Comments on: Second Life Sued. Again. You Should Pay Attention This Time.

By: JuJutsu

JuJutsu — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 12:55:10 +0000

…I don’t like Lum’s behaviour lately, either, and Lum is free to apologize to me at any time.

I agree, it was cruel for him to post that Microsoft video.

By: Prokofy Neva

Prokofy Neva — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 01:57:45 +0000

Of course, Cindy Claveau herself has run a club called Archan, and a store called Cyn City, and surely she’s not going to pretend these had nothing to do with pixel sex, so she’s being awfully disingenuous here.

The solutions she’s proposing are almost as bad as the rampant copyright and lack of respect of IP incited by the Linden copyleftists — only from the other extreme. It introduces a creator autocracy where only skilled craftsmen in a guild approved by the platform providers, like latter-day Medicis, can participate in the economy, and all those with free accounts or people without credit cards (many of those outside of North America) cannot enter the market even at its lowest levels of amateur content.

There has to be a better way, and it does start with the Lindens disciplining their own cynical and extremist code cave — the very people in charge of security who themselves used the hackers’ third-party opensource viewers which inevitably incite or cause copyright theft with all their “special features”.

The Lindens make people register to view porn on the adult grid and register their credit cards to buy land, but any teenage code kiddy can hack a viewer and log on and steal everything with copybot and builderbot without having to register himself or his lovely creation, with the Linden overlords beaming at him in the sandbox the whole time.

There is something sick about making hard-working merchants have to put up and chase thousands of DMCA takedown notices when the thing that needs taking down is the third-party viewers. And no, the problem isn’t that “if you can see it you can copy it”. We got all that the first million times you geeks told us that. I’m glad Lum is at least intelligent enough to understand this is a *political* problem and one with therefore *political* solutions. It’s about psychology, too.

http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2009/07/open-source-shakedown-why-i-do-not-believe-it-is-technically-impossible-to-secure-digital-ip.html

BTW, I don’t like this new layout, and I don’t like Lum’s behaviour lately, either, and Lum is free to apologize to me at any time.

By: Shann

Shann — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 17:06:35 +0000

Even though this threat has existed in there since the beginning, people seem to still manage to succeed. I bet that the creators that do quality work and get ripped, still get high volumes of traffic and business. This is really a point that needs to be stressed here.
I’m more apt to believe that these two creators have been around for a while and thought they would ride the money wave forever and were sadly mistaken when other people saw how easy it is and started making better. I’ve seen some talented people on the Internet, but in reality it’s hard to make money from it. I can’t help thinking that these people should feel lucky that they can make enough to buy a meal at McD’s just from sitting at the pc in their underwear all day and playing with software. I know plenty of people who do this every day outside of Second Life for zero profit, yet they still do it.
I really don’t see how LL can afford the manpower to stop this. You can pretty much guarantee that whatever defense they put in place, someone will circumvent it in a matter of days, likely hours. Then, where will all this have gotten you except for a buttload of restrictions that give you less freedoms than you had before? What will you do when the very next week another friend gets ripped off and you realize that all of this was in vain?
Software and movie and music companies have been trying for years and so far it’s a (very) losing battle. I just don’t see a virtual sex toy or painted skin that anyone with a free graphics program can make as being anywhere close to the same level. What you expect LL to do is next to impossible and I doubt they’re the big monster that some of you portray them as.

By: geldonyetich

geldonyetich — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:58:51 +0000

Second Life can be likened to a 3D web browser. Once a picture is on your web browser, you can take that picture. If the website uses fancy code to prevent you from simply right-clicking and saving that picture, and you can’t get it from your cache, but you want it, chances are you’ll find some third-party software that rips that picture.

Linden Labs is essentially being asked to do the impossible for the same reason all other forms of information piracy can’t be stomped out: it’s a situation that can’t be reliably policed. People can get around any kind of software copy protection.

I’m sure they not only knew this, but knew it so implicitly that they made very clear in their terms of service agreement that they will not be held responsible in the event that any content developed by the users is duplicated without consent. It’s like any other developer of online platforms which content can be made that people expect to make money producing and selling.

By: Gx1080

Gx1080 — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 23:42:03 +0000

@Cindy Claveau

Ok, putting the believe that suing Linden Labs is the holy duty of their costumers aside, how any of you expect Linden Labs to control who does what? Serial codes? They are going to be hacked. A huge database of everything that is made? Cost a lot of money. Costumer service based on reports? Not affordable unless you are Blizzard.

Do you even understand that if Linden Labs have to choose between the viability of their business and the viability of third-party pornographers they are going to choose themselves?

By: Cindy Claveau

Cindy Claveau — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:58:36 +0000

@Gx1080: “Ha. I knew that “Linden Labs told us to sue them” was bullshit. ”

You just keep believing that. And it wasn’t a directive, it was a statement of reality in the corporate world. I worked for a major corporation for over a decade, and I know from personal experience that any company with stockholders and a board of directors is reluctant to invest in maintenance (including security) unless it demonstrably adds to the botom line profits. IP enforcement doesn’t have a direct tie to profits. Thus, the only way to get a company to invest in tighter enforcement is to make it a litigation issue.

That’s the facts of life in the corporate world in which Linden Lab lives. Your doubts have no relationship to reality.

By: geldonyetich

geldonyetich — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 02:09:17 +0000

The landfills overflow with such great ideas.

@geldonyetich

Yeah? Well the guy made a million dollars! .

Such is my way of thinking, I find making a million dollars causing harm to the planet to be a bad thing. Go figure.

By: j.w.

j.w. — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 22:43:31 +0000

on the canal street thing… the brand names bag makers in real life cant get the canal street knock offs stopped. i dont remember exactly why– something like its legal to have knockoffs but illegal to sell them on public streets– something like that. in any case its almost unenforcable. the enforcement problem changes in teh internets, because there is always an easy trace of everything, so if there were to be an actual law, would it protect better online?

…to that end– my question is, is it harder to build the equivalent of a truly black market on the web?

By: Angelworks

Angelworks — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 21:55:16 +0000

@geldonyetich

Yeah? Well the guy made a million dollars! .

By: geldonyetich

geldonyetich — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 15:29:25 +0000

The landfills overflow with such great ideas.