How is this Allowed on MP - Obvious Copyright Infrigement

[Persephone Emerald]

I'm just posting one example, but we all know "creators" copy well-known RL product lines to profit off them.

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/TRV-Spider-Verse-Hud-Deluxe/23568453

[Jenna Huntsman]

As a general rule, copyrights and trademarks are only good if they are enforced - that's also the reason why Disney are so litigious when it comes to their IP, as if they are not, the copyright can become invalid.

But equally this is extremely time-consuming and expensive to do manually, as SL, unlike YouTube (end by extension, Google) does not have automatic moderation, so ultimately it falls to either the copyright holder (in the above example, Marvel), or Linden Lab (who likely will only take action once an item has been flagged as infringing IP, as again, manually screening every MP listing would require too much resources).

So, the answer is:

Report the listing, and wait until LL takes it down, or the creator modifies the listing and product to remove any copyrighted or trademarked material linked to the IP.

[Codex Alpha]

1 hour ago, Persephone Emerald said:

I'm just posting one example, but we all know "creators" copy well-known RL product lines to profit off them.

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/TRV-Spider-Verse-Hud-Deluxe/23568453

Trust me. I've approached people about this in the past and they tell me to 'f-off' - because they do it on purpose and fully know it, and waging a war over it just gets me hated, ostracized and banned. I guess people don't like being exposed

Let people cheat, steal and lie - and just stay away from them and put the blinders on - because all it does is lead to your unhappiness and ruin. Earth should just be re-named to Planet Lies, because that's all it is. Lies lies lies lies lies. Narcissists, liars and cheats own this world.

(It's also the prime reason why I got ostracized from another <ahem> platform, for standing up for the right thing and getting severe backlash from a group of people who do this on the reg, and with inpunity) - so not worth it. I literally do not look at the MP anymore - as I don't even want to know or see, it's that common.

LL's stance is "If no one files a claim, anything goes" pretty much.

Caveat: None of us really know if the uploader is licensed or not, unless obvious (we know the person personally and it is NOT their content, or they have publicly admitted so) - so not much LL could do fairly anyway

Edited May 29, 2022 by Codex Alpha

[bigmoe Whitfield]

LL is under the DMCA safe harbor act,  they can not take any actions without the copyright holder filing a DMCA  notice with the lab,   LL taking action themselves opens them up to legal challenges and there are certain sets of judges and such that could put the lab in bad spots that nobody wants.

[Persephone Emerald]

8 hours ago, Jenna Huntsman said:

As a general rule, copyrights and trademarks are only good if they are enforced - that's also the reason why Disney are so litigious when it comes to their IP, as if they are not, the copyright can become invalid.

But equally this is extremely time-consuming and expensive to do manually, as SL, unlike YouTube (end by extension, Google) does not have automatic moderation, so ultimately it falls to either the copyright holder (in the above example, Marvel), or Linden Lab (who likely will only take action once an item has been flagged as infringing IP, as again, manually screening every MP listing would require too much resources).

So, the answer is:

Report the listing, and wait until LL takes it down, or the creator modifies the listing and product to remove any copyrighted or trademarked material linked to the IP.

I was going to flag the ad, but I'm not the owner of the copyright nor the creator being copied.

[Stephanie Misfit]

1 hour ago, Persephone Emerald said:

I was going to flag the ad, but I'm not the owner of the copyright nor the creator being copied.

You could report it to the copyright owner, let them decide if they want to take action. Some companies have contact information on their website for reporting copyright violations. Of course it's not something individual SL users should have to do when they see this stuff, but maybe you would like to.

[PermaRuthed]

You can alert Marvel Entertainment and let them deal with it.

[Quistess Alpha]

For anyone curious, it takes 2 secs of searching to find that marvel would love it if you Emailed them about infringements:

https://www.marvel.com/help/category/11/topic/29

Quote

If you are aware or suspect any persons infringing on the intellectual property of Marvel, please contact infringements@marvel.com and describe the suspected infringement. Please be as detailed as possible so that the claim can be investigated properly. Please also provide as much information as possible on the suspected infringer (ex. name, address, website, e-mail, phone number).

Such examples of intellectual property infringement are:

1. Unlicensed merchandise using Marvel's characters or names
2. Unapproved commercial use of Marvel characters or trademarks
3. Counterfeit products
4. Illegal copies of Marvel material being sold or distributed.

