Every uploaded texture should have a pixel-by-pixel comparison with existing textures. Given the optimistic assumption that the vast majority of textures uploaded are varied and different, the "first pass" algo can be just a general "rough scan-thru" of the pixel contents. In the rare case of an exact duplicate, perhaps provide the second-hand-uploader with the name of the person who first uploaded the texture.

On a tangent issue, full-mod builds often have their creators nullified, when the next owner links his own prim as the root prim. The system should also be modified so that creator does not change after transfer.

In this case, the thief will have a copy of the texture on their hard drive. Now short of searching everyone's hard drive for images, which is a massive invasion of privacy, unfeasible, and possibly illegal, there is not much that can be done about this.

Deleting the objects from inventory would be rather ineffective, as it can simply be reuploaded..

Option 3 is crackable, too. not to mention that this would make it impossible to trade images around and download them from SL.

And ina. Really. What. Do you have any idea how many textures are in SL. A pixel by pixel comparison is an intensive thing to do or a single image. Comparing an image with each of the millions of textures in SL, would result in exponentially increasing delays on every upload. I'm not sure how long, but probably several hours/days.

I share your concern for this cause, but I'm not seeing what can really be done about this. The only real option is legal action.

recap: pixel-by-pixel isn't necessary for vast majority of cases due to dissimilarity in textures.

A "first pass" scan could randomly select 20 pixels in comparison with pixels of existing data. If different, then keep; otherwise, "second pass" it; etc.

About the skins you see here. It would be very simple for LL to remove these rips without searching everyones inventory.

• • • Simply grab one of these ripped skins, get the UUIDs of the 3 textures used and delete these textures from the asset server ***

When someone tries to wear the skin they will just see "missing image" textures. We already saw this happen when LLs garbage collection was marking assets for deletion by accident.

I'm willing to bet all the rips you see here are probably only 1 or 2 different texture sets. It wont stop anyone re-uploading textures but its a GREAT start

There is one solution that MIGHT help in the specific instance of clothing, skins, etc, although I can already see problems. Right now, the reason it's so easy to copy clothing items including skins is that the base texture used to create the item is sent to each client. Your client merges all clothing layers used on your avatar and sends the result back to the server for distribution to everyone near you. This is called "Baking". Since those individual clothing textures are sent to your computer, it's possible to intercept them and reupload them to make a full-perms version of the clothing item.

The baking system was implemented back when processing power was a little more expensive, and LL had a little less to work with. It was decided that efficiency required the computationally expensive process of baking to be done on the client side rather than on the server. I have heard mention by Lindens in town halls that perhaps it's feasible to do baking on the server side by a few special servers dedicated to the task. One advantage this would have would be that the actual clothing textures would never need to be sent all the way out to users' computers; just the baked texture. This means that there's less to steal.

It'd probably still be possible to steal skins if this method were in place, because the baked texture created by the server would probably very closely resemble the source image for the skin in question. Other items like clothing wouldn't be as easy to reproduce, especially if they had transparency, because the transparent portions would be merged into the rest of the person's outfit, including underlayers and skin.

So it's not a perfect solution, and I'm dubious as to whether the benefits outweigh the need fo rmore processing power at LL and development work. However, this is the only technical solution that is even remotely feasible and useful for mitigating the theft of clothing textures. Any other solution like those described above is pointless, especially given the fact that the client is open-source.

Yes, people can still reupload the textures, but it WILL stop the massive spread of stolen items though full permission shops and resell. It will be a good step.

If this stealing will go on, it may ruin a big part of secondlifes business. If people can get the highest quality skins for free, who would still buy the originals? It also kills business for any skin business, because who would still pay for any normal skin if they can get the highest quality skins for free?

So many items are beeing stolen nowadays, it's just a matter of time till all popular skins, clothings, texture based furniture, tatoos, houses will be stolen and turn into freebie.

• Off course Linden labs can do more than they do now. Its crazy if people have to remove their item after a DMCA and can put it back 10 minutes later because they still have in in their inventory. 95% of people selling stolen items are NOT the rippers themselves, so they could not reupload them, since they do not have the original textures. Most of them are (full perm) resellers or newbies in malls. Can you still find a mall in secondlife where the skins on top of the page arent sold for 5-25$? This wide spreading is a huge problem, not just the ripping alone.

• Getting the UUIDs of the textures used and deleted these textures from the asset server, would delete al of the illegal copies at once, so a shop owner would not have to file hundreds of DMCAs against all people reseling their skins and start hundreds of law suits against all of those people (most resellers do not even knowing they are selling stolen items). It's impossible to sue all resellers too. The ripper may be the one that caused the problem, but the resellers that are spreading items for bottom prices that hurt the original creators most and should be stopped too. Also, it would save the lindens a lot of time, not having to go through hundreds DMCAs for copies of the same rip.

• In many cases it may be impossible to track down the original ripper, this person could create/have a basic membership which does not have any info about who they are in real life. Who are you going to sue then?

Given that, along with a simple UUID asset deletion of the stolen texture, going after the creator of the texture will lead straight to the person who stole it. The creator of textures, clothing etc..basically anything non-prim, cannot be faked. Of course it is to be assumed that the one who stole it simply used an alt account. Going after the people who sell the thing or buy it is bad..as Fluf said, many false positives. Bad bad bad.

Removal of the uuid-grabber in the client is senseless..it can simply be reapplied via patch, and you cannot redistribute a texture via its mere uuid anyways. 3rd party programs cannot be blocked out due to the same process...apply patch, and it's circumvented.

The only solution on the LL side would indeed be a better way to report stolen goods...the main problem here is...it's hard not to make that abusable. A new texture store opens, mischievous person comes along, steals all textures, uploads and claims to be the real creator. Depending on how much of a smooth talker the thief is, things might not go well for the original creator. Never underestimate the cruelty of the corrupted to get what they want. The only way to reduce that possibility is to have LL check the creation date. I am however not sure if that gets stored internally for textures. I really hope it is.

Given the fact that abuse reports already suffer a huge delay and are usually considered useless already if a single person complaints, the question remains if this new process would be done in an effective manner in the first place. Also fake or revenge-driven complaints come to mind that just would stress and overload the team handling those.

Meh. This is just hard to handle, all in all.

1. Ripping textures is trivial. I won't explain how for obvious reasons, just telling you that it's very easy and Linden Labs has no control over this. No amount of technical magic Linden Labs can do will stop this, short of letting the GPU burn cycles (and even than it probably wouldn't be to hard for the rippers to adjust).

2. Folllowing from the above, blocking at upload is the only way to ensure copyright compliance. Any technical solution must therefore be able to make comparisons, know about rights for original texture and the newly uploaded texture, and somehow magically know that the uploaded texture is in fact created (imagine a texture taken from images.google.com) by the uploader and the original uploader has any rights to claim copyright at all. In short; a technical solution would either be too lax, overly strict or just straight from 2000 years into the future.

3. Determining copyright is hard for many textures. Skins are specific to the Second Life game engine, and as such somewhat more easy (assuming they aren't mangled beyond recognition), but other types of textures can be much harder to assess.

4. Therefore, the only way to effectively and fairly deal with these issues, is by human processes. Luckily, there's one in place already; the DMCA! Which brings us to...

5. For some odd reason, LL seems to ignore pretty much all DMCA notices from in-game companies. Why they do this is beyond me as they are taking a huge legal and financial risk by not following DMCA notices. LL claims DMCA notices are the only way to handle copyright disputes yet ignores most, whilst many would be very easy to validate and even blindly following DMCA notices is legally completely save for LL. Quite frankly I'm just waiting for somebody to sue LL over an ignored DMCA notice. If the notice was valid, LL would be in deep shit, but that's a different matter.

6. Deleting (or more likely, replacing) textures can be a massive problem for the social structure of SL. Imagine a basic texture which is ripped and then sold, then bought by an unsuspecting builder and used in some object which is then sold to another person. That person would suddenly have a crippled object which she paid for, and for which she did no wrong. Obviously there's a guilty party somewhere, but it could be buried deep between layers of perfectly honest and unsuspecting vendors and builders. Imagine the impact it would have on the SL world if textures would be deleted. Obviously LL has incentive to NOT do anything about DMCA complaints for textures.

