Do you care if content is ripped?

[Fionalein]

5 minutes ago, Drake1 Nightfire said:

How do you ban an item? 

write a script that returns items upon spotting for rezzed ones and ejects users wearing attached ones...

[Alyona Su]

14 minutes ago, Drake1 Nightfire said:

How do you ban an item? 

NOTE TO READERS: Off-topic post to answer a question

*****

Scripted object.

In my case I have a (very popular) helicopter which some in the SL Aviation creator community proclaim is "ripped" or somehow "stolen" (Yet these are the same creators who break copyright I.P. all the time). One sim in particular (and I'm not naming names because I'm not into the shame-game) has a scripted object that detects this particular object (the helicopter in question, likely by its name because it is no-modify) and immediately deletes it, unsitting you (and you fall to the ground).

I don't know how they do it and I don't care. All I know is they do it and so I never ever go to that sim whether I'm using that product or not (I have a lot from different creators).

So they are punishing me because I bought something they allege is a "stolen" mesh, even though they don't explain where they got this information or any proof whatsoever. As far as I know it could just be "drama" in that creator community. Well, fine. Their loss. I'll never buy from their renters and I'll never donate to their sim (and it appears I'm not the only one, it's on the Blake Sea and almost never anyone there, but the sim next door is always populated).

[Alyona Su]

16 minutes ago, Fionalein said:

write a script that returns items upon spotting for rezzed ones and ejects users wearing attached ones...

Laugh. I should know well to always read all new replies so I can look for you. You always beat me to the response and always so much pithier and more eloquently. I hate you! (just kidding)  

[Chase01]

 Her brand isn't the first to be outed, nor will it be the last. It was IMO a huge slap in the face to other creators who produce content with integrity.

I'd like to know what people thought of the subsequent letter posted from her spouse.

 

 

 

[ChinRey]

5 hours ago, Chase01 said:

I'd like to know what people thought of the subsequent letter posted from her spouse.

Oh, I didn't know about that. Interesting. Are there any details you can give without breaking the "no names given" rule on this forum?

Now, there's a parallel discussion going on at  The Other Forum That Must Not Be Named. I posted a reply there earlier today and I think I'm going to repeat what I said here.

In addition to the commercial 3D stores, the internet is also full of sites where you can download open source models for free. Most of it is rubbish of course but not all and there's quite a lot of items similar to what you typically find at events and from gachas. Romantic "shabby chic light" style, high poly meshes, high resolution textures auto-baked in Blender - the full package. Anybody can grab those things for free and upload them to SL themselves if they like. Or if they want to save the upload fee too, they can jsut keep the models on their own computer and admire them there whenever they like.

I think that's why exclusivity is important to the events and to many of the events based merchants. Because what you generally can buy there is not particularly original or creative and it's not adapted to Second Life in any way. It's just thirteen-a-dozen standard internet meshes. That means that "made it myself" or possibly "specially made for this brand" isn't just an important sales argument, it's the only valid one they have. Without it, all they have left is empty hype and people will see through that eventually.

It's different with the people who have their own distinctive and unique style of course. And it's also different with the merchant who actually optimize the content for Second Life. But for the majority who only do quick-and-dirty uploads and don't have any noticeable personal style, if they didn't make it themselves, they're basically just freebie resellers.

[Chic Aeon]

34 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

. And it's also different with the merchant who actually optimize the content for Second Life. But for the majority who only do quick-and-dirty uploads and don't have any noticeable personal style, if they didn't make it themselves, they're basically just freebie resellers.

Letter from spouse was very well written in that professional manner and covered most of the bases. I found a few things in it that were questionable and bordering on inaccurate but all in all a good read --- and likely better than more from the "offender" :D.

That STYLE thing is really the tip off sometimes. If you look at a brand and see a lot of divergence, well, "why"?

I remember in one of my first art classes the instructor explained the importance of finding your style and keeping with it -- at least for a few years at a time if you are a long time artist. Back in the day when I was deeply enmeshed in the art world, I could spot the artists of paintings without getting close to any signatures -- and really you should be able to do that somewhat with mesh. 

