(WARNING, RANT): Second Life and the mesh upload academy

[Nerxual Oh]

I can understand the long ass wavier thingie in order to get mesh uploaded but I agree, there is no logic for it since I already see stolen artwork images or sound bites from MLP show on secondlife that only costes them L$10. LL really doesn't seem to care much about copyright, but they want people to think they care with very long wall of text. 

 

I'll deal with wall of text but if uploading mesh costs more than L$10, screw it. LL is not getting more than L$10 from an upload. They are just terrible lately. I miss it when they actually had slight chance of giving a damn about anyone, even important people of secondlife. Now it's everyone that doesn't matter anymore.

[leliel Mirihi]

So because it's easy to get away with ripping current content LL should make it just as easy to get away with ripping any new content types they add? What was that you were saying about logic?

 

[Nerxual Oh]

Seems you're not reading what my post said or maybe just not understanding what I said. There are already copyrighted stuff out there. Renamon, pokemon, starfox, mario and more. And LL scared a lot of people when they first made notice about copyright rule, that was a good thing but after few months. That fear died down as LL showed no interest in making things easy on getting rid of people who make copyrighted stuff or copybotters. That is already happening to with mesh with copyrighted stuff. Go look at marketplace and explore it. You will find copyrighted videogame characters as mesh avs. I already seen a couple. 

[Nerxual Oh]

Lawl well I did quiz thing. 10 out of 10. Was that the big deal or am I missing something? 

[Chosen Few]

I haven't seen such a misunderstanding of law since this thread.  I'm sorry to have to point this out, Masami, but taking passages out of context, and then attempting to reapply them in ways that are completely off kilter from what they were meant to cover, does not a winning strategy make.

I'll take your points, one at a time.

 

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Masami Kuramoto wrote:

I'm suggesting that someone may drag Linden Lab to court in order to challenge their DMCA Safe Harbor privilege.

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Anyone is free to attempt to do that at any time, of course.  But no one would get very far, since LL hasn't done anything to jeopardize their safe harbor status.  This should become clear to you as I respond to the rest of your points.

 

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Masami Kuramoto wrote:

Because they took extra precautions ONLY for mesh.

Here's what the law says:

17 U.S.C $ 512 (i)

"

Conditions for Eligibility.

—

(1)

Accommodation of technology.

— The limitations on liability established by this section shall apply to a service provider only if the service provider —

(A) has adopted and reasonably implemented, and informs subscribers and account holders of the service provider's system or network of, a policy that provides for the termination in appropriate circumstances of subscribers and account holders of the service provider's system or network who are repeat infringers; and

(B) accommodates and does not interfere with standard technical measures.

(2)

Definition.

— As used in this subsection, the term “standard technical measures” means technical measures that are used by copyright owners to identify or protect copyrighted works and —

(A) have been developed pursuant to a broad consensus of copyright owners and service providers in an open, fair, voluntary, multi-industry standards process;

(B)

are available to any person on reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms;

and

© do not impose substantial costs on service providers or substantial burdens on their systems or networks."

Linden Lab has now "adopted and reasonably implemented" a method to identify repeat infringers -- but only for one asset class. If you happen to be a texture artist rather than a 3D modeller, LL's enhanced protection policy is not available to you, although LL could easily apply it to all uploadable assets.

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Two things here:

First, LL's existing precautions for ALL content types were already sufficient in this context.  The fact that they subsequently elected to employ additional precautions for any one type of content does not negate what they already had going for everything else.

Second, your interpretation of the Conditions for Eligibility is off the mark by miles.  Since you're focusing on 2B, let's simplify the picture, by eliminating all the other conditions, keeping only the relevant phrases, while maintaining the proper context.  Here's what we're left with:

The limitations on liability established by this section shall apply to a service provider only if the service provider accommodates and does not interfere with standard technical measures.  "Standard technical measures" means technical

technical measures that are used by copyright owners to identify or protect copyrighted works and

that are available to any person on reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms.

OK, now that we're properly focused on the point in question, let's talk about what it actually means.  LL, as a service provider, is not allowed to interfere with any existing standard technical measures that are already available to all copyright holders. That says nothing about any additional non-standard measures LL may elect to indroduce on their own.  It simply means they cannot block any of us from using whatever commonly available means we already have at our disposal to protect our own works.

For example, say I put a digital watermark in one of my textures.  That's a standard technical measure.  LL cannot go in and remove that watermark.  That's the kind of thing 2B addresses, nothing more.

"Any person" not only means people who are SL users, but also people who are not.  Therefore, any technical measure that only exists within the SL service is not a "standard technical measure".

 

 

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Masami Kuramoto wrote:

The payment info requirement is such a technical measure. 

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No, it's absolutely not.  As I said above, nothing that exists in SL but does not exist elsewhere is a "standard technical measure".  In order to be "standard" it has to be available to anyone and everyone, not just to Second Life users. Quite obviously, having payment information on file with Linden Lab is something only Second Life user can do.

Further, this section of the law is does not talk about any measures utilized by, or offered by, the service providers themselves.  Again, it simply states that the providers can not interfere with already established measures that all copyright holders can already use.

Your mixing up the various legal points, and acting as if they're interchangeable, as if they all cover the same things.  They're not, and they don't.

