Content Creators Ask Residents To Purchase – Not Copy
by Alphaville Herald on 07/03/08 at 8:35 am
Will naked avatars shock Linden Lab and residents into action?
A press pack arrived at the Herald offices yesterday – and understanding our readers’ purely artistic interest in naked avatars, it seems best to simply post the whole thing. Click on the images below for the large version, and happy fapping.
Near
Mar 7th, 2008
FUCK YEAH, COPYBOT.
Angel
Mar 7th, 2008
I will hope that all these content creators don’t rip their CD’s onto their ipods, download torrents or music except from paid legal sources, anything else would reek of hypocrisy.
That said… anyone who profits from copying is a thief, repeated attempts should lead to a permaban.
So...
Mar 7th, 2008
I don’t know why Minnu’s bitching. Her skins are photosourced anyway. (Besides, if we can’t sell skins, get your BFF to open a clothing shop… right?)
Pie Psaltery
Mar 7th, 2008
The creator of Sculptypaint, Cel Edman, took down his site yesterday due to this very issue:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~elout/sculptpaint/
If appealing to people’s better nature worked, we wouldn’t have this issue in the first place.
You keep on creating… they’ll keep on stealing… because they can. Simple as that.
Nothing will change until Linden Lab changes it. Best of luck pushing that boulder up the hill, but don’t hold your breath while you’re doing it.
NinaA
Mar 7th, 2008
Buying stolen content is fucking stupid. If you are going to be a thief then have the guts do it yourself. The ones who sell it on aren’t following any free for all principles they are just scum.
Maxx Something
Mar 7th, 2008
@ the above issue regarding the sculptie paint. What a shame that so called “mentors” were involved in distrubiting these goods.
Kudos to the person who outed the mentors doing this. i won’t name the person as i know he was booted out of that retarted “mental mentors” clique channel and was catching grief for outing the thief.
Hal
Mar 7th, 2008
VOTE FOR CHANGE!
(uhm, where did i hear that before?)
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-1732
Ari
Mar 7th, 2008
This whole campaign is a waste of money and effort. Not like I really care, though, old Stroker has the bucks, right?
It’s a complete waste of breath because they are trying to ‘educate’ the buying public.
How the hell are they (the buying public) supposed to know that one of Stroker’s crappy builds is really a stolen set being sold by a thief? Or anything else in any other vending machine or sale box?
They don’t know. Do you? How do you know, when you are looking at a box with a picture on it that when you buy it, your are not buying something that’s stolen?
So what good is asking anyone to not buy stolen stuff – if they don’t even know whether something in a vendor is stolen or not?
It’s laughable.
Alyx Stoklitsky
Mar 7th, 2008
Boo hoo. Suck it up.
Jim Schack
Mar 7th, 2008
Welcome to the rehashing of the Napster argument.
Can you actually own an idea and self expression? No.
People should compensate good artists if they like their work, especially if they want more to come. People morally shouldn’t steal or support thieves and this copybot is bad, no doubt. At the same time you’re never going to stop people who want free things from getting them. No matter how many rules LL makes, not matter how many laws you pass, who passes them and who enforces them or how they are enforced is useless. Appealing to people’s better nature is probably the best. I could have gotten a lot of stuff for free. But I like the people I buy shit from and think they should get some compensation for their work. So I would never use copybot or support those who do. I think that is more motivation not to do it than say getting banned or facing jail time, fines, lawsuits..etc.
With that said; YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG! You’re rewarding people who use copybot with tits and dongs. Gee I wish some of these pop singer chicks would do the same IRL, I’d start selling burnt CDs to see more.
in b4 Prok posts a crazy TL;DR comment.
Ranma Tardis
Mar 7th, 2008
The problem with “buying” content in Second Life is that you really do not “buy” content. It is more like renting it. So many things are NO COPY, NO MOD and NO TRANSFER. If second life worked corectly things would not be so bad but I am not sure of all of the things that I have bought but have lost through the normal SL flaws.
I have an Ipod but unlike SL am able to make backups and am protected.
