A bunch of well-known SL shop owners are trying to fight back with a public relations operation to educate Second Life users, as a way to fight back against content theft.
Given that copy bots and efficient hackers keep finding ways to rip off content creators and sell their products as their own, those who spend days working on creations rightfully feel that sales are stolen from them.
While I applaud at the effort to fight back, I wonder if it will produce tangible results for several reasons.
The first one is that awareness itself is very hard to raise in a fragmented world such as Second Life. There is no national media around here. There isn't one source of information or one place that everyone ends up visiting in a short time span. Should the campaign be short-lived for a quick splash, it will meet that obstacle. Should it be present for a long time, it will become part of the landscape and eventually draw less attention.
An additional roadblock could be found at Linden Lab. The people behind the campaign would like to have a dialogue with LL. But the Linden track record on prevention and regulation is poor at best. They either refuse to make a move or wait until it is too late to go ahead with a sweeping ban. Nothing in between.
The third issue is perhaps the most elusive, yet the worst of them all. This is a software world where a good chunk of the user base has feelings of entitlement.
In their minds:
- A L$500 outfit is too expensive even if it took days to create and its cost is barely around US$2.20;
- A L$300 piece of art made with much skill isn't worth its price although it is around US$1.45;
- A L$1000 photo shoot is pricey although it is two hours of professional photo work for US$4.08.
This entitlement and the edge that hackers hold against honest people in a software world makes theft very hard to fight against.
Can this battle be won? I hope so, but I'm not holding my breath.
Sunday, March 02, 2008
Can we fight back against theft?
Posted by Alesia Schumann at 7:37 AM
Labels: second life, secondlife
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3 comments:
There is another aspect to this. If content creators are taking money out of the economy and not putting it back in, prices do have to go down or products have to be something people are willing to pay high prices for.
If you support the economy, the economy supports you. If you fail to support the economy, don't be surprised if it fails to support you.
That is one of the reasons that I haven't touched this topic. The other reason is that I haven't heard about any DMCA filings. One properly executed DMCA filing is worth more than objects with naked avatars.
Sorry if it's a double post, there's something with my browser.... So... this time I used a notepad and gathered my thoughts.
Cure for bots
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- Restricting non-payment info accounts to 1 IP/account.
- Introducing a CAPTCHA for the login screen, even though bot owners could forward the CAPTCH puzzle to their screen and solve it every time the bot logs in or reconnects. Anyway, it would certainly eliminate a big chunk out of the bot traffic. (Ever seen zombie campers in mass?...)
Cure for texture theft
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- against the UUID texture-theft: implement a server side decision whether the textures are rendered on the prim or not. If the textures are in the Contents, render the texture, otherwise render some default texture like Missing Image. If the prim's owner opts out this option (sorta like chechking the Full Bright texture), or rather, doesn't checks a new, Use Texture Auth checkbox, the textures would be rendered whether they are in the Contents or not.
When a bot copies the prim it can't copy its contents, so the textures would be saved.
Cure for prim theft
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- first, hire a few people for nothing else, but defending people's SL properties. Their most important task would be to analyze those new logs that would be created every time an account copies a large number of prims in a short time. With a good management console that can filter for accounts logging in from the same IP or accounts having an unusually big view distance (a bot or someone fiddling with the debug settings can have a way bigger setting than the 512m) etc.
Cure for everything
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- Make an option for the users that their prims contain a "default script", that can have separate permissions, but is no mod for a start.
This script should have the option to: 1. check the current creator 2. compare it to the one included in the script. (The original creator.) 3. Die and/or notify owner/LL if they mismatch.
Oh, some of these suggestions require a bit of an investment on the part of LL? Yes. They should, until it's too late.
Nobody Fugazi Nicky Ree has successfully filed DMCAs BUT LL only removed the copied dress from inworld NOT from adiva's inventory so she could easily re-rez them either in the same place or in a new outlet - that is why the DMCA does not work because LL have decided not to follow through completely with the ruling and remove the stolen textures from the offenders inventory. This is only one example there are many more, these examples are what are leading to the creators frustration - they follow the rules, spend hours finding the copies and reporting on them only to find the re-rezzed or in another spot with the same owner.
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