Sex Gen Removed!

True, well pattern matching behaviour is always going to be problematic and need constant tweaking to be anywhere close to right but it seems harsh to penalise honest people who might want to cash out from their business alt in order to make it a little more difficult for the violators. Sadly that seems to be the trend though, penalise the honest and the dishonest find another way to continue to cheat and violate their way around the roadblocks

These are things we do not yet have full knowledge of. If it was clear, then both Miffy and Lear would be posting in this thread with a link to where the updated "EC" scrubbed versions of the MLP scripts could be purchased on SLEX and everyone would be quickly rebuilding going about their business taking care of customer service. Since neither Miffy nor Lear have chimed in here, it is a safe bet that they are waiting for some kind of word as to what is actually going on and why before they put updated scripts out on the market. Right now nobody has any concrete information beyond the fact that all scripts with "EC" as the creator have been disappered and there's just a lot of jumping to conclusions and speculation.

That's not an argument for a "no resale" flag; that's a good argument for a "license summary" or license notecard in the object description.

I know. It sucks but as long as people can have access to SL the gate is wide open for problems.

There fixed that for you Mac, sadly

That's true, I was thinking of the "no resale" flag as one way to indicate a particular kind of license, but that's a clumsy way of passing a license with the object. Having a way of attaching simple, standard license options with the items would be far better.

You can just cut and paste the MLP scripts from the forum into the world, and then your name will be the creator. Why would you need to buy them from SL Exchange?

Right now nobody has any concrete information beyond the fact that all scripts with "EC" as the creator have been disappered and there's just a lot of jumping to conclusions and speculation.

An embedded license was one of the tracks LL said they were considering after the copybot craze I think. Not that anyone should still hold their breath for it after 19 months, they promised *something* then and delivered nothing.

Not sure what this would solve though. Dishonest people will ignore the license and then the content creator must use the currently available means to get those offenders dealt with. So that leads us back to square one except now we have to deal with the confusion to do with licensing.

It wasn't really intended to solve anything as far as the offenders really, but as a way to permanently embed a license in an item and as an aid for those who wish to be honest.

For instance you could release something as full permission and have an embedded "Free item, not to be resold" license that can't ever be removed. It likely wouldn't stop anyone determined to sell it anyway, but it would be there none the less.

Or if someone gave you a full permission item you either have to trust them if them if they claim it's "free to use", or you have to contact the creator (who may or may not still be around). Or you could look at the license instead and determine whether or not it was indeed "free to use", or something that was intended for embedded resale (a full permission texture/animation for instance).

That can and has been accomplished with a simple notecard. Though most people still prefer to use the No Transfer option instead - so an additional mechanism is unlikely to change that I think.

Ideally we’ll build ways that you can better identify your work as your own so that copying it is not profitable. For example, here are some ideas that we’re pursuing to help you prove your ownership of an idea or object:

* You may have heard us talk about “first use metadata”, that is a time stamp that is attached to your creations, including uploaded textures, that shows first use. First use is an important part of being able to claim copyright ownership. This work is started, and we are committed to completing it quickly.

* We could work to reduce how much avatar/clothing data is downloaded, so that a copy can be made of the baked texture and shape but not the pieces. We’re interested in your thoughts on that option.

* We can reduce incentives to copying content within the system, by preserving the creator attribution such as with creative commons licensing.

* We could create hover text which would act like a garment label does, exposing both the first use metadata and also a brand name, reducing the incentive to copy by making it obvious that copying is occurring. If your work is “signed”, and clearly you developed it first, then the person who purchases the copy is not unlike the person who buys the fake Rolex off the back of a truck. Plus the signature becomes a recognizable asset and could be coupled with a landmark as a form of advertising.

These options allow you to prove that your creation is in fact yours, but ultimately it’s the DMCA process that provides you with the channel to protect your investment. It’s to your benefit to review the government’s rules for filing a copyright and protecting it, posted at http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html. More government-provided information on copyrights can be found here: http://www.copyright.gov.

