns the copyright on anything, because they just don't know. At the very best they could determine who uploaded a texture first, but that still won't answer the question of who owns the copyright to it. If they make the wrong decision, I'd guess they're liable for it.

Filing a DMCA means you assert a claim over the copyright, which the other can dispute, but however it turns out, you're both on record for it. I'm not entirely sure whether the filer is liable for a false DMCA, but if you dispute one and you're in the wrong, that's going to weigh rather heavily if it comes before a court.

Again in English please?

Yeah Ive heard that. I even bought a watermark registration ( or nearly did ) thats like a plugin for PS it was pricey but if it has solved my problems I would of paid.
Ive heard some people being able to put tiny tiny initials and dates only seen if the texture is streched in SL on prims to a certain size...I dont know how much truth is in that

The problem I heard ( and it may be the same as whats above ) is something to do with the transfer from jpg to tga and back again? or just the process of saving to HD then reuploading to SL its lost apparently.

You CAN steal textures I can assure you there are at least 2 3rd party software aps that snatch textures with little ease....but I dont want to turn this into an advertisment for any of them but their out there.

This sounds like the plugin I tried. ( trial ) but after so many years I figured someone in the forums would of shared their success if anything out there worked for SL.

I recently bought a very nice beach house, it's beautiful, designed to sit on a hill, came with a few bits to make that work (stairs etc)

Only it didn't fit my hill, so I im'd the author asking about the two textures used in that part of the house, thinking it was a reasonable question for someone who just paid them $6,500 for a house.

The answer I got back, "I don't sell my textures, but if you send me the prims I'll texture them for 100L each"

Was I impressed, not particularly. In the end I needed about another 50 prims with those textures.

Fair enough the creator has a right, so I decided to look around for things that would work with the supplied textures....and what do you think I found in a freebie texture pack (from either NCI, Sarah Nerd's, or Yadni's, can't remember now)... the exact stone textures used in my house.

So either the creator of my house lied and used PD textures, or someone has already ripped them off, Should I tell them? Possibly,if they had been what I consider reasonable about the use of the texture in the first place I would of. (but then I wouldnt of found it in the texture pack...etc)

To my way of thinking by buying that house I bought a right to use that texture with my house, and being able to sit it on the hill properly is a part of that. (Yes I know I could of ripped the texture, grabbed the uuid, whatever, but thats not me)

In the end everyone loses, I've now got that house in my inventory, I don't plan to use it again. So I'm out 6,500, the creator loses because I won't buy from them again, and they may have been ripped off on their textures.

On the good side, I've got a new house, cost quite a bit more, but came with the textures so I can add/alter parts.

I and other older texture stores have asked directly Philip Linden and got the reply " We cant think of a way to do it practically. If you can find a way let me know!"
So I posted a forum post offering $100 for someone to come up with a system that LL could use to be able to add an extra perm esp for textures. I got no replies

Im going back 18 months when I did this.

With all the work and DMCA reports they must get you would 'think' LL would just put someone on the job for a week and come up with a Damb system and put and end to this crap once and for all.
There are more and more REAL texture artists coming to SL now...once over they were few and mainly just ppl who found everything off the net and sold the 'convenience' of finding it for other people
On that subject anyone been to the new 'Texture Mega Store' campers delight traffic of 30K I went out there and its ALL stuff off the net..infact heres the link to what they have for sale for 350 per 10
They have nothing but crap like this
Crap
Dedicated a whole sim to this garbage?! I havent checked the site for copyright but Im willing to bet there is a disclaimer.
I swear its garbage and my blood boils to think noobs who will go there just because their high up on the search list and spend their money thinking ' this HAS to be the best SLs has because its got 30K traffic"
Sorry personal rant lol

Moving on.... As time goes by and SL becomes older more and more ' real ' artists are selling their texture work and this issue is only going to get bigger.

Sooner or later theres going to be a massive Co DMCA I know of at least one major Texture website filing a DMCA some resident had their entire CD collection for sale LL apparently came in and cleared the lot
Anyway there is a point to this long winded story.

I think the MAIN reason why LL wont give ppl protection on textures is because as someone has already pointed out here...a massive amount of ppl selling content from skins to clothing and textures too have used in part if not whole someone elses copyrighted work and they dont want to start 'false' claims of copyright based on LLs support.

