Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot…
I don’t know if 1605 conspiracy to kill King James I of England and some members of aristocracy has anything to do with this and if there will be any gunpowder barrels and fires on Linden’s sims, but the call is here and we should talk about content theft before we start the particle scripts.
While I wholehartedly support the action and the idea behind it, I’d like to chit-chat a bit about it with you.What always bugs me when content creators ask Lindens to protect the rights of the creators is how to effectively do it. First thing that comes to mind in the digital realm is to protect the data by tech means. But if I knew a way to protect digital data from copying and not to cripple it in the process, I would be hellishly rich by now. Many people are banging their heads about the case, and it doesn’t give much results. Actually, Second Life™ is one of the safer places to publish your digital stuff. Just compare it to good ol’ web where you have no protection at all. But, it’s far from good and satisfying.
Other way of protection, one that is usually applied, is protection by the law, which is how modern societies are supposed to work. But there is just one slight problem. It doesn’t work. Not in the publishing and media industries, let alone in the second life. While the big corporations can sue somebody’s ass for unauthorized duplication of digital material, that won’t be so easy in our world. Not only that the copyright laws are made to protect the monopoly of big corporations and not the artists and creators, but also because, in the case of big corporations, there is a huge amount of money involved. Even if you are big in second life, you are still working for L$ peanuts that hardly covers lawyers fee.
Sure, one can say that amounts of money in SL are not big anyway so the loses of creators, and profits of the thieves are not big either, so the whole case is not worth the fuss. But that’s not true. Loses of the creators are big. Maybe they are not big in terms of real currency but count the time invested in the process of making things, count the expenses. Last but not the least, count the right to get compensation for own work and creativity, no matter if that compensation is small or big. Other thing is, thieves do make a considerable amounts, especially if you consider the effort invested. Yes, they steal things that, in real currency scope, doesn’t cost much. They sell it for even less. But they steal large amounts of items from all over the grid and they sell it many times. Small price * many sales * many items = considerable profit. And then, that kind of behaviour seriously damages the economy of the grid. It’s not just creator’s loss. In the long run, it’s yours and mine as well.
One of the ways of fighting the content theft menace is educating the customers. It has been done before. Creators appealed to all of us not to buy stolen things. And it seams that kind of action gave some results. But there are two problems. First, you can’t get everybody in. I will join the cause, and as I know that buying stolen goods is wrong and even damaging to all of us, I won’t buy from the thieves. I guess you won’t as well. But you and me are the minority here. Because, there is a huge amount of people that are just quickly passing through second life, most of them came just recently. They don’t know about the content theft, nor about the bad things that happen because of it. Nor they would care if they know. They just came, they are short on money and they don’t know if they are going to stay. It’s just a game, after all. They will more likely beg for money and bitch about the freebies than to support creator’s rights. And then, even you and me and people who do care, do we always know if the item we’re buying is from the vendor of the real creator? I don’t think so. We avoid bad looking malls with full permission things sold too cheap, but there is no way to know if something we bought is an original.
SO, I’d like to hear from you. Is there some way I missed and that would end all this, bring some order and make both creators and shoppers happy?
“Because, there is a huge amount of people that are just quickly passing through second life, most of them came just recently. They don’t know about the content theft, nor about the bad things that happen because of it. Nor they would care if they know. They just came, they are short on money and they don’t know if they are going to stay. It’s just a game, after all. They will more likely beg for money and bitch about the freebies than to support creator’s rights.”
Spot on…I think some people are missing the point that these groups play a big part in the proliferation of stolen items inworld. Most of them think it’s just a game, the stuff here isn’t real, and it isn’t really valuable. Virtual goods isn’t taken too seriously.
I am not sure of the wise solution for this, but only to ponder that there might be a way for LL to capitalize on this somehow. They have the means to wipe away the thieves, it has been done. Maybe they are thinking of offering some sort of program where for a fee you are guaranteed sure protection of your products. I hate for that to happen, but with the way LL seems to be turning corporate on us each day, it just might seem possible.
Here’s my suggestion, warning: My personal opinion follows…
There’s no way to stop content theft at all. Closing the client source isn’t going to do it. Registering 3rd party clients isn’t going to do it. Why? Because I have this sneaking suspicion that LL is going to allow ALL 3rd party clients to log into the grid and that the registry is just going to be some hoop devs have to jump through that makes NO sense.