Make your own conclusions.

Personally, I think this is something LL needs to sort out for itself. Does it want to increase the scale of economy or does it want to milk the current economy. Currently they seem to prefer the status quo.

It's not just the ripper that should be stopped, but even more the reselling of items.

Rippers are already beeing deleted. This topic is about stopping the spread of stolen items which is killing business, about stopping the reselling of items from people who rely on teir creations for a real life job from becoming freebie, destroying their business. Its about stopping the massive violation of DMCAs which linden labs does virtually nothing about.

Having every popular item for free may sounds nice to newcomers but will destroy skin business in secondlife on the longer term. Who still wants to create a skin knowing it's only a matter of time till it will be stolen?

Linden Labs halfhearted way of 'reporting DMCAs but leaving the stolen items inworld' is doing nothing to stop items from beeing sold.

The spreading should be stopped and that's what this topic is about. Let's stay on topic.

Durilka Voom is selling stolen X2 skins at Royier (105, 106, 95) listing her as the CREATOR meaning she is the ripper too. She has her payment info on her file, so Secondlife knows who she is

I have reported it to the X2 creator, and hope my message arrived

now we finally can see what SL really does with rippers. This ripper deserves a permanent ban!

Linden Labs has two options.

1. Act fast and hard upon DMCA complaints. Immediately scan for and remove/mangle all copies of infringing textures and upsetting innocent buyers who'll loose money and whose only recourse would be with the person they bought the stolen texture from. Block the account of the thief and rebursing customers and/or copyright owner with the account's funds if the thief does not file a DCMA counter-complaint within the allotted time. Though most likely the account won't hold sufficient funds.

2. Not act and end up seeing all the best content providers and builders leave SL. Even if they won't leave SL immediately, they'll leave as soon as an alternative comes along and at the very least will probably stop making new content, possibly risk the negative media attention that SL is effectively a copyright thief's paradise, thus discouraging new content providers to start and eventually marginalizing the skin texture market and losing money.

It's a long term vs. short term scenario. If SL wants to keep profitting from the skin texture creators, it needs to act as described in 1 (which is normal in real-life) and start handling DMCA complaints as DMCA regulations require them to do.

Option A: A creator watermarks his/her textures upon upload or in-game (optional). If this texture were hacked, and the hacker tried to re-upload the texture into his/her SL, the feature would be able to read and recognize that this texture was already uploaded and watermarked, and either crash the game or fail the upload. Creators could have lists of approved up-loaders (in case they would like to share their watermarked textures with another resident or alternate account.) Any resident would also be able to re-upload their own textures at any point.

If option A is too complicated, option B would be: LL creates a system where any chosen uploaded texture could be marked, never to be uploaded again by anyone. It would prevent anyone from hacking an in-game texture, but unlike Ina's idea still allow users to upload similar/same images, (say two users found a free one online) and take far less time to recognize. The option to protect your texture from being re-uploaded would be optional. Uploading a watermark-free texture would still be possible for those wishing to give them out on full perms for people to modify and use.)

Again, I have no clue about how any of this could work. It's an idea.

LL's total lack of concern over the needs of the content creators in SL dooms it. In the end, I see a world owned by a few, created by Electric Sheep, populated with adverstising for IBM et al and enjoyed only by those who's sole purpose for coming into it is to create havoc.

The best way to be safe in SL is to not sell your creations. If you choose to start a business here and you become popular I guess you have to except that this is going to happen , you really have no other choice.If you decide to fight for what is yours as Lost and I have,you may not like the consequences.We have been stalked and harrassed mercilessly wich has not been limited to just our Second Life but has followed us to our pesonal email . It is quite impossible to run a business under these conditions.We have not given up, but all of this has certainly taken away any joy we once felt and has definately hampered our creative energies.We pay thousands of dollars each month for accounts we can barely log in on .

Be aware that when you do file DMCA's with certain exchanges for SL that if a counter claim is filed your personal information is sent to the person you filed against .This is fine if they are a normal rational person ,unfortunately we really do not know the people in wich we are dealing with nor what they are capable of .Personally I do not want my home phone number and address given to anyone in Second Life or any one on the net for that matter unless Im the one giving it to them.Sure, you get their personal information in return, but what happens when you have 10 counter claims and 10 diff people have your personal information how are you to know who happens to be the one with the screw loose .

1) Person finds a copied texture
2) Person enters the copy's UUID and the Original's UUID in a form
3) They are compared, and if identical, the one with the later creation date (assuming this is known, this won't work fairly otherwise) is deleted from the asset server.
4) If the textures are very similar within a certain tolerance, they are flagged for Linden-human examination, prioritised on how similar.

Another idea would be to, while not examining every texture at upload time, have a process running on each simulator that compares textures randomly in CPU idle time whenever the simulator is under low load.

http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/02/14/opengl-copying-and-stealing/

" One example is the concept of first use. Linden Lab is currently making changes to
make it easier to determine who originally created an asset and its creation
date. While much of this data currently
exists, it isn't displayed in the UI. By
exposing this data, it will be much easier for residents in a conflict to be
able to clearly determine which texture or object was created first,
simplifying conflict resolution for all parties involved."

Almost 2 years ago linden lab was working on this, and thinking about other options for this problem (read full post). I would like to know if there has been progress in this?

Ultimately, nothing can really stop it. But that will at least cause inconvenience, and reduce the spread.

I'd personally like to see that dante skin asset lasered in any case. I'm sick of seeing it on each and every gangster wannabe, businessman, beach bum, and thousands of other guys all over, all looking identical, and not even realising it.

ugh.

When the texture is stolen, the original creator can prove its his texture his own creation to the lindens, which the ripper cant since they dont have the original photos and in between versions of creating the texture to prove they made it. So when a store sells items which are stolen they cannot prove the created it and LL knows these are illegal copies. Then SL can delete all illegaly copied textures since they all will have a different UUID from the original one, the ones with the rippers UUID will be deleted. That would be a good and working system.

I would not mind if i would have to pay for the cost of adding myself in the database, or for the costs of the extra work for the linden to delete the UUID, because if the skin remains to be spread I will lose even more money. Having people tpay, and only allowing people with payment info in would be a good idea, so only serious people will apply and when they do LL knows who they are in real life.

The way of sueing people by this system compared to tthe DMCA now is:
1) far more effective, since all copies can be deleted at once
2) This way it doesnt costs us our privacy like sueing by DMCA where every single reseller can counterfile and get our RL indentity
3) its easier for the lindens since they dont have to do hundreds of DMCAs over the same item

Its basically the same idea the lindens came up with and I think its a pretty good idea!

Any Linden?

The texture upload process damages the resolution of textures. Therefore watermarks will be damaged and Stenography may not be feasible given the nature of it's process that introduces noise.

Therefore a texture registry sounds good. Textures would have to be submitted outside SL and the associated reference uploaded texture UUId attached to the record.

In this way a dispute can be handed off to a legal concern outside of LL's property and the entire discovery process can be shortened.

There are technical issues. A mask would have to be made and only certain areas within the mask area be XOR'd, a process that done properly, is nearly instantaneous. Otherwise a smear or 2 in the non used portions of the image area will be sufficient to fool the bitwise comparison. This sort of technology is 10 years old so by today's standards XOR comparisons of images will not be much of a load on anything.

An interesting side note is whether or not LL is legally an internet service provider given the system is closed. If LL is not legally an ISP then LL is not protected by DMCA Safe Harbor provisions and may be liable for content theft. Therefore it is in LL's best interest to take the high ethical ground on this matter and staff the resources necessary to maintain a registry of offenders using the metadata they have from connections and transactions and ensure no reconnection to SL is possible. This also means LL may have to totally exclude Nigeria, Iran, and Brazil, to name the most prominent few, from SL by means of IP range banning as the practice of "internet cafe" use to avoid identities is common and apparently acceptable by those governments. (Most identity theft comes from Nigeria according to the information available on the web). Yes there is IP spoofing but only the most serious professional criminals will go this route for a few pennies out of sl. content theft in sl has the emerging precedence of the criminals not exactly being that smart and in general are fairly arrogant and ignorant about the reality of law. When I was a game host service provider i eliminated 99% of all my security problems by banning certain countries following the model used by godaddy to reduce the workload. When a country has manifested itself as one that does not deal with internet related crime that country no longer gets any content.