 

[Love Zhaoying]

Maybe the real Spider-Man created it! Too bad Spidey lost his copyright to Marvel.

[Paul Hexem]

On 5/29/2022 at 7:19 PM, bigmoe Whitfield said:

LL is under the DMCA safe harbor act,  they can not take any actions without the copyright holder filing a DMCA  notice with the lab,   LL taking action themselves opens them up to legal challenges and there are certain sets of judges and such that could put the lab in bad spots that nobody wants.

This isn't totally accurate. LL can remove whatever they want from their platform. They're not obligated to leave that up.

We were actually just discussing that sort of thing in a now locked thread.

[Zidaya Zenovka]

If Linden Lab put serious effort into eliminating copyright infringement not only would they go broke paying people overtime to chase it all down SL's economy would collapse. SL was built on copyright infringement. Not trying to stick up for it. It's just the truth. I can still go out and find vendors selling band T-shirts you know music labels never approved. Same with a ton of different clothing styles people pass off as their own designs. Club decor, furniture, fake food products based on popular brands-even when they're thinly-veiled parodies of existing products there's still a lot more products that are someone passing something off as their own work that isn't. The biggest example of this are all the items like in the example provided where it's obvious they were ripped from a game. 

You could report it...but honestly I'd stick to worrying more about keeping an eye out for individual creators and letting the big brands like Disney & Marvel look after themselves. Again-not defending copyright infringement. It's just why defend corporations that actively work against independent creators via unreasonable copyright extension and oppressive litigation? Why go to bat to companies that align themselves with anti-LGBT legislation? If you're going to narc on infringers at least do it for small-time folks who are actually hurt by things like infringement and copybotting and let Disney do their own legwork. All you're doing is making it so they have less reason to pay the people they hire to track down this stuff a reasonable wage. 

Edited June 8, 2022 by Zidaya Zenovka

[Flea Yatsenko]

6 hours ago, Zidaya Zenovka said:

If Linden Lab put serious effort into eliminating copyright infringement not only would they go broke paying people overtime to chase it all down SL's economy would collapse. SL was built on copyright infringement. Not trying to stick up for it. It's just the truth. I can still go out and find vendors selling band T-shirts you know music labels never approved. Same with a ton of different clothing styles people pass off as their own designs. Club decor, furniture, fake food products based on popular brands-even when they're thinly-veiled parodies of existing products there's still a lot more products that are someone passing something off as their own work that isn't. The biggest example of this are all the items like in the example provided where it's obvious they were ripped from a game. 

You could report it...but honestly I'd stick to worrying more about keeping an eye out for individual creators and letting the big brands like Disney & Marvel look after themselves. Again-not defending copyright infringement. It's just why defend corporations that actively work against independent creators via unreasonable copyright extension and oppressive litigation? Why go to bat to companies that align themselves with anti-LGBT legislation? If you're going to narc on infringers at least do it for small-time folks who are actually hurt by things like infringement and copybotting and let Disney do their own legwork. All you're doing is making it so they have less reason to pay the people they hire to track down this stuff a reasonable wage. 

People gravitate towards things that are familiar. If someone is looking for a band shirt in marketplace, and one is an extremely popular band, and another is one a content creator invented themselves, almost everyone will take the popular and familiar band. Copyright content harms original content builders.

[Codex Alpha]

57 minutes ago, Flea Yatsenko said:

People gravitate towards things that are familiar. If someone is looking for a band shirt in marketplace, and one is an extremely popular band, and another is one a content creator invented themselves, almost everyone will take the popular and familiar band. Copyright content harms original content builders.

Yep. One can be an innovative, creative and original artist and say try to sell a T-Shirt. People would think it is cool if you were a celebrity, or had some fame of some sort.

Then another artist simply makes fan art like Darth Vader stroking a Kitty Kat, or Heisenberg Face from Breaking Bad saying "Say my name", or of "Baby Yoda Playing Golf" and those T-Shirts will sell thousands Copyright infringement sells.

Edited June 8, 2022 by Codex Alpha

[bigmoe Whitfield]

On 5/30/2022 at 3:58 AM, Quistess Alpha said:

For anyone curious, it takes 2 secs of searching to find that marvel would love it if you Emailed them about infringements:

https://www.marvel.com/help/category/11/topic/29

 

One problem that i just remembered,   Sony has rights to Spiderderp,  while he is a marvel creation though.   

