LagNMoor: A victim of content theft. Image Credit - Sakura Sands.

No surprise there, really. For all the talk about a roadmap to protect the merchants of Second Life and clamping down on Third Party Viewers, my own blog (and a few others) were bombarded by somebody spreading spam of a new copybot client they’re selling. But that’s hardly the Lab’s fault..

What is the Lab’s fault is the closure of Maxwell Graf’s gorgeous LagNMoor sim which he deleted over the weekend.

The frustration of SL designers continues, and Linden Lab’s lack of effort to help the community is throttling the artistic movement at the neck as sim owners wise up to the Lab’s overinflated prices.

After Filing a DMCA, waiting for 6 days, I was sent the response that “LL has sucessfully and expeditiously removed the content listed from those locations and the inventory of the avatars.” Excellent, right? Not so:

Within an hour of getting this email, I went to all of the locations listed and the items have NOT been removed. 4 sims of my content still sits there, being sold and distributed through vendors, rez boxes, etc. Hundred of pieces of my work – sections form my carriageway house, my garden set, my sculpted prim pack, furniture from my store. One of the houses is even called “maison Rustique.” Nice touch.

So, with some of the removals team members fired recently, it seems they are now limiting the enforcement of the third party viewer policy to merely sending you useless documents to make you feel like they have done something to protect you, when in fact they have not done anything but send you a document saying they have. Im not really up to speed on the legalities of this, but it seems to me that telling me they’ve acted on a DMCA when they haven’t would be against some kind of law. It should be if it isn’t, but then this is typical of the perfect loopholes that exist within the framework of the TOS policy and the DMCA policy that make it next to impossible for you to do business here.

Those avatars still exist in world, despite my filing on them, LL admitting that the persons were found guilty by way of removing the items from them, and despite 2 other people having filed on this person in the past for similar offenses. Just what exactly do you have to do to be removed from second life? I think we all need to ask that question. Supposedly, the 3rd party viewer policy was designed to help them remove people like Skatman and his alts, to give them more authority. From the working end of that policy (which hasn’t stopped any 3rd party viewers from coming to my sim, unlike my CDS which works fine still…) I can say my experience leads me to conclude that it is designed more than anything to make it look like the lab is finally being pro-active about theft. In a word, BOLLOCKS.

~Maxwell Graf

Couldn’t have said it much better myself. The Lab has never and probably will never care much about content theft until it starts hitting them in the bank account. The sacking of several concierge staff makes it even harder for SL users to get any assistance, and in most cases you end up begging an OnTyne to do something.

Join us next time on Metaversally Speaking for more ‘Same Old Shit, Different Day’.

Linden Lab have published their policy upon which third-party viewers which connect to Second Life must adhere to. It’s kinda an interesting read if you have too much time on your hands, suffer from insomnia and need help falling asleep, or write a blog. In my case, all three.

Third party viewers gained prominence around a year ago, and it seemed they were popping up everywhere. As is always the case, one client rose above the others as Emerald Viewer eclipsed the competition with its stability, fun little toys and, of course, breasts that bounced. Sex sells, kids.

However, they rapidly gained notoriety after a handful of viewers with illicit undertones emerged, and a mainstream blog irresponsibly published the name of one of the clients, driving more people towards it. That, coupled with other incidences (sidestep) led to Linden Lab finally responding with a plan for all third party viewers.

And about bloody time.

So what are the nuts and bolts of what they’re requiring of all third party viewers? Are they shying away from doing anything as I insinuated in my previous blogpost? Or are they actually stepping up and stamping down their authority?

Here’s the nuts and bolts:

• Required Functionality and Disclosures

Viewers need to have their own unique identifier label. When they connect to the grid, they need to announce themselves to the server as to which client they are, and must not try to cloak or cheat the system by pretending to be another viewer (Either Linden Lab or other Third Party Viewers).

All TPVs (Yeah, I’m already getting lazy and abbreviating that one) must also display a link to their privacy policy, stating what information is collected about users, if it is stored and how it is used.

• Prohibited Features and Functionality

TPVs must not alter key information about objects in-world, such as the creator’s name, or try to hack the SL permissions system to circumvent modify/copy/transfer.

Additionally, all viewers must not provide functions which allow content to be exported out of Second Life which isn’t in the official viewer, unless it is specifically checked that the creator of the content is the user of the client.

As is commonly known, Linden Lab have enforced bans in the past using IP and MAC addresses. The policy states that TPVs cannot mask this data when the client connects to the grid.

There’s the usual stuff too, that the TPV must not contain viruses, trojans, spyware, phishing, cause DoS attacks, sell your new widescreen TV, lock up your children in the basement, or steal your cookies while you’re out having extra-marital affairs with the neighbour’s wife.