I know some people will argue against a proactive approach but thats life on the internet. Latest word is a lot of Nigerian ID theft operations are moving to Iran because Iran is now assumed to be safe harbor for anyone attacking the west.

I won't be expecting LL to take any action. Rosedale paid lip service to the issue long ago and ultimately worked in the direction of trying to acquire safe harbor exclusion from liability instead of dealing with a serious problem thrusting it upon the designers. Should LL elect to not grow some ethics and begin dealing with this and other growing content theft issues then it is certain that the "metaverse" run by LL will never be a viable platform for anything except amateur criminal activities.

good luck with it. you will need it.

• Modern digital image watermarks do survive resolution changes and JPEG (and other) mangling. On the other hand, currently all digital image watermarking method published have already been hacked.

• XOR based dupe checks require all compared pixels to be perfectly identical. Even if you check only the non-transparent pixels, it'd still be trivial to sufficiently change the image to fool any decent XOR-based dupe check. Besides, XOR would offer no benefit above simply comparing pixels for this purpose. Even fuzzy-based checks would be trivial to circumvent without damaging the esthetics of the texture.

• ISP protection allows the ISP to remove content when prompted by DMCA without liability. Not having this protection would only make LL less likely to remove DMCA-reported content than now. Though it's hard to see how much less likely they could be.

IMHO, LL should just listen to DMCA reports, verify manually whether the textures do indeed seem to be copies, then just remove them. Really, how difficult could that be?

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1919

lets target this post at coming up with ways to get rid of the textures from outside! These will have a different UUID, so I tstill think it would be possible to just erase their UUIDs. But I guess LL doesn't wants hundreds of mad customers who payed for a skin to wear in some illegal shop getting their skin erased, so why not go for a more friendly approach. Let people have what they bought, but disable them from reselling it. Selling ripped textures is illegal right? (after a DMCA) . So why not set all objects which contain textures which are known to be illegal to no transfer?
Then people could still keep what they have, no mad customers, but it will stop the resell of any further illegal objects.
Maybe this can be done in the new object search: add an extra feature in it so it scans the objects into boxes too. Then when an object i found with an illegal UUID

1) an email can be sent to the original creator so he knows which resellers sell his stuff so he can sue them with a DMCA. (give him the coordinates of where the objects were found)

2) Send an email to the reseller (owner of the things for sale, is in most cases not the ripper) so he knows his objects are illegal rips and he can be DMCAed if he keeps selling them.

3) or even better: set the illegal objects to no transfer and send an email to the owner of the shop telling him why his object is set to no transfer. This way customers who bought it can still use their skin, but they cant resell it anymore (which they arent allowed to anyway since its a rip)

The DMCA actually requires that the hosting provider remove the content without regard to whether they think its infringing or not. So it's really not up to LL to decide if they think it's a copy or not, they get the DMCA, they take it down, end of story.

Yet according to reports by people who did send in DMCA complaints, LL doesn't remove reported content, so what's going wrong here?

http://secondlife.com/corporate/dmca.php

Most people who were ripped off are long term secondlife users. Its very unlikely these people, who know how to build complex items, and know how to use jira, would masively fail to fill in something which is relatively simple compared to that.

In relation to this and the whole open source client (aka Project: Copy Bot);

Linden Lab can either have a totally transparent open-source geek-project, or a business driven creative community. Not both. If nothing is done to protect property, then SL's creative economy will die out sooner than later. Why buy when you can steal? People have subjective morals... I've heard the lamest excuses for theft.

Wake up please.

CopyBot's been dead and been dead for a long while. It only worked for about 3 weeks somewhere in the 1.16/1.17 series.
LL shortly released an update, which at that time released a new UDP protocol map EVERY release.

TestClient, which has been shipped with the libsecondlife SVN since the CopyBot days, has had the same prim export and import function that people maligned CopyBot for.
However, many commits hit the SVN which have broken the exporter or importer at various times while the inventory code was being reworked.
I am unsure if it's currently working, but there are specific revision numbers which have worked since 1.18 and still continue to do so.
I personally use this export and import for my own objects, and write & save my scripts on my PC as well, using LSLEditor ( http://www.lsleditor.org )

The number one requested feature for Second Life since 2003 that I've heard is "Let me download my items to my harddrive so LL doesn't lose them / I don't lose them". LibSL comes through, and they're the bad guy, just because of a poor decision naming it, and a couple off-color comments in IRC from Baba. Sheesh.

The @#$%ing annoying copybot killers that attempt to IM anyone with !quit are COMPLETELY flawed, because even the 'good' copybot direct from libsl DID NOT RESPOND TO OBJECTS IMing !quit, only AGENTS.
The 'bad' hacked copybot had completely removed the !quit command thus were completely immune.
Copybot Killers are a waste of time and effort, and DO NOT WORK. End of story.

Now, about this TOS arguement.

If my memory isn't mistaken, doesn't the TOS grant LL a license to use and display any and all uploaded textures to ANYONE at any time?

Under the following in the TOS:
----------
3.2 You retain copyright and other intellectual property rights with respect to Content you create in Second Life, to the extent that you have such rights under applicable law. However, you must make certain representations and warranties, and provide certain license rights, forbearances and indemnification, to Linden Lab and to other users of Second Life.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, you understand and agree that by submitting your Content to any area of the service, you automatically grant (and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant) to Linden Lab: (a) a royalty-free, worldwide, fully paid-up, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license to use, reproduce and distribute your Content within the Service as permitted by you through your interactions on the Service, and (ii) use and reproduce (and to authorize third parties to use and reproduce) any of your Content in any or all media for marketing and/or promotional purposes in connection with the Service, provided that in the event that your Content appears publicly in material under the control of Linden Lab, and you provide written notice to Linden Lab of your desire to discontinue the distribution of such Content in such material (with sufficient specificity to allow Linden Lab, in its sole discretion, to identify the relevant Content and materials), Linden Lab will make commercially reasonable efforts to cease its distribution of such Content following the receipt of such notice, although Linden Lab cannot provide any assurances regarding materials produced or distributed prior to the receipt of such notice; (b) the perpetual and irrevocable right to delete any or all of your Content from Linden Lab's servers and from the Service, whether intentionally or unintentionally, and for any reason or no reason, without any liability of any kind to you or any other party; and (c) a royalty-free, fully paid-up, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license to copy, analyze and use any of your Content as Linden Lab may deem necessary or desirable for purposes of debugging, testing and/or
providing support services in connection with the Service.

3.4 Linden Lab licenses its textures and environmental content to you for your use in creating content in-world.

During any period in which your Account is active and in good standing, Linden Lab gives you permission to create still and/or moving media, for use only within the virtual world environment of the Service ("in-world"), which use or include the "textures" and/or "environmental content" that are both (a) created or owned by Linden Lab and (b) displayed by Linden Lab in-world.

----------

If I'm not mistaken, with such a reciprocal license, does that not imply that we too may display and / or use any texture uploaded to the service?
Considering that we as users are not actually transferring or displaying the textures, the LL servers are transferring the textures to us thus invoking their "royalty-free, worldwide, fully paid-up,
perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license" (I.E. Full-Perms) to "use, reproduce and distribute your Content within the Service as permitted by you through your interactions on the Service" (I.E. upload) clause?

Yes, SL can display those textures to anyone... as long as they do so according to your permissions.
If people are using your texture on some other object or clothing layer, they are no longer doing so as permitted by you through your interactions on the Service.
So no, this license explicitely stops people from copying textures and using them other than as the original author gave permissions for. This term also states Linden Labs has no license to display stolen textures, as they only claim a license for textures used in ways for which the author gave permission.
The only exceptions provided in the terms are for promotional and debugging/testing reasons. Neither of which is at stake here.
As I read it, this term only exists for reasonable technical and promotional reasons, not to allow anybody to do whatever they want with your copyrighted content. In fact it explicitely opposes this in the words I quoted.

