Where I landed was just amazing. It was a camping spot from hell. I felt like I was dropped into a sequel to 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'. Just imagine being surrounded by all naked ruthed avatars dancing and making weird moves.
So, here I was, surrounded by alts or script controlled avatars. The reason why people do this, is just to create extra traffic. They create a number of alts and bring them in-world with a clever script or program. They park them and there you go.
So I was wondering why we were here. My darling told me that she had stumbled on to something really really bad. There already have been numerous reports on stolen skins and clothing for the last couple of months. There's even a long article about it on the official Linden Lab Jira site (link here). And she had found the place where they sell the contraband goods. We flew down from the camping platform in the sky to a big mall on the floor. There was a big shop selling skins there. And piece by piece, they are exact copies from famous skin shops like Naughty Designs and X2.
Look at the resemblance and examine the detail of it.
So far, Linden Lab hasn't done anything about this. The place still exists, the illegal copied textures haven't been removed from SL, the search is still unfairly screwed up, and suspected thieves still make tons of money from it. And the worst thing about it, is that these skins aren't even given away as freebies, they are actually sold as quality original goods, although we all know that they're not.
The problem with these things is that without the help of Linden Lab, it is very hard to find proof of the theft. LL could easily see when the textures were uploaded and thus see which ones are original. But so far they haven't done anything, it appears.
And these people are in breach with the Terms of Service and Community Standards altogether, because the regions that they show these skins (including explicit adult content) are rated PG, not Mature. To complement this statement, on the other side of the street is a Dicks & Pussies store, showing their wares !!
Mind you, with the term 'help' in the name of one of their regions, they suggest that they're an official Help Island. I can tell you, they're NOT. That, combined with the high traffic numbers that they produce themselves, it's basically one big scam.
All in all this is just a very bad place to be and it made me feel very very uncomfortable. About the stuff that I could prove, I have submitted a few abuse reports. Please remember that at least part of what they sell is illegal (if not all) and you would be supporting copyright breach if you buy there.
Skin designers like Backstage (Naughty Designs), X2:Exotica and RaC have put a lot of time and effort into those skins and that's what makes them quite expensive. So the only right way to do it, is use a (legal) freebie skin like the CS-Passport ones and save up to buy a good one at the right places.