Rya Nitely Posted October 30, 2013 Share Posted October 30, 2013 OK the ToS is a huge sore spot with many.But let's for a minute - just a minute please then back as you were - talk about Mesh RIPS. Halloween is turning out to be the biggest Mesh RIP Horror show. And to tell you the truth, I am starting to join the ranks of non carers. Some of the creator names I have seen should and do know better. People can hide behind the 'Oh, I didn't know' ripped Halloween mask all they like but, NO... you're not that dumb. And these beautiful objects are being displayed on the most well known sims in SL.Ok, there has been one or two drops of concern on the subject among the flood of ToS concerns - and kudos to those voices for raising it.But here is the sad news - most people love it. They buy it, they put it in their creations, they display sims full of the stuff - and yes it looks amazing.OK, enough from me. Just thought I'd talk my mind. Now RIP me to shreds if you like - with your 'RIPPED from some game' scary scythe.I'm off to work. Happy Halloween all - go see those sims - SL is looking amazingly spectacular lately. Mesh has raised the quality 1000%. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sassy Romano Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 There's your answer Rya, as of this morning 116 views and not one response, comment, burp or sniff. Nobody cares, certainly not those purchasing. As long as it looks good and is affordable, the rest is of no significance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freya Mokusei Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 Not too surprised that All Hallows Eve is seeing all of the slimy monsters creeping through the walls, violating intellectual property rights and then leaving ectoplasm all over the place in the morning. I would hazard a guess that the incorporeal state of the passed prevents them from ordinary theft, but brain contents are more delicious than ever. Their insatiable hunger for the blood, sweat and tears of other peoples' hard work at reduced prices driving them on like a frenzied horde. But... It's not too different from past years, the only real difference is that now assets can be used directly, no extra work is involved to turn a comic book or computer game character into wearable layers and attachments. SL has - at least - survived this cultural borrowing of intellectual property every October 31st for the past decade. This disreputable blog claims the new ToS has had no effect on the economy, and I have to concede that why would it? The creatorbase of SL is small (with high-ish turnover), and brand loyalty shrinks when everything is viewed under the banner of SLM. Perhaps this is the real horror story. Do I care? Not especially. I can appreciate that this is an issue, and my own shopping habits keep me away from stolen material. If LL don't care about their own platforms reputation, what on earth can a simple user do but shop responsibly? There's no way I want anything to do with the UCCSL, and spreading information about this issue has only been met with shrugs and disinterest. Oh well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drake1 Nightfire Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 I care.. I think its terrible that people rip things from games and sell them in SL. And the put a DMCA warning in their own ToU. on a ripped product.. I saw a battle axe that was ripped directly from Skyrim. When a review comment on this the greatr denied any knowledge of the item being from Skyrim.. First Keyword, Skyrim... I called him on it. No responce so far. Personally i think we should be able to flag things as bieng copyrighted violations and have LL actually check them not just pull them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sassy Romano Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 Drake1 Nightfire wrote: Personally i think we should be able to flag things as bieng copyrighted violations and have LL actually check them not just pull them. LL should check them how exactly? That's the problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drake1 Nightfire Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 Sassy Romano wrote: Drake1 Nightfire wrote: Personally i think we should be able to flag things as bieng copyrighted violations and have LL actually check them not just pull them. LL should check them how exactly? That's the problem. check the reports, not just pull the item. They have full control of our items now. They can remove whatever they want. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sassy Romano Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 They've always been able to remove anything they want so that hasn't changed but they have no resource, nor inclination send staff on an investigation to hunt down a mesh object that just might exist somewhere else. Example, say I were to import the coffee table from World of Tanks, you can't really expect LL to go off installing that game to learn how to play it just on the off chance that they'll encounter that coffee table. This is just one example, merely claiming that the object IS the item it is described as is a world apart from proving the case and without that proof or original claim, it wouldn't be reasonable for LL to start taking things down on a belief that it might be. The burden this would put on LL is too great. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Czari Zenovka Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 Sassy Romano wrote: There's your answer Rya, as of this morning 116 views and not one response, comment, burp or sniff. Nobody cares, certainly not those purchasing. As long as it looks good and is affordable, the rest is of no significance. Unfortunately likely very true, especially amongst the SL population that are strictly social ie. not even a passing knowledge of building, etc. They are out dancing, having fun; many if not most with no idea this TOS issue even exists. Since I'm not building/uploading anything new to the MP atm, my time in SL for the past couple of months has been strictly social and meeting non-content creators/merchants can be eye-opening. One woman I met said she never had the patience to learn to build and had no interest in it; one guy who knew I had a small store said he had heard something about the TOS change but didn't understand it and asked for my opinion as a merchant. After giving a thumbnail sketch of the issue, his response was, "I think merchants are upset over nothing; the items in SL are so poor in quality compared to other games (/Czari runs screaming into the streets) that they (assuming "other games") wouldn't want them. I just let the discussion drop for the sake of my blood pressure. Another person who has been in SL since 2005 has a grand total of 3k items in inventory, says he owns five outfits, and lives on a friend's parcel rent-free in a small skybox. People find their niche in SL - I've gone to some live concerts, participated in a bit of rp, took a walk on the (for me) wild side and see that many people in SL find what they enjoy and often don't move beyond that area of interest. That was me in 2007 when I came to SL with my IRC group and I would likely still be with them (albeit now on OSGrid where they moved awhile back) if I hadn't met someone in my first weeks in SL who encouraged me to not confine myself to the RP sim/s, but to get out and explore the richness of SL. I will always be grateful for that advice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OzwellWayfarer Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 Though I think it is sad, I don't see how LL could possibly police this. DMCA works because the creators of the ripped stuff are present in SL and have an interest in protecting their work, but most game companies probably don’t really care if someone is making a few hundred bucks from a game that they made a few million from a few years ago. Its just not important enough to them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drake1 Nightfire Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 OzwellWayfarer wrote: Though I think it is sad, I don't see how LL could possibly police this. DMCA works because the creators of the ripped stuff are present in SL and have an interest in protecting their work, but most game companies probably don’t really care if someone is making a few hundred bucks from a game that they made a few million from a few years ago. Its just not important enough to them. Marvel, DC, Disney, James Cameron and many other big name companies have all filed DMCA notices with LL. They care, they just have to be notified.. which is where my idea comes in. let us flag them, and LL inform the companies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drake1 Nightfire Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 Sassy Romano wrote: They've always been able to remove anything they want so that hasn't changed but they have no resource, nor inclination send staff on an investigation to hunt down a mesh object that just might exist somewhere else. Example, say I were to import the coffee table from World of Tanks, you can't really expect LL to go off installing that game to learn how to play it just on the off chance that they'll encounter that coffee table. This is just one example, merely claiming that the object IS the item it is described as is a world apart from proving the case and without that proof or original claim, it wouldn't be reasonable for LL to start taking things down on a belief that it might be. The burden this would put on LL is too great. They dont have to do that, just send a screen shot to the creators of the game and ask if they wish to file a DMCA. simple. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freya Mokusei Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 Drake1 Nightfire wrote: simple. Apparently! Maybe you're missing something though, so here's an example. This coffee cup is from a modern 3D game. Imagine that someone uploaded this coffee cup (which is a mesh) to SL. Imagine that (somehow) it was your job to find out which game this came from so that you could send the correct company this 'screenshot' as you propose. Go. Please tell me which game this coffee cup came from. Remember that each minute you spend searching costs LL the equivilent wage for a minute of a professional Linden's time (between 50c and $1) and also prevents that person from working on any revenue-generating task. For super-extra bonus clarity of why this method isn't too practical, now imagine that you have to look at 3000-5000 of these images per day - approximately 6 per minute of your working day (and remember that some complaints will be false allegations, people trying to get their competitors products removed). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sassy Romano Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 That might work for a well known character but won't go deeper than that. The example that I gave illustrates that. How would you identify the object in the first place? Who owns it? Can that company identify it as a copy based on a screenshot? etc. We've got people here claiming DMCA because someone else made an ironing board that looks similar ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OzwellWayfarer Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 Drake1 Nightfire wrote: OzwellWayfarer wrote: Though I think it is sad, I don't see how LL could possibly police this. DMCA works because the creators of the ripped stuff are present in SL and have an interest in protecting their work, but most game companies probably don’t really care if someone is making a few hundred bucks from a game that they made a few million from