Ahha! But the author gave those permissions BY UPLOADING.

As I read the legal jargon, "as permitted by you through your interactions on the Service" is specifically referring to uploading an asset, as indicated more specifically by the preceding wording, "you understand and agree that by submitting your Content to any area of the service, you automatically grant (and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant)"

"royalty-free, worldwide, fully paid-up, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license" to LL is basically giving LL full rights to use and display your assets to anyone for any reason.

To me, this says "When you upload your stuff, we (LL) can do whatever we want with it."

"you must make certain representations and warranties, and provide certain license rights, forbearances and indemnification, to Linden Lab and to OTHER USERS of Second Life." (emphasis mine)

translates to "You agree to let other people see and use these uploads"

Now, it is true that you retain the COPYRIGHT, but in uploading your copyrighted material to the SL asset cluster, you're granting LL full legal perms on your stuff EXCEPT that LL cannot claim copyright or trademark protection over it themselves, EG, call it their own/claim they made it/claim they were the source of it.

Basically, it means that anything you upload to the service loosely becomes the 'property' of LL, but with your name attached/attributed to it.

Besides. The majority of images I've seen on SL have been either from GPL texture packs (Without the GPL license, strangely enough), picked off google images for which the SL'author' cannot claim to be their own, or generally received from an external source, edited, and uploaded into SL.

The only content I've seen that is a direct result of someone putting pixels to assets without a base image, has been original paintings, scanned or CG sketches/drawings, or very simplistic clip-art/text (But... Amusingly enough, using copyrighted fonts with license terms that prohibit their use in such a way... Like the Microsoft font family, just about anything from dafont, blambot fonts, practically any font other than the Bitstream Vera family.) such as arrows.

Most of the skins I've seen are based in some way from copyrighted sources such as http://www.3d.sk/ and UV mapped onto the mesh using the linden-provided skin template.
I understand that the UV mapping can be painstaking, but that still does not mean that by putting in those hours of work, you completely own the content you have provided.
A lot of skin artists CLAIM to draw EVERY PIXEL of their respective skins, but we all know this is mostly untrue. There are a few exceptions, however – but you must somehow prove that you created the works uploaded, and since most of it is CG work in photoshop (often pirated! hah!) with a mouse or a tablet with 'hundreds' of layers, it's impossible to prove to any jury that knows the technical background of how this is all created that you are the sole creator and copyright holder of the content.

I'm one of the few people that know about procedural texture generation, I use a Licensed, Paid For Copy of DT2.5 for generating most of my textures. Any content I create with it is my own, copyrighted by myself, with plenty of hidden watermarks and tiny pixel signatures for good measure, mainly because I want to track how my textures are used, and identify them. In the documentation distributed with my works, I mention the software used to create them, and cite any sources I used as direct (pixel cut&paste) or indirect ("Ooh, that's a cool rune, I should draw something similar!") references. Credit given where credit is due. Personally, I'm not too concerned with others using them, I'm just stoked that someone else found them nice enough to use them. Practically, all I ask is that you don't dump and reupload my textures with a different creator. Feel free to use the UUIDs or request the inventory texture assets from me.

I fully read and make sure I understand the terms of service and license agreement for anything I use. How many of you can honestly say the same?

I would love to know Liana Linden's take on this.

If it revered to the act of uploading a texture, I wouldn't have expected language in the form of "interactions on the Service", since uploading can be described in a much more limited way (which is much more typical of legal jargon). I interpret the TOS as written, not as some more limited way than written, AFAIK this is how legal documents should be read. If it were to be interpretted as "uploading", then they would have probably written it down as such, as it offers them a far greater license then the one I interpret them to have.

Copyright also stretches far wider than simply not being able to claim something as your work. I'm sure none of those pirates/crackers claim their "publications" as their own, but it sure is copyright infringement. By default copyright law gives absolutely no rights to anybody but the author unless a explicit license is provided. In the TOS I do not see a license granting LL the rights to use our uploaded intellectual property beyond the purposes of displaying in-game "as permitted by you through your interactions on the Service" (which I interpret as the in-game permissions system due to a lack of more descriptive language) and promotional/debugging.

As for the 3d.sk stuff; perhaps those skin makers have actually paid for that site and the photo's on there and are thus legally allowed (licensed) to use those photo's.

Perhaps some of the Linden's can make clear whether they meant that TOS term as meaning "everything uploaded" or "according to the in-game permission system".

p.s. The SL TOS has already been declared invalid in court in the past, so whether any of this really matters from a legal standpoint is also a good question to ask.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-2909

Quote:
Copyright also stretches far wider than simply not being able to claim something as your work. I'm sure none of those pirates/crackers claim their "publications" as their own, but it sure is copyright infringement. By default copyright law gives absolutely no rights to anybody but the author unless a explicit license is provided. In the TOS I do not see a license granting LL the rights to use our uploaded intellectual property beyond the purposes of displaying in-game "as permitted by you through your interactions on the Service" (which I interpret as the in-game permissions system due to a lack of more descriptive language) and promotional/debugging.

Seems to me the explicit license is granted by the TOS. What more do they need to do with your content than display it to and & all users?

Quote:
As for the 3d.sk stuff; perhaps those skin makers have actually paid for that site and the photo's on there and are thus legally allowed (licensed) to use those photo's.

Ah ah, not quite, from the wording in the SL TOS – "(and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant)"
Just because the content on 3d.sk is royalty free after it's 'purchase' (rental), does not mean you own the copyright on it... Actually, it's considered a "derivative work" according to US copyright law, and the 3d.sk uploaders still retain the full copyright, which means the person uploading it to SL does not have the right to make use of it according to the TOS.

Besides, even though LL is in the USA, more specifically, in california, they may be bound by US copyright law and the DMCA, but the users are not.

Recently, Textures R Us shut down because someone realized that outside of LL, their TOS means nothing. So, said someone downloaded all ~40,000 textures (which I am absolutely sure the licenses of the texture sources that TRU used were not being adhered to) and placed them on a DVD-R and started selling them over eBay.

LL cannot do a thing about this, since it's completely outside of their domain. I mean, sure, if they figured out the meatspace identity of this individual, they could ban their SL account, MAC address, and perhaps their IP address... But MAC addresses can be changed on just about any network controller, IP addresses can be released and another issued via DHCP from their ISP, and they can always generate another SL account.

What, pray tell, would be the legal recourse of someone from say, sweden, performing the same action of selling this content on DVD-R or making it available for download from a webserver hosted in sweden?

Considering Sweden's copyright laws are vastly different than the USA's (Which for example, allows The Pirate Bay to continue operations, but that doesn't really count since they're only hosting metadata, not the actual data itself, and it just so happens due to a legal precedent in the USA that hyperlinks are considered a form of free speech and the site linking cannot be held responsible for the site linked TO's content.) and for all intents and purposes, it would be legal to do there.

SL is international. Someone from every country on the globe has likely logged on to SL at some point, I'm even willing to bet someone in North Korea has logged in at least once, most likely to scout it for government censorship. Heck, the great firewall of china has a word censor for things like "Falun Gong" - a banned movement - and "Dalai Lama"!
If you ever wanna mess with someone from china in SL, just say either and watch their connection get RST/FIN dropped faster than a thai prostitute!

Trying to stop someone from doing what they wish, short of grid attacks (thanks to the grey goo fence), is just incredibly naive to attempt, especially on SL.
You can troll, flame, orbit, crush, ban, cornfield or anything on SL, and there is NOTHING that can be done about it. They'll just come back.
It's just polygons and packets. I'm not saying we shouldn't try, but are we really so petty and wasteful with our time that we need to 'make an effort' that will never be fruitful?
Why spin your wheels with your front end against a wall? All that's happening is honest folks time is being wasted for nothing, just for the sake of slowing down an inevitable flood with a children's plastic beach spade. This is the 21st century, the age of the internet. Get with the times. INNOVATE.

