Legal Animations Campaign

(Preamble: This post is inspired by the topic of the pirated animation kit thread here: /327/c9/264963/1.html . The accompanying MLP 1.2 scripts are not an issue; they are public domain. It is instead the accompanying animations which are an issue. Here is a list of those animations. http://slfreebieslist.xonat-qayos.com/2008/09/20/how-can-i-tell-pirated-animations/ )

Action was taken against this pirated kit at the start of summer this year (June 2008, but it is now re-emerging as a big problem. I'm even seeing it for sale again on SLX by several people for as low as L$199.

And, I'm coming across as much, if not more, furniture than ever that uses the pirated kit. When I alert the furniture makers that the animations are illegal, most shrug their shoulders and go, "oh well. I paid someone for it, so I think I'm fine", or they go, "oh well, tough on them. I don't care" , and continue using the stolen product. Many of these furniture makers present themselves as reputable business people and would have a cardiac arrest if someone copied and pirated their stuff.

I know there are honest furniture makers, and no doubt there may be a follow-up posting to this reminding me of that. I know many, and work with them closely. They aren't the issue though. But it seems that the problem isn't just the people selling these pirated full-perm kits; it's also the willing market they have in the not-so-honest furniture makers.

Why is this a problem? It makes it darned hard for those of us, and there are many, who only use legal animations. Our costs are higher, because we actually compensate the creator of the animations for his / her time in creating them.

And, consumers are being ripped off. They are being re-sold pirated animations, which are increasingly dated. And, they are being sold these at prices vastly inflated above the costs that the furniture maker incurred. Customers are being price-gouged, basically.

What can be done about the pirated kit itself? Nothing basically I suppose. The only thing that will make it go away is time, as the animations in it become embarrassingly dated or people become sick of them because they are *everywhere* now.

But there is an admittedly small step that can be done which might achieve some good. Which is, an education campaign.

First, the campaign must include an aspect that lets people know what the pirated package looks like. Then.

A. Furniture Maker Side of the Campaign.

We can let furniture makers looking to procure animations that should they come across this package (see point 1 above) on offer, that it is pirated, illegal and should be reported. And, that they should not buy it not only because it is stolen goods, but also because they would be offering their customer dated goods.

This part of the campaign would help to knee-cap the market for the sale of these full-perm stolen kits. (Note: I'm a realist, I say "would help", by letting honest furniture makers know to avoid it at the start. There will always be people for as long as humanity around who won't care if it's stolen, and don't care what they sell their customers.)

B. Consumer Side of the Campaign

1. We can let customers know how to identify whether furniture on offer uses this stolen kit, and that if the furniture does, it is poor value for their money.

2. We can let customers know the reverse: how to verify whether a furniture maker uses legally-licenced animations or not. And explain that someone who does use legally-licenced animations is more likely to offer quality, state-of-the-art animations. And that their prices are more likely to include fair compensation for all suppliers involved, rather than wild price-gouging on the part of the furniture maker.

How can customers verify? By looking at the animations inside, bringing up properties on them, and IM'ing the animation creator to ask if the furniture maker is on their purchase records. (Yes, it would be nicer if there were another way, but this simple method is hack-proof.)

The consumer side of the campaign would help to knee-cap the market for furniture made with the pirated kit. (Yes, I also realize some customers won't care, but many will, and would appreciate the information so they don't get duped.)

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To this end, I have initiated such a minor campaign. I call it minor because I am aware of how little it may achieve. But I'm the type of person who would rather at least try to make an effort.

I have created a sign, available for free here on SLX:

http://www.slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=905046

Reputable furniture makers put it in their stores. It says you are reputable, that you support SL's animators, and that customers should beware of being sold stolen goods. It invites them to click on the sign, and gives them a short notecard when they do. The notecard tells them exactly how to identify the pirated kit, why the pirated kit is a bad deal for them, and how to verify that you use legally-licenced animations.

(The sign is pretty plain, if anyone wants to make a better looking one, whoo-hoo! I'm not a graphic artist!)

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I invite all reputable makers of animated furniture makers to take part in this campaign, to fight back against the unreputable makers, to protect our customers, and to protect SL's animators.

I also invite animation creators to distribute this sign in their own stores for people who licence their stuff to use.

Yes, I'm aware how little this campaign may achieve, yes I'm aware that some people won't care (which is why we have this problem in the first place), and yes I'm aware there'll be lots of "why bother" or "it won't achieve much" responses to this. But if I let such negativity always hold me back, I'd never have started in business in the first place! I believe in doing something, even a small step. And this is largely a education campaign. Education for instance won't step everyone from smoking, but it will stop a lot, and really that's the most you can hope for in life.

p.s for those furniture makers who may say that they can't afford legal animations, in fact, they can: There is a list of genuinely free, public domain animations on the newly formed SL Freebies list.

http://slfreebieslist.xonat-qayos.com/2008/09/15/animations-which-are-public-domain-which-are-not/

I wonder, Chaz, if perhaps you could provide a short summary of your post's salient points.

Thank you in advance.

It might more effective (and efficient) if animation creators would just maintain a blog with the frequently updated names of all established stores that don't have properly licensed animations and let bad word of mouth do the rest.

I think my approach is quite efficient, in that it lets honest furniture makers promote themselves as such and takes place right in the shop to educate and protect consumers.

But don't let me stop you from organizing such a campaign Kitty. It would be a great compliment. How do you propose starting this? How can we help you?

What would be a lot more helpful, than a list of people whose animations aren't free... is a list of animations that ARE free. (or better yet, someplace we could go to get them, and possibly even try them, inworld.) Or at the very least, some sort of "subscription" system where, you might send out "Genuinely Free Animations - June".

I would not see a conflict of interest, in being asked to pay a small subscription fee for such a service.

I would find it MUCH more useful, as a content creator, to simply go to a clearing house where I KNEW the animations had all been verified as free and clear, when I was working on a project.

Corwen, here is the summary:

I have started a minor campaign called "Authentic Animations." This is an unofficial campaign, not officially backed by MLP or animators (I say this just to be clear that they're not on the hook for any aspect of it.) The campaign has two goals: (1) To help those MLP'ers who use legally licenced animations compete better against people who do not; and (2) to help raise the quality image of MLPv2 products, given that MLP 1.2 got a bad name by being included in pirated animation kits. Basically it's really simple: you post a sign in your store, and customers are invited to click it to get a notecard telling them how to detect products made with pirated animations, and how to verify that yours aren't. I'd like to keep it just that simple, but am open to suggestions.

A notecard inside explains how the campaign works, why it's of benefit to you and your customers, and how the very simplicity of the campaign prevents it from being abused by shysters.

The campaign kit is here:

http://www.slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=905046

*For those reading the summary, if you have questions you may wish to read first the very first post in this thread which covers it all in detail.

Winter, great idea! In fact, I announced such a list within seconds of doing this posting. You may not have seen it. The announcement is here: /327/e5/283052/1.html

The actual list is here, on the SL Freebies site:

http://slfreebieslist.xonat-qayos.com/

That is exactly NOT what I asked for.

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The following is what your "big list" accomplishes..

List of animators whose animations are not free
List of animators whose animations might be free
list of animators whose animations are free

All of these create hours of bookkeeping for me, every time I open a box of freebie animations, As I have to inspect EVERY SINGLE ANIMATION, find it's cretor, lookit up on the list,, and then potentially have to contact the creator if they're on the ambiguous "maybe" list.

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The following is what is at the top of your blog:

list of animations that are not free.

This is at least on point, and gives me a much quicker tool for finding and deleting some of the unusable ones from a folder.

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The following are things you don't do...

List of ANIMATIONS that are free.
Actual Free Animations. (not lists)

See? that's so much better. AN ACTUAL BOX OF ANIMATIONS that I *know* are okay to use. No bookkeeping, no hunting around freebie warehouses for days at a stretch, no constant fear that I missed deleting one bad animation. That's a service I would be willing to pay a monthly fee for.

Winter, the list starts off with "Genuine freebies".

If that is not what you asked for, then you are welcome to roll up your sleeves and create what you asked for! Will you announce it to everyone when it is ready for us all to use?

A list like Winter suggests is actually doable; it merely requires the cooperation of the creators themselves. Rather than it be the responsibility of one person to do all the hard work of finding out what is free and what isn't, some sort of resource to allow content creators themselves to post a list of their individual content that is free would be a useful resource. The only problem is, of course, that such a list is not very useful if only a handful of content creators take part. You would need to find some way of making it worth their while. Convince them that this list doubles as free advertising (which it does, sort of - people will see a given creator's freebies on it, try them and some may then purchase their for sale products) and you might get their cooperation.

What you would essentially be doing is creating a freebie wiki of sorts.

It's like that old adage about fax machines being more useful the more people that have them.

I already did the list part. I didn't mind the hard work; i did it for the benefit of everyone.