I see this article as the usual crying of the content makers. They have NO per unit costs , only distribution costs. It costs the same to them to sell one unit as a million.
So how about having some cheese with your whine or if it is too hot in the kitchen get out!
Jeremy Prescott
Mar 7th, 2008
I congratulate this effort to raise awareness about content piracy in SL. The effort won’t stop the thieves themselves, because there will always be thieves and cheaters, and nothing short of force (i.e permanent banning of repeated DMCA offenders) will convince those people not to be lazy parasites. But I hope this effort will help to let more people in SL know about the issue. It’s likely that most SL citizens who don’t read SLH etc. may not be aware of how bad things have gotten.
It would be nice to think that LL would simply enforce their own policies and do something about this, even if that costs them some money to support a few full time staff positions to handle DMCA cases. Unfortunately, it seems very unlikely they will. Unlike a lot of people, however, I don’t see this as a major conspiracy. I think it’s pretty straightforward; LL seems married to a pretty broad (though strangely selective) laissez faire ideology. Unless they think their financial or legal survival is potentially at stake – such as their sudden and drastic approaches to SL gambling and EU VAT payments – they seem to take the view of ‘let’s stand back and see what happens’. Maybe they’re interested in watching how SL citizens themselves deal with IP theft. The problem with that is there may not be any clear way of SL content creators to ‘deal’ with theft aside from 1) giving up and leaving SL, or 2) some kind of weird organized counter-griefing assault, where content creators pay griefers to attack known thieves. The first outcome will eventually close down SL as a venue for online creative business. The second will probably lead to some kind of strange online mafia system, where content creators pay ‘protection money’ to virtual mob bosses. I don’t think either outcome sounds very appealing.
It would be nice to have some other alternative, but it’s not clear that there is one (assuming LL keeps on the sidelines). Is it possible to build script codes that identify ‘stolen’ goods? But then we just have another Darwinian contest between thieves and creators (i.e. better copy-detection versus better copy-detection-prevention, and on and on…), like we have now between copybot and anti-copybot utilities in-world. If copied goods can be ‘tracked’ or identified, how could we use that information? Can I, as a store owner, scan buyers to see if they have any stolen goods equipped, and deny them sales if they want to buy from me? This would be useful as a sort of reverse boycott against people who possess stolen goods, which would help to drive down the desirability of cheap knockoffs. But is it even possible, technically?
Aside from in-world technical strategies like the above, or the development of an SL mob network of escalating griefer wars, there doesn’t seem to be any way out of this. If theft can proliferate unchecked, then we just have a gigantic cleptocracy where SL used to be, and the people who are serious about trying to sell the products of their creative work will just leave SL behind. There don’t appear to be any other logical outcomes. If LL knows there is no way around theft but enforcing DMCA violations, and they have simply chosen to deliberately sit back and do nothing, then they’re just shooting themselves in the foot. That doesn’t make a lot of sense as a viable long term business plan. If LL seriously expects each and every DMCA violation to be pursued through RL legal redress, they’re kidding themselves. Only large scale SL enterprises like Stroker Serpentine’s (and similar) are going to have the time, resources and persistence to be able to follow through with RL lawsuits ad nauseum…. which will only turn SL into a province of big business, where small or part-time creators are effectively shut out of the market.
I anticipate that hardcore libertarians will continue to insist that LL stay out of this fight, and have us all just wait for the holy Invisible Hand to put things right. It’s still not clear to me how such people can believe so vigorously in the superfluousness of government, without simply packing up and moving to Somalia (which would seem to be a perfect anarcho-libertarian paradise), is beyond me… but that’s an argument for another day.
LL, are you really going to just sit this one out? This isn’t a new problem, it’s not going away, and it’s only going to get worse as time moves on. I don’t think people want you to come barging into SL with jackboots and inventory scanners at every sim entrance, but it really would be quite helpful if you could just implement a process for banning repeat DMCA offenders. That doesn’t seem like a lot to ask, and would no doubt pay for itself by building trust in LL’s willingness to support its customers and help them build a more reliable and secure environment for online creative commerce.
lal
Mar 7th, 2008
In that second pic, shouldn’t the avatar be bald? This bothers me. She should be bald.