• Intellectual Property Rights

TPVs must not be created with the purpose to infringe intellectual property rights, or encourage, instruct or assist the user to breach IP rights.

Linden Lab lay down the big daddy rules here, saying they’ll ban your viewer from accessing the grid, ban you and your alts from SL and set the lawyers to hound down your sorry ass.

Also worth noting is that all TPVs have to comply with the GNU General Public License. Basically, it has to be free software with the source code published.

• Data Access and Privacy

The Privacy Policy needs to clearly state exactly what information is collected about all the seedy and naughty things people use their TPVs for, and the user should never need to provide any personal information to install or uninstall the program.

Any data which is collected by TPVs must not be shared with Linden Lab, unless the user gives consent.

• Third-Party Viewer Branding and Second Life Trademarks

Here’s an interesting one – all TPVs are prohibited from using any name which can be confused with Linden Lab’s trademarked brands. TPVs are hereby banned from using “Second,” “Life,” “SL,” or “Linden.” So if a viewer’s name ends in “Life”, it’s gonna have to change its name, sharpish.

Additionally (and expectedly) the Second Life hand logo must not be used.

• The Viewer Directory and Self-Certification

All TPVs that would like to be listed in the Viewer Directory must comply with the Policy, and SL’s Terms of Conditions. All information provided about the viewer must be true, and all the Second Life accounts owned by the developer must be in good standing (and none must be permanently banned). The developer must also have Payment Info on File, or be Age Verified.

• Your Responsibility for Third-Party Viewers

Linden Lab states clearly that they will not provide any support serviced for third party viewers (obviously), and that the developer is solely responsible for the TPV they create.

Users are advised to take reasonable precautions when installing viewers from a third party, incase they do steal your cookies. Those are good cookies.

• Policy Changes, Enforcement, and Termination

Linden Lab state that they may look at the code of TPVs to make sure they’re playing ball, and not using any pumping poison into the user’s circuitry. If they find any anthrax, they’ll cut off access to the grid for that viewer without notice, and may notify the developer to stop distributing the software for the purpose of accessing the Second Life grid.

The Lab also state that by being a TPV developer, you automatically agree to provide Linden Lab any part of the code based on their viewer for them to review. If it’s found that the viewer is not in full compliance, they may request that functions be removed, added or modified.

Basically, it’s their world and their rules.

Image by Skills Hak

Skills Hak last week released a ban-tool called Gemini Cybernetic CDS, which on paper, sounds a fantastic tool. It ejects avatars using third party viewers which have illicit purposes in order to combat the threat from copybot. The ban is not just limited to the sim in which the avatar was identified, but also every other sim in the CDS network.

The creator insists that the CDS system has not had a single case of a false positive in beta trials. More interestingly is that this system has been gathering information on which viewers that SL users have been using for several months now, and will ban users even if they are not using an illicit viewer anymore. How this system counters against viewers which cloak their identity is currently unknown.

The way the system works is obviously being kept under wraps in order to stop illicit viewers from creating workarounds. However, in a world where piracy is rampant, I don’t doubt that they will find a way. As sad as that is, it is the way of the internet which has grown a culture of wanting everything for free.

So what of this system? There appears to be suspicion surrounding it, and it obviously raises ethical questions of privacy. Just because someone used an illicit viewer once upon a time, is it fair to ban them if they’re not using them anymore? Is CDS really 100% foolproof, and how long before a popular Second Life figure is caught out by it? Is this system just vigilantism to the extreme, and should Linden Lab be the ones who govern this sort of discipline?

There seems an element of Orwellism in the way everyone is now being watched. Although I have no issue with disclosing the viewers I have used, it does make me wonder what other information can be harnessed by other SL users, and how it may be used.

Linden Lab are preparing Viewer 2.0 for Public Beta which may or may not include the elusive mesh importing function which was proudly showed off at last year’s Second Life Community Convention.

Mesh imports will pave the way for a new level of content within Second Life, much in the same way as sculpties changed the way the grid looked. The complexities of such a change lay in how the current levels of mesh operate within the virtual environment.

Looking at the standard polygons, for example a prim cube, you can see it formed out 18 triangles in its wireframe. Other default shapes have a similar grid-like structure to them, as do sculpty forms, despite their more freeform nature.

The clear advantage of a system like this is that the asset server can clearly define the mesh of the objects it holds – a prim cube is a prim cube. This information can then easily be downloaded to the various Second Life clients being used at the moment.

The disadvantage is that builders oftentimes find such shapes to be restrictive to what they want to create, or require a prim count which is much too high. The resulting factor leads to more simplified structures and objects being created, as the “prim cost” of more complex shapes is too high.

