Low-Life, Design-Stealing Second Life Mentor
Seeing double in the desert: at the top, the original work of Jessica Ornitz. To the left, the stolen copies of Alejandro Sansome, SL Mentor.
A tenant complained about overprimming today with something called the Humping Bunny that was producing gadzillion numbers of self-replicating bunnies (gosh, was that clever!) and somehow the autoreturn was off again (these rolling restarts cause this, I swear). So I'm fixing it, and all of a sudden, I feel like I'm seeing double -- a mirage in the desert?!. I rub my eyes. Where am I? I'm lost. Is there something wrong with the sim?!
I look again at the home of Alejandro Sansome a long-time tenant in Ak'sha Oasis, where I have had a little desert community for 2 years on Ansheland. I love the authentic sand textures and terraforming there. A wonderful SL builder, Jessica Ornitz, who built the Memory Bazaar in Ross and the Refugio townhouses and other builds for Ravenglass Rentals, and has an ever-changing island and store of her own, built this little settlement, sort of in an Arab theme, little houses with inner courtyards, keyhole shaped doors, sandstone or adobe walls, and a metal ring on a dome-shaped top. It's a build for this site, not sold as prefabs, and the buildings are not copyable.
I click around and realize what has happened: this tenant, Alejandro Sansome, has simply copied her building design and textures verbatim, and put the houses out for rent right next door. It appears a very clear-cut case of theft. The kind of theft that constantly goes on in SL, and about which few have remedies.
Please understand here. Putting up a rental right next to mine -- that's an old story. People do that all the time -- often tenants who have spent a few weeks copying everything I do, sometimes so slavishly that they even directly copy my lease word for word, and then their offerings contain things that only I offer, like "use our public commons". Nothing to be done about that! Sincerest form of flattery, and all that. It's a free market, people copy your business, they try to steal your customers.
But this is a clear-cut case of stealing textures and design, even if the design is somewhat modified. Oh, and it gets worse! A mentor! The guy is a Mentor! Now, why are we not surprised! And I urge everyone to boycott this man, and not do business with him. Why? Because not only is he a texture and design thief, which is wrong, he has put up rentals on land that I cannot be sure he really has permission to use. Why? Because the person has not been heard from in awhile, and their land has been left out for sale for ages without selling. When you try to IM them, they don't respond. He has put up rental homes set to his own group, called Illegally Tender (yuk yuk), that doesn't match *her* land group. I mean, you just don't do that in a rental, because you can't manage the prims. So anyone renting from this jerk might find that the real owner, or Dreamland administrators, could suddenly turf all this off, and you'd be out your rent. It's a good idea when renting to check the group settings of objects and lands and see if they match or not.
What can you do? Jessica and I flew around consulting. Neither of us can afford lawyers. Neither of us can "play" Second Life "with our own money" so to speak. The cost is just too high. Lawyers in New York can run $400 an hour. A simple labour dispute can cost $2000 before you even blink. And this case would likely hard to pursue. What we can do, for starters is: refund, eject, boot, ban. Then...and condemn in your blog. We can call on the Lindens to eject him from Mentors. But more than that, other groups he is in, like ::+Elite BUILDERS of Second Life+::. I find groups like this will sometimes work to enforce ethics among their members. You have to ask!
Building originally created in 2007 by Jessica Ornitz in A'ksha Oasis.
Copy made by Alejandro Sansome, former Ravenglass tenant, and put out next door in A'ksha Caves.
So, be sure to boycott Alejandro Sandsome, although of course he is welcome to withdraw his build and apologize, but still, not a good recommendation for one's business reputation.
Of course this incident is repeated literally hundreds of times a day across Second Life with 60,000 people logging on concurrently, and creators and designers and builders are getting hopping mad, and really frustrated with the refusal of the Lindens to provide a more coherent and streamlined way to address this situation. It cannot be abuse reported. The Lindens can only point you to their Knowledge Base about DMCA takedown notices, but my God, who has the time? Like I said. We are not people who can "play Second Life with our own money". We have to try to work and extract some meager profit, and work real-life jobs, too, we cannot hire lawyers, nor even figure out some sort of DIY thing -- it's too many steps, too hard. Of course, the Lindens are right to force people to make their own case, and go through at lease some steps. People make false or wild accusations all the time, saying something is stolen, when it really isn't.
I think anybody travelling to A'ksha won't have a problem seeing what's up here, and most important, is the opinion I value most here: Jessica's.
Wall texture on Jessica's building.
Identical wall texture copied on Alejandro's building.
So, let's try to pre-empt the usual copyleft/hacker/script-kiddie/Rip sort of argumentation here, by going thruogh some of the FAQs and replies to some of these thieving argumentations:
FAQs
1. The design that Sandsome made is different -- what, you aren't for people becoming inspired by work they see and creating new versions? That's what Second Life is for.
