March 2008

With reference to my previous entry: an instance of a situation which has caused a significant person within SL to stop producing products has come to my attention.

Sculptypaint was a lovely little application written in the Java language, which enabled the production of all sorts of sculpted primitives. I have been known to refer to it as the “avimator of sculpts”, in that it allows those without the funds to purchase specialist software, and without the time to learn how to use it, the opportunity to access important features of Second Life.

Sculptypaint has now been discontinued by its author, with the following explanation:

I decided to take down Sculptypaint site for the next few days.

Why?

Well there are a number of reasons. I love to create, and write creation tools, that I offer free to download as well. Love the positive response of the majority of people, but the same time.

- People threatning me in real life, that I filed a DMCA complain against.

- I got serious hate mail, about my software thats free to download for everyone.

- The way Linden act on DMCA and copyright infrigment.
Like one person modified my artwork, removed my name and copyright, and have been selling my items for 6 months now.. Using an army of bots to get #1 in the search. I file a DMCA, wait 2 months, Linden removes the vendor boxes. And the next week the person is selling the same stuff again. I filed already 3 times in a row a DMCA takedown to this person, and still this person with ‘Payment info on file’ is running around in SL. Also selling other artist work.
Another person has a huge record on selling stolen goods in sl, created by me and other artist. Selling stolen items for the last 12 months now, all the DMCA takedowns he received he calls just a joke. and continues this ‘bussiness’. The person got ‘payment info on file’ and his own sim.

- Yesterday I learned about the ‘mental mentors’ group in Second Life. This group is for mentors in Second Life, who’s goal is to help Newbie`s, educate teach, lead, guide and so on. Great..
This group is rather big, about 800+ people/mentors.
I found out several of my sculptpacks I sell are offered as freebee`s by the leader(s) of this group. For several months now.
A ‘mentor starter pack’ is given out to all mentors, to help the helpless newbees in SL.
I released my latest SFT-pack around 14 februari 2008. Only a few days later, this pack I created was repackaged, my copyright notices and TOS removed, (all the sculpties clearly state not for individual resell/repackage). The whole pack was distributed as a freebee pack too about 800+ mentors in SL, to use and to give away ‘to help the newbees’.
If this group was called ‘robbers from SL’ I would not care a second, but from a mentor group.. Who`s goal to educate, teach, help and lead in SL?! unbelievable.

You must know, I only can continue developing Sculptypaint and other free creation tools by selling my work in SL.
No income - no time - no coding - no tools - simple as that.
I’m sick and tired about all this crap that sucks all the creative energy out of me, standing alone in the cold here for such a long time. So decided to put a statement here for the next few days. Hope you understand.

Have a nice day!

Elout de Kok - march 6, 2008
SL: Cel Edman

So - copyright breach, threats, lack of action by the Laboratory and (even worse) blatantly illegal redistribution by supposedly officially-sanctioned “mentor” groups has led to somebody of considerable imagination and skill being discouraged and deciding to give this project up, a project which was of great benefit to both the Lab and to residents. And who can blame him, to be honest?

I hope that this is temporary and that the tool re-appears - the author does say “this notice is up for the next few days”, we shall see what happens after that - but it seems a prime example of how breach causes discouragement and harms us all.

Incidentally, my God, if a “mentor” group has been shown to involve the redistribution of items and the deliberate removal of copyright notices, that group should be disbanded and the responsible parties banned permanently from ever stepping foot on the Grid again. I am aware of the debased nature of the “mentor” system in this day and age but this is really an appalling illustration.

Addenda:
1. Forum thread
2. “Mental Mentors” wiki page

Edit:
Since this has appeared, the “Mental Mentors” group has disappeared from within SL!

The group leader, Rails Bailey, despite having reference to the group still in his profile, somehow does not have the group itself listed at all. I am sure that I have managed to miss an important point here and it is not at all the case that the group has been hidden due to negative publicity. I would be very pleased to hear more information on this topic.

