On a side note: 49 left to go

Now that we have to respect Second Life to have suddenly turned into an ® in stead of our virtual world, and Linden Dollars to be ™ , but still valuable, everybody awaited a response from Linden concerning OUR IP rights. Now, finally, Linden Lab talks about protecting our copyrighted content: a whole policy change, allowing creators to prove what is theirs, a more easy DMCA process, and a promise of swift action upon filing a DMCA complaint. Oh wait… I’m dreaming out loud. Actually they just rechewed what we already knew, and made a promise on something we can’t test yet and won’t change the policy on ’suspending’ thief’s accounts!

Linden’s blogpost basically comes down to ‘blame the creator’. Creators need to file DMCA reports more efficiently and with more data. People shopping should learn how to check the inspect the stuff they buy. Which is - when boxed - actually impossible. And Linden? They should do nothing. Except continuing as they are doing now, and maybe, follow up on DMCA reports a bit faster. ‘Protecting Your Copyrighted Content’ reads as ‘you should protect your copyrighted content’. Sadly enough, we do not have the tools and Linden’s support to do just that.

LL on Protecting Your Copyrighted Content

Laurap Linden:

Imitation may be the highest form of flattery, but it’s important to protect your creations in the Second Life world. We respect Residents’ copyrights in works they create, and we’d like to tell you about tools you can use to protect your copyrighted content and how we’re working to improve them.

1. Object Creator Inspector - This feature is available for objects only (not textures), and should help Residents determine which object came first in Second Life and empower them to better resolve copying claims among themselves. If you right-click on an inworld object and then click More > More > Inspect, you can see the creation date and creator of each prim in a linkset. - Yeey! If not that this can easily be spoofed. Just take a full perm prim that was created by a famous builder a few years ago. Textures can’t be checked. And what do you think of this dream scenario: ’steal’ a sculpt texture. Put it on the full perm prim that was created by a famous builder a few years ago. Et voila. He does sculpt art even before it was available? ;) Or take a full perm notecard, and do some forgery.
2. The DMCA Process - To help with information required under the DMCA, we’re also developing a new form for submitting DMCA claims. The goal of the form is to help Residents provide all the necessary DMCA information upfront and reduce the number of claims that require supplementation (which slows down the process because we need to ask the Resident who filed the claim for more information). - Does this mean we can file DMCA by email? Great to here we’ll get a status update. Just be a bit more firm, please? Repeat infringers are issued warnings and may be suspended or ultimately banned from Second Life. Do ban them. And their alts. Thank you. Also please remove ALL infringing content, and not just what is rezzed in-world.
3. Copybot Infrignement, a TOS violation - Any use of it to make infringing copies violates the Terms of Service and may result in suspension or banning of Second Life accounts. If you believe that a Resident has used CopyBot (or a similar application) to make infringing copies of your content, please file an abuse report and provide as much information as you can to support your claim. Although technology can’t prevent the copying of data drawn on your screen, we don’t tolerate Residents who seek to profit from infringing use of CopyBot. - Yeah right. ‘May result… .’ And the most :mrgreen: part of this all? However, there seems to be a filter in the Abuse Report feature which _specifically_ scans for words such as ‘CopyBot’ and auto-rejects the Abuse Report. The person attempting to submit the Abuse Report is met with the following popup: “Dear Resident, Reports about copyright infringement can only be submitted as described in http://secondlife.com/corporate/dmca.php. Reports concerning copyright infringement will automatically be discarded if they are submitted through the ‘Abuse Report’ feature. If your report does not relate to copyright infringement, you may close this window and finish submitting your report. Thank you, Linden Lab”. Hat tip to Tengu Yamabushi for reporting this. Of course, LL did not reply to this report of inconsistent policy on the blogpost’s comments. There now is a JIRA issue on this.

Forgotten Linden Promises

I wonder, what happened to all the things Linden promised:

1. We can reduce incentives to copying content within the system, by preserving the creator attribution such as with creative commons licensing. (2006)
2. We could work to reduce how much avatar/clothing data is downloaded, so that a copy can be made of the baked texture and shape but not the pieces. (2006)
3. We could create hover text which would act like a garment label does, exposing both the first use metadata and also a brand name, reducing the incentive to copy by making it obvious that copying is occurring. If your work is “signed”, and clearly you developed it first, then the person who purchases the copy is not unlike the person who buys the fake Rolex off the back of a truck. Plus the signature becomes a recognizable asset and could be coupled with a landmark as a form of advertising. (2006)
4. Offer either a registration or seal program for creators who are willing to provide additional identifying information and who are committed to not infringing on other residents’ content. If the finder makes it easy to search for content and locations that participate in this program, then economic and social pressures combine to reward creators who respect copyright and punish those who don’t. (2007, ‘it is an option’)
5. Make copying of all content within SL trivially easy, but to track appropriate metadata about who’s copied the content and where it has been reused. Maybe even make that data publicly searchable. By making the act of copying easy, the incentives to go around or hack the system are greatly reduced and the community is better able to recognize and respect the wishes of creators. Plus, it would be much easier to implement important concepts like “undo�? which are incredibly complicated or impossible when trying to preserve uniqueness. (2007, ‘it is an option’)

Sadly enough, none of those solutions would work against content that is first taken out of world (glintercept, copybot) and then rebuild in-world. But did I miss any? And have Lindens become more smart, not mentioning this possible (partly) solutions anymore? Does this mean they gave up looking for solutions, and DMCACO - DMCA complaint optimising - will soon be a full time virtual world job?

Tags: content, IP, virtual goods

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