Marketplace Scam - Beware!

[Phil Deakins]

You make a good point about the few who would be unable to have their PIOF or a premium account but, imo, it would be far better to restrict marketplace sellers to those who have their PIOF or a premium account. Yes, a few would be hurt but it would stop a lot of the theft that the marketplace allows. It's one of those things where you can't satisfy everyone and, of those choices, my view is that it's better to prevent the theft than to allow it so that a few people can continue selling in the marketplace.

[Trinity Yazimoto]

so since you can enable PIOF and delete them just after, or pay a premium account for one month and stop it after, what do you suggest ? we also block those pp from the mp if they delete their PIOF the day after creating the mp or if they stopped their premium account ? LL invest in a software that will check that at everytime for every mp store owner ?

I agree with Perrie, the copyboting is still a tiny part of the MP activity.. then... we will all pay the price for this.. i m not ok for this.. 

i would rather agree for a store inworld is asked for a mp store, (even a tiny stall inworld that you pay only 15 l$ weekly), bec on top it would be more fair for all the ones who use their energy and money in an inworld store. But i dont agree for PIOF or premium... PIOF wont stop copyboting.. certainly not... bec these copybotters need to cash out the money soon or later, so they enable PIOF from time to time to do it... 

copybot, or intellectual property infrigement, is part of the internet... we know this, and it is at every level of creativity.. bec of the nature of the internet, it wont never be possible to stop it... we just can be vigilant, and maybe do like the OP of this thread did.. tell it when we see it, denounce it, and use the way we have like report, flag and DMCA. LL cant deny them and is always forced to take action then....

but more excessive security mesures are always smelling bad and in the end never protect anyone but just kill the poor last freedoms we have.

[Phil Deakins]

Yes. Every time a user removes their PIOF or ends their premium account, LL could programmatically check if the user has a marketplace store, and remove it, or give the user a limited time to remove it. LL wouldn't need to continually check every store. It only needs a single user be checked when s/he removes their PIOF or premium account. That triggers the check, and it wouldn't happen very often. It's not a difficult thing to do.

It would be more difficult to programmatically check that every seller in the marketplace has an inworld sales area.

I'm not talking about stopping copybotting. I'm only talking about the ease of being able to sell stolen stuff in the marketplace, and LL's failure to do much about it. They even take a cut of the ill-gotten gains. It's LL's fault. They created the means to do it, and they profit from it.

I've been dead against LL's marketplace from the beginning, and dead against the unscrupulous way that LL handled it. It shouldn't exist at all, so it's very easy for me to suggest limiting its seller use to 'preferred' users. And I seriously do think its use should be limited to 'preferred' users, just like other things in SL are limited to 'preferred' users.

A few years ago, there was talk from LL about a system of accredited creators, if that's the right word, so limiting who can sell in the marketplace isn't a million miles away from thinking that's already been done inside LL.

[Trinity Yazimoto]

well instead of the piof or premium system, i would prefer the accredited creators thing..

pp would need to register as creator, so they would be on a list. then, maybe like the old age verification system, pp would need to verify their identity. why not ? maybe the fact to be on a list should discourage some copybotters..

but really i think that we wont never stop it bec its internet.. and as i said, less freedom in the name of stoping some nefarious pp is not acceptable for me..

but about the premium needed solution, imho it goes aggaisnt all that is SL... a world with contents made by his users.. Then it will be "a world with contents made by his premium members" and it does a huge difference in the SL's soul.

[Perrie Juran]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

You make a good point about the few who would be unable to have their PIOF or a premium account but, imo, it would be far better to restrict marketplace sellers to those who have their PIOF or a premium account. Yes, a few would be hurt but it would stop a lot of the theft that the marketplace allows. It's one of those things where you can't satisfy everyone and, of those choices, my view is that it's better to prevent the theft than to allow it so that a few people can continue selling in the marketplace.