Also, the ones that say “I’d rather go bare than wear stolen skin,” those should have muscles, bones, and organs showing. No skin.
TT
Mar 7th, 2008
You’d expect at least some of these content creators to know that the company’s name is LINDEN LAB.
Kula Anatine
Mar 7th, 2008
If you made contributions to SL and made profit too. many residents would support most of you but most of youare just out for the loot greed has a karma debt also
how many content creators sell or have shops that host zombie farms money is not evil making just money to no regard to where or how you get it and not giving back for your success is a lose for not just the creators you cant let the coal miners die after they have mined all the coal…
Edward
Mar 7th, 2008
This whole thing is really silly. What moron buys skin and clothes and who has nothing better to do in life than to spend hours making them? There are thousands of skins and clothes available for free at any freebie area, and between that everything from that Chinese lady’s $10L line and the stuff at BidSl auctions anyone who really feels that they must buy something that pays more than $10L for it is a real chump. People are dying daily in Iraq, the animals that are Al Queda are still on lose. Time to put some things in perspective here. Instead of spending time on some silly ad campaign for a subject that nobody but themselves gives a hoot about, how about visiting an old folks home, volunteering at an animal shelter, or God forbid, getting a real job?
RoFLKOPTr
Mar 7th, 2008
To those of you who are saying LL should hire DMCA lawyers, etc… and to Jeremy, who points out the fact that “Unless they think their financial or legal survival is potentially at stake – such as their sudden and drastic approaches to SL gambling and EU VAT payments – they seem to take the view of ‘let’s stand back and see what happens’.”, you need to recognize the fact that Linden Lab does not care about you.
Linden Lab is a company. They put their time and money towards making more money. They don’t give two flying fucks about whether you, as a resident, are making money, just as long as you’re making enough that you remain a paying customer.
Linden Lab is not interested in keeping your intellectual property (lol, what a fucking stupid combination of words) safe. As long as they’re making money, they are perfectly happy.
Aya Pelous
Mar 7th, 2008
These are from the same people who copy RL clothing designers, make up, objects, shoes, jewelry…..**Rolls eyes**
GreenLantern Excelsior
Mar 7th, 2008
Here’s a copybot discussion from the most recent GTeam office hours on Wednesday:
[2008/03/05 10:21] Pierce Kronos: speaking of intricate stuff … those alleged new copy bots that copy anything and everything to the nth degree, are they gonna get a looksee by the GT?
[2008/03/05 10:21] Mbrb Rau: I don’t want to be copied like 2000 times and replicated.
[2008/03/05 10:21] Zara Linden: we are aware of the “new” copybots…however, they aren’t actually new.
[2008/03/05 10:21] Zara Linden: maybe a new name…
[2008/03/05 10:22] Mbrb Rau: just suspend the people that use them, like you always do
[2008/03/05 10:22] Pierce Kronos: revised? reworked? Rescripted?
[2008/03/05 10:22] Mbrb Rau: but they could spread
[2008/03/05 10:22] Adromor Wierwight: It is my understand that they arent new, just improved and spreading alot more
[2008/03/05 10:22] Zara Linden: our developers are highly aware of them…there’s nothing we can do to prevent them from being used
[2008/03/05 10:22] Adromor Wierwight: its becoming rampant
[2008/03/05 10:22] Marianne McCann has heard some hype and hysteria (like “they work even in noscript areas!”), but not much solid
[2008/03/05 10:23] Mbrb Rau: Does that mean I’ll have to go to the underground place and hide until they’re all gone?
[2008/03/05 10:23] Adromor Wierwight: yes the work in noscript areas, they are external applications
[2008/03/05 10:23] Zara Linden: it falls under the DMCA law. if they are being used to copy another person’s creations the violator should be reported using the DMCA process.
[2008/03/05 10:23] Adromor Wierwight: I think the video on that news article was made in a noscript zone
[2008/03/05 10:23] Mbrb Rau: The copyright act.