I make all KINDS of styles and items but they are all made with the same baking style and the same process. Hence they have a homogeneous look about them; there is a flow when they are all together. It get's pretty suspicious (to me anyway) when a creator puts out items that are very divergent in nature. 

 

[Chase01]

1 hour ago, ChinRey said:

Oh, I didn't know about that. Interesting. Are there any details you can give without breaking the "no names given" rule on this forum?

If you go to their blog, you can see the entry for yourself. As of today, it was still up.

Some snippets from his post

Quote

You may have heard rumors and allegations about {redacted} recently and I would like to address these. This post will discuss what happened, why it happened, how we are going to rectify this, and finally how we plan to move on.

 

Quote

I am now a management consultant specializing in operations and logistics, and occasionally procurement. My work and study background combined with spending time as part of the {redacted} team qualifies me to take over the running of {redacted} in the interim. I am doing this because there has to be a review of processes, there has to be higher level of accountability, and {redacted} has to concentrate her efforts on content creation.

I thought it was clear that she understood that the source material was not to be used in SL, but did so under her own free will for the reasons cited in her apology letter. This just sounds so bad any way you slice it.

[Jerilynn Lemon]

On 8/6/2018 at 10:31 AM, Alyona Su said:

NOTE TO READERS: Off-topic post to answer a question

*****

Scripted object.

In my case I have a (very popular) helicopter which some in the SL Aviation creator community proclaim is "ripped" or somehow "stolen" (Yet these are the same creators who break copyright I.P. all the time). One sim in particular (and I'm not naming names because I'm not into the shame-game) has a scripted object that detects this particular object (the helicopter in question, likely by its name because it is no-modify) and immediately deletes it, unsitting you (and you fall to the ground).

I don't know how they do it and I don't care. All I know is they do it and so I never ever go to that sim whether I'm using that product or not (I have a lot from different creators).

So they are punishing me because I bought something they allege is a "stolen" mesh, even though they don't explain where they got this information or any proof whatsoever. As far as I know it could just be "drama" in that creator community. Well, fine. Their loss. I'll never buy from their renters and I'll never donate to their sim (and it appears I'm not the only one, it's on the Blake Sea and almost never anyone there, but the sim next door is always populated).

I know the feeling. I have an aircraft from an unnamed store. It looks good, handles well and is/was reasonably priced. I like my aircraft.

One afternoon, I was flying at Blake and saw a landing strip, thinking "why not land there...". Made my final and as I was approaching, POOF...my plane was gone and I was standing (more sitting really) on the floor of Blake. I had an error message stating something of an IP violation. I had never seen that before, so I hopped on to an aviation group chat and asked. Within 15 seconds I had a good idea of the back story from a number of respondents.

It's a bad idea to take out disagreements with a creator on potential customers who had no idea if a given product is a rip from someone else by banning said given named product. You don't punish the children for the parents mistake. I won't be visiting that certain airstrip in the future nor will I stop flying my aircraft. I like it. If there is a dispute, don't take it out on me.

I agree with Alyona and highlighted it. The strip next door is friendlier.

Edited August 8, 2018 by Jerilynn Lemon

[Fionalein]

3 hours ago, Jerilynn Lemon said:

It's a bad idea to take out disagreements with a creator on potential customers who had no idea if a given product is a rip from someone else by banning said given named product. You don't punish the children for the parents mistake. I won't be visiting that certain airstrip in the future nor will I stop flying my aircraft. I like it. If there is a dispute, don't take it out on me.

It is not even proven they are rip offs. If it were proven rip offs LL could have removed it and it would not even be in your inventory anymore. However land owners can ban you for whatever reason like "I don't like your nose" so "I don't like your aircraft" is fine but simply impolite. One company decided to take copyright into their own hand and started producing those "anti-copybot" orbs for stolen vehicles - apparently without waiting for lawyers to settle copyright issues first. If you don't like it you can only boycott this wannabe vigilante or any of his other products...

