[opensource-dev] oh give me a break

Maya Remblai snowfox102 at dragonkeepcreations.com
Mon Mar 15 15:22:58 PDT 2010


New Hax wrote:
> but on the internet as a content maker you can make INFINITE products
> so you arent losing anything if i copy it and make no money off of it.
>   
Not true. See the following example that actually happened to me:

Person A rips a large number of products, including mine. He boxes them 
and gives them away, for free, claiming he has my permission (which he 
doesn't). Now, the total value of my products involved was $150 USD. If 
he only gave the box to 10 people (it was actually more than that) I'm 
now out $1500 USD. Person A has done a huge amount of monetary damage to 
me by taking away sales.

It's true that content theft happens, but it depends on the platform and 
what you do about it. Because all of SL, including its content, is under 
the direct control of LL, it is reasonable to expect LL to remove all 
stolen content from users' inventories. They CAN tell the difference 
between the original and ripped copies. The problem with content theft 
in SL comes, not from the initial theft, but from LL's lack of action. 
They systematically violate the DMCA by simply removing one instance of 
the stolen content, and sometimes they don't even do that. (The last 
time I filed a DMCA, they reported that they removed the individual 
products from the thief's inventory, but not the box containing more 
copies!) So the solution isn't really in preventing theft, it's in LL 
following DMCA law. And it IS a law, IP theft is still theft, and there 
are legal ramifications.

FYI, Person A was permabanned following DMCA orders.

Maya


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