What do you expect from a toy economy made of database transactions and pixels?
Have you ever looked at the products coming out of china?
http://www.pmptoday.com/2007/12/16/dv-mp4-boasts-alienware-logo/
This stuff happens in the real world too. All of us in SL are not alone.
Realize that you're standing on the shoulders of giants, Every good idea is stolen, and imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, because it means that SOMEONE TOOK NOTICE.

Stop wasting your time complaining and build more stuff for people to steal. At least you'll get more sales out of it before it gets popular and stolen. Rinse and repeat.

To sum it up, IMHO, You Are Wrong. I'm Sorry.

No offensve, but from this perspective locking a car or even your house is usless. Why do we even have a police or a law? people can always find ways to do the bad stuff they want it real hard. THe idea is to at least stop the ones that are not that dedicated or skilled

If we just made all objects full permision, there wouldnt be more things 'illegally' copied? if we just put note there saying ' well..you CAN copy it , but it's not legal to do so'

I dont think so

The entire web works on that premise. You can click "view source" in your browser and copy all the HTML code that made this page. You can go post it on your site if you want. No browser prevents you from saving the HTML from a web site, and yet, people do make money on the web. Why is that?

Correct. A car can always be broken into with any blunt object. The only thing stopping most people is the noise, and if a crook is smart, you can bash in a window without much noise.
Your average lock on a house is a simple pin and tumbler, which is EXTREMELY easy to break into. Simply file a blank key's pits all the way down, called "all nines" by locksmiths due to the machines used to make keys having settings from 1 to 9 for each pit. Now, insert this key into the lock almost all the way – leave it one notch out. Now put pressure on the key in the direction you would turn it to unlock it, then tap the back of the key while keeping turning pressure on it with a screwdriver handle, shoe, or any object with a bit of weight. The lock should pop open within seconds. It's called "bumping" a lock. Search it on google or youtube and you'll see how easy it is to bypass ANY deadbolt or keyed door latch.

Putting a lock on your car or house is declaring intent. It is saying, under the letter of the law, that whatever is behind the lock is protected and private property.

Just like putting a fence up will not stop people from jumping over it, it simply declares intent that you do not wish for the public to pass.

Quote:
Why do we even have a police or a law?

Because the simple act of locking something declares an intent to protect it, and therefore the law protects against that via theft laws, trespassing laws, or even the Castle law in some states in the US, which is the law that allows you to shoot someone trespassing on your property and having it declared self protection versus manslaughter or murder.
By locking something, you are granted legal protection IF someone infringes.

The permissions system in SL is a perfect example of a system designed to DECLARE INTENT, it is not an actual impassable barrier, nor was it designed to be, or ever will be, considering the dismal state of DRM.

Quote:
People can always find ways to do the bad stuff they want it real bad. The idea is to at least stop the ones that are not that dedicated or skilled.

True. There is nothing stopping me from jumping over your fence, breaking into your car, or busting the front door of your house open. However, in doing so, I would become a criminal and therefore prosecutable by the law, which is by design...

Freedom is something many people have fought and died for.

Currently in America, there's a whole slew of cases about games like Manhunt 2 and how they are not suitable for minors. People like Hillary Clinton are trying to pin the responsibility on the place of business providing the point of sale, EG the store the game was bought from.

It's ACTUALLY the job of PARENTS to prevent their children from getting a hold of these games, not the stores that sell them.

The stores should be free to sell to anyone who drops the $50 on the counter.
If that person is a parent, it is their decision to give the game to the child or not.

We are free to make choices, to have data available, to choose either the right or the wrong path. You shouldn't try to take away people's freedoms with silly technical hoops to force people to jump through – Especally when some of the users ARE legitimate. It's people like you that are forcing linden labs to disney-ize SL. Oh, this texture is offensive, oh those furrys are copulating in public view on a private island, oh this person made a plane crashing into a building just like 9/11, oh this person has an avatar that looks like a child, HELP HELP LINDEN LABS MAKE ALL THE BAD THINGS GO AWAY!

It's not Linden Lab's job to make all the bad things go away, it's their job to make the world work right, regardless of who's doing what.

I happen to use the Ctrl-Shift-Alt-T UUID display constantly, because I'm a scripter. When I write code to display a UUID on a specific face, I have to make sure I chose the right face, because it's not always obvious. The face numbers change for each object type. Since I work with a builder closely, I don't have all of his textures, and a lot of the time I'm forced to grab his UUIDs when I break a texture while I'm working. Fortunately for me, VWR-1919 isn't going to affect me as I have the skills to add the UUID display back into the viewer and compile it myself – it's as easy as backing out the changeset where that change was made. Three clicks and it's back to 'normal'. But that still doesn't change the fact that you're infringing on what other people like me use in a legitimate fashion.

Just because you can embed a virus in a jpeg file doesn't mean we should ban jpeg viewers or jpeg files. Just because some idiot wrote a macro for word that replaces every instance of the word 'sir' or 'madam' with '<explicative deleted>-head' doesn't mean we should ban word macros or word itself.

The world is changing... You can either embrace change and change with the world or ignore the world changing and complain about it until you're left behind.

And thats exactly where it goes wrong with LL. We aren't granted legal protection. Shops like Skinsoul/soul/whatever the name has changed to now have been filed a DMCA and are still selling a stolen skin. Asking for legal protection to be done as promised, is our right, since LL promised us we could DMCA people and have the content removed, so why don't they do that when we DMCA?

[QUOTE]
[ It's people like you that are forcing linden labs to disney-ize SL. ]
[ It's not Linden Lab's job to make all the bad things go away, it's their job to make the world work right, regardless of who's doing what. ]

It IS linden labs job to make the DMCAs work since thats what they promised us. If you really have a legal right to use the UUIDs of the textures you are using, then where is the problem? Why are you mad that for those who don't have the legal right to do it is made harder?
Compare this to getting mad at your friend for making a lock and forgetting to give you a key.. you can't blame people for wanting locks at their house and prefer better security over simple security. A normal person may have enough for a simple lock, since there is not much to steal, but the world invented far more advanced security systems for the rich people, since they are far more likely to become the victim of theft. Now you may feel "infringed" that your simple method of lockpicking doesn't works in a house when its protected with a bigger security system, but what do you have to do in that house in the first place? If the friend wants you in he can give you a key. Its not your content at risk of beeing stolen. If some other peope do need better protection than simple locks then why do you oppose so much against it?

Comparing asking for legal help with disneyfication doesn't make much sense, we are not asking for removing "offensive" content but content which Linden Labs promised that would be protected. Linden labs never promised us that there won't be any child avatars, furries copulating or 911 planes, actually LL made us promise we are over 18 when we entered so we knew what we were into.
LL do promised us DMCAs would protect us and make us able to stop a shop from selling our items when we DMCA them. And they don't.

I make money from google adsense, so i know how the web works
I also know the web is very different from second life and that's it's a FACT that alot of things on the web not really work too well. Just because people make money from the web, does not mean they do not suffer from the flawns of the web which makes it so simple to copy anything anywhere. A fact is that thousands of musicians loose more than 50% of their cd-income because of the free mp3's everywhere on the web. Why go to a store, search and buy a cd while you can download a song in 5 mins. I never said the copying will TOTALLY destroy second life, and neither will it cost people their full income..but it is a fact people will loose a PART of their income because this happends.

Just because it's simple to steal something in a webbrowsers, means we should make it as easy here in second life?

In real life it's easy to kil someone. Should we make it easy here too?

Kamilion Schnook -

I know it may not be handy if you cant get a UUID of a texture you do not have full permission...but just because your builder buddy oesnt send you the right textures full permission means our stuff should be displayed like that?

QUOTE: "We are free to make choices, to have data available, to choose either the right or the wrong path"

QUOTE: "You shouldn't try to take away people's freedoms"

If you do not have my texture full permission, it implies that I as the creator did not give you permission to copy/resell/modify my object/texture. I dont think most creators that dont sell their work full permission, would like other people to mess with their textures. The whole idea of the permission system in second life is to make it impossible to do something with the objects the creator did not want others to do with it (like copying items that are 'no copy'). After all, there are no handy shortcut to make no-copy items copyable and to make no-transfer items transferable. Unfortunately there is no box for 'give people my texture UID". If there was such an option, i dont think most content creators would select it.