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Only LL knows (or could know unless one of us wanted to look up every account on the Market) what percentage of people do not have PIOF.  How many hundreds or thousands of wonderful products might get removed if LL did this?  How many people might this affect?

I think this cure is worse than the disease.

Why should my friend have to suffer any more or less than you would?

[Vania Chaplin]

The part of being PIOF to have a MP store, is a thing that can be discusted, although I am not particularly for this. Maybe, a user can only be in MP after, say, 3 months of age, wouldn't be so easy to, after caught, simply make another disposable account and put the store back on.

All those things can reduce the facility of pirating, with a limited impact on innocent ones, instead of a hard proihibition of anything that was being proposed here and in other threads.

[Medhue Simoni]

Those are good points, and I agree that the problem is not as big as it might seem. At the same time tho, it's not irrelevant. It has happened to me, a number of times, I just don't talk about it. Not some obscure product either, but my most popular and most expensive products. How do I respond to these problems? I do what is required of me to protect my work by filing a DMCA. On the product in question, I released a brand new version that was a massive update, so that the copybotted version became irrelevant and more easily spotted. What I also do is try to understand why it is happening and what I can do proactively. Now, of course, some1 that boldly goes and copies a known creator's most popular product and sells it, is not some1 worth reasoning with, but people do buy the stuff. Why are they seeking out some low life to get cheaper products? Well, it's probably the only way for them to have it. So, what I try to do is give those people another option that they might be able to afford. Another thing I've tried to do is make more full perm animations available. Part of the reason copybotting goes on also is that people just don't have another option, at least in their eyes. So, I try to make things available, when I know it won't hurt my business.

For the most part, the majority of people understand that if too many people take advantage of the creators, there will soon be no creators. So, yeah, breaking copyrights on products is not widespread and everywhere, but again, it is a significant problem. LL doing nothing, as they have, makes the problem worse. The reason I agree with Phil on the Marketplace aspect, is because the MP is THE place to sell in volume. Maybe PIOF is not the proper way. Maybe all that is needed is acurate personally information. Maybe restrictions shouldn't be the answer. Possibly, a system could be implemented that takes a product down and puts it under review by LL, if that product gets flagged a number of times. All I'm saying is that when a copybotted product makes it to the MP, that is a whole other kind of damage to the creator than some person selling a creators stuff in some obscure inworld store. LL should take such things extremely seriously.

[Perrie Juran]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

Those are good points, and I agree that the problem is not as big as it might seem. At the same time tho, it's not irrelevant. It has happened to me, a number of times, I just don't talk about it. Not some obscure product either, but my most popular and most expensive products. How do I respond to these problems? I do what is required of me to protect my work by filing a DMCA. On the product in question, I released a brand new version that was a massive update, so that the copybotted version became irrelevant and more easily spotted. What I also do is try to understand why it is happening and what I can do proactively. Now, of course, some1 that boldly goes and copies a known creator's most popular product and sells it, is not some1 worth reasoning with, but people do buy the stuff. Why are they seeking out some low life to get cheaper products? Well, it's probably the only way for them to have it. So, what I try to do is give those people another option that they might be able to afford. Another thing I've tried to do is make more full perm animations available. Part of the reason copybotting goes on also is that people just don't have another option, at least in their eyes. So, I try to make things available, when I know it won't hurt my business.

For the most part, the majority of people understand that if too many people take advantage of the creators, there will soon be no creators. So, yeah, breaking copyrights on products is not widespread and everywhere, but again, it is a significant problem. LL doing nothing, as they have, makes the problem worse. The reason I agree with Phil on the Marketplace aspect, is because the MP is THE place to sell in volume. Maybe PIOF is not the proper way. Maybe all that is needed is acurate personally information. Maybe restrictions shouldn't be the answer. Possibly, a system could be implemented that takes a product down and puts it under review by LL, if that product gets flagged a number of times. All I'm saying is that when a copybotted product makes it to the MP, that is a whole other kind of damage to the creator than some person selling a creators stuff in some obscure inworld store. LL should take such things extremely seriously.