It's enough the same, and plunked down right next door! Sorry, you'd have to concede it is a copy. The arrangement of the building in his complex is L-shaped, where some of our buildings were straight lines, and he has added some wooden knobs which were actually admired as a nice touch, but it's a copy, anybody can see it. All the elements match. Especially the textures!
2. Neither of you have a copyright on designs of desert homes. Have you checked with, oh, the descendants of Moses and Mohammed lol? I mean, this is pretty public domain stuff!
So? People are inspired by architectural greats or simple popular forms all the time. Design doesn't happen in a vacuum. Yes, it's an ancient simple building. But anyone can see that what happened here is a direct copy, deliberately, to take advantage of another's work -- shape, elements, texture, all copied verbatim with only a slight alteration.
3. Where did the builder get the texture? So many builders just get textures off the Internet anyway, so what's the big deal? You whiners are thieves yourself.
As it happens, Jessica makes or buys textures, so this person has stolen twice then, from the builder in SL and the person who sold it on the Internet from whom Jessica bought it. No doubt Jessica also has textures that are available for free on the Internet -- everybody does. Does that mean it isn't theft, then to copy the shape, elements, style, and textures of a building in SL? No.
4. Well, too bad. Glintercept makes it possible to just copy stuff. If you can see it, you can copy it. If you can do something, how can be it be bad? Tools are not evil.
Because it steals another's work. What, he can't even pick/make/buy a new stone foundation texture for his own houses?! He's that lame?! And just because a tool exists to perform a function doesn't mean that you *have* to use it for ill, and steal another's work. Do your own work!
5. You should just find another business model, dude. This is the Internet, baby! You are a loser. A real competent virtual business person realizes they must keep creating new things and customizing constantly an using the 8 generatives, they can't make a business based on copyright and original textures, not in a world of copy and paste.
No, it's Alejandro who needs to get a new source of inspiration besides copying, and now he needs to get a new reputation. : ) See, two can play at social Darwinism, if you want to play harsh like that. It's wrong to steal. Theft is not the basis for a community, for a shared world and economy.
It's theft, it's lame, and people shouldn't do business with thieves. Why, it starts with theft of text, and it's looking like it could extend to more (putting up buildings on land that is not yours and re-renting). You cannot trust such a person.
6. So, who reads your blog? And so his reputation is dissed with a relatively tiny percentage of SL people. Who cares?
Just because a large impersonal world undoes the efforts of a community to show where there is right and wrong, good and bad business practices doesn't mean you can't try. You can. There's the Google search. And there is just the trying and "the rest that is not our business". Hey, if you are going to talk about Moses here, what about the Ten Commandments!
7. Opensim, glintercept -- all of this will put an end to your silly little businesses, your dumb rentals and your commissioning of builds. You should stop. Go get a life. Feed your cats. Go outside.
I don't like cats. And why should I close my business because someone else is morally challenged? Well, why? I will go on paying people for their work and their creativity and respecting their permission sets. People will go on renting from me, most likely (for one, my prices are lower considerably than this low-life's prices ROFL). His ability to copy and display will be contingent on his ability to tier land, and that may have a natural boundary, I don't know. People who are so lazy they copy another house wholesale and don't bother to make or buy or even *select for free out of the library* their own stone textures are likely not to be very competent. Will they provide much competent service? I think the people who rent from me will appreciate that I pay builders, and they will buy from Jessica too because she either pays another or makes something original herself. There will always be Gucci knock-offs on 5th Avenue. Won't people still go into Gucci's to buy the real stuff?
8. The Internet needs new business models. You need to open up all your buildings for free and all your textures and let people copy them, and in fact the Lindens shouldn't have a land market with arbitrage, and they should listen to Richard Bartle and just roll out land for free to anybody who wants, by using cheaper servers. Then the real creative people will be able to succeed, instead of parasites like you who have no skills, and merely hire other people who are forced to work for you. P.S. You are mentally ill, and need help, too.
No, the old ethics are still needed. And even if the Metaverse fills up with a lot of copying, well, the originators are still valued -- and if they cannot get paid, they won't work. (BTW, ever notice that people who steal designs and textures always re-sell them. They know the value of good work! It's only the sandboxers and script-kiddies who rant on about how information wants to be free lol).
There's no guarantee that people who create will go on creating, and people who commission for larger projects will go on displaying and renting to meet costs and make a profit. The texture thieves cannot be sure of an endless well to draw from, and eventually, if creativity cannot survive and get paid, it will either give up, or go to other worlds where such crimes are punished effectively, or prevented effectively.
Furthermore, I'm not so sure that all these creative people working on free servers will find the people to pay them. If there are too many of them, because everything is free, some of them at the lesser-talented end of the spectrum will have to fail and no one will pay them. Too much of that, and the Lindens or Adam Frisby will ask, but how can we keep rolling out toilet paper?
9. The idea that you should have people socializing and making little worlds like this is retarded anyway. Shouldn't you just have business, educational, and non-profit use of these worlds? That's what people should do online, anyway. If they are serious about socializing, they'll have to go to platforms where they can do that, for free, too, and with more immersive and better technology and more stability. Maybe Red Light District. Maybe some other world yet to be made that will make sure that real children are kept out completely and that real adults can ageplay as they like in a free setting.
