So after several months of being an active member of the group, I’ve taken the decision to leave the Mental Mentors group.

Mental Mentors, for those that don’t know, was a group started by JayJay Talamasca as a place for mentors to freely chat and send notices.. a social arena to prevent the main Second Life Mentors channel from being clogged with spam. The group was run with few rules and lots of spam.. members knew what they were in for when they asked to join the group.

JayJay’s RL started to take over and he spent less time in world, so eventually, he handed over the ownership of the group to a couple of the group members who formed a charter and a set of rules for the group, as soon as they took control.

I wasn’t particularly bothered about this as my own use for the group was simply to chat with other mentors and occasionally send out a copy of my own creations for other mentors to enjoy.

Then recently, the group came under close scrutiny by the Content Creation community after Cel Edman’s sculpty packs were released to over 800 members on the Mental Mentor channel. The Sculpty packs have served to help countless people across Second Life and I always admired Cel for helping make sculpties more accessible for all. It was at this time I questioned whether I should stay in Mental Mentors, but as one of the group leaders made an apology and it seemed a genuine mistake, I let it slide.

We’re all entitled to mistakes, right?

Every week, the Mental Mentors send out a “Freebie Box” which is aimed at providing materials to help mentors help the community. A great idea!

Or is it? It was Cel Edman’s sculpty packs that were released in this box in the first place.. The measure put in place to stop such an incident happening again was that the group administrator would now check all the items submitted for the box to make sure they were okay to be sent out.

A freebie box sent out this week contained full permission plant objects by Blazed Undercity. The textures on these plants looked awfully familiar.. as builders and landscapers, me and my sister Rrishanna Regina immediately recognised them as being the same textures as used by the Heart Garden Centre.

Now Heart Garden Centre is one of the biggest names in SL – you won’t go for long without seeing plants made by these two talented designers. So an IM to Lilith Heart and she came over to our home to take a look at the objects which had been sent out on the Mental Mentors channel.

Lilith immediately confirmed that they were indeed her own textures, which may have been copybotted or ripped using a third party program. As someone who has recently seen his own furniture ripped and stolen, and being sold in Second Life, I could relate to Lilith and felt for her.. when you see content which you’ve worked on for days/weeks ripped off in just moments and being distributed without your consent, it really is heartbreaking.

Me and Rrish immediately let the two group owners know of the situation, and the group administrator began talking to Lilith about what had happened. I was IMing one of the group owners – my concern wasn’t so much about the situation specifically as that was for Lilith to take up with the group owners.

My issue was for how Mental Mentors would react to this issue. My own thoughts were that the freebie box that gets sent out needed a rethink. I offered a simple suggestion – creations made by mentors themselves can be the only objects sent out in the freebie box. As a designer in SL, the thought of my own creations being ripped off and sent out in a mentor channel disturbs me.

Mentors are there to set an example for SL residents to follow and be there to guide and advise those who need it. To me, the Mental Mentors group was failing to carry out its duties appropriately. It appeared that nothing had been learned from Cel Edman’s attempt to draw attention to theft in SL. This was further affirmed when the co-owner of the Mental Mentors group said this to me:

“it is better for you to find your item than for it to be places you do not see it”

Did I read that right? Am I really supposed to be happy that my content could be distributed to 800+ people, but it’s okay because I know where it’s being distributed.. it’s only a mentor channel full of active members who will then pass the item onto other people..?

I was at a loss for words, and the rest of the conversation didn’t go too well as the group owner I was speaking to passed the buck and said it had nothing to do with him.. he was, after all, only one voice.

One voice which owned the group, and therefore had a responsibility to the name of Mental Mentors and SL Mentors as a whole, I pointed out..

No avail.

I then spoke with the other group owner, who pointed out that he wouldn’t apologise to Lilith Heart for ripped objects using her textures being distributed on the channel. Okay – I can get over that if changes will be made to the group to prevent this happening again.. Content Creators are already viewing Mental Mentors as something of a warez group. If people found out about this latest incident, then Mental Mentors’ name would be dragged through the dirt once again. My thoughts were that now the group owners knew about what was happening, they should take action right away so the Design Community could see they Mental Mentors was taking action to make sure this didn’t happen again.

And again, I offered my same suggestion: Change the freebie box so only content made by mentors themselves can be distributed on the group channel. To me, this means that the content is made and the responsibility of the mentors themselves. If such a problem arises again in the future, then it will be obvious who sent the item out as their name will be on the object.

The group owner countered that the root prim could be altered – I said that the group administrator could easily check this using the “Inspect” function in SL. Then he raised the issue of texture and script theft included in objects. I thought this was getting a bit silly by now.. mentors aren’t going to go out of their way to send out stolen content, but they knew the right steps to take in order to support IP rights.