[2008/03/05 10:24] You: Is the DMCA used very often in SL? And does it work effectively?
[2008/03/05 10:24] Zara Linden: it is used all the time
[2008/03/05 10:24] Adromor Wierwight: Yes it takes time but it is used alot
[2008/03/05 10:24] Marianne McCann: I’ve seen it used, yes.
[2008/03/05 10:24] Zara Linden: each individual case is looked at closely
[2008/03/05 10:25] Zara Linden: we do take down objects that violate the terms pretty regularly
[2008/03/05 10:25] Aargle Zymurgy: are they removed? or just returned
[2008/03/05 10:26] Zara Linden: http://secondlife.com/corporate/dmca.php
The Linden Governance & Response Team holds office hours every Wednesday at 10 a.m. and every Saturday at 12 Noon SLT in Kremer. It’s interesting, and I’m sure they would like to have more participation from the residents.
Ann Otoole
Mar 8th, 2008
The solution to the problem is not something LL is willing to undertake.
LL doesn’t even follow the intent of the DMCA.
They remove an instance and then allow the account to place a new violation out in seconds causing the entire weeks long process to be repeated.
Maybe LL would get the idea if someone cloned SL/LL and set it up to run for free.
Oh wait.. Thats already happening. And LL supports the idea.
I guess that job at LL isn’t a real good choice for long term employment eh?
Duh
Greatest Job Hunt Killer Known to Mankind: Put Secondlife on your resume. Try it. You won’t get a single call. Remove it and the calls start coming again. Apparently more people, people that really count in the tech sector, are aware of Secondlife than many have assumed. Might be a good resume entry for a court jester job.
anon
Mar 8th, 2008
Haha, look at all this work done to raise awareness of such trivial shit. Maybe those responsible should go encourage people to do something that really matters.
RoFLKOPTr
Mar 8th, 2008
Also, I like the “©2008″ on all of those posters…. adds a nice touch…. not? COPYRIGHT 2008 OF WHO?? YOU CAN’T FUCKING COPYRIGHT SOMETHING IF YOU DON’T TELL PEOPLE THAT YOU OWN THE COPYRIGHT. Seriously… I should sue SLH right now for putting my copyrighted posters on their site without my permission. Oh… they’re not my posters? Look, right there, it says ©2008… that means they’re mine, right?
Dumbshits.
Azzy
Mar 8th, 2008
“This whole thing is really silly. What moron buys skin and clothes and who has nothing better to do in life than to spend hours making them?”
@Edward – “Morons” with money to blow, creators who’re making 50-100k USD a year (or maybe more than you do with your rl job) and whose activity the entire SL economy is built on. Apparently you haven’t been looking at how much money is spent daily on SL, and have absolutely no idea as to what SL consumer habits are. Shut your mouth before you make yourself look even more stupid than you already are – of course people give a hoot about what earns them a living. Some people treat this as a second income, who are you to preach what they should be doing to earn money? Take your idealistic tripe somewhere else, it’s not going to pay these people’s rent for them.
Lola
Mar 9th, 2008
“@Edward – “Morons” with money to blow, creators who’re making 50-100k USD a year (or maybe more than you do with your rl job) and whose activity the entire SL economy is built on. Apparently you haven’t been looking at how much money is spent daily on SL, and have absolutely no idea as to what SL consumer habits are. Shut your mouth before you make yourself look even more stupid than you already are – of course people give a hoot about what earns them a living. Some people treat this as a second income, who are you to preach what they should be doing to earn money? Take your idealistic tripe somewhere else, it’s not going to pay these people’s rent for them.”
Lawl, it’s Penny.
Second life sucks
Mar 9th, 2008
Content protection in SL is a joke, and i fucking wish there were no economy in the game at all. If you can make infinite copies of your work without any extra effort, placing artificial limits on its availability is total bullshit.
Aya Pelous
Mar 9th, 2008
seriously we can spend out cash on whatever we want its the fact that the creators are trying to make a fuss about what they stolen…. wow they created skin…so does my rl body that means they are stealing from me. haha losers.