One example is the concept of first use. Linden Lab is currently making changes to
make it easier to determine who originally created an asset and its creation
date. While much of this data currently
exists, it isn’t displayed in the UI. By
exposing this data, it will be much easier for residents in a conflict to be
able to clearly determine which texture or object was created first,
simplifying conflict resolution for all parties involved.

Another option – which we aren’t working on yet – would be
to offer either a registration or seal program for creators who are willing to
provide additional identifying information and who are committed to not
infringing on other residents’ content. If the finder makes it easy to search for content and locations that
participate in this program, then economic and social pressures combine to
reward creators who respect copyright and punish those who don’t.

Yet another idea – again, we’re not working on this yet,
just talking about it – would be to make copying of all content within SL
trivially easy, but to track appropriate metadata about who’s copied the
content and where it has been reused. Maybe even make that data publicly searchable. By making the act of copying easy, the
incentives to go around or hack the system are greatly reduced and the community
is better able to recognize and respect the wishes of creators. Plus, it would be much easier to implement
important concepts like “undo�? which are incredibly complicated or impossible
when trying to preserve uniqueness.

This is the blog post by Robin Linden they are refering to:

http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/11/13/copyrights-and-content-creation-in-second-life/#more-511




And an interesting one from back in the Copybot days by Cory Linden called "OpenGL, Copying and Stealing"

http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/02/14/opengl-copying-and-stealing/


Just in case anyone not around then wants to see the LL stand on this stuff in the past up to present.

Yes, sounds like they are throwing around ideas and I seem to remember reading this however the licensing is just one of the ideas and at least one of the others is even worse (the floating text thing).

It still does not mean that this quick stab at some options has been thought through properly for in world imapct and I beleive most of my points about licensing are still valid. It might be entirely possible to kill the majority of inworld sales by making licensing mandatory.
There is no denying that at the moment a lot of people in SL feel that when they buy something inworld it belongs to them for that instance. People may not transition at all to the idea they are paying for the right to use the product instead. It might make them feel scammed. Lots of people feel scammed when they buy things that don't work as they expect already, even if the item works as intended. Peoples expectations are a fickle thing.

First use is an important part of being able to claim copyright ownership. This work is started, and we are committed to completing it quickly.

Nobody back then expected any of the "thoughts" to come to fruitation. Once the grumbling settled down we never heard another word about this stuff.

I still can't imagine float text on clothes. That stuff is irritating enough coming from vendors and boxes.. but while you are walking around with a cool outfit on?!? hehe.. that was one of those doomed to fail from the start ideas.

I did like the idea about the seal of approval with more verification. If they had done that, went through with the "trusted scriptors" idea and had creators go through the course to be verified they proposed we may not be seeing this situation today.

But that's all assuming there's any business left for anybody.

I agree with most of what you say but the idea of a verified seal and a verified creators club? That would make it very difficult for the average person to compete with the big content creators because you can be certain there would be a cost involved and/or big delays. After someone has to run all this. No I do not think that is the way forward at all.

When they announced it it really didn't sound like a long process at all.

There was a few "classes", tutorials more like that you would complete, then submit to Linden picked instructors. Once you complete them you were verified.

Even people who normally complain about every move LL makes didn't complain much at all. I have been searching the blog but I can't find the original mention of it.

The potential for abuse is overwhelming in a system like this.

In copyright case resolutions for "hard" media (books, CDs, DVDs, etc), they do not confiscate consumer-purchased copies; the defendant is simply charged the damages for the copies and awarded to the plaintiff.

Why this is different in an online medium, I don't know.

Maybe so..

I dunno. Something has to be done. Something to prevent stuff before or early after it starts...not ripping up the grid after allowing it to go on for so long. Right now it is wide open for abuse as is. Doing nothing as LL has done in the past is worse then trying something that may not work.