Do people care about Content Creator rights?

What I thought you were saying in your post was that no legal copyright protection exists where the infringed work has little market value. That's what I pointed to as wrong, and sorry if I misread it.

When it comes to practical use of copyright law (i.e., do I really want to file a lawsuit and only end up winning $200?), or when it comes to designing an alternative system of protecting work on Second Life (such as the DMCA claims), then you're right that the value of the infringed work is an important element to consider.

I would absolutely love to see a system in Second Life that would protect every work, no matter how small its actual market value is.

If one were pursuing a legal action for copyright infringement, and the value of the infringed work were so small that one might expect maybe a $200 judgment at best, it would be insane to pay a lawyer $100,000.00 to win you a $200.00 judgement. That's a net loss to you of $98,800.00. The law allows you to do it if you wish. You may do it if you have money to burn, or assauging your anger is worth $98,800.00 to you. It would just make absolutely no financial sense.

Likewise, you can't expect Linden Labs to come up a system whereby that costs them a thousand dollars in staff resources to resolve a $50 claim. If your claim is that important, you can burn the money on it, rather than burning their money on it.

That said, to the extent that "Your imagination, your world" (that's the logo, right?) is important enough to Linden Labs that that's the way they market Second Life, they do need to have an effective system that allows these intellection property disputes be resolved without having the parties sue in court.

The fact of the matter is, the Second Life "economy" revolves around these very small businesses that make pocket change (if they turn a profit) selling items for real cents each. Most of these merchants are in it more for the hobby than the money. Frustrate them enough that it just isn't fun for them to run their Second Life businesses, and your Second Life economy dies.

Plus, a lot of otherwise talented, professional artists who could participate in the Second Life economy, adding quality items that compete with the high-end products and drive down the prices (skins, for example) aren't going to get involved in a place like Second Life where the stealing is easy and the remedies are expensive or none.

So it is absolutely in Linden Labs's interest to act to protect content creators from theft (infringement).

It's just impracticable, unreasonable, and just not smart to do so with a "damn the costs" attitude. Linden Labs quickly runs out of money, folds, and Second Life is gone.

If those were the things you were talking about, Yumi, then absolutely I agree with you there.

I made a note to bring this up in this thread, but forgot about it .

http://virtuallyblind.com/2008/04/15/linden-lab-dmca/ (if you're not familiar with VirtuallyBlind, the writer is an IP lawyer.. and yes, everyone is a lawyer online I personally do appreciate his view on topics, it's an interesting read regardless)

Brief summary: LL may *possibly* not be doing enough to keep its status as a common carrier by not handling DMCA filings expeditiously, and more importantly by only removing content that is actually rezzed rather than wiping it from *all* inventories and the asset server (Cocoanut made a similar objection a few pages back).

As far as legality goes, I entirely agree: it's not only the copier's copies that are infringing, but every copy bought by unsuspecting consumers is infringing as well and all of it should go.

Imagine for a moment that the skins in the current skin "drama" are infringing and the copyright owner demands that all of it must be deleted, what happens to consumer confidence if "total deletion" becomes reality and common practice? It wouldn't be about buying a ripped skin for L$50 from a shady "back alley" store in SL where you can make a case for "you knew it was stolen, serves you right", but people who paid L$1k/skin from a store that everyone thought was legitimate. (I'm not passing judgement on that particular skin seller, but *if* it were all true)

If it ever happened to a popular texture store whose textures are used by dozens of content creators, you'd suddenly be faced with hundreds of products that become worthless because the texture was deleted from the asset server. Consumers would blame the creator who's only "crime" would be to have the misfortune of trusting that the retail textures they bought were legitimate.

Content creators could find themselves with an ever larger problem than they currently face: instead of tackling "who's copying my work and how do I stop them" it would become "how can I prove to my potential customers that what I sell is my work and won't vanish in a month".

Older, larger and well-known stores wouldn't fair too badly in such a climate of inherent distrust, but it could decimate the lesser known creators or new entries. They'd have no reputation, they could sell everything so cheap that people wouldn't care if it turns out that it's stolen and hope that people eventually start to trust them so they can grow larger / sell more expensive items.

The above only as a cautionary "be careful what you wish for". You don't have to agree with my "doomsday" view, but if LL ever starts deleting things from inventory (which I don't think they actually *can* from everything I ever hear from them) there is a point where it will make people hesitant to keep throwing away money on items from stores they think are legitimate but later vanish from their inventory and you have to ask if you're worse or better of than the current situation where infringing sold copies keep on existing in people's inventory.