Everyone
Mar 9th, 2008
AHAHAHHAHA OH WOW, STEALING ADVERTISEMENT IDEAS FROM PETA ABOUT STEALING IP.
GOLD.
?
Mar 10th, 2008
So how do skin makers make skins for to sell in SL?
I know,l probably with photoshop or something (which is a program that costs a couple of hundred dollars – I trust you all obtained it legally?), but where does the raw material come from?
I know game designers etc sometimes hire models to take photographs to create skin… Do you guys do that as well? Or is it Gooogle and the internet all the way?
And the designs from the clothing? I have done a LOT of shopping in SL, and I see a LOT of clothing designs that are veeeery much inspired by *ahem* RL designers.
So if I’m appealed to not to buy anything from a copybotted designer/reseller/thief but to go to the ‘original’ designers instead, what gives me the guarantee I’m doing the right thing and not buy from just another criminal who didnt copybot it but just googled it?
Another little pointer: in the Real World (TM) they also have this problem, and tried to solve it by making CD’s and DVD’s a lot more expensive. We all know what effect that had… More music and movies are being ripped, distributed and downloaded then ever before.
I know the Linden Dollar isnt worth jack sh*t, but when I see a dress for over 500L$…. no matter how nice, I’m going to pass up on it.
Just a little tip here, might makie you not-as-much profit, but will guarantee that people will buy from you: make sure the copybot thief cant work profitable. Go below his price, and people will buy from you.
all in all, this is sucky for everyone, hope that someday LL will start to ban people for stealing others work and not just slap their wrist. That’s just stupid.
Dr. Internet
Mar 10th, 2008
Let me say it straight:
No one fucking cares, most of the people crying make sub-par mediocre shit anyway and then slap a giant price tag on it. People who sell shirts for $75L (hell, irl a t-shirt that’s more than $15 is bullshit imho, it’d better be of extremely high quality)
Looks like we have our new bogeyman for 2008. EVIL CONTENT THIEVES! Griefers are SOOOO last year.
The fact there is no real competition in SL, everyone just kinda makes their own version of the same shit (almost all the skins in SL LOOK THE FUCKING SAME, I’ve seen few that stand out) and they just die off if they dont pick a good spot to sport their wares. There’s no competitive market, and a stagnant system, so you get high prices, and then thieves come along and rip things off and sell them for drastically reduced prices, it hurts these content creators because now they’re essentially forced to compete with their own product. Content creators need to start competing with each other and making the environment harder for thieves to operate in, aka, charge a more reasonable rate for something you whipped together in 5-10 minutes. I see so much regurgitated shit on SL it’s not funny. A lot of things have the same scripts some freebies have. most of the money goes to textures, but marking up a product by 800% that took you 10 minutes to make is crap. Sell more for less, you’ll make better money that way. As demand goes up, reduce prices and see how far your demand will go.
In other words: Stop crying and screaming for Linden labs to help you and help your own fucking selves. You’ve essentially created an environment that makes ripping you off easy and profitable. Your best market are the newbies, who don’t have thousands of lindens to blow on trinkets and skins.
anon
Mar 10th, 2008
Aya, learn to actually type in English first before posting incomprehensible garbled shit. I’d rip you a new one if I learned you weren’t ESL, though it’s more likely your atrophied brain is that of a dyslexic nine-year-old and deserves to be euthanized.
There’s nothing wrong with an ad campaign that seeks to educate. As people have said hardly anyone who isn’t active in the fashion industry knows about the theft problem – if you are in certain groups in SL you’ll get reports of theft several times daily. That’s enough to prompt some kind of action from creators if LL isn’t willing to move their asses.
