“Step Up!” to Content Theft

In the wake of the wholesale theft of sims and content over the weekend, like many people we wanted to do something about it – and also about all the other content theft that we have been fighting for so long – in the Content Creators Association and in magazines and on TV shows.

Since then we’ve talked – and have come up with the idea of the Step UP! campaign, a campaign centred on a special day of action that everyone can become involved with, and that can empower and inform people.

We are aiming for a day that draws together action, education and celebration. We want a focus that empowers people – and rather than dictates to people, allows them to express their own creativity in a variety of ways. It also draws attention to the strength of feeling that there is here on the grid.

2) We need to make people feel empowered by what they do. And, because we are hardly the most time-free people on the grid – we need something that they can largely organise themselves!

So these are our thoughts:

We are nominating a day as Step UP! Day – which will be November 5th – Guy Fawkes Day or Bonfire Night in the UK.

Action:
a) On this day – no-one uploads textures to the grid. This should show the economic power of people acting together, without harming content creators. We want Linden Lab to see the power of the feeling about the problem of content theft – and to discuss urgently strategies for tackling it.

b) As many people as possible wear an orange ribbon as a sign of support for creators. And creators can design these – they can be lapel ribbons, they can be arm bands, they can be tee-shirts … the idea is to make the orange ribbon the theme of the day. And everyone who gets a free orange ribbon gets an information sheet – explaining what content theft is, what they can do about it etc. And they also get an information pack that they can give to their friends (which also contains an orange ribbon for their friends).

Why orange? It’s been used before, but has no overwhelming association (unlike pink or red ribbons). It’s a bright, noticeable colour. It suggests explosions and colour …

And it’s an opportunity for stores and content creators to become involved too.

Celebration:
The day ends with parties. Bonfire parties. That means that all around the grid, people have parties.

We’re not going to be trying to stage Big Events that maybe only 60 or 70 people can cram into. Instead we encourage every club to hold a Step Up! party. We encourage every musician to play Step UP! events. Everyone on the grid has a part to play. Everyone can take part.

Education:
This is going to come in several forms.

1) Info pack
These will be given out with orange ribbons in stores and at parties.

2) Media
Audio and Visual service ads. The Press. The Blogsphere – everyone can play there part in getting out the message that we have had enough, and we have chosen to Step UP! against content theft.

3) Video
Short informational films – tutorials about content theft.

On the Designing Worlds shows we’ve talked again and again about the need for a social shift – so that people see content theft as socially and morally unacceptable. So … let’s go for it!

Watch this space for more details on how you can become involved, and how you can share with us your plans for Step UP! Day.

The concept originates with a small group – Angie Mornington, Gabrielle Riel, Gwen Carillon and Saffia Widdershins. But more and more people are now becoming involved. And you can too.


From the “Step Up!” website at http://stepupsl.wordpress.com/

Created Content at risk again.............

No doubt about it content creators have a lot of risks to face in SL these days and today I was made aware of yet another issue with the permissions system that is in place at the moment.
According to my source this is not a new bug its one the Lindens have been aware of for a long time (yet have not fixed).
My source firstly asked me to provide a NO COPY/ NO MODIFY object, which i dropped on their profile, a few minutes later they gave me 5 copies back - I was still the creator and the original perms had not changed yet - they now had 5 copies of a no copy object!
I won't tell you how it is done (I have recreated it myself) as I think that would do a great deal of harm to content creators already stretched through copiers at work in SL.
I did however go to live chat to see what the Lindens had to say about it:

dana_Vanmoer: I can recreate someone elses no copy no modify object

dana_Vanmoer: the permissions do not change but i can copy an object as many times as i wish regardless of the original permissions

XXXXX: Ok Dana this is actually one we are aware of. Our engineers are working to fix it urgently and we are asking if any creators notice their work being copied they send in an abuse report and a DMCA

dana_Vanmoer: you already know about this?

XXXXX: We do and our engineers are working to fix it as an urgent situation and we have asked people send in dmca and abuse reports.

XXXXX: Is there anything else I can help you with today?

dana_Vanmoer: no but how urgent is urgent this is scary for any content creator?

dana_Vanmoer: The person who told me about this reported it over a week ago

XXXXX: I do understand Dana however as I am not an engineer I can not give a timescale other than to say they are definitely working on it and content creators should know how to send in DMCAs

dana_Vanmoer: they do but DMCA takes a long time

dana_Vanmoer: a week is a long time of having items copied

XXXXX: I do understand Dana however I can not provide any further information than I have already. If you believe your work is being copied contact us and we will absolutely investigate it.