If you do think it should be there so you can " choose the right or wrong path" , why not add a shortcut to modify ' no mod' objects or to resell ' no transfer' items, so you can choose for yourself to if you want to do that?

That's just not the way SL works or should work

In secondlife i could rip some items, put up some classieids right away, and instantly get a fair amount of traffic and make money.

He started the group "Robber from hell". I have had issues with almost every person in that group. A lot of them are his alts.

Do you really know this guy? (Funk Schnook)
Do you believe in text or in photo ? http://jira.secondlife.com/secure/attachment/14128/FNKYSTOLEN+copy.jpg
What an irony? 4 moth ago Funk taught me how to steal, now he is accusing me of stealing.
===============================================================
— [ lost thereian ] —
i see it in http://foo.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2007/08/our-heros-are-d.html#comment-81042531
nice text check out..

about SOUL skins...

@ lost thereian

YOU may not have the attitude I describe. But lots of other people do, particularly large companies with lawyers on hand. I grow weary of companies and VRbullies abusing the DCMA at every turn. I expect someone to slap a lawsuit on someone else for humming a song on a bus soon, thus distributing music to others without compensation for the copyright holders.

As I said before, I've no love for people who copy stuff, even by hand. But considering the Apple/Microsoft case where "Look and Feel" was considered to be insufficient to prove copying, you'll need something more substantial than "his shoes look just like mine" to make a serious issue out of it.

Personally I would like to see a SL Copyright Court created to handle inworld IP issues like this one. Settle the matter inworld and keep the RL courts out of SL. It'll take a Linden with Linden powers to examine the textures and the created on dates. Whoever created item X first wins and if the item IS copied, banning is possible. Simple, cheap, easy and fast.

This picture you see is just another case of Ox talking to another creator trying to show off the "tricks" he knows, as a scare tactic. In this case he was showing me how he can apply any texture to a prim by finding its UUID and applying it with a script. Too bad the moron demonstrated it with a texture in his own inventory.

Ox, there are other creators who will be reading this who you have talked to you as well. A few cases of you pretending you are trying to help, then selling their items behind their backs. I've already talked to a few of them. Would you like them all to comment?

http://foo.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2007/08/our-heros-are-d.html#comment-81042531

"YOU may not have the attitude I describe. But lots of other people do..."

[quote]
"This guy Ox Fall (aka Stivie Jewell) who posted some pics here, has some nerve. He has been trying to sell skins out of his inventory for a while (along with some small mall spots around sl). He has also talked to many creators threatening to pass their skins around full perm, unless they did some sort of deal with him etc. "

To Funk: Do you have any prove he did? Did any of the creator he treathened have proof he did this? If true, this would be a good case to file a real life lawsuit against him. Blackmailing is a criminal activity.
Did any of the creators file an abuse report over this? Did LL reply to it?

To Ox & Funk: maybe its better to discuss the copybot conversation issue in another tread. Please don't post any pictures here acusing someone without prove. Two avatars on a platform are no prove, without a picture of the actual conversation.

The stolen skin shop 'Soul' is still at #1 in the top payed classifieds (it has been for months), and Linden Labs didn't do anything about it. Why do they allow such a thing.. and why do they keep ignoring this thread?

involved avies (in object creator and/or owners)
Thyago Lohner , tutumaluco Ferraris , Spike Nykvist ,LuizHernandez Slade, Stivie Jewell , Cyanide Leviathan,Asper Ferraris,Bonnie Arado,Williannn Oh, Rubnet Olivier,AlexZiNhOo Maximus,leonardoemaggi Larsson,Damien Fate,Lolo Luo,Flavio Hirons,Toor Hirons, and more...

Rubnet Olivier today is the # 1 in Rips, Stolen, Owner the one Full SIM ( BRASIL HELP BRASIL, more the 100 Skins from FNKY, Naughty,The Abyss, GL,Made Man, RaC, and all Shoes Boots, from EMO'S store, NEKO'S Store...,

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Donohue/222/121/33

The Abyss, FNKY, RAC Naugthy and moreeeee

Bonnie Arado

Don't get me wrong, I understand. But you might want to refrain from the patently ridiculous.

Example: a RAC skin is .... 4000 L$ ! Even if the creator sold 3 skin, i think he have LARGELY win more than what he have spend to upload the texture!

Who is the thief then ?? Why people that haven't have any paiement info in use for many different reason can't have nice stuff too ?
Personnally i don't have payement info because:
i'm unemployed and alone with 2 kids.
i pay 25% VAT on each lindens i could buy.

So please, if you don't want to be stoole, then... made low prices on stuff, and then people would have no more reason to want to do it .. and maybe buy more.

Think about it.

Thanks

If you are not able to do this, then are you arguing that people who do have that talent and skill and do spend the time and money in it should not rewarded for making skin?

It's really simple; if the price is too high, people won't buy it and the seller makes no profit. In most economies prices would drop to a level where supply and demand are in balance. For RAC, the price of L$ 4000 is apparently the right balance for if (s)he would make more money by lowering prices, the prices would surely be lower. People selling stuff on SL aren't dumb when it comes to business, or else they'd already be out of business.

Nobody is forcing you to buy an expensive skin. You can get skins of lesser quality for lower prices and there are even really crappy skins fof free. If you want, you can even remain in the blank skin you started out with.

If it was an essential of life, like food or shelter, you might have a point, but NOTHING in SL is essential.

You want to buy expensive stuff in SL? Start making and selling your own creations and earn some money.

There is ABSOLUTELY NO rationalisation for people taking what is not theirs to take.

Agree!!! i dont wanna see skins for $4000 too..ihate it, U$ 25.00 in one skin? (o.-)

Lowering prices on skins won't stop skin theft either and in fact many times skins that are stolen are sold for more than the original.

You mention the creator will get much more money back after uploading the texture but the creator needs to pay for tier (up to $295 per month), purchasing the land, paying for classified ads (up to 200,000Ls), Photoshop and other 3d programs, etc.

This recent wave of skin theft just is mind boggling. Why is LL waiting for these people "Rubnet Oliver" and whoever else it is to ban them? Anyone that reads anything in SL knows that this has happened in the past two months and nothing has been done. What proof do they need? How painful is it going to be to ban them?

The only suggestion I have to make here is would it be possible for all the Skin makers to get together and take out something like a class law suit, and at the same time run a media campaign to try to stop this theft? Logistically it would be hard to do, but would it be feasible?

Only one way to find out. I'm not a skin maker so I am not a member of the "ripped off skin makers" class.
good luck with it. you will need it and a good law firm.

we need a more robust metadata capability that allows for data mining to research and prosecute theft in sl. and i mean prosecute. not go take down some boards. prosecute criminally if possible. and this metadata capability would require a lot of research, design, and work to implement. very costly to do things right. makes for an incredibly better and more extensible OOP product though.

sl is no viable commerce platform until this problem is solved so Phillip can stop describing it as such.

The problem now is that after what happened yesterday, the individual named in this posting on Jira has now started releasing the skins free with full perms (Ox and Nemes will be ecstatic to hear that). Even if hell were to freeze over and Linden Lab booted the guy, he will simply return, only now his objective is not going to be to make money, it will be to steal as much as he can to release free with full perms. Odds are many others will follow suit. Like pre-school playground kids, they are either going to get their way, or destroy the whole place so no-one can have fun.

That being said, while there are a number of reasons that one might be able to take Linden Lab to court, they have their lawyers as well, and they probably pay them quite well. When you are as two-faced as LL, you need good protection. I think a preferable method of attack is the real world media. There are a lot of media people, journalists, editors, etc., who are always looking for a story that will let them tear down a successful company or individual. A well written article in the New York Times, the L.A. Times, or a segment on any of the major Television networks about how real life companies and real life people are in danger of losing real money if they join/support Second Life, might just get Linden Lab off their lazy behinds to do something about this chaos.