a few years ago. Its just not important enough to them. Marvel, DC, Disney, James Cameron and many other big name companies have all filed DMCA notices with LL. They care, they just have to be notified.. which is where my idea comes in. let us flag them, and LL inform the companies. Yes I should have added the caveat that this would not be the case if the content is expected to have a recurring value. Like an Iconic character or weapon,and some companies are more on the ball with this than others. But for 99% of stuff (like the coffee mug example) that just wont happen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drake1 Nightfire Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 Freya Mokusei wrote: Drake1 Nightfire wrote: simple. Apparently! Maybe you're missing something though, so here's an example. This coffee cup is from a modern 3D game. Imagine that someone uploaded this coffee cup (which is a mesh) to SL. Imagine that (somehow) it was your job to find out which game this came from so that you could send the correct company this 'screenshot' as you propose. Go. Please tell me which game this coffee cup came from. Remember that each minute you spend searching costs LL the equivilent wage for a minute of a professional Linden's time (between 50c and $1) and also prevents that person from working on any revenue-generating task. For super-extra bonus clarity of why this method isn't too practical, now imagine that you have to look at 3000-5000 of these images per day - approximately 6 per minute of your working day (and remember that some complaints will be false allegations, people trying to get their competitors products removed). If we are able to flag it add a section where we can say what game/movie/whatever it is from. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OzwellWayfarer Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 I still don't see how this is a solution. What you are proposing is anyone could come along, flag an item, say “this is from the sims” and then its up to LL to go find out if that's true? Sorry, but that is very wishful thinking IMHO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freya Mokusei Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 Amazing! And LL just take our word for it. No-one would ever abuse such a feature! LL then seek out contact details (using Rod Humble's personal rolladex, I guess? It's not like there's a central directory for this kind of thing) for the appropriate legal representative or content rights holder (internationally, ideally in a language they understand, from at least the past 10 years of game releases), and send reams and reams of screenshots to industry professionals, so that THEY can police Second Life for us. This, presumably, can be done instantly, so that content rights holders can magically determine if one of the hundreds of mesh developers that they represent once arranged polys in this exact fashion. The accuracy of this guess should be reasonable enough that the rights-holder doesn't lose money (and more time) by making a false DMCA claim. I can't see any possible way this can backfire. Can we get back to reality, please? Solutions to this problem won't come from us as residents (evidenced pretty clearly throughout these ToS threads, I think), and even if it did, LL probably wouldn't use it. All of this nonsense playing ping-pong with peoples' amateur understanding of IP law and complete lack of knowledge of corporate/game industry/silicon valley politics is only adding yet more noise to the [already weak] signal. ETA: Trying to keep this to as few posts as necessary, so density of information is high. I don't want to waste pages and pages with this ridiculous idea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrius Gothly Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 *waves at Rya: Yes, a lot of us care. Not all of us have a strong opinion perhaps, but a very good number do care. @Freya (and others): There is a sentiment that the meager and sometimes way off base comments of the unwashed masses do nothing more than pollute the efforts of those directly involved in the battle. It is always a tendency of the weapon-toting combatants to think that those on the sidelines are simply adding distraction, confusion and wasting precious time by continuing to debate, lament and chatter incessantly about what is going on. But I would instead point to history, a lot of it very recent history, to demonstrate how the "useless and wasteful" contributions of those not serving as targets have served to win important battles and might even be argued to have won wars. Thus we musn't let ourselves belittle or demean the sideline chatter, but instead learn to listen to it carefully, sifting out the ideas and concepts that are truly useful, looking for ways to improve those that are promising but not quite there, and politely disregarding those that are just noise in the signal. In short, the solution is not to turn off the input, but to improve the filters on the front-end amplifier ... speaking in a purely technical way of thinking. *grin* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freya Mokusei Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 Happily disengaging. Assumption is that this collection of wishful thinking won't end up being taken seriously by others reading/posting to the thread. Long live the signal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrius Gothly Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 I don't see why that's necessary. I mean, look at what you wrote before: Freya Mokusei wrote: [...] LL then seek out contact details (using Rod Humble's personal rolladex, I guess? It's not like there's a central directory for this kind of thing) [...] That's clearly a hindrance right away. Over history, Central Clearinghouse operations have been set up by industry insiders