Second Life Sued For Allowing Sale Of Impostor Virtual Goods

There's financial pain now. Content creators lose money to pirates, and LL loses money when talented people quit creating due to repeated piracy. Simply because this may not be apparent to some"ordinary users" (whatever that means) doesn't mean it isn't occurring. Stroker and Munch would not take on the potentially enormous financial costs of a federal lawsuit and the possibly severe negative ramifications to their SL businesses and reputations if so many people hadn't already lost considerable money to LL's failure to enforce their rights.

Ah, see if he has not taken steps to protect his trademark then it is not LL's fault that the trem sexgen became a generic term for sex furniture.

But trademark infringement is only part of it since the document explictly states knockoffs AND trademark infringments.

It is the verbage of the document that could be construed to be anything that looks like his work. That is what knockoff means. It is also sated seperately and in addition to things obtained and resold through piracy; that being copyboted as we know it. From our side we can see where the issue of pirated items has teeth and that indeed LL does make money off of the sale of pirated goods. The document itself goes beyond that and will most likely be denied; or at least I hope so.

I don't think that is an accurate characterization of Stroker's complaint. I think his complaint revolves around two things:

1) People who somehow have illegally gotten a trans copy of his products and sold them as the real McCoy.
2) People who use his trademarked name "SexGen(tm)" in their product descriptions, making it seem like their product *IS* a "SexGen(tm)", rather than just being functionally *like* one ("as good as" or "better than". Trademarks have to be aggressively defended, or you lose them.

He rightfully earned the branding and reputation his products and company developed over the years, just as much as anyone else deserves their branding that they develop. People who illegally attempt to "ride" on that branding and reputation need to have their tails kicked hard-core by LL. It doesn't matter if it is Stroker, or you, or me, or any other creator on the grid.

That said, he doesn't own a patent on "sex furniture", so there's nothing he can do about all the other brands and types that are out there. I don't think he's on about having competition, just competition who is not playing fair and by the law. Nobody deserves to be cheated, no matter how much money they make.

Yes. I think that's pretty close to what I said.

My point, which is apparently difficult to understand, is that if you keep claiming that open source has ZERO to do with this, people will not believe you. It's not zero. We all know it's not zero.

Being at one extreme is no better than being at the other. They're both wrong.

Well, part of protecting his trademark IS burdening LL to do something about it. LL is a service provider who, more or less, facilitates other people to either make and sell their own branded content, or copy and sell someone else's through illegal means. There isn't a DMCA process for Trademark infringement, so filing suit would be the natural course after notification. LL being an enabler as a service provider is liable for contributory trademark infringement, so if he did duly notify them of his intent to sue violators AND LL if they did nothing to stop it, he is well within his rights to take LL to court over it.



It is up to their lawyers and the courts to decide what is actually being sued over and to wrestle with the language of the document, but the intent I read from it has nothing to do with people making competing products. I don't think Stroker is so stupid as to think he is going to stifle all competition with this suit; just so-called "competition" who isn't playing by the rules vis-a-vis copyright/trademark infringement.

I could just be having a bad hair day. Maybe I've had too much caffeine. Perhaps, I really am just an irascible bastard as I have been warned often enough.

But I have to ask what ... the ... f@ck ... is ... *financial pain*?

I have a mental image of my accountant 'regressing' through all sorts of pecuniary traumas on the therapist's couch, scrunched up in an approximation of the foetal state while he reconnects with that original, pure state of a healthy bank balance.

Tell me we're just talking about being ripped-off here

You can't use DMCA for trademark violations. Stroker has apparently been aggressive going after sex bed clones. I seem to remember a sexgen script debacle when LL disabled a widely used open source script along with all the other sexgen assets associated with one line of beds.

Which isn't in dispute because I did not say that.

I said, precisely:

Copybots have nothing to do with open-source viewers.

That you are creating a red herring defense saying that people mean something else when they say copybots is notwithstanding to that fact.

I also said that Open Source has nothing to do with infringing content. That someone takes a program which is open sourced (libsl/libomv is open-source, btw) and modifies it to infringe copyrights has no bearing on the fact that it was open sourced. The implication that was made by the person I originally responded to, along with many others, is that open source CAUSED infringement, which is false, and why I responded in the first place.

The sooner people stop conflating copybots, open-source, open-sourced viewers, copying tools, etc all together with the ACT of actual copyright infringement, as well as defending such ignorance (clue), the better for all concerned.

I would leave. I would be assholes-and-elbows out the door in a real big hurry. It's bad enough I had to divulge personal information just to be able to access adult areas; but the day I have to divulge personal information just to be able to build something and sell it/give it away to somebody is the day I quit."They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin FranklinThe problem with this mindset is that, anyone who uses a system in place to his or her own benefit, then turns around and decries the very same system when other people start using it to their benefit, is a hypocrite.

Now, maybe something good *might* come out of this lawsuit that benefits the community as a whole. But I seriously doubt it. I agree with Mari: "This will not end well."

I class myself as an ordinary user . I pay a tier for the right to come and build, play a bit of trivia socialise and build for fun.

I suggest the people who want to protect their builds do so in a world where copyrights and patents are avaialble. Have these people copyrighted or patented their virtual produce in the realworld ?

As I stated earlier open a copyright and patents office in sl for those who want to protect their works....

Lets see how long it is before they begin to wail about the administrative process they have to go through..and which presumably they couldnt be bothered to complete in r/l.

Ask Maelstorm as it is his/her term. But the obvious answer to me is lost profits due to piracy, both for content creators and for LL.

Thats already started on the xstreet listings batman, star trek, disney etc, all having to come down unless the creator has a licence to produce it in SL and they apply in world as well as xstreet

From here:

https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417&task=knowledge&folderID=345



and from here

https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=22

I think the idea of "no transfer of anything until verified" as an idea has merit. Technically, LL is legally liable in a contributory sense for the actions of all users of its service. However, as a service provider, they can avoid that liability as long as they adhere to some basic precepts of accountability for their users' actions; namely, identification.

I don't think it is too much of a stretch to require that anyone who wishes to distribute content at least be RL verified with Linden Lab, so that, if an issue crops up with being DMCAed or otherwise subpoenaed for the identity of someone who is accused of breaking the law, they can properly proxy their accountability to the correct party.

People would still be able to create and modify other's creations they obtained/purchased while being anonymous; they just couldn't sell/transfer any of it until they gave up their anonymity. For copyright itself to work for everyone, anonymity has to be sacrificed at some point.

People -are- creating goods where a copyrights and patents are available: the US. And as LL does business in the US, it is subject to US laws.

As for the second comment, please read the complaint, which has been linked several times here. Both Stroker and Munch do hold valid copyrights and trademarks on some of their works.

Copyright is automatic. There's no longer any such thing as "copyrighting a product". If it's eligible for copyright, then the copyright exists by the time it's saved on the asset server.

QFT but I do love the barrack room laywers

Rather than create a two-tier world, I'd rather see "no login until verified/PIOF", but WITH a sanity check on the current rules (for example, get rid of the 5 account limit or merge multiple avatars under one account).

that being the case I hope they take those who copied their works to court.....

and SL is slowly strangled by red tape................

Well, as far as copyrights go, they are now "natural", meaning, as soon as you "fix an expression in a medium", you have legal copyright over it, with all rights reserved to yourself. No registration required.

Now, if you want to seek damages in excess of actual damages (statutory damages), or pursue someone for criminal infringement, you have to register your work prior to the occurrence of infringement. Also, when you bring a case as a plaintiff, you have to register the copyright at the time of filing your case anyway. However, natural copyright still applies in terms of when copyright ownership was established, and by whom, so it is still important, even without registration at that time.