Of course, Second Life already uses complex meshes with a higher number of vertices – the Second Life avatar is modifiable to allow users to create their idealised shapes.

So it seems Second Life is about to be blessed with the kind of things which will raise the bar against upcoming competitors who are working off more advanced graphics engines than the OpenGL which Linden Lab has based the SL platform on.

So why the scepticism of the title?

It’s not really my lack of faith in Linden Lab to be able to pull off mesh imports and get it working flawlessly, which I’m (kinda) sure they will.

Mesh imports will pave the way for a whole new blackmarket within Second Life. Architecture, furniture and clothing models are already commonplace throughout numerous websites and design communities for use in 3D software. The licenses in these 3D models usually bars any resale of the product, however. And we all see the regular ripping of content from fashion website as they magically reappear on avatars in Second Life.

It won’t take long before people are converting 3D models and uploading them into Second Life, selling them on for their own profit. Which will obviously lead to cries of foul play, SL stores getting even more fed up and the cementing of Second Life’s reputation as a haven for content piracy.

Yep.. that's the GNU mascot.

The Modular Systems developers behind the GreenLife Emerald Viewer have terminated the rights of an another viewer to use their software as a basis for creating a derivative.

Emerald Viewer has rapidly become one of the Second Life grid’s most popular third-party viewers, and under its GNU General Public license 2.0, distributes the open source code to allow others to make alterations and improvements.

However, it has also served as the base code for making viewers with more darker motives behind them. As such, the Modular Systems developers have spotted an opening in that one of these viewers does not open source their code, and is therefore in violation of the GNU General Public license.

The particular section of the license which is stated as being violated is as follows:

4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.

By failing to provide the full open source code, the viewer in question has not complied with the GPLv2 license, and as a result, Modular Systems have revoked the rights for them to use Emerald Viewer’s source code for any future software releases.

As Modular Systems own the copyright to Emerald Viewer, they are now in a position to file copyright infringement notices and take legal action against the rogue viewer.

There’s a slight irony in an illicit Second Life viewer refusing to release its code in case a rival illicit viewer stole its copybot functions, which has now led to its source provider revoking their license to use its source.

There’s a technical term for that, I think..

It’s called Karma.

I’ve been aware of a website for a little while which has been operating under the pretence of a marketplace. It works in a similar way to other marketplaces like XStreetSL, except that all the products on there are listed as free.

Except they’re not free at all.

Virtualget.net has been operating for a couple of months now and they claim to be offering the merchandise of reputable retailers in Second Life for free. Only, you have to sign up to a monthly subscription for it, to the tune of USD14.86/month.

So claiming to be selling products from creators who haven’t given permission is one thing. Then scamming the customers out of their credit card details is a whole new thing which I don’t believe we’ve seen before. This is a direct attack on both the retailer’s reputation as sellers, and on the consumer’s financial position.

Whereby I normally don’t waste my time on thieves or petty drama, a blatant phishing scam like this requires as much attention drawn to it to be sure as few people as possible hand over their credit card details in what will inevitably cost them dearly.

This is simple – the website does not send out any of the goods it claims to have. They’re simply harvesting the listings from XStreet SL and then relisting them on their own website. It’s fraudulent activity with the simple aim of harvesting your credit card details. Simply put, don’t buy into it because you’ll just get burnt.

A Whois search on the Domain name shows it has been made private by the domain owner. Which should already ring alarm bells. Then there’s the logo which appears to claim that they’re affiliated with Linden Labs. My sources within the Lab assure me that they’re not. This is in no way a legitimate business, and is simply a scam designed to target the users of Second Life.

At time of publish, Virtualget.net have not responded to the allegations.

Well of course, the answer to that is no. It’s not.

But there are very few other things in Second Life which unites the grid. You don’t see any mainstream blogs coming out and saying “You know what? I love me some content theft”. You don’t chat with your friends about what you recently ripped from a popular store. The use of Copybot for theft is one of those issues where it pretty much is agreed that it’s a bad thing which we can do without.

Then there’s the active effort made to raise awareness and combat the Copybot. People run campaigns and write blogs. They post comments and chat about it with friends. They report stolen merchandise to storeowners who then file DMCA notices.. or perhaps a class action lawsuit.

The Copybot makes people think about how they can limit its effects. It rouses people to petition Linden Lab to act. It spurs storeowners to band together to support one another if their wares are copied.  It convinces coders to work on ways to prevent copybotters from winning.

It encourages the designer community to become more innovate with their products. Constantly coming up with new ways to stay one step ahead of the thieves, the content creators of the grid refuse to give in and work tirelessly to protect themselves.