to identify the departments within companies that are designed to handle contact, and to standardize the information and presentation of the information in the contact. The RIAA is an example of an industry group that has taken on that responsibility. So we creators that are harmed .. or at least upset .. by the rampant theft of IP can start working together toward something along the lines of a Clearinghouse. What you've done in your post Freya is point out some problems that need to be overcome. That is where the discussion should start, not end. Maybe it won't be the exact participants in this conversation that ultimately flip the on switch for the solution, but getting a groundswell of sentiment, and ultimately building a coalition of people dedicated to engaging and fixing a problem starts with discussions such as these .. in forums such as this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ela Talaj Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 I've no data to judge who cares of what but I've recently posted a new product in the marketplace and the reference number was 5,404,935. Even assuming that each merchant has on average 200 listings that comes to about 27,000 merchants and of course an average of 200 listings per merchant is a huge assumption. In any case it is undeniable that there are many thousands merchants. On the other hand post PeterGray @ LL Responds to UCCSL (in respect to the new TOS) has attracted 26 participants, including the original poster. This is less then one tenth of one percent even if we keep the above extremely low estimate of 27,000 merchants. Seems to me once again a miniscule minority purports to control by screaming at the top of their lungs. At least in this respect SL is no different from RL. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freya Mokusei Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 I'm not interested in whimsical navel-gazing. I can't see why anyone would be, when we're still trying to get this issue to be taken seriously. People don't read piles of junk and assumptions. Post trimmed to prevent further detraction. My own opinion on this issue is only going to make things more complicated, and less relevant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrius Gothly Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 (Wow! I guess everyone took their pessimism pill today. LOL) Ela Talaj wrote: I've no data to judge who cares of what but I've recently posted a new product in the marketplace and the reference number was 5,404,935. Even assuming that each merchant has on average 200 listings that comes to about 27,000 merchants and of course an average of 200 listings per merchant is a huge assumption. In any case it is undeniable that there are many thousands merchants. On the other hand post PeterGray @ LL Responds to UCCSL (in respect to the new TOS) has attracted 26 participants, including the original poster. This is less then one tenth of one percent even if we keep the above extremely low estimate of 27,000 merchants. Seems to me once again a miniscule minority purports to control by screaming at the top of their lungs. At least in this respect SL is no different from RL. The last estimated count I heard from CTL was 50,000+ merchants, which of course makes the "Vocal Minority" percentage lower still. But the phrase that caught my eye was "screaming at the top of their lungs". Is that truly how you see these forums? And how you see RL? That all vocal discourse is nothing more than desperate members of the community screaming loudly in hopes of being heard? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrius Gothly Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 Freya Mokusei wrote: I'm not interested in whimsical navel-gazing. I can't see why anyone would be, when we're still trying to get this issue to be taken seriously. People don't read piles of junk and assumptions. Post trimmed to prevent further detraction. My own opinion on this issue is only going to make things more complicated, and less relevant. Then the surest way to prevent "navel-gazing" is to be the one to do something about the problem, right? Spot something stolen from a game? Grab a screenshot, note the name listed as the Creator, contact the game maker and ask for the fax number, email address or mailing address of their Copyrights and/or Legal Department. Send them a complete description of the item, the location where you found it and and which game, version and location within their property the original is found. Boink! Navel .. un-gazed. PS: You could start a thread in this forum listing the contact details you discovered too. After all, sharing IS caring. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dartagan Shepherd Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 Tried to suggest to them a partial solution before they implemented mesh and over the years which is to implement master accounts more rigidly. Meaning all your alts (and bots) must be under one master account. perhaps even a master account for the household. From there they could have established a way to punish for avatars not under the same account, or punished entire accounts in some way for infractions. Also combined with more of a RL agreement, rather than their farce of a test (that pretty much gives you the answers on a platter) needed to upload mesh, gives more of a deterrent to thieves. Also more of a waiting period or requirements for uploading external assets, short of an approval process. It would certainly go a ways toward the problem and make enforcement much less costly. They can't stop it, but there's a whole lot they "can" do if they were willing. They don't appear to be more interested in theft than the bare minimum and to cover themselves. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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