The only way to get a grip on content theft is if LL would follow the correct procedure in the DMCA process. Currently, I feel they are not doing this. Or when they are they do it half-assed. The other side of this coin is education and a change in the culture (which we are achieving slowly).
I’m going to add that LL needs to act decisively and quickly when someone is found with items that are infringing others copyright OR using copybot or other items to infringe others copyright. I recall ARing someone for using copybot (even had a picture) and the name of their main account and LL banned the accounts for 5 minutes, they were back on the grid within 30 minutes- BOTH avatars. What does that say to me if this was a violation of TOS? It says to me, “who the hell cares- do what you want”)
I’m sure I could go on and on, but at this point I’ll end. I appreciate the opportunity for this discussion.
I do support Artist’s Voice. :)
The problem is that LL couldn’t care less about the whole “Fifth of November, stop buying/selling/uploading/whatever for a day.” That is not going to affect them to do anything at all that they wouldn’t do already. The *only* thing that would get them to take decisive action that is desired would be for the vast majority of land owners (both island and mainland) to threaten to suddenly abandon their land and no longer have anything to pay for. Quite suddenly, LL would be dancing to whatever tune was set for them.
LL is in the biz of making money for their investors and themselves. Anything they do or pursue is always with the goal of moneymaking in mind. I don’t believe that LL *doesn’t* care abut content theft at all, but as it doesn’t affect them directly, they’re not going to do much about it. At the worst, a couple good designers/artists leave SL, but for the most part all that happens is some grumbling, maybe a “Stop Selling for a Day!” days, and then things move along. They *do* punish the bad guys that can be proven to have stolen content, but unless it’s on the “ZOMG! We’re going to lose money if we don’t do this!” list, anything more than general policing is going to be on the backburner.
I hope Artist’s Voice gets some consciousness raised by their action, but it’s not going to have the desired effect, unfortunately. Find a way to really hit LL in the pocketbook, and maybe we’ll see some change.
I’d say follow Step Up’s plan as well… fill the sky with orange ribbon megaprims, get them to populate on the map, then send snapshots to the Lab, their investors, and the media.
If you put enough reports on iReport, CNN will very likely take the ball and run with it. There’s also quite a few UK tabloids that crave bad news about LL and SL that can be exploited.
-ls/cm
Crap you know LL won’t care about some shapeless dull colored looking sim squares on the map. Thats all megaprims will look like. They won’t be ribbons. Besides LL keeps advertising the “metrics” that, despite what most people say about how business is going, seem to be on a clear manufactured 45 degree angle up. Reporters won’t care because they need independently verifiable facts and there are none to be found about SL. Only hear-say. Oh and a lot of people say they are hurting LL by dropping premium and renting island land. Well all that money is going to LL too. LL doesn’t care. LL is “completely focused on enterprise customers” and feeding them GSPs for content creation anyway. Main grid could sink into the ocean with all it’s residents and LL would never notice except for the deafening silence of a sudden lack of constant complaints on a million blogs.
Oh and BTW the recommendations being made for residents to put megaprims out that encroach on other parcels will very likely give LL some work to do. Not the type the people doing the encroaching want either.
[...] I did read about the initiative, and while I am too cynic to hope it will help, I never wanted to oppose it; so imagine my embarrassment when I saw I had just launched a discount sale (my first discount sale!) just the day before it, and making it finish the same day. It was like asking people to spend the money those days *blushes*. [...]
[...] “Sure, one can say that amounts of money in SL are not big anyway so the loses of creators, and profits of the thieves are not big either, so the whole case is not worth the fuss. But that’s not true. Loses of the creators are big. Maybe they are not big in terms of real currency but count the time invested in the process of making things, count the expenses. Last but not the least, count the right to get compensation for own work and creativity, no matter if that compensation is small or big. Other thing is, thieves do make a considerable amounts, especially if you consider the effort invested. Yes, they steal things that, in real currency scope, doesn’t cost much. They sell it for even less. But they steal large amounts of items from all over the grid and they sell it many times. Small price * many sales * many items = considerable profit. And then, that kind of behaviour seriously damages the economy of the grid. It’s not just creator’s loss. In the long run, it’s yours and mine as well.” -dandellion Kimban, metaverse.acidzen.org [...]