Known Copybot Account Still Active After 3+ Years of AR Reports?

[Ember Ember]

A known copybotter is still alive and kicking on SL after myself and quite a few other creators have reported them (multiple times) over the course of at least these past 3 years. How I know the thief is still around? Just yesterday, the copybotter “bought” one of my demo items (free) on the market and theres no doubt in my mind that they’re going to copybot it too.   Why is that account not banned yet? And why is copybotting even still a thing in 2019? Is LL’s code for SL never going to be copybot-proof??

(I’m not just guessing or accusing they are a copybotter too. This person freely gives out full-perms versions of all the items they copy and it says the creator is them, not the actual, real creator of the items. And a lot of this stuff is REALLY unique and obvious copies for example: a gesture using an animation made specifically for the Equestria’s Pride pony avatar, and rare gacha items that are no longer for sale all saying that the copybotter is the creator.) I’m not naming names for the sake of not breeching LL’s privacy policy...

Why doesn’t LL care about copybotting still?

[Lindal Kidd]

LL does care about copybotting, but you need to deal with it in the right way.  Submitting an Abuse Report is not the way to go.

What you need to do is submit a DMCA takedown request.  See this link for details on how to do it.  https://www.lindenlab.com/legal/intellectual-property-infringement-notification-policy

Note:  You must be the creator of the item.  If you are not the creator, report the copybotter to the creator.  They can then, if they choose, submit a DMCA takedown.

You also asked, " Is LL’s code for SL never going to be copybot-proof??"  No, it isn't.  It can't be.  When you connect your viewer to SL, the servers send your viewer information on what you're seeing.  This information is used by your graphics card to display...everything.  This information, which your graphics card MUST have (or you couldn't see anything) is the information that copybot software accesses.  This is also why copybot can't copy scripts.  Scripts don't have visual information that gets processed by your graphics card.

[Fox Wijaya]

5 minutes ago, Isolte Ember said:

A known copybotter is still alive and kicking on SL after myself and quite a few other creators have reported them (multiple times) over the course of at least these past 3 years. How I know the thief is still around? Just yesterday, the copybotter “bought” one of my demo items (free) on the market and theres no doubt in my mind that they’re going to copybot it too.   Why is that account not banned yet? And why is copybotting even still a thing in 2019? Is LL’s code for SL never going to be copybot-proof??

(I’m not just guessing or accusing they are a copybotter too. This person freely gives out full-perms versions of all the items they copy and it says the creator is them, not the actual, real creator of the items. And a lot of this stuff is REALLY unique and obvious copies for example: a gesture using an animation made specifically for the Equestria’s Pride pony avatar, and rare gacha items that are no longer for sale all saying that the copybotter is the creator.) I’m not naming names for the sake of not breeching LL’s privacy policy...

Why doesn’t LL care about copybotting still?

you can not see if somebody is a copybotter
if your demo items are so easely turned to full items by a botter you need to change your demo
LL does not discuss in any matter the outocome of a report
if LL doesn't see a reason or find directions to that in the behaviour of the reported acounnt, they won't act on it
LL can do as much as possible in the code to prevent copybotting, but no system is waterproof and the botters will be able to walk around any block thats made faster than it's implemented in the software.
It's not only in SL, see the amount of other game assets that are brought in here.
As last, there is not many really unique stuff in sl .. when one can make it, another one can make a perfect copy/lookalike too, don't confuse that with copybotting. My prim looks the same as yours ...
It's more like in RL, buyers have to be educated that 5 L$ full perm from one day old accounts are smelly ... don't buy it. This type of botters only exists because there is a market.

[bigmoe Whitfield]

Scripts live server side Lindal

[Ember Ember]

1 hour ago, Lindal Kidd said:

LL does care about copybotting, but you need to deal with it in the right way.  Submitting an Abuse Report is not the way to go.

What you need to do is submit a DMCA takedown request.  See this link for details on how to do it.  https://www.lindenlab.com/legal/intellectual-property-infringement-notification-policy

Note:  You must be the creator of the item.  If you are not the creator, report the copybotter to the creator.  They can then, if they choose, submit a DMCA takedown.

You also asked, " Is LL’s code for SL never going to be copybot-proof??"  No, it isn't.  It can't be.  When you connect your viewer to SL, the servers send your viewer information on what you're seeing.  This information is used by your graphics card to display...everything.  This information, which your graphics card MUST have (or you couldn't see anything) is the information that copybot software accesses.  This is also why copybot can't copy scripts.  Scripts don't have visual information that gets processed by your graphics card.

Thank you very much!

[Nalates Urriah]

I'll expand on Lindal's answer.

Digital copying of all sorts of things goes on, legal and illegal. Numerous anti-copy technologies have been devised and tried. ALL HAVE FAILED. The most well known is probably the music industry. You can Google for the history of those failures.

The result is the world relies on copyright law to protect intellectual property. Linden Lab complies with and supports those laws. There simply is nothing else that can be done as nothing else works.

The problem is basic. Somewhere there is a server with a digital something you want to see or hear. For you to see it the server has to send you a copy. Your computer takes that copy of 0's and 1's and turns it into what you see or hear on your computer. The computer may save that data as a file, which is what the viewer has done with the files in its cache. Since something in your computer knows how to convert that data to its final render it should be obvious that anyone can eventually figure out how that is done and do it. In the case of the SL viewers, which are open source, all the how-to is in the open source code available to everyone. One doesn't have to figure out much. Literally, the hard work is already done. With some minor effort anyone can build a copybot viewer and that has been done frequently.