OK .. Microsoft were just today ordered to pay 1.7 Billion dollars for anti something or other, well it was not allowing fair competition.....screw your closed source and your protection wrappers, We as open sourcers are the backbone of change and innovation, whether you like it or not , we really are the innovators and we will always will be.. Coders create all your eventual content. graphic artists in the extreme we may not be, but we create the platform you exist on......I still hold my thrice arguments , do you broadcast into SL ... do you DL music/movies,,,,, do you DJ into SL ....(remember you as rebecca are just a single entity... you make your claims..i or you cannot prove or disprove.) We too are intelligent and we to have an understanding of copyright and other such different countries laws.. stop whining as long as ppl continue to broadcast established artists into SL of which I'm one...without said broadcast license wake up ..smell the coffee and move on ...... things are changing ...
I notice a thread which has been going on now for a couple of weeks outside of sl ... Skin theft.. I note also because the said thief is a SL resident there is no IPT hoo ha going on... .In the eyes of the creators of all threads IPT is just that... BUT because this scenario is involving a SL resident then rebuttal is not necessary .
Please at least if you are going to argue ....then argue in a legitimate way ..n

Your argument really is now getting to a stage where its incredible maybe you should stop trying to be the all encompassing vocabularian and bring yourself to reality, now someone who is respected in SL has been accused and pretty much damned as being a content thief if that was a noob to term a phrase you would be jumping all over them, but since its a member of the clique people are rallying around and are blinkered to the facts.
I will leave you too research the stolen skins story.
Again ...SWINGS & ROUNDABOUTS..
I'm an artist I lose money every single day through downloads..
WHY ARE YOU SO DIFFERENT
Stop arguing with me ... my experience far outlays yours .. instead talk to me and at least try and find a common ground !!
But noo... ..

OMG ... DESPERATION!!!!!!!!!

People that are concerend with IP rights, include code and software, right next to art, music or video or 3D objects or anything else made by a person who is entitled to make a living off of their creative work.

If you work for Microsoft or other big software company, you can get nicely paid for that effort. Innovation is not just the domain of people who believe in open source. The big software companies employs lots of people and it is competitive hiring, the big companies want the best programmers, the most innovative.

Intellectual Property is here to stay, it's a thorny issue, and coders or artists in SL are only going to have time to pursue SL as hobby, if they aren't earning an income in the process. Loner Creators finding people selling their products or giving them away for free, is naturally going to upset them. Being called Whiners etc., is not very helpful.

I don't know which Skin theft situation you are talking about or which person in the "clique" you are refrrring to but i doubt people who are concerend about IP are going to excuse any theft.

There seems to be a mechanism for "blacklisting" content in the database; I even gather that some notorious canceled griefer accounts have had all their content blacklisted. My understanding is that this content can't be retrieved by residents with it in their Inventories, which would seem effectively the same as it being deleted, unless I'm missing something.I think this is a very important point. Above all else, SL is LL's business--and a business driven by revenue from *us*. One could easily dream up an expensive enforcement regimen, the net effect of which would be to so increase tier and membership costs as to drive away residents and drive out of business the content creators it was intended to protect. So, however "right" such protection might be, obtaining it could be a grave mistake.

There are a couple of twists to this, though. One is that LL is uniquely situated to assist in protection of IP rights, by virtue of owning the servers and all the data retained on and transactions processed by them. That is, without LL's active participation, content providers are denied access to information they would need in order to detect and assess possible infringement prior to legal action. It would still be a mistake for LL to invest disproportionate resources to provide such information, and anyway LL is under no obligation to provide it unless subpoenaed, but if we're taking cost/benefit seriously, almost surely only LL is situated to do anything cost-effective about the problem.

The other twist is something I hinted at before: the possible advantages of offering creators a separate, paid-for service to get some sort of help protecting their content. I think this may finesse the "common carrier" problem, as well as limit LL's liability for the inevitable shortfalls of any such service (especially if the service is offered by another legal entity, but given what services are routinely offered by "common carrier" telecoms, I doubt that's even necessary).

On the matter of open source: this is not germane. It is at once confused, confusing, and counterproductive to advancing the topic at hand. Whether one agrees with that assertion or not, consider it free advice: dissing or defending open source does not advance any argument here.

Welcome to There.com, they have exactly such mechanism.
As for copy catching mechanism-how it should you work you think?
texture watermarks?

p.s.permission system needs to be overhauled anyway. For example, CC/Opensource licenses,'fullperm-but-no-resell',etc. Watermarks for textures (they CAN be circumvented but if there is no reason for that...), also, making it more easy to obtain full-perm-but-no-resell(except for 0 L$) copy (this mean that nobody except original creator could get money from such a thing AND make almost all other issues with 'legitimate copybots' as some are naming them, non-issue), this is radical but still).