It brings the SL community as a whole together, as they denounce the Copybot, and help content creators by informing them when they see their stolen products being sold on elsewhere. They send messages of support, and make a point of spending their money at stores which have fallen victim to the Copybot.

So is Copybot a good thing?

It sure as hell isn’t. But it shows us that the SL community can be united, and that we care about one another, and the grid as a whole.

Arwyn and Vaughan in their TG Days. Image courtesy of Arwyn Quandry

A few days ago, I had the pleasure of having a long chat with Arwyn Quandry and Vaughan Vendetta about the problems that Copybot has caused on the Teen Grid (TG). Vaughan is a current resident on the Teen Grid whereas Arwyn recently came of age and made the transfer to the Main Grid (MG). I asked her for her input as she’s well placed to compare the problem of Copybot between the two grids.

The Teen Grid is estimated to have well under one thousand users logging in on a weekly basis, and seeing as this number will include alts/bots, the actual figure would be much smaller. During the school year, the number drops sharply. The grid co-exists in the same manner as MG though – you still have the same concept of user-generated content, and sim prices/tier are the same as on Main Grid.

So the main differences are that the economy is much smaller, and everyone on the grid can’t legally go out drinking.

So why is copybot so rife on Teen Grid? There are at least 25 active TG businesses that cover the various sectors of the SL market, of which Vaughan estimates up to 75% are selling copybotted merchandise. Some retailers are also taking copybotted material and “Frankensteining” them with their own content. Unfortunately, as Vaughan does not have access to the Main Grid, he has no way of being able to check items which are copybotted without the help of those in MG through the Cross-Grid Copybotted Content Flickr group.

I’ve been through all this before when I wrote about The Forgotten Grid, but on catching up with Arwyn and Vaughan, I’ve learnt that things have only got progressively worse.

A recent comment from Vaughan caught my eye, when he despaired that Teen Grid residents were discussing ways of regulating stolen content on TG. To me, that’s become a completely new problem, which I don’t believe we have on MG.

Copybot happens on Main Grid, but there is sense amongst the masses that it is wrong, and that it’s unacceptable. On Teen Grid, copybotted products have now become mainstream, to the point where most people there will be buying stolen products without realising. Or caring that they have.

Imagine a grid where there’s so much stolen grid, it becomes normal and socially acceptable. That would be what I call a cultural issue – the lines between original content and stolen content are blurred and it becomes impossible to control.

Vaughan explained that many people on TG who are pro-actively trying to stop the import and purchasing of copybotted goods are now feeling despondent. Another factor has been the transfer of many TG residents to the MG this year, which has meant there are less people to combat the theft.

Because of these factors, as well as Linden Lab’s refusal to lower the price of tier on TG sims, sim owners who only support legitimate businesses on TG are suffering with 50% of sim space being unoccupied – would you believe it – because of a lack of legitimate storeowners.

In order to be able to maintain their sims, it was proposed by some sim owners that they start to “regulate” copybotted merchandise stores – essentially taking money over morals.

Regulation would allow a proportion of copybotted content to be sold in stores, but Vaughan explains that this would only open the floodgates to copybotters and would only justify the problem. Once the signal is given that copybot is socially acceptable across TG, the value of all the TG original content would have to drop to match, if be priced at all.

The reality of the problem is that there just aren’t enough legitimate businesses on Teen Grid to keep it sustainable.

Having a smaller concentration of goods on TG makes the copybot problem much bigger than on MG, Arwyn said. She elaborated that Main Grid copybotted content won’t reach many people on the grid, whereas the same content would be gridwide on TG. Again, it’s a scales of economies issue, but a grid is a grid in my eyes, and those who are running it should be taking the responsibility to help combat that issue.

Arwyn tells me that copybotted items are actually a status symbol on the Teen Grid because of the high quality available without having to pay anything. Some people say that copybot is not an issue as the people who support it would never have bought anything anyway. But Arwyn found that the people wearing stolen material had no idea what copybot was, much less that what they were wearing is stolen. So in actual fact, they may have bought something if they’d have been aware of stolen content versus original content. When there’s so much infringing content on a grid, you can’t expect someone who’s new to know the difference.

That said, Arwyn feels the lure of free (stolen) content is too appealing, and that it reflects badly on TG culture and the residents in general. In that sense, she also feels like it’s a losing battle to fight the stolen content on TG.

I don’t think it’s totally worth it.  I want to have a crusade, but people don’t listen.  It really defeats you, makes you think that it isn’t worth it.  Our campaigns were met with total apathy and ignorance.  You can’t teach them.  They won’t learn.

