3D Copyright and Defamation

[Torianesia Markova]

With the recent increase in the amount of mesh material on SL, there will be a lot of questions regarding copyright.  But also there will be many questions arising focused on the area of defamation.  I know from personal experience that it is very easy to get hot under the collar and fly off without verifying.  I can think of an ad I saw once where they were advertising something they had built but were using items I had crafted as set dressing for their ad.  I had the Abuse report open and ready to go until I calmed down and looked at the add for a third time.

It is imperative that we step back from a situation and carefully check things over before we start flying accusations.  There will be times when things look very similar, but they are not in fact the same.  There are so very many variations of the same inspiration.  I could pull up a hundred pictures of the Statue of Liberty and every last one of them would be original to the creator whether a photographer or artist.

Remember that defamation is just as important to step back and understand as copyright.  Either one can make our Second Life very difficult and should be avoided.

Rules to live by:

1.  Check, check and check again.  And after you have finished checking, check three more times.

2.  Remember that when it comes to building things for a 3D world, most artists take their inspiration from the real world.  Bring up a search engine and see how many variations of  'your' work are out there.  There are truly very few things in this world that are completely original.

3.  Talk to the person first.  If you can't catch them in IM's, try again later.  We are all over the world and our times are all different. 

4.  Step back and remember that people who are long time builders are not likely to start stealing from others as they have a business to run too and they can't afford to damage that business.

5.  BREATHE and if you truly feel the need to make an accusation.  Do so privately through the proper channels.  You may really believe you are right, but if you turn out to be wrong, you damage not just the person you defamed but yourself.

6.  Most important - if you make a mistake and falsely accuse someone, do your best to help correct the damage that was done - it looks better for everyone involved.

FYI:  Cited from Wikipedia on May 13, 2012

Defamation—also called calumny, vilification, traducement, slander (for transitory statements), and libel (for written, broadcast, or otherwise published words)—is the communication of a statement that makes a claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an individual, business, product, group, government, or nation a negative image. This can be also any disparaging statement made by one person about another, which is communicated or published, whether true or false, depending on legal state. In Common Law it is usually a requirement that this claim be false and that the publication is communicated to someone other than the person defamed (the claimant).

[Amethyst Jetaime]

I agree that you should be sure of what your saying before accusing someone of ripping off mesh.  However most of the accusations I have seen is about people bringing in mesh from other worlds that is clearly  a violation of a copyright unless the person selling it has a license that specifically allows them to sell it in SL. 

AR someone you see doing this isn't getting you anywhere.  Only the owner of the copyright can file a complaint through the DMCA process, before LL takes action.  If someone spots content that they think is illegal the proper thing to do is to notify the copyright owner and let them decide what to do from there.

If you see something that is from another 3d world or a character from a movie, book or game etc, and are interested in it, you should always verify it is properly licensed.  If you don't  and the copyright owner files a DMCA, the item will be deleted from your inventory and your only recourse for getting a refund is to go after whoever sold it to you.  Good luck with that because someone that has no integrity and rips off other peoples work isn't going to refund any money to you.

[Dilbert Dilweg]

I agree. Good post and sound advice :matte-motes-big-grin: