Lindens Violate DMCA, Spam 828,653+ Citizens With Unlicensed “Big Rip Jeans”
by Pixeleen Mistral on 05/10/06 at 7:42 am
Does running the game mean never having to pay?
by Pixeleen Mistral, Herald National Affairs Desk
Colt Spearmann wonders why the Linden’s GOM’ed his jeans without paying or asking
Shortly before the usual Monday evening grid attack, the Herald offices paged me with the news the Linden Lab is no longer honoring some resident’s copyright/digital rights controls on their creations. Apparently Alexandria Linden placed a pair of Colt Spearmann’s L$70 “Big Rip Jeans” in every metaverse citizen’s inventory – which probably came as a surprise to those who had actually bought and paid for the jeans. It certainly came as a surprise to Colt Spearmann, the clothing designer. Mr. Spearmann told me, “People are supposed to buy them not have them for free. I designed them. My work”. Have the Lindens taken clothing texture theft taken to a the next level? Certainly it would appear so based on their super-powers of grid wide distribution.
This strange state of affairs has been going on since at least last weekend. Looking in my inventory while writing this report Tuesday morning, I see that the clothes folder of the library still has a pair of “Big Rip Jeans” created by Mr. Spearmann, This makes me feel bad, since Saturday I happened to make yet another Second Life alt account, and my alt had tried those jeans on. If we live under a benevolent digital rights management scheme, how could this have happened? Have the Lindens trapped me into a mortal sin or some sort of DMCA violation?
A Big Rip in the clothing library
Once I realized the trouble we are all in, I spoke with Mr. Spearmann and suggested that he file an Abuse Report with the Linden texture thieves 3D streaming content distributors, and contact Live Help, since this is the only recourse available to metaverse citizens. Colt was uncertain and seemed to feel this was unlikely to achieve much. As he said, “So what do i do, just say hi… don’t steal my designs?”. We decided that the best course of action was for us both to contact live help, and that did get some response. In my conversation with Stephen Linden, he agreed that some sort of mistake had occurred, but was less than forthcoming with regards to compensation for the theft victim
[16:14] Pixeleen Mistral: question is, how did those Jeans get there?
[16:15] Stephen Linden: It’s just a glitch… probably accidentally dropped in the wrong spot.
[16:16] Stephen Linden: Someone will remove the item.
[16:16] Pixeleen Mistral: but this is his business… aren’t you going to pay him for this?
[16:17] Stephen Linden: Pixeleen, we’re already chatting to him about it. Thanks for bringing it to our attention!
[16:17] Pixeleen Mistral: those jeans sell for L$70 each… what is 700,000 avatars * L$70?
[16:18] Second Life: Stephen Linden has left this session.
I was left with the impression that Linden Lab’s calculators cannot multiply 70 * 700,000. Or perhaps I accidentally gave offense by not using a more current population figure – 828,653 residents as of this writing. Once they do the math back at the Lab, I suppose its always possible to simply print the money – this would be consistent with what RL governments do. Perhaps Colt will offer Linden Lab a volume discount? Let’s all hope for the best. For some reason, I do not think we will see his abuse report show up on the police blotter.
While some speculate that the Terms of Service were written to protect the Lindens from compensating content creators in this sort of case, that sort of talk will only upset the entreprenuers who expect to sell their user-created content. Putting the issue of Linden compensation for the Big Rip aside, there are also worrying concerns around retrieving the wayward designs. Will everyone wearing free copies of the pants have to make a visit to Mr. Spearmann’s store to buy properly licensed jeans? If the Lindens do remove the pants from everyone’s inventory, should we expect to see a surge in avatars without pants in PG sims when their pants suddenly disappear? While we wait for Linden action, ponder the frightening effects on the fabric of our society precipitated by purloined pants going poof.
Poindexter
Oct 5th, 2006
Are you thick? Of course they aren’t going to pay him back! Linden lab is not even a profitable company, and given their larger member base of spoiled, whinny middle-aged pervs who complain about the merest of infractions, there is no chance that they ever will.
Ramen Junkie
Oct 5th, 2006
I’m pretty sure there’s some sort of thing in the TOS about how Lindens have no real value and LL is not responsible for thier accidental loss. I imagine this is basically covered under that.
Alternately, LL seems to keep track of every transaction. It’s not entirely inconcievable they could simply delete all of the illegitimate copies of the pants and reimburse those who had legit pairs.
Though you might end up with people logging in naked.
Prokofy Neva
Oct 5th, 2006
The Lindens are determined to select a very few of their most favourite pet content creators, and drop them into the Library.