To me this is scary as i sell all my wedding things transferable - no copy - no mod.
Good luck to all content creators I hope linden Lab really are treating this one as URGENT.

Dana Vanmoer

Content creation under the microscope at last?

Our Content Management Roadmap

Thanks for taking the time to read this post. I'll let you know up front that it is lengthy, because we feel that you deserve the opportunity to hear in depth what we are thinking, and doing, regarding content management in Second Life. Resident-created content is the heart and soul of Second Life, and we want to help you continue to benefit from the amazing creativity you have displayed inworld. When you are successful, Second Life is a better world for all of us – more inspiring, more spontaneous, and more fun!
We are committed to empowering content creators to better manage and control their content. Taking a holistic approach to content management, we are hard at work on new and improved content tools, programs, and policies. Because we know that content management is of paramount importance to our community, we're going to lay out our current plans, and then invite you to help us shape them to best meet the community's needs.
Right now, we are pursuing a multi-pronged approach:

• Improvements to our intellectual property complaint process, enabling intellectual property owners to submit online requests that we search for and remove all copies of an identified item created by a particular Resident;
• Promotion of standard industry practices for tools copying content from Second Life to help protect against intellectual property infringement;
• A content seller program to help the community trade content safely and trust one another;
• Clarifications to and updating of our policies to promote awareness of intellectual property and protect against infringement; and
• Development of “sticky licenses,” or additional licensing metadata, for content to help facilitate a content marketplace outside our hosted Second Life virtual world.

For more detailed information, please continue reading below, and then join the discussions in the forums. Thank you for taking the time to read this post and for your feedback.

Continued HERE

Content creators frustration with Linden permissions

There are many out there in Second Life who create for the creators - what do I mean?
You know that fantastic sofa with loads of animations you just bought? or that AO that has you posing while you stand and chat? what about the door script on your house?
These are the builders' suppliers, each is created by someone and because of the very nature of their sales they have to sell their creations full permissions - dont they?
After all if they didn't then a builder couldn't add an animation to a sofa or modify a door to fit or if they could they couldn't then resell their creation.
But this leads to an obvious risk - what is to stop anyone from then taking those creations and, instead of using then in a build, just reselling them as animations or doors or whatever?
The answer is nothing - Lindens answer - file a DMCA claim which can cost thousands after the original creator has already lost thousands.
We are not talking pennies here - people are losing money on a daily basis and a lot of the time it can be through pure ignorance on the builders part.

Yesterday I spoke to Sylva Petrov a noted animator in Secondlife:

Sylva Petrov: Due to ignorance or intent, every time I sell animations to builders, I risk them becoming tomorrow's freebies
Dana: How?
Sylva Petrov: If the builder doesn't change the perms he is giving them away essentially, and quite a few think that just setting the permissions on the containing object is enough. I even got yelled at yesterday for asking for samples of a builders work so i could show her!
Dana: no because you can copy from the contents if the perms are not set
Sylva Petrov: she SWORE up and down that the mlp2 scripts set the permissions when it was sold, people believe all sorts of urban legends
Dana: If someone sells something to me full perms then I would take for granted it was all of it - including the animation
Sylva Petrov: yes, but they're not, they're supposed to be selling them no copy or no transfer.
they set their own part, the bed for example, to it, but they don't realize the contents are wide open. Ignorance probably does more damage than intentional thieves.
Dana: Can anything be done?
Sylva Petrov: Social change is difficult, expensive, and not very effective - technical changes are cheap, easy, and almost always work.
Dana: Don't you point out and make an agreement with the builders about setting perms?
Sylva Petrov: We can roar ourselves hoarse to the builders about proper permissions setting, but what of the builder that starts tomorrow? A technical fix will eliminate the 'honest' mistakes.
dana Vanmoer: What you are asking for is that LL sets a secondary permissions system?
Sylva Petrov: yes, so we can say how the people that buy from content creators can set the perms afterwards
They can give us owner-after-next permissions
The ability to set a property on an item that will force the item to become either no copy or no transfer on the next owner to our buyers.
The way it would work is if i toggle that switch - lets call it the 'limited full perms' switch if they try to make it copyable, transferable will gray out if they make it transferable, copyable will gray out
Dana: So after you give a full perms object, it automatically becomes either no copy or no transfer if they give it to someone else - wouldn't that be difficult to do?
Sylva Petrov: Linden labs collects millions of dollars from us a month to do difficult things that's what they're paid to do. According to a programmer, it shouldn't be 'that' difficult

There is a JIRA on this very subject where many have voiced their opinions, it is as yet unassigned (surprise surprise)
Lets help those that make our lives better by supporting the content creators and helping them to protect their products from thieves and ignorance by voting on this HERE
And to Linden Lab?
Actually I can't say I am surprised this is ignored by Linden Lab, many will say its not a priority but I would argue that those same people would soon regret it if the content providers stopped selling full perms for the builders.
I love my AO and my amazing scripted furniture - don't you?