:0 this and other similar ideas i've heard are interesting, though i can see a lot of arguing from the free system side (i know me and my friends very early on enjoyed being able to share our first dabblings at creating with each other before most of us went into selling, so i'm not completely sold on 'no transfer', but perhaps - what, 'no money-trading', 'no search/classified listings allowed'?).

but - the obtaining/verifying user info at some earlier point seems a good direction (instead of only when a first dmca is filed, for example ;0) ... although there'd still be grumbling about it, i don't think any of my friends would have minded it before establishing a 'bizness'.

Stroker has. But suing all SL pirates is an impossible task. So now he is going after the entity that has profited and permitted such piracy: LL.

I doubt Stroker and Munch will succeed, although that is just a guess. I do hope, however, that this suit pushes LL to rethink its stance on creators' rights. It needs to find a solution that provides greater security for those who provide SL with its content. This would help make an significant investment in SL more worthwhile.

Preaching to the choir, there; I saw 6/6/6 as doomsday for SL originally; it's just taking a bit longer than I expected to play out.

Still, you're fighting an uphill battle with the "Linden Vision(tm)" of making SL into Web 3.0, so we both know that anonymous access to the grid is here to stay.

Personally, I wouldn't mind the tiering; I don't think it will be divisive, because it is both easy and costless to go from one tier to the other.

I have considered a requirement to have people obtain personal digital certs from a third-party, and use them to sign their content. Only the third party (like Verisign) knows who you are from the cert, so even LL wouldn't have to be involved in it. Then, only signed content could be sold/transferred.

as anyone made this point, previously LL didn't have any firm connection with trading in SL, but now they own Xstreet, doesn't that make it a different ball game?

That is my understanding as well. His complaint, to wit, was that the freebie sex bed script was almost identical to the ones he used in his products, and that they also performed the exact same function - which kind of requires the script to be nearly identical, if it does the same things, but anyway - and that for this reason they were infringing. He very much does want a monopoly on menu-driven sex beds. He won't claim that the menu-driven sex bed itself is his IP in his lawsuit, because the people here are right, such a claim would never stand. But it's clear from what he's written in the past that this is his mindset.

Further, everybody seems to have taken leave of their senses in regards to the potential results of this lawsuit. You all seem to be thinking "Yay, somebody's finally taking on Big Bad and they'll be forced to change things for the better!" I ask again - have you all lost your minds? Are you dreaming? Arguing for a moment that LL will actually change or impliment a new feature (as opposed to changing the TOS for instance), when was the last time LL made a change or came out with a new feature that actually WORKED the way it was supposed to, or that you guys even liked? LL may be forced to change, but to think whatever change happens is going to transform the current landscape into SL Builders' Happy World Land is recklessly wishful thinking. And that's not even the worst of it.

The worst of it is the chilling effect on content creators. I make boats - they use freebie scripts which have been modified by me, but no matter - these scripts contain everything that is necessary and REQUIRED for a vehicle to behave like a boat in Second Life. With the exception of the actual variable numbers themselves (on on a lot of boats even those) every boat maker in Second Life with a working boat basically has this same exact script, whether they used and modified a freebie or whether they actually wrote their own from scratch, it will be the same. So if somebody trademarks a boat whose script is uncannily similar to mine, maybe my already-made boats will be safe - but will I be able to make any new ones? What if I decided to script my boats to have sails that interact with SL wind - there are already such. But if I work out the math and develop my own sailing boats, the scripts will be identical to the ones that already exist. Will I be infringing?

The validity of Stroker's lawsuit begins /and ends/ with people who are selling so-called "SexGen(tm)" beds that aren't really SexGen(tm) beds. I'll tell you what - this lawsuit will have done far worse damage to his mark's reputation than any cheap knockoff did. Assuming one day I end up as an adult av, or create an adult alt, I'll never be buying anything marketed as "SexGen(tm)", real or not.