They know its some what common in SL Ive seen skins/clothes from poser sites being sold with make up kits you simply apply and I studied it well as my new store is based on skins and I know many skin stores are nothing more than poser Vicky base skins with ready made makeup kits applied in a paint program These outside kits cost about $15 for the base skin and the same for the various make up layers. Another store had clothing for the Steve ( ? ) poser male model?
Not my area of expertise but I was shown the links whilst stood in the store and they were def the same

And thats one reason the skin/clothes market value is dropping...its much easier to sort the seams out on a pre exsisting base skin for Vicky ( for example) and apply ready make makeup kits ( some allow you to experiment and make a whole variety of options) than it is to start from scratch using photographs and your own shading and highlightng...hence the value for your work is much less...and so the price starts dropping. This must be very frustrating for the older genuin skin artists but on the whole the casual shopper dont know or indeed care. They want a good looking skin at a cheap price ( on the whole)
Im not sure if the above example is copyright infringment or just blatant short cutting.


Another story...( Something I had no idea about until a animation artist showed me the link)
You know those 5 or 7 minute salsa dances? some guy was knocking out for 5 or 7K each?
Well he/she didnt make them....they are available off the net for I beleieve $20 and the true creator was informed....but he didnt 'get' sl and didnt seem to care.

So SL is rife with copyright issues... very few ppl havent crossed that line or at least blurred it at least to some degree..and I think LL want to keep their hands clean and for good reasons.

Now I know this will spark some anger by the observations Ive made.. but I stand by them and can provide the links to the poser sites...I dont want to do that...this isnt the reason why I mentioned it and its not a witch hunt...its just a point that SL 'is' filled with copyright breaches...and yes I have done it when I was new and niave ...and I know many other texture stores older than me who have done it... If your prudent you wise up sooner rather than later.

Oh some one said in a post something about ppl can sell or give their textures away because the perms are set to full (not sure if you meant that literally or legally )
Not so with TRU we covered our asses with the EUAL outlining the perms system in SL does not apply to TRU textures and no one is allowed to distribute free or for commercial gain any hand made textures.

But then Ive heard certain LL support saying " well if its set to transfer and copy you are doing nothing wrong" in reply to some person who was reselling in bulk my own work hand made only 2 weeks prior. Of course that contradicts with the fact that all I have had to do in the past is fax Ginsu Yoon a DMCA file and they go in and remove ( despite the full perms) sounds to me like even the LL staff dont know the real copyright laws in SL

Where 'did you hear that about you only need to make 3 alterations and its yours?
If those textures or art work is sold with a licence and it says " can not be modified or sold/distributed in their altered or unaltered state' then you cant touch them
Also anything older than 50 years goes into the public domain unless the creator reclaims ownership again which after 50 years is unlikley.
I dont know too much about Art work older than 50 years but doesnt it fall into the public domain? Meaning anyone can mess with it and call it 'theirs' but the original artist work still remains the rare and expensive piece?

TiledTextures.com ( Toob in SL ) explains she runs her own website selling her work and also works in the legal department that a texture has to be changed by upto 70% before you can make it yours.

Ive also read that if you removed the original work from the bit you modified and it left a significant 'hole' then you havent modified it enough.

All licenses are different. One place I buy from allows me to modify their textures by cutting parts out and layering and blending into my own...others dont let you touch them at all if you are going to distribute.

Depends on the license or disclamier on the website.

Whats the user rights on the place that gives the freebie textures out?
Maybe the builder had rights to use them on commercial builds or when rendered but couldnt distribute the textures 'as is' or at all.

Just a thought

TRUs licence allows commercial builders to distribute the txtrs in the build package as long as the Transfer perm is unticked. Meaning the customer who bought the build can use them on the build ( and even on their own personal builds) but cant use them on their own commercial builds or transfer them as textures
I dont know who your refering to but sounds to me hes doing the right thing.
Maybe he didnt get them from a freebie place? Maybe he got them off the net and the licence on the website says " can be used on commercial renders but cannot be distributed as is'

All depends.

Indeed

Sorry I know I should know how to 'mass quote ' lol but I dont!

I think your right. Sad but true.
We were the guinee pigs. The beta testers.

Weve played our part and so far I and a hand full of others ( approx 10% according to LL figures) make enough to call it a rl living for how long? Who can say.