 

 

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Masami Kuramoto wrote:

It is a strong deterrent against repeat infringers, but the Lab isn't applying it in a nondiscriminatory way.

---

OK, now that you're bringing in a different point than the one you'd previously highlighted in bold (1A now instead of 2B), let's again simplify the focus, by eliminating all the other points, and keeping only the relevant phrases, while again maintaining the proper context.

Here's what we get:

The limitations on liability established by this section shall apply to a service provider only if the service provider

has adopted and reasonably implemented, and informs subscribers and account holders of the service provider's system or network of, a policy that provides for the termination in appropriate circumstances of subscribers and account holders of the service provider's system or network who are repeat infringers

.

In other words, a service provider can adopt and implement any policy they want in order to identify and potentially terminate the accounts of repeat offenders, as long as they can demonstrate they take reasonable steps to follow through on it, and as long as they inform all of their users what the policy is.

If you don't personally like the policy, that's your prerogative.  But whether you do or you don't, hopefully you at least understand that your personal taste isn't legally relevant.  The fact of the matter is LL does have a policy in place to identify repeat offenders, they do follow through on it, and they have told us what it is.  As such, they have met their legal requirements on this matter.

 

The word "nondiscriminatory", by the way, was in 2B, not in 1A.  It doesn't apply directly to 1A.  The only thing its presence in 2B means is that in order for a technical measure to be defined as "standard", the measure itself has to be available to everyone on nondiscriminatory terms.   If it's only available to some people but not others, then it's not standard, and the provider doesn't need to be concerned about not interfering with it.  They're free to treat a non-standard measure any way they want.  Only standard measures are of concern.

 

 

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Masami Kuramoto wrote:

Imagine YouTube introducing fingerprint technology to identify copyrighted music in uploaded videos -- and then making that technology available only to one major music label, locking out all the others. If YouTube did that, they would risk their DMCA Safe Harbor privilege too.

---

No, they wouldn't.  They're free to make any agreements they want with any party.  They're under no obligation whatsoever to offer the same options to everyone.  It would be nice to think they would, of course, but they certainly don't have to. All they have to do for everyone is not interfere with existing standard technical means of identification and protection, as we discussed, and have a policy in place to deal with infringement once it's been identified.  Anything they offer in addition to that is gravy, and there are nothing that says everyone has to have the same condiments.

In any case, your analogy is flawed.  Music is just one type of content among many on YouTube, just as mesh is one type of content among many in SL. To keep the analogy 1:1, we must envision a scenario in which YouTube offers special precautions for music as opposed to all other content, similarly to how LL allegedly offers special precautions for mesh as opposed to all other content, if said special precautions are, in fact, your interpretation of what LL is actually doing.

Singling out one supplier of music would be directly analogous to singling out one provider of mesh, which no one has yet suggested LL has ever done (although LL certainly could do that if they wanted to).  So, in your analogy, you overlooked non-music content creators who use YouTube, in much the same manner as you accuse LL of overlooking non-mesh content creators who use SL.

 

 

By the way, if a recent claim by Universal Music Group is to be believed, YouTube actually does do precisely what you just described.  UMG, after getting themselves in a bit of hot water for allegedly filing a false DMCA takedown notice regarding a music video that they do not actually own, rebutted by stating they have a "written agreement with YouTube" that allows them some sort of special access to certain of its content management tools.  UMG appears to be trying to get around the legal issue, by saying what amounts to, "We didn't break any law because we didn't actually file a takedown notice, per se.  Instead, we just went straight in and took down the video ourselves, because YouTube allows us that level of access."  They haven't specified what the agreement actually says, so we don't yet know if it's for real.  But it wouldn't surprise me if such an agreement does exist.

If UMG did what they say they did, then they abused their relationship with YouTube.  If they actually went the DMCA route, they broke the law.  Either way, not cool.

This is totally off topic from what were discussing, though, obviously.

 

 

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Masami Kuramoto wrote:

Linden Lab is aware of the infringement that happens on their platform on a daily basis. A great deal of the DMCA takedown notices they receive is about stolen avatar skins. There is no excuse for denying texture creators the same level of protection that mesh creators already enjoy.

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On this, we all seem to be in agreement.  However, your assertion that the law requires it is simply not true.

[tigerlily Sapphire]

Well why not just have a simple contract instead of the quiz which was the rant in the first place. What is the difference, will LL go to jail if it isn't a pointless quiz and IS a legal contract which every person who wants to upload mesh must agree with?

[Mircea Lobo]

They're certainly not required to do such a thing by law, no. Having a simple license agreement that you click "yes" on (what any normal website would do) is more than enough. But like I said all those years ago, I don't see why even as little as a separate TOS should exist for mesh compared to other uploadable assets... given that art and music are a far more likely way of infringing copyright than 3D models could ever be.

My conclusion remains that a few people at LL are either trying to show off with things like this, or have a small problem if I may say that much. Then again, considering they used to do identity theft for catching kids who lie about their age, I still expect anything no matter how weird to happen on the Main Grid. Of course, this mesh quiz doesn't actually break anything so I can't complain much... just raises a few concerns about how extreme LL is in their thinking. And I tend to be quite critical of things I find out of the ordinary sometimes.