Linden Lab’s Baitbox Nabs 50 Copyright Infringers?
by Jessica Holyoke on 06/10/09 at 1:44 pm
Have the banned residents already returned to the grid?
by Jessica Holyoke
The SL community is safe again as reports that due to the heroic efforts of Soft Linden, and the alleged infringers themselves, 50 residents were banned from Second Life. The residents were all users of the Neil Life viewer. This viewer – which appears to be based off of the Emerald viewer – was previously falsely hyped as being endorsed by Gwyneth Llewellyn.
How did the sting apparently work? The propagator of the Neil Life viewer posted information on how to create certain assets in world using the viewer on his website. Specifically, he posted the asset identification or UUID of what can be copied in world. According to reports, Soft Linden was able to use that asset id in order to call attention to anyone who tried to use the Neil Life viewer method of infringement. The only people who would be rezzing that asset would be the ones who got it from the website.
Reports of the sting operation led to some gleeful speculation of possible criminal charges, but without knowing what the object is, the likelihood of legal action is unknown – as is how this sting operation will help other content creators who find their creations copied.
Questions about how much impact the baitbox sting will have are understandable – over at the "SecondLife NeilLife Open Source" blog, several posts suggest that those banned may be able to return to the grid by putting in a support ticket. One post says, "Everyone has been restored to their faithful accounts. Please give athumbs up to soft linden for a big misunderstanding(in a big return,they are fixing the nc/object exploit, as usual).Give a support ticketif this happened to you( you should be back ingame online)"
If Soft Linden is being praised by the NeilLife creators, it is hard to see how this "sting operation" could be portrayed as a ride on "the spank-bus to ban-town", but maybe Tateru Nino knows something we don't.
All Seeing Eye
Oct 6th, 2009
LL is unbanning them. After all what would Soft do without all his black hat cocks to suck?
The only solution for linden lab atm is to fire soft and Q and get some real talent in the house. These fucktards can’t do shit and they support thieves so no wonder a big Italian estate is abandoning 50 sims and moving to open sim like everyone else that found out LL wrote copybot and then has been lying ever since. With the stellar performance of mongoloid retard at the helm it looks like sl will be closed next year anyway. In the meantime if you are a solution provider be aware linden lab is telling your clients to avoid you and go with a certain solution provider that is nearly next door to of LL’s Massachusetts office. I.e.; Get the last of the money before everyone figures out what is going on.
Ari Blackthorne
Oct 6th, 2009
Kudos to you for an accurate report right down to how “everything you see is a copy”. I’ve been following all this controversy myself – fired-up the Neil viewer myself so I have a clear picture of what all this nonsense is about.
So, again, kudos.
The Dude
Oct 6th, 2009
First of all… this is yesterdays news…
Apparently somebody tipped off one the content creators about his product is in “free to rape” box, and considering that LL really had to do something re support for premium users most stupid solution was found. Replace asset with phone-home script inside. Only problem is that asset itself can be tossed out to people who really have no idea what happen, and rezzing it will for sure report them back to Soft. Other thing that he didnt thought of is for example fact that no-script sandboxes will not envoke call-home feature. As usual, skiddies got themself bans because as all skidies are retarded, and due to fact that Neil himself is retarded too (and cant type). Considering this is first time LL actually took some actions it went cool. However unbanning them sucks bigtime.
Secondly… here is what happened… Neil the dork published uuid on his site on 2nd october… Something he does from time to time, however nothing he posted so far wasnt worth it. In this particular case object contained about 10k worth objects inside including hippo vend networked vendor carton, several combat huds, some prefab houses(with transfer rights tho scripts inside look pretty much intacted). That lasted for about couple of hours (lets say about 10 or so), and then LULZ begun
LL cant do shit about it because it got out of control actually… You have open source viewers, you have complete UDP comms unencrypted, you have users that can leave fake info… What they could do is to ban people, and keep them banned (of course, that can be overridden too as their ban system sucks balls) but skiddies will be out for sure (as their IQ is usually below their shoe size).
Gorky
Oct 6th, 2009
The thing is, the NeilLife viewer, as far as I know, does not have the ability to copy the asset to inventory. Its notecard import system will not embed items, and doesn’t have an inventory import feature. The imports were probably done with CryoLife.
The Dude
Oct 6th, 2009
His private viewer have… The one you buy from him for 60$…
LOL
Oct 6th, 2009
Linden Lab is only doing this to show that they are taking a step to prevent copywrite and trademark issues on SL when they go before the judge in the up comming SexGen Suit. Even though thier little sing operation would be considered entrapment in the Real World. Too bad this sting was too little too late, if the lab can boast over 6 million residents and then ban only 50 of them for TM violations well thats less the 0.00008333- %
Gorky
Oct 6th, 2009
And the likelihood 50 of the infringers paid him 60 bucks for a viewer is slim to none.
btw
Oct 6th, 2009
@All Seeing Eye
I won’t abadon Second Life,i’m a furry and there is a good furry community on here.
Ssieth
Oct 7th, 2009
This really is a problem the community is going to have to get used to… the issue that content has to be sent to the viewer for SL. As such there’s a hell of a lot of stuff that can be readily copied with little or no effort (textures, object definitions, sound, animation etc). The only items that LL can be reasonably expected to protect are those that run entirely server-side – which is basically scripts and not much else.
You can whinge, moan, leave, write blogs etc etc but really there’s practical limits to what can be protected under the circumstances. That’s really not going to change no matter what grid you’re on and it really isn’t worth anyone putting massive effort into banhammer swinging. What really needs to happen is a solid effort to develop a business model that works in the medium not in slagging people off for failing to try and enforce one that fundamentally doesn’t.
LOL
Oct 7th, 2009
He claims on his blog that only people with full perm abilities can retrieve the asset not anyone from a normal sl viewer.
The Dude
Oct 7th, 2009
No, he claimed that only people with modded viewer (read Cryolife, his own private viewer and derivates) were able to get it. That is not something that goes to his defense as he sells his viewer that have all of those abilities (pretty much undetectable Cryolife). But as somebody already said, only thing safe so far are scripts. Anything else is pretty much free to get (one way or another)….
Ajax
Oct 8th, 2009
You got half the story right. LL did not re-instate the offenders but gave some temporary reprieve while they review their complicity. All others were threatened with legal action should they return as an alt, and those getting the reprieve have only a few days to say goodbys. Also, LL is not the only ones making bait boxes — private vendors will be placing bait boxes in-world and using LL’s action to back up their demand that anyone who copies their private bait boxes be treated similarly. This is just the tiny tip of the iceburg — look for more stings to come.
NebulaBlack
Oct 16th, 2009
Nebula Life takes scripts and objects so not even scripts are safe any more. It’s easy to do, Neil even posted about it on his blog I think. When I saw it, Grey said he was already on it. But ripping scripts is easily detectable and will earn you a ban hammer quickly.