Sex Gen Removed!

Creator? You mean uploader?

Just because someone created a prim doesn't mean it didn't come from a copybot.
Just because someone uploaded an animation doesn't mean they created it.
Just because someone uploaded a texture doesn't mean they created it.
And so on...

There are precious few ways to prove that you own the copyright on something or that you are properly licensed regarding content that someone else created.

The only thing I can think of would be to register everything with the copyright office and providing links in your store.

Everyone can say "sure, I created this". It's meaningless.

so anyone who has bought items with these in it can get in trouble?
if they don't post on the blog or in some kind of notice how can anyone get in trouble?
they are just deleting things and gonna cause a big stir with residents that have no idea what is going on right now..
i can't imagine how many customers are giving creators crap right now because this is happening without a warning..
i have a feeling there is gonna be a rush in the forums with tons of questions about ..where did my sexy walk go or my animation this or that..
a lot of creators are just now finding out they had bought something that was black market..
a lot still don't know they did..someone needs to make an announcement or something because it's gonna get nasty i can feel it..

this sounds more like someone deciding to do something while mom and dad are gone for the weekend..
oh you mean i wasn't supposed to touch thaaaaaaat button..oh o.k..

Im sent, 3 days/weeks/months later no response..................................

Err.... there was *nothing* illegal about the BSD licensed MLP script that LL removed from my stuff.

The only difference between Miffy's, Eva's, and now my version of the MLP scripts is the name in the creator field.

Some very interesting reading here. All in all I am pleasantly suprised by the proactive responses towards content theft. That being said, I am very pessimistic that LL may have removed or intentionally borked an MLP script set because we DMCA'd or reported it. There are just too many variations of UUID's in terrabytes of data for them to accomplish that.

On occasion we have filed reports for MLP systems that use our "SexGen" trademark, but only after contacting the owner and informing them of our desire for them to not dillute our mark. The vast majority of builders are unaware that the name is trademarked (Kleenex, Coke, Tylenol) and are cordial and responsive. We have gotten a few "Bugger Off!" replies however. Those are typically the ones that we report. Trademarks do not require a DMCA to be removed btw.

We have however had a rough time eliminating a BIAB that keeps popping up with the name "SexGen". It is indeed a 62 anim set that was comprised of stolen/unlicensed animations from Craig, Nym and Johan. The original distributor's last name was Hax.

But again..I would be VERY suprised if LL removed all instances.

I would highly suggest that if the OP or anyone were to consider a multi-pose anim system, that they have it custom made or at least looked over by an experienced LSL Scriptor. Many of the older antiquated scripts are severely laggy and no longer supported by the creators. Just my $L.02 worth.

To the OP...I empathize with your situation, IM me IW and I will drop some full perm anims on you. I can't offer up 62 sets, but I can get you started anyways.

Please be proper ... SEXGEN is not going anywhere. What you are talking about is the fake SexGen that people have been pawning off as the real thing. Please speak about the right product.

For the record... I fully support Stroker's right to go after people using his trademarks, and I apologize if in any way I made it seem like he was going after people using the MLP, and MLP2 scripts, and not just people using his trademark.

^5

So I have discovered that I have one of these beds in my inventory. It shows "Eva Capalini" as the creator, and contains animations with names listed as stolen by someone earlier in the thread. It's just been sitting in my inventory for a long time because, quite frankly, I don't like the bed. (And even knowing the work of some of the animators listed, and generally knowing them to do good work, the animations that were apparently stolen for the bed weren't the best animations to be stolen.)

Of course, I had to rez it to verify that it was the contraband bed. So I'm still able to rez and use freely the object.

So I seem to have exactly what was stolen and at issue here. So there is no way for Linden Labs to identify that this is in my inventory and delete it? I mean, Second Life has just eaten some of my legitimate inventory before. Linden Labs can't get out something that shouldn't be there? And the current policy is just that I can re-rez it (if I wanted to rez it) to my hearts content after Linden Labs does its initial sweep of getting it off the grid?

Wow, Linden Labs just has no way to enforce its intellectual property policies. That's shameful.

I'm going to just hope that we haven't heard the full story, and that deleting it from the grid was phase one, and deleting it from inventories will be the soon-to-be-implemented phase two.

Well no we really are not talking about any fake Sexgen.

What we are talking about are the open source MLP and MLP2 scripts that happened to have Eva as the creator being totally removed from any objects that happened to be rezzed inworld.

In this instance, Kitty, I assure you that if you IM the 3 animators I mentioned above, you will get a response within a day (allowing for time zone differences), and you will get a clarification of the status of their anims used in that pirated set.

That's just it... these scripts were not "stolen" in any way.

From the MLP readme

*blinks*

I think you quoted me out of context the first time ...

The bit you quoted from me was about the general case where if LL's new policy is indeed to remove all infringing content regardless of who, where and what then you run into the issue that there isn't any way to verify if something you want to buy is perfectly alright or bound to vanish sometime in the near/distant future.

I wasn't talking about the bed, that seems clear-cut and it's also much easier to prove that something *is* infringing than to prove that it isn't and the latter is what is needed and currently lacking.

like someone said earlier i don't think this has to do with the SexGen suit..
i am hearing lots of little things missing from products in different groups..mostly animations..
things like walks and poses from AO's that have nothing to do with furniture and different things..
if i do have something i had bought and someone made it using someones elses hard work i do hope it leaves my inventory but i would like to know in some way what it was with either a list in the blog of items related or something so i can clean out these things..

as much as i spend on my things i don't think it's gonna happen though because i don't really buy full perm things and do all my shopping mostly with well known creators..
it just sucks for the people that are the unaware victims in all this that spent so much and put in so much hard work and for those people that had their hard work stolen as well..

everyone feels things like this but the thef and thats the really sad part of it all..

