Report someone selling copied designs

[Omari Blackheart]

I found A Market place seller selling nothing but illegally copied Items. I bought a few things Full perm and discovered they were copied from actual creator. This has been reported , still there many pages are up and selling hurting people like me and the creator. What do I do?  [Moderator Edit - Identifying information removed]

Edited July 17, 2018 by Dakota Linden
Removed Avatar Names

[Dakota Linden]

Greetings!

If you believe that the content that you purchased was sold against the copyright of the original creator, the only thing you can do it notify the original creator with a link to both the item or items you purchased and the DMCA policy page.

Only the original creator can submit a DMCA violation notification with Linden Lab as the original creator is the only one who can legally say that the item or items are being sold in violation of their copyright. 

This information is provided in the Linden Lab DMCA Policy page, located here:

https://www.lindenlab.com/legal/intellectual-property-infringement-notification-policy

It is solely the responsibility of the original creator to protect and defend their copyright. 

If you purchased the item on the Second Life Marketplace, do not leave a review claiming that the content is stolen. Your review will be removed if it is reported.  

 

[Coffee Pancake]

Legit sellers tend to stick to a theme and have a certain individual style, random mesh clearing houses on the SLM tend to contain assets from other locations on the web or ripped from video games, as fast as they get removed they just restart.

The DMCA does require the copyright holder to report the infringement.

[Rolig Loon]

17 minutes ago, Nalates Urriah said:

the standard process in SL is to report copied and stolen products to the original designer and let them abuse report or DMCA the villain

Exactly right.  And if you are curious, read about how to file a complaint under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) at https://www.lindenlab.com/legal/intellectual-property-infringement-notification-policy  Note that DMCA is a federal law, and that the Linden Lab policy is their statement about how they comply with the law.  LL is not legally required to accept any DMCA complaint unless it meets all the standards in the law, although they "may elect to remove allegedly infringing material that comes to its attention via notices that do not substantially comply with the DMCA."  That's why a well-documented Abuse Report may occasionally be effective.

[Alwin Alcott]

5 minutes ago, Omari Blackheart said:

I found A Market place seller selling nothing but illegally copied Items. I bought a few things Full perm and discovered they were copied from actual creator. This has been reported , still there many pages are up and selling hurting people like me and the creator. What do I do? xxxx is the Avatar the MP store. The persons Profile is totally blank 

remove the name it's not allowed to shame here. If you get reported for it you'r in trouble, not he/she.

It's totally possible he sells it legitime.

Also, you can do nothing against it, most likeley your reports will have no result at all, only the rightfull owner of the copyright can file a DMCA.

Edited July 14, 2018 by Alwin Alcott

[Cindy Evanier]

First of all you have to remove the names from your post.  It is not allowed to name and shame on the forums,

After that you could (only if you know for sure)  leave reviews on the the items you bought telling others but apart from that only the original creator can do anything about it.  So I suggest reporting it to them.

ETA Alwin was faster  

Edited July 14, 2018 by Cindy Evanier
Alwin was faster

[Nalates Urriah]

This is a long term ongoing issue with the marketplace.

The complication is full-perm kits are a common, legitimate product in the marketplace. There is no way for the computers to detect the thefts from the legitimate. So, someone has to report the theft. 

The nature of people is such that competitors report legitimate products in the hope of knocking the competitor out of the market. The Lab has learned to avoid reports from any but the original author of a product.

So, the standard process in SL is to report copied and stolen products to the original designer and let them abuse report or DMCA the villain. 

[Lindal Kidd]

Please note Nalates's reply carefully.

When you suspect someone of copyright infringement on digital content, you need to be very sure that is what is happening.  Especially with full perm items.  In this case, it MIGHT be infringement, or it might not. 

The avatar you accuse has been around for nine years, which is a point in their favor.  Most people doing shady things use a newly created account. 

They have a great many full perm mesh models in their store.  This could be either a plus (they've been modeling a long time and selling their own creations) or a minus (they stole the content from elsewhere on the web, as Coffee said). 

Their prices are low.  This is usually a point in their favor; most people selling stolen content ask high prices; they want to make a fast buck before they are taken down. 

There is a wide variety of items offered.  A "mesh clearing house", as Coffee calls it.  This is generally a danger signal.  Most modelers stick to one or two types of objects that they're especially good at.

You say you "discovered" that the seller's items had been copied.  How did you discover this?  (That's a rhetorical question, don't answer it here.)  If the item you bought carries another creator's name, it may still not be "stolen".  Maybe the creator gave their permission for others to give away or re-sell the item.  Maybe the creator left SL and left her content free for all (I have a free item listed on the Marketplace that I obtained in exactly that way.)  If the seller got the items from elsewhere on the web, maybe he has permission to distribute them. 

This is why the only person who can actually file a DMCA notice with Linden Lab is the original creator.  Your course of action should be to contact that person, whether inside or outside of SL, and apprise them of your suspicions.  Then step back and let them take any further action.

[Chic Aeon]

Since I got to look these up before the name is removed I am going to add a bit of info from a mesh maker's point of view. 

Looking at both the variety and the WAY TOO HIGH LAND IMPACT and the note that these are high LOD objects (note that high LOD objects do not NEED to be high in land impact) etc etc.   --- it looks to me like these were most likely downloaded from a "free mesh" website and uploaded (without a lot of knowledge perhaps) into SL. 

It appear that is now OK after the  TOS changed to encompass Sansar rules. This is just my opinion from reading the TOS when it changed awhile back (a year? time is tricky in virtualland).  Since I don't ever plan to upload mesh that isn't mine, I didn't worry about the change all that much. 

So it seems to me that there is no infringement here. It also doesn't look liked ripped content from a game (there is plenty of that of course). 

The bottom line is that these are not practical to USE in SL and hopefully not too many people will buy them. 

 

Also note that there are folks that buy full perm mesh objects and then RESELL then with copy only or transfer only permissions. This is also legal depending on the EULA of the original maker. It is TACKY to be sure as it eats into the sales of the person that made the mesh. Still, when you see that, don't panic.