WARNING! Transfer security exploit

Last night we were tipped about a major security issue for all content creators in Secondlife.
I managed to create a copy of a non transfer item and give it to James. Once given the original permissions are reverted.
Anonymous: I was given information that results in any NO TRANSFER object now being turned into a TRANSFERABLE object. My friend was give 2 items which when in inventory are full permissions and can be given out
Our source then walked us through the simple process.
We will not tell you how it is done, or who showed us, but this is a major issue for all creators in SL.
JamesT Juno: we took a horse we had ourselves and made a copy we could sell or give away
JamesT Juno: we tried it too
JamesT Juno: we COULD reproduced it very easily

This has been reported to security@lindenlab.com and we hope they will act quickly to protect the already harassed content creators.

Hello, and thank you for your report to the Second Life security team.
This list is for reporting security issues that might compromise residents or the Second Life Grid.

We hope they do move fast before more find this method out and content creators lose more.

We will keep you updated on any replies from Linden Lab.

JamesT Juno
Dana Vanmoer
Click images to see full size

UPDATE:
Thank you for reporting this issue. I have created a security
ticket on your behalf (SEC-***) with the details that you provided.
We have been able to confirm what you reported and will be
escalating this to our development team who will ultimately deal
with the issue.

CopyBot rears its ugly head at Styles of Edo

This morning I awoke to an email from Edo Tone of Styles of Edo he was very upset and showed me photographs, taken by Maggie Mahoney of Runway magazine. The pictures showed copies of his 'famous' tailcoat worn by M(ark) Linden at his first public appearance at the SL5B opening on sale at OMG! Inc.
When I arrived at Sununu, next to our head office, home of OMG! Inc and saw the suits on offer, I could see for myself it was his tailcoat, it is unique. But I was also disturbed by the similarities of others on the wall and buying the white tux shown found it too was from Edo. Edo came and confirmed it but more disturbing he also pointed out designs that were from another designer Simone Stern.
I brought Simone in and, although blurred and photoshopped a good deal, she confirmed some were her textures, pointing out highlights and shading that were unique to her designs.
Next I tried to contact Kaddan Yue CEO of OMG! Inc. but it was the middle of the night for her so I asked Intlibber Brautigan to remove them from the sim which he did as soon as I appraised him of the situation. I admit I was impressed with the speed he grasped the facts and dealt with them.
When Kaddan came online she immediately confirmed that she had bought the textures some time previously and they had been sent to her by email. She was totally unaware they were copied/stolen and shocked when shown the pictures. She took immediate action and removed all designs made from textures sent by kraus Folland. I know Kaddan and the work they are trying to do with OMG! is commendable, these designs were bought at the beginning of the project. Kaddan told me that now they are using only inworld designers and no longer buying textures because of the copybots.
I have rarely seen anyone so upset and I can't blame her. It was a horrible position to have innocently bought stolen textures and used them.
I arranged a meeting with Kaddan and Edo where Kaddan apologised personally to him for the mistake which Edo accepted with an offer of friendship to Kaddan.
Later Kaddan released this statement;
"OMG Inc is a co-operative company meaning we collect designs to sell from many designers as well as creating our own.
We have bought designs from many places like XStreet and designers inworld.
When I was informed that some of the designs we were selling were copies I took immediate action and removed them from all of our stores.
I will also delete all copies of the textures I bought from kraus Folland.
These textures were delivered to me by Email and I have destroyed the originals stored on my PC.
I wish to apologise publicly to those that have had their textures copied.
I would never deliberately resell someone Else's work without their express permission in writing and had I known that these were copies I would never have bought them.
Texture theft is a big concern in Secondlife and because of it we are now working only with designers inworld in the hopes of preventing this from happening again.
All I can do is apologise to Edo Tone of 'Styles of Edo' and also we think Simone Stern of 'Simone' and accept full responsibility for reselling their designs."