I dont take anything from granted. Each day is a bonus to me. I wish I could say this is a long term career or job but it isnt. Its a very shakey '

Its been wonderful and I feel blessed as w/o SL I would just be a sick woman at home bored and very poor with only 1 rl wage coming in. It provides me with a superb hobby and a little extra cash which is desperatly needed

But Im interested in the point that LL are seeing a far more lucrative market now...and thats the big boys from the Real Business World moving in.

I dont know enough about it all really. I mean I know Rebok is in they have a little store you can buy a pair of their trainers ( sneakers) and personalise them and then link to their website to buy the real thing...but how does LL gain more $$ from rebok than they do from say me who owns an island and spends thousands of L$ on upload fees and spend literally tens of thousands of L$ on paying for scripters and advertising each month and generates a significant % of L$ turn around from customers buying their L$ to buy textures to then sell what they make which starts the whole process off again?

I dont really understand the long term financial benefits for LL to have big rl Cos in SL over lots of us the 'little people' who probably generate more $ turn around each month than say Rebok.

I don't give or sell the textures I use in my buildings either. With exceptions for the ones I know as best I can were genuine freebs. Most of my textures now are custom made, a lot of them by a friend who generously gave them to me. I don't have the rights (as far as I see it) to sell them on.

I think 100L per prim to do work might be on the steep side, (well at the speed I work) but I certainly wouldn't spend my own personal evening time slaving at the computer for one person without being properly compensated for it, either.

I keep thinking about selling my own custom textures, but then I can see the IMs now- "Hi I bought this texture pack but it doesn't have the X texture" because the X texture is one made for me by someone else or whatever.

Actually Ceera if anyone in SL ever did resell yours or any other artists work that fell under the umberella of TRU I WOULD go legal regardless of the amount of money. And I would pay for the fees
Why?
Because it would be worth every penny to set an example and have that example branded about TRU , the forums and any news website that cares enough to want to share the story.
As yet to my knowledge no-one has gone legal on anyone in SL regards IP rights. Seems most ppl do see sense and remove at some point but I am waiting for that one wise ( or not so wise ) guy to think he/she can beat the system and press me into making a costly move...assuming I wont...oh I will and a sick part of me actually wants someone to test me...because being the 1st person to file and WIN a court case on Copyright could potentially alter the whole ' oh its just a game 'attitude in SL if it became well known and talked about.

And it would certainly put a stop to potential theives.

It would be worth the money to make that history in SL and be the store to do it.

I treat all TRU artists textures as my own regards to the illegal distribution of them.

Ive been thinking of starting a group were by we all agree to chip in if ever a case came to light like this. I for one would chip in to pay the court fees for another persons battle as long as it was texture related JUST to make that history and create the 'legend' to put off wanna be texture resellers.

This problem isn't new to Linden Labs. Most artists who have posted their digital artwork on the internet have run into the problem that enforcing their intellectual property rights will cost them more money than the actual theft.

Linden Labs would be doing everyone who wants to engage in commerce over Second Life to devise ways to help protect intellectual property. That is something big that they can advertise to attract more people to Second Life.

There is no perfect way to protect your work. But the harder you make it for someone to successfully steal, the less theft you'll have. It's like the lock on my house. It will protect me against someone who casually gets the notion to come in and see what's inside. A serious, prepared thief is going to be able to break in.

Oh, I agree completely. For my photos and landscape screens, I use pics that I or a RL friend took ourselves, or that I've downloaded from a website with clear permissions for re-use. But I do use a lot of freebie textures in my other builds - not having extra overhead for textures and uploads is why I can sell things so cheap in my store. But ultimately, how do I know that the textures that I got for free were really intended to be distributed freely by the original copyright holder, way back when they were originally uploaded? I don't, and that's troubling.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to add a non-modifiable descriptive field for textures when they are first uploaded, that lists the copyright holder and permitted uses of that texture, so even if it's passed around, months/years later someone like me who gets hold of it can check the properties field and know where it originally came from and how it is intended to be used?

I am tempted to add this comment...shall I, yes why not, I did not agree to any secret cover up, but I will not mention any names...

I purchased an item that is in reasonably high demand as a Second Life object, it is (how can I put it) likeable, and has an exact mirror in real life, and for the prurient minded among you it is not connected with sex!

Anyway to cut a long story short I purchased it as a full permission object for cents where the true retail value is in the thousands of Lindens. That includes all the scripts to power it. No separate licence agreement was attached to it but I accept the object was branded in another unique way. By the way no software bug was exploited to enable the purchase

Once I realised what I had I pondered, as it was legally mine it was fairly easy to remove the unique brand, redo it and launch into the XYZ business of selling it en mass.