No matter what Linden Lab says, do not forget that they are in this for the money only. I think it's been shown that they will do anything to make sure they get money, even if it means ignoring criminal activity.

They/He is making one alt after another and the only way to track is by going to the marwood location and checking the about land, which is owned by the MaNya group, and checking their member list of officers shown and cross referencing

Problem:

1) Theft - Right now we are experiencing the exact same issue that Song Artists and Labels have gone through since napster and other p2p software surfaced. You have a product that costs your time/money/love to produce. When a person just copies that without your permission, or worse yet, copies and trys to sell a knockoff, it hurts your bottom line. This can lower the value of your product(s) or worse yet your good reputation.

2) Law - DMCA actually protects the creator against theft of copyright making it illegal. However, you must take steps to prevent theft. The law is mostly unenforced and requires the creator to protect the content in some way making it illegal.

3) Practical Use - It's up to us to do something even if SL doesnt.

Solution:

DRM (digital rights management) specifically was created to protect images (the basic form of a skin) and music/video from being stolen digitally. The technology is getting more mature every year, however, it has weaknesses. However, it does do some basic things to protect a creator.

1) Tracking - you can encode an image so that even if a person choosing to steal a skin copys one patch of the entire image you can read the signature of the creator. Tracking requires discovering a skin and reading the image to determine the origin. Right now SL is not doing anything to track skins. A very basic tool for creators is to use the Digimarc plug-in in Photoshop to mark the image with your copyright. Enabling this hidden wartermark allows you to read/write a copyright registered to you. It also gives you the undeniable ability to prove that someone has stolen your work and gives you a LEGAL way to pursue a criminal theft.

2) Resolution - if creators used a tool like Digimarc, not only would you have a way to resolve a 1:1 theft of your object, but you would be able to more easily get SL involved in resolving the rampant theft issues. If this became documented by the active creator groups and you could establish a monetary loss from the thefts, one could easliy involve the FEDS.

3) Other options - If SL fails to answer requests for resolution, we could take this into our own hands. One way would be to create an object registration tool that has a script embedded in the objects capable of verifying an SL username ownership of a skin being used. If this type of tool was engaged the entire community could benefit. It would still require a DRM of sorts like the Digimarc watermarking on images for it to work.

Hope these thoughts help.

netguy

The problems are.

1) Nothing in Second Life 'wears out' or expires. Therefore, something created years ago is just as useful as something created yesterday. As an example, no matter how many times an user dresses their avatar in a favorite outfit it will always appear as nice as the day it is bought.

2) The cost of production in Second Life is zero. Once an item is created it can be duplicated 100, 1,000 or a million times without any additional cost.

3) There is no charge for inventory storage. A user can 'warehouse' a virtually unlimited number of items in their inventory as long as they desire for no cost. Also, this virtually unlimited inventory can be tranferred endlessly between accounts and transported anywhere within the Second Life grid without economic disincentives.

I have no idea of how many quality items the average user considers 'enough' but for this comment assume 20,000. Now imagine 1 out of 1,000 users creates a single original high quality full permission item per year and and releases it as a free gift to all. Also consider the ever increasing number of Second Life users. It's fairly obvious that within a relatively short time frame there will be enough free items to satisify the needs of most users. Though there may be a limit to how many items can be packed in a prim or within nested prims it's conceivable that eventually 'everything you need for SL' could be given to new users as they rez into the world with only a few item transfers. How much shopping would a new user do when they had just been given 50,000 free items?

When this point occurs the only thing of cost within Second Life will be land. And would Linden Labs consider THAT a problem? :^)

(No, I'm not for texture theft. Just wanted to point out that the price deflation will continue even if all texture theft could be magically stopped tomorrow)

I first agree with Funk, any Linden I guess can inspect the textures of freebie skins, see the magic code and delete them from the database. It would be an AMAZING start.

As a skinmaker I am frightened to death. I just wait to see one of mine around, and thanks god I am not commercial. So in a way it's better to keep low tone? The point is copying and stealing textures is simply WRONG. The point is there is a lot of work behind any makeup and skin tone. The point is
A SKIN is NOT a right, but a LUXURY. To enjoy your sl experience. As Said before, costs too much? Don't buy it.(and RaC sells 6-8 skins for 4k )

Anyway...
A campaign would be nice, also spreading the word, making a group maybe open on invite only to skin creators to communicate rippers and resellers. Help each other, and make their life more miserable as they ruin our nerves.
Or maybe something more smarter...well, joining the forces in a non open way or accessible to them as in this forum.

I HOPE Linden Labs will do something at least to make it more complex for them to resell and rip, something would be better than nothing. But till then I think we have to work it out alone.

Keeps blue still

[11:31] Zakira Qunhua: (Saved Sun Feb 03 10:44:11 2008) Hi, Crystall Mathy I know her bcoz she stole my creation and resell them

and please check all ip from Crystall Mathy and go to land.. all is copys!! iIligal copys

We are a serious company, we have real headquartered in Brazil, we have more than 10 years of activity duly recorded in the Brazilian government. To confirm our real existence in the 1st Life, visit our web site: http://www.studiografics.com.br.

We these lies as a crime of defamation and will trigger the American justice through the DMCA and ways to correct this, if these reports lies not stop.

Bonnie Arado is not Rubnet Olivier, Bonnie Arado is not of our team (even if the Brazilian running in the back office SL), the Skins Soul is part of the network organized by the Brazilian trade Studiografics company, which has already invested more than USD50, 000 in metaverse Second Life, including the Linde Lab has all the evidence of our existence real.

We demand respect and we denounce all that we treat in this way by RACISM DISCRIMINATION, including seeking justice through the 1st life a solution to the LIES THREATS STOPPING IMMEDIATELY!

Without more.

Liberato Lindman
(Jean Liberato)
Projects Manager - Studiografics

CEO STUDIOGRAFICS
Olivier rubnet
Www.studiografics.com.br

The method you use to "create" your skins is wrong. Wrong, immoral, and illegal. You DO NOT use already made skins from Second Life and peice them together like a jigsaw puzzle to sell. You DO NOT pull the skin textures from the client and sell them as your own. If you wish to create photorealistic skins to sell a good site to start with would be 3d.sk.
These are real people you took from. Real people who did the work to create these skins on their own. They did not take another skin from SL and copy/paste parts of the body they like. You guys seem pretty capable of doing your own skins. I don't understand the need to take from other people who sell in SL.

You will certainly not have my respect until you remove any skin that has remnants of Naughty's skins from your store, as well as other people you have stolen from. It's sick and wrong. These practices need to be stopped.

I would suggest taking a good look at the skins your team have created and do the necessary steps to make this wrong a right.

Thanks to those who responded in my defense

Sorry, bad english, I use google translator.

CEO STUDIOGRAFICS
Olivier rubnet
Www.studiografics.com.br

this http://www.studiografics.com.br/ don't have 10 years of activity duly recorded in the Brazilian government., (IT IS BULLSHIT) if you check the in Google fort his don't have more the 3 Links!!! http://www.studiografics.com.br/ don't have any contact or connection with Brazilian Government!!

inside of Site Sell Linden like Bank, STOLEN New Users From Brazil , have hight TAX.. http://www.studiografics.com.br/blb.php
and
Liberato Lindman (aka) rubnet olivier ,Rub Oh , agenteblb avro
(Jean Liberato) same user .
LLB if you wanna check IP and all Logs!! MacAdress you can do it if you wanna,... VOTE FOR BLOCK IP

Today the Big real Problem is ILHA HELP BRASIL Liberato Lindman (aka) rubnet olivier .
this guy Pay 30k or 50 k per Skin Rip from yours Store! i have Prove the all here!! and him have to prove to the PSD because him like pay skin only if have TGA Files... if you don't have him don't pay!!

