Another option to enhance this would be to create a new permission - Allow NPIOF Transfer. This perm could ONLY be set by verified users, for objects they want newbies to be free to share.

But I hear you on not having this restriction for notecards and landmarks. However, I think its a small annoyance to put up with.

Something that occured to me, is that notecards are often used to spread scripts around. I think no on notecards, for sure.

If people need to transfer text information, use a website and a link, it will come up in the inworld viewer. SLURLs are also an alternative to landmarks.

If "Be identity verified" refers to Aristotle's age verification I'd think it is just far too easy to bypass to pose any kind of hurdle since it will even verify completely made up information. Any hoop that only takes a minute to jump through and results in the ability to freely transfer content at will and which doesn't prevent anyone from creating a new account with new made up information the very next day isn't going to change things.

Payment information is slightly better (the problem there is that pre-paid cards don't care what name is put in AFAIK) since it opens the possibility of granting "inventory transfer priviliges" on an payment info name basis rather than an anynonymous account basis (even if you don't lie to Aristotle LL still won't know what information was entered on the form so there's no way for them to know that anonymous IDV'ed account A and anonymous IDV'ed account B are one and the same malicious person).

I.e. if someone is found to be misuing their inventory transfer privileges then they could be revoked and registering a new account couldn't get those privileges back either when using the same payment info name (see spoofing with pre-paid cards above though).

A better solution would be to go after cash outs, selling, and L$ balances and transfers. This idea, though, I don't think is a good idea.

Correct. And what usually happens is that those items get resold by unknowing people who then list them on Xstreet and in their shops, believing them to be legitimate BIOB items they can resell.

Yes, but how often does this happen? Especially compared to stores and malls full of ripped content, or compared to the many, many legitimate reasons for transferring content?

This proposed policy throws the baby out with the bathwater, and will probably hurt sales of legitimate goods in the process.

I reckon a good many will. I don't think this is going to hurt sales nearly so much as it has the potential to limit the damage of goods which are passed around by unverified accounts, most of whom don't realise they are doing it.

Hard core infringers are surely going to get around issues, but we are dealing with both hard core infringers and people who infringe and redistribute unknowingly. It's that latter group that does immense amounts of damage., all either unintentionally or just because they plain dont care.

Your ten percent number comes from one merchant who reported her stats. One. You cannot treat it as a gridwide fact.

Even if it was ten percent, this policy would cost some sales – and it would do so needlessly, because theft could also be discouraged by removing the ability for nonverifieds to profit much from it. It would also do a lot of other needless damage. There are many, many legitimate reasons for transferring inventory.

"Hard core infringers are surely going to get around issues, but we are dealing with both hard core infringers and people who infringe and redistribute unknowingly. It's that latter group that does immense amounts of damage., all either unintentionally or just because they plain dont care."

Whenever I've seen merchants complaining of theft, the vast majority of the time, it's someone selling their stuff, not passing it around for free.

I can also look around the rental estate where I live and see its not any kind of significant portion of renters, either. Some are free accounts, but most of them are buying lindens to pay rent. There are a very very few free accounts who don't buy lindens through the usual exchanges, and one renter of mine was this, who was in a country where he could not get a verified paypal or had a credit card. But he had perfectly acceptable identity information, and uses his RL info all the time.

And yes, I have seen plenty of people give away stuff thinking they were actually preventing theft, only to discover they were giving away the merchants stuff that had been copied for free. I can think of many many Fashcon Cafe instances in this vein. Many folks have given me content thinking it was a freebie, I can think of one where I got a neko skin given to me for free when I asked on channel for stores that sold neko skins, only to wear it and see that it was the one I had bought that I no longer wanted to wear!

With Munchflower Zaius listed as the creator, no less. (no, she didn't create it, either) Yeah, I groaned and told the guy, who just shrugged and said he didn't know.

1. Making it easier to buy legitimate content.

2. Making it easier to find infringing content and removing it

3. Limiting the ability to widely distribute copied content

4. Making it more difficult to profit from copied content

This idea comes mainly under 3. but has also a little bit of 4. in that I have suggested tighter cashing out limits and inability to sell inworld. But remember that if you tighten cashing out, people will simply cash out with third party services. So to really restrict that, you will have to control movement of L$, and I think that's probably a worse situation than what I have suggested... that will definitely impact sales in restricting how much an unverified person can spend.

There is also the fact that you'll be hurting legitimate people and the bad people will just use other methods to distribute stolen content, they'll grab the build's prim data and just recreate it with scripting, sell access to a notecard or a webpage giving step by step instructions on how to make a ripped build and downloadable texture files or any number of the other ways. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make it as hard as we can for people to steal content but we have to do it smartly not this shotgun blast style lock everything down and screw anyone who gets in the way mentality.

As I have stated, putting identity info or payment info is easy to do. It's not an onerous requirement for anyone, and the damage is pretty limited.

By now, I don't really see much alternative, unless you can come up with some better method to make the distinction between goods which are likely legit and goods which are more than likely not... and this is the segment of customers who care the least about this distinction anyway. And I see very few people trying to devise a system to make distinctions between these sets of sellers.

that this should better apply to the creation of new accounts and not those existing in the database right now. I'll amend to reflect that. That's a good compromise to me, to not affect current NPIOFs, but rather new alt creation

Currently, the DMCA system coupled with SL is useless for many reasons, and here`s one:.All it does is have LL delete the offending inventory item out of named avatars who may be involved. What about everyone else who the botter has transferred the items to? They`re free to pass those items out to hoards of people, free to put them in freebie boxes, and the cycle is pretty unbreakable. I`ve had unreleased items ripped off of my back and passed around welcome areas and there`s nothing I can do. By implimenting this jira suggestion, it would help kill the mass passing around of content, which is many times stolen. In the cases of legitimate freebies, it would simply cause people to have to visit a shop or area to pick up a copy for themselves. Not a problem.

The downside is, a thief could just download copybot and make their own copies for personal use, but atleast the DMCA process would be more on target (As said copybotter would not have been able to send the stolen item/s to others, and if they were a verified copybotter, atleast there is something to more easily track).

The bigger issue: LL needs to punish people who steal. My question is, after being caught stealing why are these people not being reprimanded? Common sense, if I were to steal something and I logged on and it was gone from my inventory, why would I care? I will just bot it again or re-upload it. No fear of being punished, I would just do as I pleased.. LL isn`t going to do anything to stop me. And if they try? I`ll just register another free account and continue with my lifestyle (NO!!! I am not a thief, im speaking hypothetically). This is the mindset of people who steal. Why behave when there is no punishment for your ill actions? If LL posesses no way, or desire, to keep a thief out of SL, then what better way than to impliment some limitations on new account creations? Ban the "grandfathered" accounts who are caught stealing, and when they run off to make a new account they will have restrictions.

You will see SL thieves running around all the time screaming, "haha! I stole! Im destroying your business! Catch me if you can!!" because they know full well that LL is not, and will not, do anything to stop them. So why not impliment something such as this jira to help curb the mass passing out of stolen content? Everyone pretty much wins with this one. Its not a silver bullet but it`s better than what we currently have and probably the best suggestion yet that doesn`t take from an individuals ability to experience freely creating things, nor does it cause LL to have to do away with free accounts. Both of those things seemed to be 2 big issues in past suggestions that were written up regarding stolen content. I personally am hanging by a few strings regarding my continuance to create content for this world, and i`d imagine many more are in the same boat.

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I wanted to add a quick thought on a possible backfire. If someone uses a program which saves files onto their computer (instead of botting/cloning it inworld) , uploads it into SL to create a stolen item and pass it around, these people most likely will resort to this:

"Hey, i have some stolen content but i cant pass it to you inworld, its restricted. Give me your email address and i`ll send you the files, you can upload them into SL and make your own"

So the process goes from passing the already-made stolen SL item that is not on any ones computer HDD, into being passed around via email addresses and they now have the raw copy of the files on their computer. That`s pretty bad, too, for obvious reasons.

Really, this is true.

I know that this JIRA is not a silver bullet. It's a prong in a several forked approach. LL also needs to get real about other issues, such as the inability to distinguish between copybotted goods, and those which are legitimate, and have an expedited process that deals with removing questionable assets.

They need to make it easier first and foremost, to buy legitimate goods from creators. Currently this is not the case, its a crapshoot at all levels, from counterfeits of "luxury" SL items, to the difficult issues surrounding full perms building supplies - which also suffer from an inability to distinguish legitimate creators of building supplies, legitimate users of those building supplies, down to distinguishing when a product is a derivative work from building supplies as opposed to an original high quality item. These have correspondingly different pricing, of course. But anyway, this is just a digression and outside the scope of this JIRA, I am just saying that my JIRA is not a silver bullet... its only a drop in the bucket, and we need quite a few drops in that bucket to get to a reasonable process that allows for safe and legitimate trade of items at all levels of creation.

It's been admitted many times that most of the time the buyers have no idea it is stolen, that's a key argument behind this issue and while SL is not real life while buying stolen content can result in seizure (and arrest) in real life for someone purching it you'd never break into every single person who could have possibly stolen a stolen watch or a counterfeit bag and demand that they hand it over.

There's also the doctrine of first sale which again doesn't fit perfectly into the differences between SL and RL but should be kept in mind. Pre-emptively removing everyone who doesn't identify themselves's right to transfer objects totally skews the balance and is in my opinion trying to get rid of termites by blowing up the house. There has to be a non-nuclear and more targetted way to achieve the same end.

RL, you buy hot merchandise, it gets taken from your house by a visit from the cops, you don't go to jail, but its still forfeit.

So, I'm saying the same thing. It gets taken from you, but you're not slapped around for not knowing it was ripped.