First, they did this deliberately, taking Nylon Pinkey’s skins and some other people’s skins to put in a deck of skins for newbies in the library of new accounts only — and with Nylon’s consent. Not sure why this wasn’t an open bid; not sure why only newbies got to have Nylon’s cool urban chic duds, but it was done deliberately, consciously, and with consent.
This was done around June 2006, when the Lindens opened the floodgates, saw the newbies preferred to fly around naked and grief when they weren’t verified, and thought that if the state gave them cool pre-made avatars/outfits, and even gave them a check-off template to chose for a “look” before they even landed at the Help Island, they would be less prone to doing that thing that Tateru Nino couldn’t really bring herself to write on her no-nakie warning sign at the HI “Don’t…just…don’t.”
That freed the old and new Lindens to understand that they now had a “norm”. And the norm is, Lindens get to select resident content and plunk it in the library — every Linden’s dream.
So the first scandal that occurred was that some Lindens — Jeska? Torley? accidently dropped 7 landmarks — their own landmarks in their own folders — into the library. We all suddenly got pushed 7 landmarks to the top dress makers. They all claimed to know nothing. The landmarks were even out of date, they said, as if that were proof that they were NOT taken from a Linden feter and NOT deliberate. But…they were taken out of an existing staff person’s inventory and put in a pushing template — by accident, on purpose, well, who knows? Philip said it was a bug. Jeska said it was an exploit. It was just…a thingie. A thingie that happened in the enabling environment of the other thingie which was the deliberate, conscious, decision to push Nylon Pinkey’s urban chic stuff.
They cleaned that up, and mumbled stuff about how
I have to say, Pixeleen, that each time a huge public feting takes place (think of it as a fete to be GOM’d not a theft), we do often find the party involved begins to protest no, I never knew. Perhaps Spearmann did never know — but then, we do live in a context where others who have protested and protested this, like Cristiano Midnight protested the sudden use of his Snapzilla technology by Lindens pimping their homepage with resident shots they grabbed on the way out of SL to Cristiano’s webpage, or like Squagmire Stravinsky, who protested that he “knew nothing” about the Lindens putting his Infonet terminal in every infohub (though they had a contract with him leasing it)…and on and on.
Perhaps they are the “last to know” — but it’s more like the events occur because of an environment where they interact with the Lindens so much that the Lindens feel they are “theirs” and don’t tell them — or they aren’t being completely on the level. Very hard to tell which. Cristiano, for example, protested mightily when I challenged his claim “not to know”. But a Linden blog page on it made it sound like they had discussed it and worked it out. Now, that may be the Lindens’ perception. They clearly feel very proprietary about things made on their platform. Perhaps they feel that any resident will only be too happy to be GOM’d and given the huge publicity of getting in the library, just like Nylon Pinkey (we don’t know whether she was paid, or donated her skins; there wasn’t an open bid or contest).
So we now have 3 cases of library content-pushing. The first was conscious and deliberate. The second was repudiated. The third — we don’t know yet, except it does look like a mistake if we’re to trust the comments of the jeans maker. We have no reason not to, but we have to understand how a *copyable pair* of these jeans landed in Alexandria Linden’s inventory. If they are buyable for $70 they are on transfer, but likely not on copy in the store where they are sold.
Could this mean that any item that a Linden *does* seize for GOMing automatically is available for him to undo all the perms on it using some kind of god mode? That’s an unpleasant thought.
Ultimately, I view these “exploits” and “mistakes” as marketing tests. They are testing the amount of static that they can expect from both the general public and the content creators to a notion that they need to enforce before they sell Second Life off to a buyer: the ability to grab al the content and put it in the library for everybody to have.
Prokofy Neva
Oct 5th, 2006
sorry:
*They cleaned that up, and mumbled stuff about how they made a mistake when a Linden responsible for prepping the template for what goes in everybody’s library before a new patch is put in, pushed something that shouldn’t have gone in there.
Seems to me reasonable to assume that “something” was her own inventory.
Ramen Junkie
Oct 5th, 2006
On the subject of Lindens and permissions, I always kind of assumed that as Lindens, they automatically were except from the permissions of objects. IE, they can pretty much just take and copy everything at will.
I may be completely mistaken.
Random Writer
Oct 5th, 2006
*snip from Poindexter*
Linden lab is not even a profitable company *snip*
AHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA MUAHAHAHHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHA MUAHHAAHAHAAHAH!!!
You’re kidding right? Do you honestly believe that and use it for the basis of an argument? You really think LL is here for our amusement only and isn’t turning a profit?