[WereBeast Alpha]

If its used for a roleplay like a superhero one shouldn't be an issue on an old platform I used people created Marvel related items for superhero role-plays. I had a made up one but it wasn't linked to either Marvel or DC related sense it was a character in its own. 

But each to their own I guess.

[bigmoe Whitfield]

4 hours ago, xxVi3perxx said:

If its used for a roleplay like a superhero one shouldn't be an issue on an old platform I used people created Marvel related items for superhero role-plays. I had a made up one but it wasn't linked to either Marvel or DC related sense it was a character in its own. 

But each to their own I guess.

Depends on the copyright holder,  if it's something original content created,  but a little inspired,  that should be fine, if it's totally knocks off the look and the powers and such.  merf. and since house of mouse now owns them,  nobody should go up against house of mouse, house of mouse will win each and every time.

[WereBeast Alpha]

9 hours ago, bigmoe Whitfield said:

Depends on the copyright holder,  if it's something original content created,  but a little inspired,  that should be fine, if it's totally knocks off the look and the powers and such.  merf. and since house of mouse now owns them,  nobody should go up against house of mouse, house of mouse will win each and every time.

To me from what I seen in the description It's more based on combat from the Spiderman video games. I recognize some of them when I played Spiderman 1 & 2 on gamecube as a child. None of the games are on Xbox is what I currently play and are playstation exclusive for any Spiderman games. 

[Sorciaa]

Marvel = Disney so i am sure as someone on their end is informed it will be removed.

[Crim Mip]

Essentially, LL is well aware of this sort of thing, but there are are a couple of things in play. First off they have to follow the laws regarding the DMCA in order to maintain 'safe harbor' status. One of the stipulations is that they will only accept a DMCA filing from the actual holder of the copyright. That more or less means that there can be blatant violations, but unless the holder of the rights decides it's worth pursuing, nothing will or can be done by LL. That's not to say items don't get pulled, it's just not as many as some think should be. Beating your head against this wall will only give you a headache so don't bother.

The second thing is LL literally loses if they delete content. The huge amount of varied content available is the one thing all the up and coming virtual world systems can't match. It's a chicken and egg problem. Content creators don't want to spend time making items if there's not enough of a user base to let them make some money. Potential users don't want to join a virtual world with no content. The powers that be at Metaverse still haven't figured out that the secret would be to throw money at creators to make content until such time as the user base could support them. We'll hope they don't figure that out.

[Flea Yatsenko]

8 hours ago, Crim Mip said:

The powers that be at Metaverse still haven't figured out that the secret would be to throw money at creators to make content until such time as the user base could support them. We'll hope they don't figure that out.

It takes more than that, Sansar had lots of contests to get people to create content and it's not doing very well right now.

[Tahiti Rae]

I can understand the situation with copyright infringement against big corporations and obvious trademarks, likenesses and logos, especially in the SciFi community.  MP does come up in www searches for their infringement teams so merchants take their own risk.  I wonder how the general shopping public handles clearly stated copyrights by joint co-creators who are residents of SL where one breaks agreements and sells products and derivatives without the other co-creator's permission.  Do shoppers pay attention to those situations?

Edited June 24, 2022 by Tahiti Rae

[Persephone Emerald]

33 minutes ago, Tahiti Rae said:

I can understand the situation with copyright infringement against big corporations and obvious trademarks, likenesses and logos, especially in the SciFi community.  MP does come up in www searches for their infringement teams so merchants take their own risk.  I wonder how the general shopping public handles clearly stated copyrights by joint co-creators who are residents of SL where one breaks agreements and sells products and derivatives without the other co-creator's permission (or even denial).  Do shoppers pay attention to those situations?

I have no way of knowing the agreements or copyrights between creators. Occasionally I hear bits of gossip. I also see their public statements in their groups. For instance, we know that Akeruka has been granted the right to make mesh heads that use similar parameters to those of Lelutka. We don't generally know what meshes have been bought by creators and with what rights they were bought, though we can see similarities between clothes from different stores and assume they were made with the same basic mesh.  We don't as a rule know what agreements between individuals might or might not have been broken. It's not like there is a public court system and the kind of media outlets in SL that there are in RL.

Edited June 24, 2022 by Persephone Emerald