What to do about content theft?

[Nymph Zenith]

Just a bit of history, My name is Nymph Zenith.  I've created See no evil over five years ago and pioneered a lot of demon and dark designs in sl.  I was one of the first to create dark  and infernal skins.  I've had ups and downs in secondlife but the shop has been years and years of hard work and sleep deprivation.

 

The worst part is the content theft and how easy it is for less then desirables to steal and sully the hard work creators on secondlife have , then sell it dirt cheap for a few measly lindens it makes me rather ill.

 

 

This might get deleted but my abyssal line was one of the first in second life of it's kind when it was released.  https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Abyss-Skin-mens/161694

This was almost a year of hand drawn art and a lot of fussing, it hurts to see it taken and cheapened like this.  It was released as an original, thurs june 14th 2007 and very well received with rave reviews.

 

This link was given to me https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Drow-2-skin/2448877

 

I'm sad that linden labs has disabled the ability to report content theft on the marketplace.....

 

 

I'm holding back new work for now, because I'm tired of creations being stolen...

 

Yes dmca is being filed, etc etc.

 

 

*if this is deleted , sorry but I needed a place to air my frustrations.

[Damien Avedon]

That's a ripoff for certain.  Both have a pronounced linea alba which would be unlikely were they two different artists' work. 

Keep the pressure on the dmca, that's all you can do.

[Clarissa Lowell]

Sorry to hear this.

Thieves bite the big kazoo.

[Vegro Solari]

Could I share with you what personally I would do it if were my hard work being ripped off?

I'd first hold myself a small celebration to affirm that I'm what other people only want to become and admire enough to blatantly rip me off. The confidence they have about selling the ripped work speaks volumes more about the marketable quality & relevance of the item than the fanciest blogger's review.

Being ripped is a great gift, only you have to be generous enough to accept it all.

I'd secondly, devote a day or two of focused attention to my original product, making sure it's got all the subtle marketing touches it needs to succeed, far superceding the imitators (legit competitors) and the more blatant counterfeitors.

I'd thirdly smile.  And fourthly, on a very optional basis, hire someone to either pursue DMCA takedowns for me related to this, or send out scaremonger "our legal departmet is onto you" notices to the more blatant guys. The outcome of said activities would be totally irrelevant, LL takes it down- fine. They don't - fine!

Using this recipe, I would free myself from worry and resentment, and as a creator, focus on my creating again.  So many new things to invent and create, that only you can do, and that others are in fact just begging to imitate! I would gradually or suddenly, more and more feel the comfort and deep satisfaction, as you just let go of the mentally corrupting sense of financial entitlement, and choose to create unfettered again.   Thanks for reading!

[LuciaRiley]

Try reporting it or doing this http://secondlife.com/corporate/dmca.php

[Jennifer Boyle]

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Vegro Solari wrote:

I'd thirdly smile.  And fourthly, on a very optional basis, hire someone to either pursue DMCA takedowns for me related to this, or send out scaremonger "our legal departmet is onto you" notices to the more blatant guys. The outcome of said activities would be totally irrelevant, LL takes it down- fine. They don't - fine!

 

One option that doesn't get talked about much is to serve LL with a DMCA subpoena demanding the RL contact information of the alleged infringer.  Unless they, or the subject, are willing to file a motion in US District Court to quash the subpoena, they have to give you the information.  Then you can send your letter to the real person, if there is one.

[Lizard Howl]

This is the Land forum.

Your post should go here instead: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Merchants/bd-p/Merchants

[Richie Kanto]

Content theft using programs designed solely to duplicate virtual objects (copy boting) is a huge problem here in Second Life getting almost no attention from Linden Labs and driving out most of the good creators.

Smiling and being happy your work is popular is not a solution and really shows a total lack of understanding. The hoops LL makes a person go through in filing a DMCA shows they are more interested in protecting the practice of copy boting (to allow for low priced goods here in Second Life) than in protecting the hard work of content creators.

Ultimately, only LL can solve the copy bot issue, and until they wake up and see it as a threat to their business good content creators will continue to leave Second Life while LL spends its time and resources breaking the Marketplace, creating voice morphing, programing to allow residents to rename their avatar, and adding in Linden Homes and Virtual Realms (programs which even a first grader can see take residents away from mainland instead of trying to interest them in staying in what was once the reason everyone wanted to be here).

And yes... this clearly isn't a posting for the land forum, but, all people who make a business of selling land in Second Life should be concerned that their customers, people like the content creator who posted here, are finding it harder and harder to deal with the total lack of Linden Labs to see where their business focus should be and take care of their customers. Content is the backbone of Second Life... once good content creators go we're going to see a world where the copy boters are busy undercutting each other in price to try to get on top, and, falling prices and people leaving Second Life aren't going to sell a lot of land.

[Stella Gravois]

Whatever you did, it must have helped... the rip off is gone from the MP, the link is dead )

[Timothy McGregor]

Actually, not even Linden Lab can really solve the copybot issues, or the issue in general of copying textures from in-world, which is what this product, being a skin, primarily is. The problem is that there are no underlying security mechanisms in OpenGL which provide for protecting against this kind of theft, nor is there any practical way to detect, track and ban unauthorized clients from saving these textures outside of the grid once they are downloaded for rendering. 

The lack of security is inherent in the OpenGL platform, not in Linden Lab's product. As has been often pointed out during these discussions, which have taken place now close to ten years, in Second Life, because of the nature of the OpenGL environment itself, if you can see it, you can steal it. There is nothing Linden Lab can do to stop it. 

When technology gets to the point where we can encrypt everything "to the glass", content theft will be orders of magnitude more difficult to achieve. Until then, legal process is the only remedy.