You may have missed this ongoing thread where I did all the work:

/327/c2/265609/1.html

If Winter wants to set up and host the in-world clearing house for these genuine freebies, I can help her stock it!

Ah, perhaps I misunderstood what the cause of Winter's dissatisfaction was. But still, some kind of wiki-like rweb resource that content creators can add to over time would be an idea. I'm not saying you yourself should feel obliged to set it up. But it's something to think about if enough content creators are willing to get on board. It's worth canvassing opinion amongst creators to see if there would be sufficient support out there.

That would be a great campaign to organize! Can you take it on?

I'm more of an ideas man. A creative sort. I leave the implementation of ideas to better men.

I take your point about the work involved. Just throwing an idea out there. You never lnow, someone might like to implement it at some point in the future, and I won't ask a dime for it.

I have very mixed emotions about all this... your initiative is commendable but what about the furniture makers that have all legally licensed animations that opted to use MLP1.2? MLP has always been free. I have many sets of furniture that are working perfectly with MLP1.2 and I had no intentions of upgrading them. Since you are including MLP1.2 in your campaign ... furthering the assumption that it is associated with stolen animations... I may not have a choice. You say that MLP1.2 got a bad rep due to stolen animations being used with it... but aren't you just furthering the damage? I'd be careful that you aren't called on by Miffy to cease spreading it.

As for your list of stolen animations mentioned in the first post... I have many of those.. all purchased legally. You may actually be planting the idea into customer's heads that all of these are stolen. They may not take the time to ask the Animation Creator..... or what makes you think the Creator is going to want to be bothered with 100s of IMs daily about whether a merchant obtained their animations legally? I may be forced to ditch these animations altogether from guilt by association issues. I've invested 1000s of Lindens in my animations, but thanks to those that have distributed them illegally it may be lost.

I agree that Content theft is a problem.. I agree that something should be done. But let's not run folks out of business in the process. The Creator's should definitely move to have them removed. I know many of the top merchants in SL have hired staff specifically to seek out and report illegal distributed content. The original creators are the only ones that can have them removed.

Then sadly, you'll have to compete with those who did make the effort to upgrade to MLP 2.x to deliver the extra benefits to their customers. Toothfairy Tizzy, for instance, I know has bitten the bullet and spent hundreds of hours doing so, as have many others.

Nevertheless, I agree that the campaign should focus on the legal use of animations, rather than whether the furniture maker has had time to upgrade to MLP 2.x or not, particularly as many may use other script engines entirely and not like MLP!

Great idea, but I agree with Claari (probably not for all the same reasons though). There's absolutely no reason to mention MLP at all, let alone make value judgments as to the perceived "reputation" of various versions. You're just going to confuse people and potentially do a lot of harm by implying that MLP 1.2 somehow = bad, and MLP 2.0 somehow = good - let alone that here's absolutely no connection between these script packages and whatever animations might be used with them.

I wholeheartedly approve of the idea that people have some lists to check against, at least as a jumping-off point, and I applaud the effort to compile such lists - but this stuff about MLP has no place in all this, IMHO.

Agreed, Anti!

I'm not sure why you keep asserting that everyone should upgrade to MLPv2...and obviously i'm not sure why the subject of MLP is even being brought up in a post about "pirated" animations...

But really, when did this become a value judgment between creators who use MLPv2 and those who choose to use MLPv1.2? A thoughtfully designed piece of furniture with MLPv1.2 will always be better than a poorly put together product with MLPv2, and vice versa.

With all respect to MLPv2, some of us might not think of it as an "upgrade." You can't always assume that newer is better...

We've covered that point, Sera, and the adjustment has been made. Perhaps you missed the preceding posts.

Just to completely clarify for everyone, there is now no mention of any scripts. So the focus is now on the pirated animations. Topic of MLP whatever version is no longer necessary.

Actually, there's no reason why the blog can't include a list of builders who state that they use licensed animations from animation creators. Any frauds could easily be exposed by the animation creators themselves.

Yes, I think the point was brought up in previous posts over a month ago... but you are still bringing up the MLP issue... glad you'll be done with that now, as it really doesn't belong in your campaign.

Perhaps you can make a new thread and tell us why it is so "sad" for those of us who choose not to "upgrade" to MLPv2. (especially since there seems to be no final version?)

MLP 2.1 version is final and rock solid. You may wish to move discussion of MLP matters to the MLP thread where others can find it more easily.

ah, sorry, i thought you might make another new thread to aid all of us.

MLP 2.1 is final? Someone needs to inform Lear of this since he's working on v2.2 at the moment...