I have been approached a couple of times recently regarding an “issue” mentioned on the publication known as the “Second Life Herald”, on the subject of a “new copybot”. (I do not read this publication on a regular basis any more, on account of its tedious hagiography of groups of annoying children; an odd pursuit, not my part to judge I suppose but not in my interests to read, either.)

Let us be clear on a few details in this instance.

1. There is nothing at all new about any of this. The idea that with the initial outcry relating to “copybot”, the functions responsible and the use thereof went away, is simply nonsense. The prohibition was a socially-based one, making the possession or use of a copybot illegal, but the technology never disappeared. In fact, as far as I can see, this “copybot 2″ is just a simple modification of the “testclient” that is freely available. Anyone with any interest could make a similar product, we are not talking about Programming Genii here.

2. There are no physical countermeasures - at least, none which will prevent people from copying designs and textures as presented in SL. Anyone attempting to sell you an item which claims to “defend against copybot” is as much a fraudster as anyone duplicating your design and selling it. The entirety of SL depends on the “client” - that is, the thing that is running on your own Engine - receiving information as to what it should display, the exact geometry of every part, the textures, and so on and so on. No, this cannot be encrypted without utterly crippling the already tardy speeds at which SL operates, and being crackable in any case.

3. The only countermeasures, therefore, are social ones. There is the option of relying, instead of on simple product sales, on things which cannot be duplicated - services, customised versions, work on special and personalised products. (This may require some alteration of the expectations of purchasers on the Grid but to be quite frank, those expecting large amounts of time to be devoted to their whims are, at the moment, mostly extraordinary misers.)

   The other part of this is that the Gods of the World, the Blessed Lindens, must actively enforce matters of copyright and duplication, to a far greater degree than they do at the moment.

What if the latter does not happen? Well, industry will not vanish. Even if copies are easily made and resold, people will still have some loyalty and decency and wish to reward the original creators, particularly at the very low prices charged in general. Little-known designers will be too little-known for anyone to bother copy them; well-known designers will be able to play on their “brands”. Those between are in the most danger I would say, but still, they won’t lose too much in the way of sales.

But they will lose some. The idea of designing things within Second Life, in the knowledge that anyone can copy whatever it is you make and resell it for whatever price they feel like, will put people off bothering in the first place. The prospect of reward spurs people on to create - that is why we have copyright legislation in the first place, to encourage creative activity, with the underlying assumption that creative activity is a good thing for society in general (an assumption with which I would agree).

I would mention here that my own activities, and those of others who concentrate on providing Scripted Amusements, are less at threat, as Scripts currently exist only on the Grid, are not sent to Clients and are thus not Copiable. However, this is merely a coincidence. The issue of Content Duplication is no less important to me merely because it affects my fellows and not myself.

So - what happens if we have a “free-as-in-free-beer” Second Life, enforced by Code? Designing becomes less profitable. Some designers leave. (A number will stay on, certainly, but professionals, apart from the largest who can play on their brands, will be rarer.) The general level of design goes down. There are fewer products available, and fewer to be copied, with the copy-resellers being parasites on the skills of others.

There is a way around this, and that is as stated previously: the owners of the world, the blessed Laboratory, must enforce rules far more strictly. It is not a perfect solution, as clearly there are far more places than can be checked, but without it nothing will happen. Not just “DMCA” nonsense, which is just a mechanism for covering one’s bottom in the face of future legal action, but actively removing duplicated content.

There are all sorts of ways that this can be made easier - registers of content being uploaded, watermarks and so on - but in the end it is the will that is important, and that means governance, active enforcement of rules. Attack content-thieving accounts; delete them and their alts. Enforce DMCA takedowns properly, as rubbish as they might be.

Without that? Oh well, nothing terribly serious. Content creators will be discouraged from ever entering SL. Nobody will bother to learn the obscure, undocumented, ever-changing details of how the tools work - unless they already have a out-world patron, in which case they will rarely be putting anything on the open grid. Second Life will become less and less interesting. And the “Second Life Protocol” will become less and less relevant, and less and less likely to become the dominant virtual world protocol, and then it will be 2009 and we will all be speaking about SL as certain old-timers do about ActiveWorlds.

You know, nothing that anybody might care about.