That said, I wonder why this was sent to the Herald anyway, knowing it’d get the usual kind of response like the ones above.
shockwave yareach
Mar 10th, 2008
One thing to remember when you are lambasting the poor customers – 95% of the time they have no idea whether any texture/item/dress/shoe/dong/nipple is a ripoff or sold by the original creator. When I walk in a store and see something I like, I can’t tell if it’s a duplicate or not. How am I supposed to know? Is there a LL board to handle inworld Copy issues? Have they disabled the trick which lets you duplicate prims? (Hint: llGetPrimParameters should return NULL on anything where the item creator and the script owner are not identical)
Some of the fashionistas may think we should memorize every item being created by every maker in the grid. But see, people have this thing called a First Life that is far more important. As a content creator myself, I sympathize with the problem. But I don’t blame the customer for not knowing Xoutfits steals designs and textures. How CAN a customer know and make a choice, hmm? Until you devise a way to alert buyers that the store they are entering has illegal merchandise, your effort will be for naught. Not because the customer WANTS lower prices and chooses to rip you off, but because the customer doesn’t have the slightest idea.
Dr. Internet
Mar 10th, 2008
Also, looking at the profiles of most of the creators crying, most have a HUGE chip on their shoulder. One says something along tghe lines of “NO, I will NOT join your mall.”
Heh, be glad that someone sees you as worthy of being in a mall of yours. poor business sense imho.
Alexa
Mar 11th, 2008
Guys, what do you think about this
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=541881???
It’s absolutly open and free!
And how business owners can care about their copyright protection?
You can copy skins, items, everything!
Just Me
Mar 11th, 2008
@Ranma “They have NO per unit costs , only distribution costs. It costs the same to them to sell one unit as a million.”
NOT true. Discounting the work it takes “up front” to create content, there is still costs incurred in selling the items. Everything that a content creator sells is sitting on their land (for which they pay tier) or on rented land/shops/stalls (for which they pay rent).
So, if you rent a shop for 500 a week and don’t sell anything (which does happen, believe me), you’re in the negative for that week. The following week you need to sell at least 1000 of product to break even. Most small shops don’t sell very many items. We aren’t all “Last Call” or “Sirena” .. the small vendors are just scraping by in many cases.
Azzy
Mar 12th, 2008
@Dr. Internet “One says something along tghe lines of “NO, I will NOT join your mall.
Heh, be glad that someone sees you as worthy of being in a mall of yours. poor business sense imho.”
Try saying that when your customer notecards and IMs are being capped out by mall offers from places that have little to no traffic and look like a regurgitated chunk of the mainland with all the lag, plus strippers. And then you get screamed at by the customers for not getting their messages.
Try running a successful store sometime then reevaluate your opinion if it has any merit.
?
Mar 14th, 2008
I’m still wondering where for example skin creators get their raw materials for the skins they create.
The good ones look photorealistic, and are definately NOT hand drawn a-z. So where do the photo’s come from to create skins? The textures that are used to make lace for underwear? the textures that are used to make a nice paisley skirt?
Gooooogle perchance…?
Observant Hax
Mar 17th, 2008
Adromor Wierwight is selling at his little stores stolen objects that were copybotted, all you have to do is check, he is even selling an ancient freebie for $100L
He is creating a gift card system that will probably rip people off, its strange that he was commenting
Alaska Metro
Mar 19th, 2008
It’s kind of dismaying seeing all the “who cares?” responses on this topic. It’s not just the fashion industry in SL that’s affected by this, you know. Since everything in Second Life is user-made, it’s ALL affected. So if you feel it’s not a big deal if stores in SL have their IP stolen, because you just walk around in n00b clothes and freebies anyway, consider that vehicles, prefabs, furniture, gizmos, your scripted naughty bits, and builds are just as likely to have their content stolen as well. Unless you want to spend all your time in a slider skin talking in the Welcome Area, this problem affects ALL your Second Life.
It really takes the joy out of content creation to see your content around the grid without it being under your control. It’s not just a money issue. Some of the designers affected by it wrote about their experience trying to get their content taken down by DCMA. It was a long, irritating process that had to be repeated over and over, and left the copying designer free to just put the copies up AGAIN in another location. It’s enough to make someone put away their Wacom tablet for good and leave Second Life.