In a long and detailed converstaion I had with one of the Lead Programmers at SLCC '06 I was told that it is physically impossible to remove all instances of a UUID due to the sheer volume of data the asset server contains. That type of spidering would lag the grid to a crawl. (Hmmmm)

Since it is very simple to re-establish a fresh UUID, that aspect alone makes it very unlikely anything will ever be irradicated from inventories and therefore make it a waste of time and resources to persue a database takedown.

However, I do know that considerable strides have been made in the server architecture over the last few years and there may very well be a effective filtering capability now.

Most likely this scenario is just another borked content anomaly.

Well, from what I gather, different things have been stolen. One is a trademark infringement on the trademarked "SexGen." The bed I have does not have the words SexGen on it, and I don't remember if it was sold as a SexGen bed when I bought it. (It was a year ago, and my main purchase consideration was "wow, this is cheap, I'll snap it up."

Then apparently some or all of the animations inside it have been stolen, according to a list posted in this thread.

The scripts are not stolen, it seems, and to our knowledge, the build and the textures are not stolen. The bed shows Eva Capalini as the creator.

So I guess that, to take care of the infringing material in my possession, the bed (as a collection of prims) wouldn't need to be deleted, nor the scripts, just the animations inside them.

Though it's most likely that if I have this bed with the particular animations inside them, those animations are stolen. Though there is an outside chance that I bought the bed, removed all of the illegal animations inside it, and replaced it with legal copies of the same animations.

So maybe it's not necessarily the easist thing in the world to deal with.

But didn't anyone making "Your World, Your Imagination" consider these issues before now?

"...But didn't anyone making "Your World, Your Imagination" consider this issues before now?"

Umm..in a word. No.

A borked content anomaly that removed every script with Eva listed as the creator? (or
Loni Arado in the other thread)

I think if it was just a bork, there would be far more content creators affected and not just the small handful it seems to be.

Well, borked content anomaly or not, a friend of mine just finished making some beds using Eva's scripts and those beds no longer have any scripts in them. So, the scripts have been deleted from in-world content for whatever reason.

There was something dodgy about Eva Capalini.

I don't really know the whole story, only snippets of things I've heard in passing. For instance, apparently that salsa set (27 Latin Salsa Full Perm + Poseball Script) that has her as the creator (to Kitty's point), was just generic and not very good BVH stuff that she uploaded. Not that there's anything particularly dodgy about that, just that the real animators looked down on it, as you would.

And there was, I hestitate to say this lest I'm remembering or heard wrong, some connection to a lot of stolen goods, either directly or through intentional or inadvertent association with fencers of stolen goods in SL.

Eva capalini's profile no longer shows up in search under People, though it still shows under the All search, which being google, is possibly cached.

It would appear that for some reason that profile and everything associated with it has been terminated.

I am hearing reports, though, that if you edited and saved any notecards or scripts with Eva's name on them, that those emerged unscathed (because their UUID changed.)

I think I also heard that Eva was possibly one of a few alts belonging to one person?

But practically speaking, how can we--or, rather more importantly--LL tell whether the full-perm copies of those anims that we have are legal or not? I'm sure I have legal full-perm copies of most of the Craig Altman anims listed because I've gradually bought most every red ball in that store. So *I* know they're legal. But if I put them in a prim and throw a script into it, how does LL know whether they're the good or evil anims? (Of course, if I sell them full perm it automatically would be evil, since it's a violation of the license I have with Bits and Bobs. In fact, if I don't rez them, neuter their perms, and take them back into Inventory before putting them into a resale product, I've violated the terms--and b0rked setting the slam bit, so they won't be properly protected.)

In contrast, the NyteRave Studios full perms have a license agreement that in fact forbids any use of the animations in a scripted product like MLP because they have to be resold only in the (slightly brain-damaged) poseball in which they are purchased. (This is why I don't own many of those: can't legally embed them in my own scripted prim.)

(I'm embarrassed to admit that I don't know anything about Johan's license agreements.)

I'm certainly not arguing that illicit copies of animations should be resold with impunity. I'm just worrying about the potential disaster of every object containing one of the listed animations getting disappeared in another night of long knives.

the more i hear of different unreleated items being missing today the more i am really thinking it is just that..something borked in the system and not targeting a certain one thing..

I think this is more likely an ill thought-through decision on LL's part.

"We have a resident who has a lot of content that is infringing and we have a bunch of DMCAs. We need to remove the content ASAP."
"Can't we just remove anything she created from in-world?"
"Great idea!"

They probably never stopped to consider that there would an issue with things she created that aren't infringing and are being used in entirely unrelated and non-infringing other residents' creations.

(OK, I think enough people have mentioned the name that I don't need to truncate it to initials any more.)

On looking at that profile for Eva Capalini, the picks are interesting. They are:

Coincidence that the other main thread about items suddenly going missing is regarding sculpty textures...?

Or am I over-analysing?

Edit: Just been to the first pick, and there's no store at that location. The location for the second pick returns a 'privacy setting' if you use inworld search, and a 'no such key' error if you use a world.secondlife.com search.

Well the MLP2 scripts I have with Eva listed as the creator, were all (or most of them) modified by Lear Cale and others, and I added a few changes myself in my copies and they all went poof.