But I do have a bit of a conscience. Even though I understand trade in real life and was very confident I was on sound ground I also accepted that the creator (not the vendor) would not be very content with the position if an unrestricted market developed. And although this object is rather valuable in Second Life terms, its commercial value in first life to me is more or less non-material to that of my main business.

I advised the creator, who actually got some fair compensation from the vendor (the vendor claims it was a mistake) and promised the creator I would never sell this object except for non profit charity fund raising.

So, I set it up as a "once off" object for charity, to benefit Relay For Life the American cancer society on an unrestricted full permission basis. I did not even collect the charity money for this object, as I am not a US subject and it would be difficult to pay them, I allowed another avatar to place a toll kiosk on my land to collect the money.

I would also comment that although it is a desirable object within Second Life it would also require some advanced re-engineering to further develop it to sell them en mass in separate varieties as a viable business.

Well to use an English expression I have never had so much of a 2 and 8 over it, the creator stuck to me like a limpet and the vendor got all huffy to put it mildly. It was almost as if you could hear cries of anguish and wailing and gnashing of virtual teeth over the electronic virtual either

It is still not totally settled now after several days although I have hope that the deal negotiated yesterday will be fully implemented to enable me to help the charity.

Sometimes some of you lot are too sensitive, like wailing banshees in the wind over every little thing

The problem is, suppose they did manage to add a "transfer as part of a build only" flag to textures. What does LL do with the existing textures already in the database? If they leave them as they are now, they will be marked "transfer - yes, transfer as part of a build only - no", in fact because the build-only permission didn't exist when they were created, but looking to the end user exactly like an explicit statement that it's fine and dandy to transfer them on their own.



This is a bit trickier - most of those motion captured animations say it's OK to use them in software, in particular games, that you develop, and they can be used royalty-free. So I can see them arguing that by uploading them to SL, they're just helping develop a game (SL) by making the animation become part of it. Since you can't recover .BVH files from SL animation by any means I know of (and most downloaded animations require quite a bit of modification before they're ready for upload to SL anyway - usually removing about half of the bones ) this could be reasonable..

Just because I'm surprised no-one else has mentioned this yet: if it's a good watermarking algorithm you'll be able to read the watermark data from a snapshot of the texture. I believe there are watermarking algorithms designed to survive recompression, scaling, and even perspective mapping.

As a home buildier I agree the builder in question could have handled it better.

What I do in such situations is if it was a freebie texture I used (yes there are some worth using) I give it to them. If it was not I tell them where to purchase it (even if it wasn't from my own texture shop). BUT I NEVER give away purchased textures from another artist!

SL's permissions do not supercede copyright.

In the absense of an explicit license or agreement between you and the copyright owner, you have no implied rights other than that granted by law, such as fair use (since you did purchase it).

Full permission does not mean public domain, unless I missed a paragraph in the TOS that states that the IP owner waives their rights as creator by having anything set as full permission.

Um, stealing for charity is still stealing. It sounds a bit like you took advantage of someone else's mistake there. Did they give you explicit permission to redistribute this item for fundraising?

I'm with Kitty on this one - full permissions does not mean public domain. Otherwise, people could argue that they are free to use everything on the Internet the way they like, ignoring copyright, just because they have the ability to download and distribute it.

Going back to intent of the creator/copyright holder - some of them made things to be redistributed to a wider audience, and it's hard to know the intent of the original creator after it's passed through so many hands. If we all had to be 100% sure before passing a full perms item along, no one would ever redistribute freebies.

In this case, it was easy enough to determine the intent of the creator and the vendor. It was a mistake on the vendor's part, and now the creator is angry it was redistributed.

My SL business is mostly for fun and an outlet for creativity, and I'm pleased that I can break even on my SL expenses with my business profits. But for some people, their SL business provides a significant portion of their living expenses in real life. They are sensitive to being wronged because it affects their livelihood.

Thank you Kitty

The amount of people who tell me my EUAL means nothing in SL 'beacuse' of the perms angers me so much. They preach I need to read LL TOS and as long as I sell with full perms I am giving the customer full rights to distribute.

People come to SL and think they leave the RL law at the log in screen and as soon as they log in a whole new 'virtual' law over rules the 'real' law! Its so insane!
Its like they believe SL is more real than RL?

ggrr

Indeed