There are copybot viewers you can download for free and others you can buy. A thinker will probably consider a viewer built for theft and freely distributed might be designed to steal passwords. 

If there is no app for converting the data to something you can see... then it is of no use. The whole anti-theft game in the digital world is about making a system no one can figure out and duplicate. The flaw is some human thought it up in the first place. So, they are betting no one can think up how it was done after someone already did it...

 

[Lucia Nightfire]

"No-mod encourages copybotting. Change my mind."

[Nalates Urriah]

13 hours ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

"No-mod encourages copybotting. Change my mind."

I agree. 

A No-Copy anything should be VERY rare. I tend to only ever make note-cards No-Copy.

[Fox Wijaya]

1 hour ago, Isolte Ember said:

“if your demo items are so easely turned to full items by a botter you need to change your demo”

My demo item permissions are not the problem as they are always set to NO mod, No Transfer.

you didn't even read what i was saying but directly climbed the rope when you thought to see what i said... there's nothing in my post that says your settings suck.
 

 

1 hour ago, Isolte Ember said:

 I’ll be ignoring your presumptuous responses from now on.

the one that is presumtious are you, you think LL can work miracles.

[Skell Dagger]

15 hours ago, Isolte Ember said:

“if your demo items are so easely turned to full items by a botter you need to change your demo”

My demo item permissions are not the problem as they are always set to NO mod, No Transfer. I’ll be ignoring your presumptuous responses from now on. Thanks for trying though.

There is a reason why demos of some mesh heads have strips of missing pixels. Fox was likely talking about something like that, or defacement of the demo in part by different textures (such as seen in many demo hairstyles), not the permissions you're using.

Edited June 8, 2019 by Skell Dagger

[Ember Ember]

2 hours ago, Skell Dagger said:

There is a reason why demos of some mesh heads have strips of missing pixels. Fox was likely talking about something like that, or defacement of the demo in part by different textures (such as seen in many demo hairstyles), not the permissions you're using.

Thank you for the clarification. They were not specific as to what would be potentially wrong with my demo so I really appreciate your comment a lot. Even if a creator has a demo texture on their product, copybotters can still get the whole mesh. But you’ve shown me the idea to actually upload a demo mesh that is completely missing vertices and faces. Thank you very much!

[Fionalein]

Disfiguring the demo will stop copybotters how exactley?

 

[Skell Dagger]

9 hours ago, Isolte Ember said:

But you’ve shown me the idea to actually upload a demo mesh that is completely missing vertices and faces.

I suggest attaching a sign to the demo itself explaining that the demo has missing pixels but the full version is complete. Most people will, of course, not read it (the mesh head brand that I work for does the 'missing pixels and huge sign' thing, and we still constantly get people asking in support chat why their head demo has bits missing!) but you can point to that sign when people ask you why your skirt etc has holes in it

Edited June 9, 2019 by Skell Dagger

[Kyrah Abattoir]

On 6/8/2019 at 8:52 AM, Isolte Ember said:

“if your demo items are so easely turned to full items by a botter you need to change your demo”

My demo item permissions are not the problem as they are always set to NO mod, No Transfer. I’ll be ignoring your presumptuous responses from now on. Thanks for trying though.

The problem is your assumption that there is a technical solution to a legal problem then.

[Ember Ember]

4 hours ago, Fionalein said:

Disfiguring the demo will stop copybotters how exactley?

 

It won’t stop them. But it would at least deter them from copybotting the demo since it will be an incomplete mesh. *shrugs*. I know someone will still copybot a full version, but at least it won’t be as convenient as just getting the demo? XD

[Ember Ember]

1 hour ago, Skell Dagger said:

I suggest attaching a sign to the demo itself explaining that the demo has missing pixels but the full version is complete. Most people will, of course, not read it (the mesh head brand that I work for does the 'missing pixels and huge sign' thing, and we still constantly get people asking in support chat why their head demo has bits missing!) but you can point to that sign when people ask you why your skirt etc has holes in it

Haha! Covering all your bases. Thank you kindly for the new tip. :3

[Ember Ember]

7 hours ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

The problem is your assumption that there is a technical solution to a legal problem then.

Only one person actually cared to explain this to me already and clear up my assumption. Your comment is not at all helpful.

Edited June 17, 2019 by Isolte Ember

[Ember Ember]

1 hour ago, Fox Wijaya said:

you can not see if somebody is a copybotter
if your demo items are so easely turned to full items by a botter you need to change your demo
LL does not discuss in any matter the outocome of a report
if LL doesn't see a reason or find directions to that in the behaviour of the reported acounnt, they won't act on it
LL can do as much as possible in the code to prevent copybotting, but no system is waterproof and the botters will be able to walk around any block thats made faster than it's implemented in the software.
It's not only in SL, see the amount of other game assets that are brought in here.
As last, there is not many really unique stuff in sl .. when one can make it, another one can make a perfect copy/lookalike too, don't confuse that with copybotting. My prim looks the same as yours ...
It's more like in RL, buyers have to be educated that 5 L$ full perm from one day old accounts are smelly ... don't buy it. This type of botters only exists because there is a market.

“if your demo items are so easely turned to full items by a botter you need to change your demo”

My demo item permissions are not the problem as they are always set to NO mod, No Transfer. I’ll be ignoring your presumptuous responses from now on. Thanks for trying though.