Same goes for the flying copyright infringement accusations now. So creator A buys some design and uses it for SL and the same product is available by creator B on a site that does not allow SL use in it's TOS - what we do not know is: did A buy it from B on another plattform or in an individual contract that allows A to use it in SL - or was it in reality even designed by an unknown creator C who sold it to A and B is the culprit here? Of course even A and B could have copybotted C... Fact is: we know NOTHING. As long as A does not claim it is his design we do not know if A did something illegal or questionable at all. Sure - the most prominent recent case is now cleared, but all the follow up cases are not. Please leave it to the lawyers... copyright law sounds weird and unneccesarily complicated - but there are reasons only the copyright owner is allowed to file a DMCA takedown request...

Edited August 8, 2018 by Fionalein

[ChinRey]

51 minutes ago, Fionalein said:

It is not even proven they are rip offs. If it were proven rip offs LL could have removed it and it would not even be in your inventory anymore. However land owners can ban you for whatever reason like "I don't like your nose" so "I don't like your aircraft" is fine but simply impolite. One company decided to take copyright into their own hand and started producing those "anti-copybot" orbs for stolen vehicles - apparently without waiting for lawyers to settle copyright issues first. If you don't like it you can only boycott this wannabe vigilante or any of his other products...

That's another big problem with the widespread ... ummm... questionable business practices ... among SL merchants: when there are no rules or the rules aren't properly enforced, people will take the law into their own hands and then you get all those arbitary and unpredictable decisions.

But on the bright side, it finally gives me an excuse for a Larry Niven quote. He has so many good ones and I've never seen any on the forums before:

"Anarchy is the least stable of social structures"

 

[karynmaria]

On 8/6/2018 at 3:11 AM, Fionalein said:

Justa  silly question: We know folks don't care but what exactley did OP try to get to know with this thread? Come on, even if someone does not care they usually have enough brains left not to admit it in here... or would they?

To be frank when I first joined SL this kind of thing never really crossed my mind.  I am sure I bought some hair that was questionable and bought it cause it was cheaper same with skins.   I wouldn't have even thought to research stuff or thought about the effort it took to make things.  I don't think I really gave it any thought until the mesh body that came out at the time got dmca'd after I bought it.  

[Fionalein]

5 minutes ago, karynmaria said:

To be frank when I first joined SL this kind of thing never really crossed my mind.  I am sure I bought some hair that was questionable and bought it cause it was cheaper same with skins.   I wouldn't have even thought to research stuff or thought about the effort it took to make things.  I don't think I really gave it any thought until the mesh body that came out at the time got dmca'd after I bought it.  

But that's not exactely the same, I guess the OP wanted to know if you care after knowing it was aquired by the seller in questionable ways - I do not blame regular customers for not knowing and I do not think it is the customer's obligation to look if something is legit - It might be wise to do so if it already looks fishy but most of the time we are completely oblivious of what's going on...

Edited August 8, 2018 by Fionalein

[ChinRey]

36 minutes ago, karynmaria said:

I don't think I really gave it any thought until the mesh body that came out at the time got dmca'd after I bought it.  

Oh yes, the early days of fitmesh body parts. Does anybody remember the Bum War? The two big makers of big bottoms accused each other of IP theft and it got really, really dirty. In the ... umm... end the .... hit the fan and it turned out both had simply copied a certain part of the system avatar and split all the triangles. So there was noe wonder they looked identical.

Edited August 8, 2018 by ChinRey
Typo

[ChinRey]

55 minutes ago, Fionalein said:

It might be wise to do so if it already looks fishy but most of the time we are completely oblivious of what's going on...

I did start a thread over at The Forum That Must Not Be Mentioned about how to spot copybotted items on opensim. Most of it is not relevant here but a few of the points that have come up are. So it could be worth checking out if you're concerned about originality and happen to know The URL That Must Not Be Posted.

