Teresa Matfield

A former good friend knows when I create a new alt and the name of it and I can't really figure out how. He claims he's psychic and dreams the names up (yeah right). I thought he'd used a password I once gave him for my Casper vendors so he could help me with them. I'd forgotten that it was also the password for one of my e-mail accounts I use for some of my alts. Besides, the thought of him testing that password to see if he could access any of my e-mail accounts never crossed my mind as he was a good guy (but apparently not really). I changed the password for all my e-mail accounts, and later I made an alt with another e-mail account than the one he had the password for, and yet he still managed to find that alt and it's name. So my question is: do any of you have an idea of how this can be done? He's pretty computer savvy and as he's had access to my computer, he could easily have installed something on it, but a full scan with more than one security program hasn't revealed anything. I really hope I can get some help with this. ..... Thanks for responding to this. I'm not sure where Rolig's answer went as it seems to be missing. I assume full responsibility for giving him a password - that was a stupid mistake. Im also not going to report him to LL, as I know it's not going to lead anywhere. Basically, I was just hoping that someone who was tech savvy or had tried this before could give me an idea of what to look for. I know all about detecting alts and that people tend to follow the same habits, but that doesn't explain it, in this case. My ex friend knew about my new alts, right after I made them. I had them placed in locations I've never been to before and hadn't had any interactions with others. The profile was empty with no texts, images, picks or groups that could expose me. I guess I need to consult a computer expert on this. Anyway, again; thanks for your responses - I truly appreciate it :-)

Someone I banned from the homestead I rent, claims that I've banned him by his IP address. What I did was banning him and two of his alts in the Region/Estate window for the homestead I rent in SL, but that's all. Is that really enough to ban someone by IP address? I've never heard of this before.

The search for related items in my marketplace listings doesn't work anymore. I can search out some of the oldest items but none of the recent. Has anyone else experienced this and is thare a fix?

For a while, I've had problems with several of my new sculpt maps. When I use a newly imported one, it takes ages before the sculpt appears - or it doesn't appear at all until I've done a relog. Sometimes it shows up as a flat octagional prim and stays that way - until I relog. Today, two of my customers have had the same problem with sculpt maps they have purchased in my store, so it seems it's the first time a person (client/account) uses the sculpt map, the problem arises. Their issue was also fixed by a relog. Does anyone else have this problem and do you know the explanation and - most important - a better fix than relogging? I'd appreciate any help I can get with this. Teresa Matfield

Thanks for all the answers to my post. Food for thought - and action, so thank you! :-) Since the incident happened, I have talked to the customer and she has given me an apology and agreed to raise the price - still to a low level but at least she wasn't rude or incooperative so I haven't gone any further with this. She also agreed to credit me in the item description as the designer of the lightrays. The real issue wasn't that she resold my collection of lightrays - she didn't violate the terms of conditions I had set up. She changed the full permissions to 'no transfer' as I had requested in the item description. It was the fact that she marketed it as her own design using my picture with only the text changed and even at 1/12 of the original price, which gave me completely unfair competition. So I guess it was also a question of business ethics and what we find is right and wrong and you can't expect others to share your views. Where I come from, you automatically have the copyrights to your own creative work and unless you state that your work can be used by others commercially, they are not allowed to use it unless they ask your permission first. So to me, using my picture and calling it her own design, was a clear case of copyright infringement. I can see that under international conditions, it is a question of making an EULA that covers everything you can possibly think of may occur. I have thought about LL's role in this and have also come to the conclusion that it is not their responsibility to protect my rights unless the customer has violated the rules set up by LL for commerce. I think what bugged me the most in all this, was one of ideology and politics. My customer had chosen to resell the collection at 1/12 of the original price because she wanted to offer a high quality item at a price where everyone could afford to buy it. However sympathetic this view is, she did it on my expense ..not to mention all the other sellers of light rays that may have felt the result too. But this is really a discussion that deserves a thread of it's own. When all that is said, I am sorry to read that others have had the same experience as I have - you have my sympathy. And once again, thank you for all the great answers. I will use them as tools to become better at protecting my work.

I spent months working on a collection of lightrays and then decided to put them up for sale full perm for other builders to use. I chose to let others resell the lightrays as long as the permissions were set to 'no transfer'. I set the price at $L300, which I thought was a reasonable price, and each lightray could be purchased for $L40 by those who only needed a single or a few lightrays. Then someone decided to put my entire lightray collection up for sale on SL marketplace in a 'no transfer' version for $L25!! Less than I sell a single lightray for. I was shocked and appauled but knew I couldn't do anything to prevent it as I'd given permission to do so. Yes, perhaps it was a bit naive and maybe I trusted too much in people respecting my work as most other creators do. But what made me angry was that the seller markets the collection using MY picture - only the text has been changed, but still my picture ...which I assume she must have copied/pasted from my store. At least she could have made her own. Anyway, I decided to do nothing to begin with as throwing myself into a battle over a few pennies seemed undignifying. But then I read the seller's profile and noticed how she markets MY work under her own design company's name. That really pissed me off! Besides, what she was doing was just as illegal as using my picture, which I never gave anyone the rights to use. I contacted her about this but received no answer. Then I thought about putting the price of my own collection down and give the earnings to charity which would be sure to wipe her ass off the market. But by doing this, I would only be doing the same as her; dumping the prices on lightrays so that no one else, including other creators than myself, would have a chance to sell their original work in this segment of the market. It seems that no matter what I do it either hurts other creators or I will stand out as a greedy, bitter person quibbling over a few pennies. So the question is what can you do in a situation like this one? The first thing I did was to check and change the permissions on all my other items to prevent anything like this from happening again ...hoping that most will respect it as there is no copyright police in SL as there should be. But apart from that it seems there is little else I can do. Being wiped off the market by someone else selling the work I spent months on perfecting really sucks. The possibilities of protecting your work in SL are LOUSY to say the least. If anyone infringes on your copyrights, it is up to you to solve the matter and take any legal action if required. But everybody knows that no one will do anything about it as the amounts most creators earn in SL are negligible. But there are some who live on this or hope to do so. But if it's all about earning a fast buck and not caring about anyone else on the market, the prices will one day be so low that we may be looking at a future SL where all the talented creators have gone elsewhere to build. Is this really what we want with SL? Maybe, if we creators unite and channel money into a common fund which will have the single purpose of funding and supporting us in protecting our copyrights, this would have some preventive effect ...?