As for the “photosourcing” issue, I would assume everyone who photosources and has ethics either pays for usage fees on photographs specifically FOR texturing, or uses open-source images, or made the original RL garment photographed (like House of Nyla.) Finger pointing at SL’s fashion industry and saying they have nothing to complain about when their stuff is stolen simply because they didn’t create the item 100% from imagination in a design vacuum is missing the point, really.
RM
Mar 19th, 2008
The ads are neat, but they’re paying ad farmers such as Exchange Price to spam these on the mainland now. Does this detract from the message, or change how people feel about the advertisers?
Caleb
May 22nd, 2008
Kerp looked at her terminally and replied, “i spent eggshell lonely growths overdoing necessarily for you in this ‘bachelor pad’, and there’s chess about that arrangement i barrel to keep. http://www.fhr.ru/gallery/porno-tv/porno-igry.html – порно игры http://www.fhr.ru/gallery/porno-tv/ukrainskoe-tv.html – украинское тв [url=http://www.fhr.ru/gallery/porno-tv/hhh-tv-germanya-porno-video.html]ххх тв германья порно видео[/url] Then she sourced it around and the excretions all agreed i smelled sexy.
?
May 22nd, 2008
No, I disagree with the missing of the point.
The point namely is, that if you did copying yourself in the first place, no matter if it’s from open source, and then go baawwwwwing about your stuff being copied, I say, you’re a hypocrite. IF you use open source imagery, if you have copied only a mere one percent of something you didnt design, you should give credit where credit’s due. Even when it’s a mere “Inspired by” notecard included with the product or note on the vendor. THEN, you can complain ‘legally’.
Again, my earlier used example:
I have a car in SL, that cost a small fortune. It’s called a Saleen, made by the Fast & Furious SL car/bike designer. On the side doors, it features a graphic of some manga girl. Now, it is very clear, not only by it’s name but by every square inch of the thing, that this car is supposed to be a Seleen S7, an American supercar from RL. *nowhere* is this mentioned, or credited. I have compared it to photographs of the real thing, and it’s completely the same, lest for maybe the shape of some of the side air intakes.
As such, no problem for me, its a very, VERY nice car that I wish I could afford IRL… I have to do with the SL version sadly tho.
The second someone decides to copybot the thing, and sell it for lets say half of the price as F&F does, and F&F finds out and starts making a problem out of it, yeah that I call hypocrisy. They ‘stole’ it’s design in the first place, the ‘only’ effort they put in it, is making the object in SL, and figuring out how to place the textures to make it look right. (here ignoring the scripting, as in this case that’s not important; it *is* very ingeniously scripted, all credit due where it’s due.)
So, if F&F decides to file a DMCA or makes a fuss about it, what point am I missing if I call them hypocrite?
You say, everyone who photosources and has ethics… Here’s my point. Who can guarantee me they indeed have ethics and that their stuff isnt photosourced from legally free to use materials? I’m not calling the entire fashion industry hypoctites, all I’m asking… who can give me that guarantee it’s their own design? Every time I see a dress in any store on SL that I want, I’m not going to google for images to see if perhaps the design is or isn’t copied from the net, there is no way to check that, unlless you’re a RL fashionista.
One simply doesnt know.
In the case of the skins which I specifically mentioned… The realistic looking skins simply cannot be all hand drawn and be NOT photosourced, seeing the huge number of skins on the market out there. I’m an artist myself, and I know how horribly difficult and tedious it is to draw photorealistic skins. It’s a near impossibility. And I have yet to see a SINGLE skin store that cites a single credits reference. Again, hey, no problem there for me. But if I see complaints about content theft from that area, (as with all other possible areas of content creation in SL aside from scripting), I am curious to proof of the fact that they created it themselves, and proof of the fact that they themselves gave credit where credit is due. Freeware or not.
Again, I’m not pointing fingers at anyone. I’m just asking questions, (and I will keep asking them) because I am in doubt about this. I dont just assume someone has ethics in this land of the anonymous, as being anonymous brings out the worst in people as this very blog proves time and time again. In SL more then in RL, trust has to be earned. I learned that the hard way.
One last tidbit about the design vacuum… its not hard to be original, all it takes is some creativity.