Also, situation with client-side backups should be sorted out in some way

Not necessary. Have you considered possibility that resources needed will be just too much?

First problem, how to identify cobybot?identifying libsecondlife-based clients (which is not too easy anyway) will have problems(there are legitimate used) and will have no sense becouse _regular_ client can be modified. Possible closing down sources of regular client and implementing Warden-style protections will also have not too much result.
See http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/18/1950203 for how 'good' warden works with glider.


You think that SecondInventory(www.secondinventory.com) doesn't have ANY legitimate uses?


May be not. But problem is that closing client and implementing warden-style protections DOES NOT HELP
(there are other ways, some of them (GlIintercept-style, except that this can be done without separate program which can (in theory) be detected) allows to capture only textures(i.e. skins,etc), others could allow prim copy too. Going TPM way and require encryption up to video memory will result in Vista-only SL requiring DX10-only cards and still could be circumvented(in this case it will be really difficult, but do yu really want to have Vista-only SL requiring latest video card?)
Yes those methods ARE difficult, but it's possible to automate them. And in the end almost all of effects will be wasted.

p.s.What if someone thinks about consumer protection laws which will affect both LL and creators(I speak about non-delivery issues,inventory loss,etc here)

You certainly are limiting Second Life. On every point you are using a "can't be done" theme. If I am to agree with you that it 'cant be done," then I think "Second Life" Back to the Drawing Board" should be the new motto, since the existing model may have been a house built on sand and can't be fixed.

All of the issues you mention are valid, but it could be fixed one way or another.

Problem is that almost all possible fixes are just raise bar, not solving problem in full.
I'm not limiting SL. Many things described are not SL issue to begin with.
(c) protection is rather common issue and many people/organizations has same needs.
If we stand on issue that _ALL_ (c) must be protected when all code down to hardware must support this idea becouse if it's possible to run untrusted code - protection can be broken.

One example: Let's suppose code closed, 'sl-warden' added,etc.
But SL must run on wide range of computers, running different video drivers.
If it ever to run under linux-there are workable opensource linux video drivers. How you suppose to prevent driver saving all textures which are given to render?And simple nothing can be done about it.And such patch to driver can be developed just for fun. Block Linux too? Windows also allows custom drivers (mirror driver can be(rather difficult, will require developing of special 'hacking' mirror driver but possibe).

There IS one solution which could solve almost all problem. Fully-implemented TPM chip and it's support code. Here I mean implemented not as in Vista but rather like as described in MS Research's Singularity OS design documents. Except that it's unlikely that this will be done. Too much havoc for all.
And if this will implemented, it will be implemented not only for SL -. And incetives to hack this system will be too much.
One possible example of such technology is consoles, they have almost same ideas. How many games with user-generated content you have here?How many _pirated_ games(=DRM protection simple broken) are on consoles?

And if return to reality where SL client is open-source and SL's main attraction is ability to have UGC this can not be done
.
More interesting path (I think) lies in accepting ideas that:
- content CAN be copied
- users are generally prefer paying for content if it's better or at least equal to 'pirated' alternative (in case of RL DVD's for example, this is not the case)
- users can make a mistake and buy not from original sources,becouse they simple doesn't know

and do things in several ways:
- implemented texture fingerprinting (aka digital watermarks) on all texture content, waterprint is implanted on upload, contains original creator AV name and possible short license. LL viewer(and all alternative,at least by default) should allow fingerprint checking on Inspect (possible also on item transfer) and warn if creator from fingerprint and creator from props does not match (it's possible they are not match - for example if new SI's code will be used). Something like that should be developed for prim-based too. (for anims/sound fingerprint code arleady exist). Possible, this can be done as closed source plugin(like QT support-but this mean that LL and NOT authors of alternate viewers must do that due to licensing issues).That is not too much of work (except that watermark support code likely needs to be found...). And this CAN be done, and doesn't introduce technical problems. Why it wasn't done YET? Yes, issue with 'who was first to upload that licensed image' and like, but if there is no _automated_ actions on watermark issue this is not a problem I think.

- gently advice anyone who make alternate viewers to LEAVE this option default (possible even leave it as always-available non-option).

- not issue artificial borders like 'we protect our rights and make XX no-transfer,we also doesn't allow returns becouse they are no-transfer'(right, and you give users excuse for their fair use rights under copyright laws). It's not user problem. Either transfer/no-copy (and mod if item need it-like shoes,or scripts instead of mod) or copy/no-transfer. Having at least something like support(in case item really needs it).