CEO STUDIOGRAFICS
Olivier rubnet
Www.studiografics.com.br

Face, my wife is not this girl who vc show. Who to want enters in mine profile and sees who is. I am the same here, in the SL and my LIFE! You he is a COWARD, WITHOUT SHAME, that worked in the SL with name Stivie Jewell, is hunting Brazilian pq is a Brazilian who deferred payment in U.S.A., asshole for not being American. It is receiving how much from the cowards of the Naugthy, RaC, FNKY (tb of Brazilians, that by the way not falm9speaking) in Portuguese to dissimulate to be foreign), of the Made Man and others that are despaired with growth d aSoul Skins? face, we have public address, telephones, we are honest!!!!!!! Vc's is being dull and cowards in promoting such attack against our company and other Brazilians. Being that vc are OX FALL, or Bonnie still Ploughed, is all ALT its. I never bought avatr, never I bought skins to resell, I had yes FULL PERMS therefore I was a moment where FULL PERMS was taken the serious one, thus that moleques as vc começarama to vender the things the banana price I created first MEGA FREEBIE of the world, before proper Venice Freebies, in the Help Brazil, opu either, everything what perms was full turned freebie, and never gave or vendí things that chegarama me that I recognized I eat of famous store, as for example skin DANTE, THAT IS GIVEN to HJ INSIDE Of the ISLANDS Of the KAIZEN!!!!!!!!!! TOTAL FREEBIE. E vcs comes to speak to me that I am bad character????? I show my face, I am man I seriously have 3 children and honest work and with the SL. It shows who is you and its others avatares ALT its frustrated!!!!!!! I tneho shame in the face, thing that vc and its corja does not have! It enters in my Profile and it will see who I am of truth!!!!!! Brazilians, do not fall in the wave of this FAKE, moderators of the community, find that it would have to banish this citizen daqui. and all the FAKES of it in the ORKUT. it is a shame for Brazil. until more. Liberato

so .. Now Linden Lab see for underground how is the real Liberato...

Not true; you are, very obviously, a liar...your shop has nothing but rips of skins by Naughty; the shading and details are identical; the odds of two graphic artists applying a photo source to the SL avatar UV maps in an identical fashion, and creating identical shading and highlight, are nil. Not to mention the fact that the creation date of your vendors is in most cases at least a year after the same skins were first offered by Naughty (well before you were even IN SL, from your rez date). When you say you can produce PSDs, you are lying. This is a fact which is obvious to anyone who has a vague understanding of how such things work. That you have the arrogance to spend thousands of American dollars on advertising to promote a business built on the theft of someone else's work is, really, disgusting (as are your outright lies here).

YES I'm REAL PEOPLE (and Rubnet is other person and real to), not use ALT, I am not FAKE, Brazil am a reference for the SL and what you are doing is absurd.

My contribution to the theme of the metaverse LL, SL and other virtual worlds, in newspapers, magazines, blogs, web portals, universities and so on. I am a professional consultant who discloses the ideals of the SL in Brazil and as I do not know they can not go out there saying that I do Rubnet ALT, or that we are all Robers as are speaking.

What are robers in Brazil nobody is saying anything against, but put all this to Wicch Hunt and treat people honest and serious as those that copy dishonest things, then you become the ethical and moral limits.

We have evidence in 1st life, PSD files (filters, brushes, layers, etc. - not just as TGA said) that prove our creation, so we cleaned and quiet, we are not like these guys who copy. We are serious and we must address public, but registration in the Brazilian government.

Stop to include in this case, because we are such victims as all the other owners of shops in skin. Copy our products as well.

Have a nice day.

Liberato Lindman
(RL: Jean Liberato - 33 years old - maried - 3 children - consultant on digital media)

you are selling 1 naughty & 1 X2 Skin
you probably haven't stolen it yourself but as a skin developer you should know the source of the full perm copies that you have purchased for L$ 500
Not only that you know that - you also don't have demos for these particular skins!

Nobody was claiming that the vast majority of your skins are stolen but the 2 listed above are. I also would refrain to act as a designing big shot, i happen to know your skin designer extremely well and I know how they are developed. That's all I am saying here out of respect to her.

This is not about alts, this is not about you giving your real name, this is about business ethics and you being in the know selling stolen skins which you have purchased for L$ 500 and selling them for L$ 1400.

I even go that far and say you don't even know how to steal a texture because otherwise you had demos for the copy skins.

Reselling a stolen product is still illegal. Remove them and show that you are the man you want us to believe you are.

...brings just a sad laugh over my face. i have no mercy for people like you

Ì am sorry for the owners of the originals and I am VERY sorry that they don`t get supported from the Authorities.

Dig Dollinger
Owner of SLASH!

For the one 3rd party feature you need to copy a particular file into the SL folder, 1 line of code could make a reference check and disable the whole client.
The one copy tool that was created by LL itself could simply be deleted and if someone has found a work around there are still ways to trace it.

Designers should group and share informations and ban these people from your land

Why won't LL do anything against known thieves? Maybe money talks......8 x $295 USD tiers per month might be a good reason, who knows?

Anyway getting back to the SOUL Skins that i viewed a day or two ago after all the hoohah......the real point that nags me a lot is
their signature style or lack of it!! . Let me explain.......every major Skins creator has a unique style for their skin creations. You can just tell what is a Naughty Design skin..or X2, or RAC or Minnu Skin or Celesrial.....you know that from the type of shading they use, the make-ups, the overall feel of the face & body, it's very distinctive.

The problem i have with SOUL skins.....it has so many variations, there isn't any consistency. One style of skin is completely different from the next one. The style variations are significant ........there is no signature!
Draw your own conclusions!

Based on what i have seen and unless SOUL are using a number of different artists, this cannot be the work of any
one single person no matter how talented they are. If there are mutliple artists, why are all the creations in one name only?

This is very sad, how many dmcas need to be filed against one individual or group before someone is banned? Are the soul skin people allowed to stay cause they spend so much money? Its truly sick. Ive personally witness stolen skins int heir shop, X2, Naughty, celestial cities and more.

I know for a fact that several people filed claims against them and the lindens have removed content but theres more items in their shop that are stolen.

If they had come out and said im sorry I did not realize that the stuff in their shop was stolen. And then removed the stolen items I would have forgiven and said it was a mistake. but instead they are sitting here saying they did nothing wrong.

Now a lot of the other Brazilian skin rippers have directly said if soul is allowed to sell these skins then why am I not? I have nothing wrong with anyone from Brazil, what I do have a problem with is someone making a huge presence of themselves and encourage many other individuals from there country to think selling stolen skins is ok. That I have to say is truly horrible. Soul skins has done so much to make designers mistrust Brazilians in second life. They are promoting a entire country as a den of crooks and that has to stop.

I know some Brazilians in the game and they are very nice people, so please do not show any anger towards them. But do get angry if their community leaders are promoting theft, its horrible. Its not the Brazilians that are being crooks, its soul skin and all the people they inspire that are.

Rob Linden or any other LInden reading these post, please we beg you for more protection, just a few simple things.
Ban accounts that get repeated DMCA claims, three strikes and they are out.
Remove the uuid of the stolen textures from t he database. It wont stop them from reuploading the textures but it will remove all the stolen items sold from the system and make it a bit harder for them to return.

Thank you
PopFuzz Bamboo

It's really amusing to see the conspiracy theory though, I LOL'd.

Your topic, which has no actionable items or code patches, has no place on a BUG REPORTER.

This is an issue with PEOPLE, not with code, therefore it does not belong here.

If you want to stop the people from infringing, get some legislation passed. Until then, you'll have to make do with the communications channels that Linden Labs has made available at http://secondlife.com/corporate/dmca.php

And to be honest? I've been on the internet a long time.
I've been on IRC for over 15 years.

I've always had mistrust for the Brazilians, French, and Russians as groups in general, online.
Why?
I've met too many individuals belonging to those groups that act as if they own everything they lay eyes on.
This is not to say every member of those groups are acting in this fashion, but it is a large percentage of the group that is making themselves visible and high-profile with these actions. No different than the Bush family making americans as a group look bad. (I'm not terribly concerned with the rest of your opinion on my outlook, so don't bother starting a flamewar, you'll just look foolish.)

Any other IRC oldbies will probably remember the Brazilian invasion of EFNet ~10 years ago, where every fourth person joining the channel could only manage to say two words: "am brazil".

Thankfully, the bar has been raised since then. But not by much.
Hail Eris, Praise "Bob".