It is also important not to band all the teen residents into the same group. There are people like Arwyn and Vaughan who continue to fight the good fight, and for little reward. It’s not a grid of thieves – it boasts as much diversity as Main Grid does, albeit on a smaller scale. It’s simply become neglected for years, and as a result, the Copybot has become a big issue over there.

And where are Linden Lab? Well normally I support the Lab on many matters, and disagree with them on others. But I’ve been campaigning for many months now for them to pay more attention to the Teen Grid if they insist on continuing with it. And low-and-behold, they have done Sweet F*ck All.

Which shouldn’t surprise me as there are more than enough examples where they’ve done absolutely nothing to fix things, and instead concentrating on creating even more problems instead.

Since my last article on Teen Grid, Linden Lab have shut down the Teen Grid Mentors group, closed down Linden Answers in the SL Forums (which was one of the few portals that TG residents had to get answers), taken Blue Linden off as the Teen Grid’s Linden and not replaced him and whittled down the In-World Linden hours to a single hour a week.

Linden Lab have abandoned Teen Grid and I challenge anyone from Linden Lab to tell me otherwise.

Copybot 2.0 Image courtesy of Vint Falken

One of the things you quickly realise between being a blogger and a content creator is that you have to weigh up when to give coverage to such a tool as Copybot, and what the ramifications are to yourself as a content creator.

I’ve known about copybot clients for years now, but I’ve always refused to publish names and certainly won’t link to any. Ann O’Toole sent me a link to a copybot blog after yesterday’s article which is distributing entire builds. But by simply writing about them- even if you’re denouncing it – you still raise awareness of where they are and how to access them. As they say, there’s no such thing as bad publicity – it’s all still publicity.

The converse is that the more coverage you give to something like this, the more people who will be geared into doing something constructive about it.

Copybot is one of those issues I always danced around, simply because to entertain it may do more damage than harm. Advocates would harper on about it being a useful tool to some, but that’s like saying torrents are useful tools. It’s true, but the number of people using it as a useful tool is overshadowed compared to how many utilise it for illict purposes.

I maintain that the vast majority of Second Life users don’t read blogs, so it may not be an issue – although a thief with a search engine can be a dangerous thing. And the bigger a blog is, the wider its sphere of influence, and with that comes a social responsibility.

My own social responsibility has always included to avoid naming names – when you start targeting individuals, you play a crass game which delves you into gutter blogging. And usually, said people are perfectly capable of identifying themselves.

Copybot clients differ slightly, as they’re not individuals. But by giving their name, are you not just enabling someone to steal? Would this not make you a co-conspirator? It’s not as if Google won’t find a link pretty quickly..

There are still some copybot clients out there which I know of, but nobody I’ve seen has mentioned. I’m sure there are others which I’m unaware of, and are under the radar. Thing is – does outing their names provide awareness to the SL community to protect themselves, or does it just enable those who want to steal to go forth and do so?

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again.

The chances of being copybotted are very slim. The chances of you suffering at the hands of copybot are very slim.

Now awareness is one thing which I’ll happily support – but there’s a sensible way of doing it. When you start panicking yourself that the grid is doomed and there’s no future for Second Life, that would class itself as hysteria.

Every now and again (usually when there are lawsuits being bandied around) the whole IP theft and copybot issue crops up and a lot of people get worked up about a minuscule proportion of the grid who are ripping content and start jumping on bandwagons and kickstarting witch hunts.

Now I’ve seen my own products copybotted and being resold, and it’s most definately heart breaking to see your designs that you spent hours having been ripped off and someone else profiting off your hard work. I don’t blame content creators for being angry, and rightly so too.

But the vast majority of designers in SL will never be copybotted – that’s a fact. I’ve heard grumbles from people who haven’t been copybotted, but blame theft for the SL economy downturn. Copybot isn’t killing the SL economy at this time – in fact the Lab reports the economy is perfectly healthy. If your sales are down, then don’t look for excuses.

And screaming foul when you’ve been copybotted may make you feel better, and garner sympathy, but does it benefit the community? If people keep hearing stories of copybot over and over again, then people start to think it’s a rampant problem which is destroying the grid. That disheartens designers, and makes them ponder if there’s any point in creating content in Second Life. And no matter how you cut it, that’s not good for community spirit. If you’ve found your work has been copybotted and want advice, I wrote a guide here some time ago based on my own experience.

The rising prominence of these copybot clients means that we need to stand firm and make sure Linden Lab hear our concerns when we demand something is done to protect our intellectual property rights.

Screaming around that the end is nigh, and overreacting to every copybot case isn’t helping anyone, and does more damage to the community than good.