My question now is WHY IS COPYBOT ALLOWED IN SL?
This situation was awful for all involved, Edo and Simone had their textures ripped and altered, Kaddan and the OMG! team were, in all innocence, selling stolen goods (which in real life is no defence) but here we can see the ones to blame are those that continue to use the CopyBot and decide to profit from other peoples hard work!
I guess some will always try to profit from others hard work - just make sure you know the source of any textures you buy! So we can minimise the profit these people can make from copying.

Dana Vanmoer

Precedent-setting trial rules virtual theft is real

In a precedent-setting trial, a court in the Dutch city of Leeuwarden has ruled that stealing virtual items is theft and sentenced two teenage boys to community service.

In 2007 2 boys forced a younger boy to give two virtual items from the online game Runescape to their accounts. The boys kicked, hit and threatened their classmate with a knife until he gave in and transferred the items to their accounts.

The prosecutor argued that virtual items used in the game should be considered as real and tangible goods as they have real, tangible value for the owner. The prosecutor noted that winning, collecting and trading Runescape objects play an important role in the virtual world and can also be sold for money in the real world.
According to the public prosecutor, if these items are valuable to their owner and he has been forced to hand them over to somebody else, it should be considered theft. The lawyer representing the culprits argued that legally, the items do not exist and therefore cannot be considered to have been stolen.
The court dismissed the defence lawyer's argument and cited an earlier ruling that electricity can be considered a material object for the purposes of criminal law and stealing electricity is theft. The court ruled that the same principle can be applied in this case and stealing virtual Runescape items is theft as the owner was forced to hand over his possessions.

This opens the floodgates for Seondlife theft cases - BUT content theft is different in that textures are copied rather than stolen, it is the income that the creator loses rather than the actual object, so is it actually theft?
Source: RNW

Court of inquiry - re Armidi

A step to far in protecting designs?
So what was it all about?
Yesterday I got an IM and a notecard from a good friend Eymerich Lane, now Eymerich is not one to get upset over nothing and when I saw the images he sent me I could understand it.
He had been shopping it seemed at Armidi - Eymerich is one avatar that takes his dress seriously - He had bought the {Gisaci} Cambridge Cuffed Shirt, a lovely design with rolled prim sleeves and prim collar open neck and available in many colours, when he put it on he got the result you see on the left; there were copyright notices all over his hands and legs! The same happened when his wife also tried the same shirt in a different colour.
So I did what any good reporter would do, I went and bought the same shirt and tried it on to see if the result was the same.
While there I bumped into Eymerich and his wife Roselinda with Joppa Linden trying to solve the mystery - now I didn't have the same problem when I tried the shirt on and no more did Joppa, although both Eymerich and Rose could see the notices on Eymerich we could not, although the place was incredibly laggy! When he tried another suit in the Classic style we immediately saw the problem especially on the pants layer - yet on me it looked fine?
Trying on another suit I made the discovery of the actual texture: It was covered in copyright notices - but only in the places where it could not be seen. My guess would be that Armidi have had instances of their textures being stolen and tried this method of preventing it.
The sliders that set the sleeve length and the pants length (the bottom of the shirt) that Eymerich and Rose had bought were set to 100 so that the copyright notices were visible and once reset - which took a while in the lag - the copyright notices disappeared; Problem solved?
In a way yes but none of this explains how the copyright notice came to be on Eymerichs' hands as even set to 100 length a shirt sleeve does not include gloves which would need to be worn to cover the hands, no-one could explain this mystery including Joppa. It will have to remain a mystery and there may have been several factors involved including lag, graphics card, Macbook pro or just a glitch.
My main concern was actually the attitude of Armidi in all this - of course the note Eymerich sent to me he also sent to the Armidi representative who replied that the fault lay with him and that he should clear his cache etc...... basically they were not helpful and there is no doubt that the item was not set right, although MODIFIABLE so you could yourself fix the problem IF you were aware of what was causing it, at the end of the day this was a mixture of causes but you would have thought that a company with the reputation of Armidi in Secondlife would have taken the trouble as we did and Joppa Linden did to try to get to the bottom of it.
That Armidi was at fault here is undeniable - that they are trying to protect their textures is also, sadly, understandable - but shoddy workmanship is not acceptable and if it happens then apologies at the very least should have been forthcoming instead of basically bad advice.
Conclusion: Texture theft is a sad fact in Secondlife and the extremes some designers are going to to try and protect their hard work is understandable but there is never an excuse for bad consumer care - if a mistake has been made own up to it and apologise, you will not lose respect for making a mistake only for ignoring one and trying to pass the buck!