- have something to tell in case of item non-delivery/item loses due to grid issues. (Something at least like Xcite!'s policy)

(I'm not trying to dismiss your suggestion, just offering a perspective on it)

Copybot recreates prims that are an exact copy of the original by creating prims with the exact same parameters as the original, which means that the texture on the prims isn't a ripped-and-uploaded copy, it's the original texture applied by texture key. If you checked it with your "Inspect" suggestion the watermark "owner" and the texture uploader would match since it's using the original texture rather than a ripped copy.

As far as clothing and skin is concerned, I'm not entirely convinced that someone can't do the same: reuse the original texture rather than a ripped-and-uploaded copy. If someone knows of a "it's not technically possible because..." post somewhere then I'd appreciate that .

I really have no idea how many copiers rip vs reuse textures but the effectiveness of your suggestion does depend on it (even if only a minority "rips" that doesn't mean there's no point to it, just that you should be aware of its limitations).

As far as the "copybot way" goes, that could be a "simple" matter of treating client input as inherently untrusted. If the client says "I apply the texture with UUID to that face", the sim could check to make sure that that texture is actually present in inventory before allowing it.

(Which would be bypassed by using llSetTexture which is more difficult to limit since it would break legitimate content)

I knew how it works -.
Inspect in this case will show that watermark "owner" and item creator are different.
This will be interesting for many people to know. (After all Inspect can show something like:list of creators of components of this item:... , list of creators of compoments according to watermarks)
Basically, my suggestion is make it real easy to detect _potential_ violations (after that either person decide not to buy(provided that there is no explanation from seller, seller's notecard givers(which ARE in almost all 'real' shops I visited,but NOT in 'fullperm' shops I visited(may be I don't knew many of them...) something like 'this item includes textures from <....>').
Also, if such code will work reliably, later server-side addition can be done,to prevent pairs of wrong 'creator'/watermark hash to be transferred (this way it will be impossible to SELL content which is 100% sure to be pirated). This can also be option to 'initial' creator(i.e. invokable without DMCA request, limits can be put to prevent abuse,and wrongful invokation(like in situation with external non-exclusive license) could mean revoking invokation. This additional idea has a problem - it _will_ put load in LL support to deal with wrongful invokation of such feature.



I think it's technically possible. There isn't too much difference between various textures. When I speak about textures I also mean skins/(non-prim) clothing too.
Also, I don't think there is too much difference in end result if texture grabbed by key a

Yes, and, after all, if client has key somewhere he can download it, and re-upload automatically. So such check doesn't make too much sense.

Regarding LL position, for me it looks like even if they _can_ technically do what, they have no _free_ resources to investigate idea(grid stability,mono,Dazzle -,etc). May be best course of action will be find watermarking code with can be used under some-opensource license (BSD or dual GPL/commercial could be best here _i_ think) and implement patch for that function. After that,talk LL into accepting it.
I don't think anyone could ay that such funcionality is not needed and/or can cause additional problems.

I can't work out whether this is sarcasm; I hope so though, since that is precisely what the definition of theft is - the dishonest appropriation of property with with the intention permenantly to deprive the owner of it.

This is one of reasons of disagreement in Intellectual Property(well, or Imaginary Property, which make more sense according to some people).
In physical world it's impossible (yet) to make exact copy of something without using rather significant resources. But this thing is possible with information, cost of copying is near zero(except first copy, first copy can be rather expensive). And at least some people thinks that they rights to use near zero copying cost and rely on rules on handling 'real' property. And given the fact that more and more things now cannot be used without 'information' which controls them it's even more of a mess.


p.s. Those things must solved somehow, current situation is not good, but making IP almost fully equivalent to physical property is not good too (becouse it is not, and copies ARE made in process of working with it, some copies cannot be NOT made). Something must be done.

Hi Folks

I've been thinking about the problem for a while, and I've just now actually written up what I see as a potential partial solution on my blog at www.neilrobinson.wordpress.com -

Its not a total salvation one stop fix but its a damn good start, would love to get some feedback and ideas?

Thanks for reading,

Neil.

As far as I'm aware, you _do_ already have to verify in order to cash out.

First, that if somebody DONT want to cash out (and for example buy sims instead,profiting for them in some other way)?
Second, you have, using LL, but there are alternate exchanges (SLEX,Robox for example).

Third, even considering first two, idea can work, at least partially. And weak point could be worked around in some way too, without making _additional_ problems.

May be someone - should create issue in JIRA(but please, with _relevant_ _technical_ discussion,NOT WITH 'thieves must be banned on moment copy is made no matter that and no matter if this possible at all'/'information was,must and be free always so screw up,(c) defenders' kind of discussion(which could easily turn it into another flamed jira issue).