In the end, we failed to reach an agreement, and the group owner refused to interfere with the way the freebie box worked. Nevermind limiting so many other functions of the group and exerting their control on many aspects that used to be free and easy about Mental Mentors.. when it comes to protecting the group, they weren’t interested.

A notice did go out that night about members of the group being “advised” not to send objects which they did not make themselves.. a weak notice, which gave no apology and did not explain why such a decision would be beneficial to the group. I then received a confrontational IM from one of the group owners that I “had gotten my wish” and the freebie box had been axed. Which wasn’t my wish, and wasn’t what had actually happened, but I wasn’t in the mood to fight over something as pointless as that..

A meeting of the group owners, administrator and officers was held the next day. I’ve been handed a transcript of this meeting by an unnamed source, and I can’t say I’m comforted by what I read..

[14:14] Officer 1: as mentors we need to be setting an example

[14:14] Officer 1: and sending out stolen stuff is not a good example

[14:14] Group Owner 1: no I don’t agree

[14:14] Group Owner 1: I am not running a business

[14:14] Officer 1: we shouldn’t be setting an example for residents *****?

[14:14] Group Owner 1: its the person who runs their business who must be vigiliant

Umm.. I’m not even going to start on how wrong that is. I think it speaks for itself.

[14:16] Group Owner 1: I get upset when Prad is calling me a thief in my damn IM

[14:16] Group Owner 1: it burns my ass

[14:17] Officer 1: he did not *****

[14:17] Group Administrator: Tell him to IM me

[14:17] Group Administrator: hes an idiot then

Officer 1 is right – I never called the Group Owner a thief personally and I have the chat logs to prove that. I stated that the Mental Mentors’ group will be perceived as a warez group by Content Creators if nothing was done to stop this happening again in the future. But I digress.. I was trying to help the Group Owners and prevent the group from coming under attack again. Being called an “idiot” for trying to help is just sad, I feel..

[14:20] Group Administrator: what is the problem here

[14:20] Officer 1: i know i wouldn’t want my stuff sent out to 800 ppl without my permission

[14:20] Group Administrator: That item was NOT made by Lilith

[14:20] Officer 2: *****, let me ask you two questions. Do you know what A) Google Image search is and B) Photo editing software in general is?

[14:20] Group Owner 1: I am glad it was found

[14:20] Group Owner 1: I told Prad that

[14:20] Officer 1: yes ***** use them both extensively

[14:20] Group Administrator: ***** did you not see what I just said though?

[14:20] Officer 2: you can look on google search and find almost ANYTHING

[14:20] Group Owner 1: if 800 people ever open that box would be a miracle

[14:20] Group Owner 1: maybe 50 if that

[14:20] Group Administrator: That item was NOT made by Lilith hun

[14:20] Officer 1: I know *****

[14:20] Officer 2: ANYONE could have found the same texture or created it

[14:20] Officer 2: and uploaded it

[14:21] Officer 1: i know it wasn’t *****

[14:21] Officer 2: who is to say it was stolen

[14:21] Officer 2: that is the SAME

Yes – the item wasn’t made my Lilith. We can deduce that from the object being created by “Blazed Undercity”. However, the textures used on the object are exactly the same as those used by Lilith.. and seeing as Lilith creates all her own textures, I think that’s a little too co-incidental. It seems more likely to me that Lilith’s textures were ripped, placed on prims and then distributed.

As for the Group Owner stating that only 50 mentors may have looked in the box, I think that’s a ludicrous point to be making. Does it really matter how many people look at it? It’s there and it’s devaluing the work that content creators do in SL.. it makes me sad that mentors can actually think like this, and I’m not even sure I want to carry on creating in SL.

[14:25] Group Administrator: To bad for Prad…. he will have to get over it. Lots love the box and lets not forget that Mentors dont get paid, some dont have money to buy items. We have many gracious friends, creators that DO send us their items.

Mentors don’t get paid, so they should be allowed to distribute stolen content?!? That kinda did it for me.. the owners and administrator of the group obviously have no regard for the hard work that content creators put into their creations and aren’t interested in supporting IP rights.

They are giving the majority of Mentors in SL a bad name and that makes me sad. So many mentors support the creators and IP rights, and are against theft. I’ve now left Mental Mentors as I cannot be a part of a group that has no regard for IP rights behind closed doors.

I hope this blog posting will help to stir and continue the discussion about IP rights in Second Life, as well as giving a clearer view of what is happening in the Mental Mentor group to Mentors and the Content Creation community, in the hope that changes can be made to make the community as a whole work together as one and protect the future of Second Life.

Both Creators and Mentors play a vital role in Second Life, and I am proud to participate in both programs. Both need to be united to help make Second Life work.

=Prad Prathivi=