Some time a couple weeks ago, Stroker Serpentine posted on SLU about the ‘Thieves’ Motherload’ – he had been passed a ‘golden nugget’ while attending Burning Life, and subsequently found that it was packed with not only some of his own items for sale, but thousands of skins, animations, clothing and accessories by other creators. All of these items had been ripped through a security hole relating to notecards, which LL apparently fixed with the previous server update… nonetheless, the ripped content still exists and there is very little one can do short of blacklisting all items matching the descriptions of items that were copied. Doing so and then returning correct copies to legitimate customers can be extremely time consuming.
Stroker posted an abbreviated list of creators who had been stolen from, but encouraged folks who thought they might have been stolen from to check. I did so and was thankful that my work had not been.
But as the week wore on, I’ve seen at least two other instances where theives have been caught red-handed trying to sell items that were acquired using the same exploit.
This, of course, doesn’t define all of the situations involving stolen material – there are many other ways in which items can be stolen – the degree to which this is going on far exceeds just a little recreational dabbling too. Earlier this year I had the unpleasant task of following up on a large group of thieves who had a huge network of alts and associated groups for passing around stolen material. The list of names and groups I was able to confirm spanned two handwritten pages by the time i was done, and I’m quite sure I missed at least a few.
That was only one group – thieves pop up like gophers and just about as frequently. Within a few weeks, I had another case on my hands. I have heard some designers in busier fields (such as clothing or skins) have to file DMCAs daily for this reason.
So apart from filing a DMCA and hoping for the best, what can one do?
Law suits
Well, Stroker and Munchflower are undertaking a class action suit against LL… it’s been interesting to see how that progresses, to be honest. I’m not sure that it’s ultimately the best route to take, but I can certainly understand the frustration and need to see LL do something about theft. LL seems to be trying to put up a fight in the interim, but i really do hope the suit encourages the company to do the right thing and put in place a more definitive and enforced means of copyright and trademark protection.
Boycotts
Of course it goes without saying that everyone should do the responsible thing and boycott sellers of copied content… but this refers to something different.
Various other bloggers organized a two day boycott which insisted that content creators should shut down their stores in protest and not spend L$ on anything or upload any textures to aid in item creation during that time. The aim, ostensibly, was to make Linden Lab notice that content creators were unhappy and to attempt to impact the Lindex through a decrease in L$ purchase.
This would not be the first time such a protest had been put together. For those who were in SL back about this time in 2006, you might recall that some businesses closed shop in protest upon the discovery of Copybot. LL did eventually change the Terms of Service and put out a blog notice saying that the use of Copybot for nefarious purposes was forbidden… but time’s passed, and it’s still here.
In fact there are a few other tools around that circumvent permissions set by content creators, and it doesn’t look like they’ll be going away any time soon. Moreover, a protest encouraging participants not to patronize genuine content creators for two days does nothing but harm the genuine content creators. Conversely, requiring that participating creators not make any uploads to aid their business doesn’t make sense either. Second Life has simply grown too large for any such protest to make much of an impact on the general populace, as large as the forum and blog community may appear to be. The Lindex also likely sees very little effect when any sort of boycott goes on anymore, also based on sheer volume.
Let’s not forget; whether a boycott runs or not, tier payment dates won’t go away in the interim. Which is more important? Closing up shop and punishing one’s self in a giant pity party, while losing potential revenue to pay for tier or being proactive about encouraging purchase from the real deal?
Anti-Boycotts
A short term alternative several other bloggers and content creators put together in opposition to this boycott had to do with special sales promoting purchase of original content. In my opinion, probably a better choice. I think most of the creators who did this have been pretty happy with the results. Which is great and has really gotten awareness about buying original content over copied out there… but this is certainly not something that can be pulled off on a constant or long term basis.
What else?
If I could name a set of attributes these thieves always lack when compared to the original creators, it’s a conscience, creativity, skill or self-esteem.
They will take anything, new or old, which they believe will sell or will benefit them in some way, even if it means they do it just because they can. Or they might do it just to give away for free as some means of getting them higher on the social ladder amongst noobs who don’t know any better. They don’t care that real creators spend endless hours working on products which only cost a dollar here or there to the individual customer. They don’t care that those sales sometimes add up and can provide genuine creators with a reasonable sum of money, be it enough to cover tier, pocket change, rent, or perhaps more.
They lack creativity because they wouldn’t be monkeying other people and passing off this ripped content on their own if they had a creative bone in their body. If they had creativity, it would drive them to develop skill, which they also evidently don’t have, judging from the lack of additional work that goes in, or the overall shoddy job done to cover up the crime.
Their lack of self-esteem is covered up by a false sense of security that they can never be caught (this in part is part and parcel of the general ease by which alts can be created and start the whole process over again), but ultimately if they had self-esteem about their own content creation, they would spark creativity of their own and subsequently skill and motivation to fuel the overall creative process and make money of their own.
But these individuals will, more often than not, never reach that sort of understanding.
So here is where genuine content creators excel; continuing to produce quality work that pushes the limits, establishing a reputation and recognizable product line, becoming involved with the community, enlisting in the help of fellows and patrons to fight theft, and lastly (but by no means least), holding Linden Lab to their legal obligation to the Resident base to protect intellectual content.
Bunnies
Most recently, the bunny project that I and quite a number of other creators have been working on for months was copybotted, modified in an attempt to subvert a DMCA takedown, and re-uploaded. The copied product was slated to head in to beta soon; all functionality described was practically identical to our product – the bunnies even hop about the same way. You could click each bunny and have it return identical stats to the ones made by Ozimals – right down to breed, variant, food levels, energy, etc.
Talk about lack of integrity.
There are discussions elsewhere that branch off in many other tangents and demand proof, complaining that news of the theft is hearsay – I can assure you that there is very definitely proof. And much like is mentioned in that that thread on SLU, I can recognize exactly what mediocre modifications were done to my work after it was ripped off and re-uploaded. I don’t really want to discuss it in detail because 1) I’m talking about the bigger picture here, 2) Ozimals is still in talks with their lawyer and it’s not up to me to disclose evidence, 3) the content has been taken down as per DMCA, 4) i actually don’t really have the time to become mired in an internet debate with people who by necessity aren’t privy to all the information.
Suffice it to say that we ran in to a stumbling block, but we have no intention of letting it throw us off our path. I still have lots of stuff to work on for this project and should it be well received, I will continue to. I’m optimistic for the success of the product and truly believe that it will do well.