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I agree that the problem isn't irelevant.

As far as people who seek out this stuff in order to buy it, like any one else, I do want the best bang for my buck. But if something smells fishy I am going to take a closer look at it.  Sometimes people like the OP get scammed.  I hope LL both retrieved and credited the $L to her account.

As far as people who 'know better' are concerned, if they get stuck with an IP replacement then they got what they deserved.

I do think that you and I would agree that we absolutely need quick and decisive action by LL on these accounts up to and including hardware bans.  While I know even this can be circumvented, let's make it as hard as we can on the guilty, not on the innocent.

[Dillon Levenque]

 

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

 All I'm saying is that when a copybotted product makes it to the MP, that is a whole other kind of damage to the creator than some person selling a creators stuff in some obscure inworld store. LL should take such things extremely seriously.

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On this subject, I completely agree with you. It's actually probably less of a problem for you personally, because animations are something that have to be tried before purchasing (at least for most of us). For items like clothing and home accessories and just about everything else except maybe hair and skin—something most people won't buy without a demo inworld—it's a huge issue for copies to be sold on the MP. Linden Lab should be all over it like a blanket.

They apparently are not, and that is a shame.

[Phil Deakins]

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Trinity Yazimoto wrote:

well instead of the piof or premium system, i would prefer the accredited creators thing..

pp would need to register as creator, so they would be on a list. then, maybe like the old age verification system, pp would need to verify their identity. why not ? maybe the fact to be on a list should discourage some copybotters..

but really i think that we wont never stop it bec its internet.. and as i said, less freedom in the name of stoping some nefarious pp is not acceptable for me..

but about the premium needed solution, imho it goes aggaisnt all that is SL... a world with contents made by his users.. Then it will be "a world with contents made by his premium members" and it does a huge difference in the SL's soul.

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No. I've only talked about PIOF and premium accounts for sellers on the marketplace. It has nothing to do with the ability to create stuff and sell stuff inworld.

[Trinity Yazimoto]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

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Trinity Yazimoto wrote:

well instead of the piof or premium system, i would prefer the accredited creators thing..

pp would need to register as creator, so they would be on a list. then, maybe like the old age verification system, pp would need to verify their identity. why not ? maybe the fact to be on a list should discourage some copybotters..

but really i think that we wont never stop it bec its internet.. and as i said, less freedom in the name of stoping some nefarious pp is not acceptable for me..

but about the premium needed solution, imho it goes aggaisnt all that is SL... a world with contents made by his users.. Then it will be "a world with contents made by his premium members" and it does a huge difference in the SL's soul.

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No. I've only talked about PIOF and premium accounts for sellers on the marketplace. It has nothing to do with the ability to create stuff and sell stuff inworld.

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yes i know Phil... 

i know that you dont use the MP and that i get only 20/30 % of my incomes from it so it wont make  a big difference for us.. but still... imho SL 's soul apply to the mp aswell.

As everytime, with harder security measures the ones who will be harmed will be the weaker ones, the poor merchants and then the nefarious ones will find a way to get round the pb, as usually.

i really dont think that a PIOF will scare them... they know LL wont never sue them for copybotting, above all if they are not in US. Believe this is just naive. See what happens with the virtual commerce all around the world.. they just localize themselves in country where they know they wont have pb.

maybe educating the customers is the key... maybe they should make some tutorials for newbie, maybe we, as merchants, we should provide to our follower some blogs, notices or whatever else to help them to act as clever buyers... 

imho, its about the everyone's responsability, and not about one who will make prohibition.. i do believe that if pp act more responsabily then its better than to deed all the responsability in one person's hand. 

i will try to work on a blog spot for my follower about that. but really, i think that when sm1 create a new avatar, they should get some lessons about this too at the welcome area.. or maybe a lil later, after 1 month for example.. then these pp should fill a test to be able to go on. with questions about how to buy safe.