And where is that in my JIRA anyway? It's not punishing anyone. It's just limiting transfer on people who don't want to give identity credentials or payment details. It's a bit like a trial account status, except its a lot more expansive, as they can always be an audience member if that's all the participation they wish to have.

But if they wish to have more participation, they need to understand a few things about accountability, and give over some more info.

Oh, dear. People are supposed to be unaccountable online for their actions. Yeah, hippy dippy softheaded nonsense, believe in that at your peril.

"It's been admitted many times that most of the time the buyers have no idea it is stolen, that's a key argument behind this issue and while SL is not real life while buying stolen content can result in seizure (and arrest) in real life for someone purching it you'd never break into every single person who could have possibly stolen a stolen watch or a counterfeit bag and demand that they hand it over."

No, I'm not a vigilante, but it's happened with police many times in RL EVERYDAY if they are reasonably sure that they do. But again, that's just nonsequitur, nobody is taking ANYTHING away from anyone in my JIRA, they are just not able to GIVE IT AWAY.

Ah, details, so hard to figure out!

Gordon, this is a private network. You do not have rights on it. You have rights that LL allows to let you have on it. If you want to exercise that argument, it needs to be your equipment and its not.

If they wanted to end unverified accounts completely, they could and you will have NO recourse over it. My JIRA is simply asking for a small limit on these accounts, so people can still enjoy SL in most normal ways, while limiting to some degree the most abusive behavior, unless they provide more details and accountability beyond an email address. It cannot be the only solution to this problem - it is just one part of an overall approach to deal with it realistically. (Trying to make a DRM-style perms system isn't realistic, IMO. And no, the current perms system isn't DRM, its just bog standard ACL file permissions)

It's not rocket science, and it's not "abusing" anyone, forcing DRM on their assets, or taking anything away from them. I would even be fine if they grandfathered existing NPIOF, provided they are tough on weeding out the desire to "liberate" your assets against the will of other people.

But no, I suspect I know what will really happen. People will leave this world through the process of attrition, as enlightened competitors come online and deal with these issues with something better than The Tao of Do Nothing About It and Maybe It Goes Away.

I think the genius is that they have the sharing and the commercial aspects of the community sharply defined, and not muddled together. Top tier merchants are highlighted separately from the cheap stuff. These are simply marketing issues.

Copyright infringement issues are taken seriously and acted upon quickly, and merchants have to adhere to a code of conduct. Now I realise that in SL, there will always be the sharing aspect, but when it comes to XStreet - it should be run as professionally as Renderosity and DAZ3d at the very least, and it's not.

Legally that's a big pitfall, but again, that's outside the scope of my little JIRA. But people better keep it in the back of their head, especially when mesh import arrives and their content gets imported here by the truckload. Don't say I didn't warn ye.

Again, to get back to my JIRA. All its doing is limiting transfer. People can still get stuff, still buy stuff, still learn to build, still receive money, still script... they can be happy little sandboxers as much as they like to. But if they want to do more than that, they have to simply enter a little more information on a form. Nobody is asking for their first born children, or taking away their security blanket, or even the pacifier

Right in this case being not the best term admittedly since this is only at the graces of LL and they can close and delete our comments and issues at will and ban us but you get the idea.

I would rather see new unverified accounts become impossible than see the change in the culture of SL that would result from new people not, by default, being able to pass cool stuff around.

And that's even though I would undoubtedly profit from more n00bs not passing around Flight Feather and buying it from me instead. The "muddling of sharing" in SL is one of the things that's made SL the kind of dynamic and creative environment it is.

there may be other ways of copying things that i don't know about, and there may be more than i know to it in the instances i do know anything at all. and, i am neither making this post in agreement with or in opposition to anything that has been said, it's just information i want to put for people interested in the content protection issue.

copying objects, whether it is done by the old 'copybot' or by one of the new viewers that leave out permissions checks, the method i am aware of is that an XML file is created on the user's local hard drive, referencing the properties of each prim and the UUID of the textures. the relevant textures are also downloaded and saved by at least some of the old and current software, and can then be re-uploaded as is or modified in whatever way that user wants and then uploaded. the tools i have seen so far that re-import such exported data don't require re-uploading the textures, they just apply them from the UUID, but the resulting object can certainly be re-textured with uploaded copies if someone wanted to fork over the upload cost. so, it occurs to me that limiting transfer capability in world, while it is a logical partial solution if the objections to it already stated in this discussion can be adequately ironed out, does nothing to stop transfer outworld of the XML files, either between said user's own alts or between whoever he or she wants to share those files with.

copying textures, the same applies except that in this case there is no object involved, just the downloaded textures. i have seen some evidence that it is possible to create skins and clothing by referencing the UUID in world and copying said texture directly to inventory for use, but i have not personally seen it in action. however if that is possible and it seems likely that it is, UUID can be passed around for use and people make their own copies of whatever skin or clothing in world without uploading or transferring anything.

Eliminate unverified accounts, don't make them second class citizens.

So unfortunelty I am almost sure this proposal wont ever finish.