Edited August 8, 2018 by ChinRey

[Drake1 Nightfire]

7 hours ago, Chase01 said:

If you go to their blog, you can see the entry for yourself. As of today, it was still up.

Any chance you could message me the link to the blog.. I am really confused here... 

[Chic Aeon]

2 hours ago, ChinRey said:

I did start a thread over at The Forum That Must Not Be Mentioned about how to spot copybotted items on opensim. Most of it is not relevant here but a few of the points that have come up are. So it could be worth checking out if you're concerned about originality and happen to know The URL That Must Not Be Posted.

To be fair to the Opensim folks, most (at least when new or for many months -- or EVER if they don't do any social media) don't know that items are copybotted. I ended up with a very popular LAQ Christmas tree the same year it came bout (maybe four years ago). I had no clue at all until I saw it in SL. Then I deleted it.

Above that most content creators don't know about the god power things which is way worse than the copybots IMHO.  So tricky over there for sure. When I put things out for free I expected them to be all over the hypergrid, hence I just made them Take a Copy. Take a Copy was very popular when SL was new. You really don't see it any longer -- at least I don't.  

There are a few very talented creators that put out their original items  for free in OS, but nothing compared to the amount of stolen content.  And that is very sad. 

 

Edited August 8, 2018 by Chic Aeon
spelling

[Drake1 Nightfire]

6 hours ago, Jerilynn Lemon said:

nor will I stop flying my aircraft. I like it. If there is a dispute, don't take it out on me.

Except that if the copyright holder files with LL you will lose your fancy plane.. 

 

[Alyona Su]

2 hours ago, Drake1 Nightfire said:

Except that if the copyright holder files with LL you will lose your fancy plane.. 

 

That is exactly the POINT. Who the heck gave so-and-so resident (I now know who it is) the right to create such a tool that deletes a vehicle out from under you if you cross their sim border all based on drama because they either don't like the creator of that vehicle or they're too gullible to recognize drama-based hearsay? Solution? Boycott that sim. S.I.M. and  P.L.E. LOL

It is precisely Linden Lab's job to do the asset-nuking based on established reporting methods, etc. And LL *has* done it before. I remember (a few years ago) several (very popular) items either disappearing from my inventory directly or when rezzing was broken with a system message saying "removed from Second Life" (or something to that effect,) meaning: nuked by LL. LOL

Edited August 8, 2018 by Alyona Su

[ChinRey]

9 minutes ago, Alyona Su said:

That is exactly the POINT. Who the heck gave so-and-so resident (I now know who it is) the right to create such a tool that deletes a vehicle out from under you if you cross their sim border all based on drama because they either don't like the creator of that vehicle or they're too gullible to recognize drama-based hearsay?

I suppose that is a rhetorical question because you know both answers.

The real answer is simple, they gave themselves the right.

The answer they will give you if you ask, is: who gave you the right to fly over that parcel or land on that airstrip?

I don't like it more han you do but that's how it is.

 

21 minutes ago, Alyona Su said:

It is precisely Linden Lab's job to do the asset-nuking based on established reporting methods, etc. And LL *has* done it before.

Not on a regular basis. LL decided long ago to keep a hands-off policy and only do the barest minimum required by law. It may be because they didn't consider the problem carefully enough, or maybe they didn't think they had the resources to police SL effectively or maybe they thought they would benefit from no rules. The reason doesn't matter. Nor does it matter whether they regret it today or not because they can't put the genie back in the bottle.

Even if they did try to do as much as possible, there would still be limits to how much they would be allowed to do. DMCA is in many ways specially designed for the benefit of the big fishes only and to keep it as hard as possible for the small fry to defend their rights. And in this context all SL merchants are small fry.

[Luna Bliss]

More than feeling angry over theft I have pity for those who are doing this. This is supposed to be a place of creativity -- art is sacred -- it's where you dig deeper and see the world in new ways... and feel excited about learning...and yet they've traded all that in for a dollar.