And you aren’t any better than the infraction whiners. You are complaining and them complaining. That’s worse IMO.
Lilith
Oct 5th, 2006
Hi Pixeleen Mistral! I need to talk to you. Add me on YIM
AF
Oct 5th, 2006
No Big Rip Jeans in my inventory. I’d like to see a follow up story on the wad of $L Spearmann made after this sensationalist story hit. What excellent advertising for him. Though I’m curious if someone got away with a free pair of jeans by simply renaming them? Linden’s probably removed it by key id though.
Anonymous
Oct 5th, 2006
@Random Writer:
Actually, they are truely not making any profit whatsoever. I dont even think they break even. However, their profit is getting closer and closer to a positive percent that LL will soon stop relying on those multimillion dollar grants and make some real money.
Poindexter
Oct 6th, 2006
You can guffaw like a braying moron all you like @ random, but the fact is that LL is surviving purely on venture capital and investor funding at this point. They can only realize a profit by driving up the volume of users. Unfortunately, their technology is aging and glitch prone, and with promising new competitors entering this market soon, the future is not so bright for LL.
Try doing some research on company financials, so next time you won’t have to illustrate to the entire thread just how uninformed you really are.
Hiro Pendragon
Oct 7th, 2006
It’s the Library, as evidenced by your own pictures. Please retract your misleading statements that it was “in every resident’s inventory”. Truly, every resident had access. And, even if you go with the most extreme numbers, you’d have to find out how many residents have actually logged on in the past 24 or 48 hours to see who even had an opportunity, which is at least a decimal point shift worth of error on your part.
Yes, it’s a big blunder on LL’s part, but this article is simply beyond exagerration – it’s libel.
Prokofy Neva
Oct 7th, 2006
Oh, Hiro, go away, you’re so tiresome. There’s no libel here, there’s robust critical commentary. And hey, let the paid Linden evangelizers and flak-catchers do the work of countering hype on the Herald, eh? You’re way too long in the tooth now to go on being a hyperventilating little fanboy.
If the Lindens drop something into the library, it IS in every avatar’s inventory. It’s there. To say that it’s only there if you log in and access it is like saying none of my inventory is there unless I log in and access it. Silly.
Random Writer
Oct 7th, 2006
You say I spout, k… show me where it says LL is making no profit that isn’t in a ‘blog’. LL taking on investors isn’t exactly proof. Many companies take on multiple investors in hopes of larger returns. Doesn’t mean the company is bankrupt, broke, operating in the red or anything of the sort. In fact, investing is a gamble. You pay a lil money now in hopes that the money comes back multiplied. People don’t just give away that kind of money.
Other than the obvious reasons on how LL is making profits, the fact it IS drawing investors with all the current in-world issues (common sense tells me these guys wouldn’t take advice to invest in a company operating seriously in the red), and a search otherwise, that included profits (other than listing LL as a privately held, for profit company), nothing out there that isn’t a blog has been produced to show they are continually losing money every month.
I can find plenty of articles claiming LL earns a profit, but I wouldn’t reference them without doing an extensive search on the motives, which I can’t do right at the second, but would be more than happy to later.
Hiro Pendragon
Oct 8th, 2006
“To say that it’s only there if you log in and access it is like saying none of my inventory is there unless I log in and access it. Silly.”
If spam is never seen by your mailbox or spamfilter, is it ever really spam? Your “Inventory” is specifically differently labeled from the “Library”, as evidenced by the picture.
The same concept goes for real libraries. Do I own Moby Dick just because I can go to my local library and get a copy anytime? No.
Do I own every mp3 on iTunes before I pay for them? No.
If there is a security hole in software, but it’s patched before very many people crack it, does this mean everyone’s data is stolen? No. Exposed? Maybe.
Let’s call a spade a spade:
Spam is a conscious attempt to make unsolicited business offer or make a statement via electronic messaging. This was neither. It was a goof.
Inventory is inventory, library is library.
Oh, and Linden TOS still allow them to use any item for promotional use and they don’t guarantee the solidity of any item. But that was neglected to be mentioned, either.
And accusing someone of a criminal or tort-liable act that is untrue, in written form, is libel.
Nacon
Oct 8th, 2006
Pixeleen Mistral… It doesn’t mean that each 828,653+ Citizens has one. ONLY if you dragged the pants out of the library, into your own inventory folder.
It WAS in the “open for grab” moment. The real question is how many people has grabbed one?
For the love of god, quit writing poor articles. And stop attacking Linden,
if they go down, your job goes DOWN along with it. Go pass a college.