UPDATE:
There appears to have been a JIRA relevant to this and it is suspected that it is a problem with NVIDIA drivers and can sometimes be fixed by either upgrading or downgrading drivers for your graphics cards - the JIRA can be found HERE

Eye on the blog - Lindens admit mistake over DMCA:

Responding to Questions about the DMCA Process

Linden Lab inadvertently disabled some inworld content this past weekend.
The problem should be fixed now, and we apologize for the inconvenience it caused. If you believe your content was inadvertently disabled, please try re-rezzing it.
If that doesn’t work, please contact Support at http://secondlife.com/support.

Linden Lab has not changed its DMCA policy. For privacy reasons, we don’t discuss the specifics of DMCA notifications with third parties. However, when we receive a valid DMCA notification, we send affected Residents email notice so they aren’t surprised when we remove content from their inventory and inworld locations.
The email notice explains how to submit a DMCA counter-notification to seek restoration of the removed content. Be sure to keep your email address current and make lindenlab.com an exception in your spam filter so you receive notices from Linden Lab.

We’ve received questions about removing infringing items from Residents’ inventory when an inworld location (a region name and coordinates) can’t be provided.
Inventory items may be subject to DMCA claims when the items are sufficiently identified. For example, if you can’t provide an inworld location, provide the names of the allegedly infringing items and avatars.

Linden Lab will conduct a reasonable search for the identified items.

Also be aware that persons who materially misrepresent copyright infringement in DMCA claims may be liable for damages, including attorneys’ fees and costs.
In one case, a company that sought removal of content protected by the fair use doctrine paid over $100,000 USD.
For more on this, see here.
If you’re unsure whether certain content infringes your copyright, we suggest speaking to an attorney before submitting a DMCA claim.
More information about Linden Lab’s DMCA process can be found on our DMCA policy page and in our recent blog post on Protecting Your Copyrighted Content.

Linden Lab’s DMCA policy has not changed, and this information is up-to-date.

Content theft is the banking screwup all over again

It worries me to see that Linden Lab seems to treat intellectual property and content theft just as it treated finance earlier this year.

The recent removal of other people's inventory items because they were originally stolen, as this newspaper has reported on Sunday, does qualifies for the same pattern. Do nothing, stay out because you do not want to "play government", realize that it snowballs and then intervene with what seems to be a high level of improvisation. This is only too familiar, my beloved readers!

The problem with this kind of erratic behavior is exactly the opposite of what should be done to give Second Life users a sense of stability around this world.

Coherent policy means the ability to define what should be allowed and what should not very early on. If I am a content creator, I need to know from the beginning whether this SL thing is the Wild West where I have to enforce my intellectuel property rights or whether Linden Lab will do it for me. Before I start investing, uploading and building, I want to know what I am getting into. The same goes for consumers, who need information about what goes on, so they can detect stolen products. So that their purchases are not wasted money.

Clearly, I cannot see coherent policy on the part of Linden Lab. I wish I did. I have been around the grid for more than a year. I made friends. I found a virtual partner. I built businesses. I consumed virtual goods. In short, I got involved.

On the other hand, I keep finding reasons that can drive people away from SL. A steep learning curve for newbies, incoherent problem-handling policies and grid instability are major reasons why someone would get pissed off and stop caring.

Is someone listening at Linden Lab?

Linden Lab moves on Content theft

Its the move many have been calling for and when LL finally move they move mountains!
Content has suddenly disappeared from inventories all over the grid, many had no idea it was stolen content and woke to find half their shop stock just gone (most seem to be unable to rezz or missing from database).
It seems LL have decided to act on certain DMCA issues that have been pending for some time the affected objects include objects that contain certain scripts or anything that says it was created by a couple of avatars, namely Eva Capalini and Loni Arado.
Clarification has been requested from Linden Lab for their apparently unannounced change in DMCA policy.
Rumours abound that LL will make a statement in the next few days (although we all know how these rumours usually end).
So is it a good move that Linden Lab have finally stepped in?
We will let you decide.
I know many have asked for it and on the face of it that is a good thing to ask for if your content has been stolen, however the other side of that is the people who have bought items in good faith and then based their own business on them. Arado created sculpties and sold them full perms many have used these sculpt textures to base their own creations on - all in good faith - those are now useless and not only does the business owner lose their business but every customer who ever bought from them.
Think on how many people just removing these 2 avatars content has affected.