My opinion on LL and Copybot

Sure LL says its legal unless abused. But think about it. What do you think people plan on doing with this? THIS IS SECOND LIFE! Hello!!! Does "Griefers" right a bell??? SL has the largest supply of them on the web! What do you think their going to do with this tool? Copy each other? NO their going to purposely go out and copy everything they can and try to sell it!!! Banning them doesn't make a lick of difference since accounts are free with no strings attached.

You ban them they come back and doing a thousand times! Hash ban? Only works if they have 1 computer. IP ban? Even "I" know how to bypass that.. I havent used the tool yet cuz i can't find it, nor am i looking for it, but from what i heard it's only good for copying prims and avatars. Besides allowing you to copy other peoples work, what good purposes does it serve that you couldn't already do anyway? Copying YOUR prims? I can already do that! Just edit shift-drag the thing. As far as i know there IS NO legal reason to use this tool. IT'S A HACK! LL please pull the cork out of your ears and realise. Your allowing a bunch of hackers to take advantage of you. Behind your back their laughing and finding newer and better ways to render you even more Incoherent. Grow some backbone and stand up to it!

After being in the recent town hall, i noticed we got absolutly nowhere. Where still in the same boat as before the meeting. All us residents are still pissed off that our content can easily be stolen and resold, linden lab still thinks it's ok to piss off their customers with bad decisions, and philip linden sttill thinks second life is a maricle world of sunshine and butterflies. Philip if your dream was to allow a world of griefers and hackers to get away with murder then tell me now so i can go back to EQ...

Yep. We're screwed.

I figure it's only a matter of time, but I'm hoping for the best, nonetheless.

coco

!) Forced verification to allow connection of an AV to a user.
2) Ban and/or press charges to those whom abuse libsl, LSL, SL in general.

As far as I was aware, when legal cases are bought, they become a matter of 'public interest', and information about the outcome can be researched.

We have heard Philip say many times that information has been sent to the FBI for prosecution, when people have crashed the grid.

How come there's never been any announcement of successful prosecutions?

Either:

1) No successful case has ever been brought.

2) The guilty accounts are all unverified and untraceable.

3) It was all lies and the FBI were never contacted..

Lewis

3) Ban anyone with the words "copy" or "bot" in their name.
4) Lindens to introduce unblockable IMing of "!quit" to everyone, everywhere, every five seconds.
5) Spankings for unverifieds - just because. They probably deserve it. With a shotgun.
6) Since objects can be copied even if they don't seem to be being copied at all, allow escort chat to be copied, so those damn plain-belly sneetches don't get one up on us hard-working content creators omg I pay real money for this.

I am not a lawyer, but as far as real world aspects of the whole thing are concerned it is , as far as i can see, quite funny.

There is no question that unauthorized use of your designs constitutes a copyright violation, but the interresting question is about your damage. Since you give your creations away against L$, the damage depends on the value of the L$.

Now if L$ had a value different from 0$, it could be regarded as a private currency, which would be in violation of US federal law. Aside from this it would require that you declare your L$-income and that either LL or you fill out I-9-forms for your activities in SL. It would also mean that all 'banks' in SL are probably in violation of banking laws. Linden Lab as the holder of the user account data would probably be in violation of banking laws too.

Therefore it is safe to assume that L$ would be declared as simple play money with a value of 0$. This of course means that whatever you exchange for L$ has a value of 0$ too. Therefore your damage from the copyright infringement amounts to 0$.

It could further be argued that this changes the nature of the transaction. Because in the case of a value of 0$ for L$ you don't sell your creations, but simply give them away indiscrimenately. It could further be concluded that they are therefore already in the public domain.

This introduces a funny catch 22. If L$ have value LL and a lot of residents are in a legal nightmare involving paying withhold, tax penalty and a few other things. If L$ have no value, you have no damage from copyright infringement and likely no case at all.

That people pay you real money for worthless L$ in the latter case is ..... not illegal.

I-9 is just to verify eligibilty to work within the United States.

Lewis is british. But yes, he is in this case probably self-employed in UK. Correction taken.

7) ban people for standing around too long not doing anything cause they might be bots and that will scare people and maybe they really are bots anyway
disable teleport
9) make it illegal for people to travel in twos
10) make it so landowners can autochallege anyone who comes on their land and if they don't answer make it so the owner automatically submits an abuse report

The root problem here is just the copying of objects and textures.

11) Ban anyone found with objects or textures that list themselves as creator.

I made this great .5 x .5 x .5 cube.. it had a plywood texture. I know I created it.. but someone copied me. I saw them rez an identical version on the ground. I checked it.. and it had the exact same texture, and listed THEM as the creator!!!! How do I sue this person for stealing my design?

Winter, you need to file a DMCA report and then wait about 4 weeks.

12) All Avatars can be stopped and searched at any point to see if they have a Copybot with tem.
13) As copybot is not illegal, only its unauthorised usuage is. Then all people who have used copybot must wear a gold rectangle with CB on it to show everyone they are a copybot user. Failure to show this copybot identifier on their AV will mean they will be perma-banned.

14. Since it is primarily PC users who are able to run this software. Reprogram the SL client to detect any microsoft applications on the user's HD. if they are found, delete the user's inventory, and then quit. Setting an autoban flag on the account.

15. ANYONE who uses copybot is obviously a theif. So let's search their HD for ANY file format that CAN be used for theft... like .torrent or .mp3.... Because there's never a legitimate use for those filetypes, right?

16. Let's ban Linux users. (no reason, they've just got shifty eyes).

*Clap!* *Clap!* *Clap!*

THANK YOU.

There have been so many self-important know-nothings posting threatening messages about class action suits and such against damages who ignore this one singular point: all such cases are civil cases, not crinimal cases, and as such, have to have as their foundation some sort of monetary damage or loss. This is impossible to show, considering that Linden Labs does not warrantee that Lindens are exchangeable for any particular value. This protects them from being sued for damages every time there's a grid attack or the asset server dies or some other malady affects the grid.

If such a thing were possible, they'd have had all their startup capital drained away in successful lawsuits by now.

The doomsayers and people gnashing their teeth and howling as they tear at their clothes over this stuff have far too high an opinion of themselves. If it's really all that valuable, why are they giving it away at pennies on the dollar in Second Life? No, there will be no class action lawsuits today. Or any other day.