People want to make worlds like this, where the different activities aren't sequestered. Who can stop them! In fact, they don't really need to have these things sequestered as much as those trying to sell the software add-ons need them to be sequestered.
10. You bourgeois North American land barons should just give up and stop complaining if poor people. The future belongs to cybersquatters, hackers, masher-uppers, mixers of reality and virtuality, you know, the People.
Well, is there a reason why these people don't have morals? Morals are needed to make a world, and an economy. Theft is theft, even if you have a new politically-correct term for it. Besides, I'm one of the people, too!
Rent in A'ksha Oasis! $200/100 prims or $400/200 prims : )
The rentals were put out by Lene Gabe, who is in the same group as Lori Rasmuson, who owns the land. While Lene has set all the objects to another group, Illegally Tender, the land Lori owns is put in another group, and is set for sale. Geez, I wonder why would anybody rent land that is set for sale, and could be purchased at any time, and you could be turfed out?
Island scams are common, but people also shouldn't be stupid, walking into a situation like this.
I had a chat with Alejandro's friend who came back to rent the place again even after he was refunded and rejected.
Prokofy Neva: Hi, your friend Alejandro is expelled from here for stealing the building design and texture, pretty low-life thing to do.
Prokofy Neva:
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2008/03/low-life-design.html
Denise Snowdrop: i can't speak for Alejandro, but i wouldn't think he would intentionally do such a thing
Prokofy Neva: um, well, look behind you? and read the article, he did
Prokofy Neva: and he is banned from here, and if you undo the ban, you will be too
Prokofy Neva: why don't you go live in his rentals next door? they are perfect copies
Denise Snowdrop: so no warning to me until i paid you your money?
Prokofy Neva: um, I ejected him, and returned your prims?
Prokofy Neva: if you come back here and rent, I can only contact you and explain the issue
Prokofy Neva: you can press refund any time
Denise Snowdrop: i thought it was because he hadn't paid rent
Prokofy Neva: No, it's because he stole my builder's design and textures?
Prokofy Neva: that would do it
Prokofy Neva: look next door, it's an exact copy
Prokofy Neva: so I don't need to sustain that, he can live in his own rentals
Denise Snowdrop: thank you for explaining it to me...and i have seen the rentals...but they aren't his
Prokofy Neva: yes they are, he is the creator of the building
Prokofy Neva: if he merely stole my builder's buildings and gave them to someone else, that person isn't even in the group owned there
Denise Snowdrop: but not the renter
Denise Snowdrop: anyway how can you tell they are yours?
Prokofy Neva: I can't even be sure that that person has permissino to put that stuff out, it isn't set to the group
Prokofy Neva: because they are? look at them
Prokofy Neva: duh
Prokofy Neva: I really don't think you will be happy here with your boyfriend banned from this area, so go live in his buildings somewhere else.
Prokofy Neva: his stolen buildings that stole from my builder
Prokofy Neva: no wonder Mentors get such a bad name
Denise Snowdrop: excuse me...i am quite sure you are upset, but you can't tell me where to live, and while i'd rather not continue to live here if he doesn', it still doesn't mean i'll do as you say
Denise Snowdrop: and you will stop speaking badly to me about him
Prokofy Neva: Oh, well, for that last comment, you will be ejected.
Denise Snowdrop: let him speak for himself upon his return to SL
Prokofy Neva: He has stolen and copied my builder's texture and design.
Prokofy Neva: It's not about being "upset" it's about not subsidizing lowlifes
Prokofy Neva: please refund and pick up your things
Denise Snowdrop: so now my opinion gets me ejected??
Prokofy Neva: absolutely
Prokofy Neva: I can tell you where to live when it involves...not living on my land
Prokofy Neva: your snotty attitude really sucks -- your boyfriend is a low-life texture thief
Prokofy Neva: and you will do as I say, because you cannot undo the ban
Prokofy Neva: unfortunately the group permissions enable you to do that
Prokofy Neva: so seeing as how you have a rebellious attitude toward not doing what I'm asking, I'll h ave to eject you
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | March 24, 2008 at 01:37 AM
you really are quite rude and socially unacceptable to first of all tell me that i have a snotty attitude, when all i was trying to do was find out what the hell you were talking about in the first place. yes Ale is my SL boyfriend, and i did live with him there, but i had no idea that you had ejected him as i stated above. i merely thought he hadn't paid rent as he is on vacation in real life....you do know what real life is, correct Sir??
secondly i got none of your conversation on line after you said "absolutely," as i muted your rudeness!! so you didn't eject me Mr.!! i merely tp'd somewhere else. i was however ejected from your group, but if you think that bothers me in the least, then you don't know me very well. you don't know me at all actually, yet you chose to call me names, and be rude to a perfect stranger simply because i am his SL girlfriend. if you did know me at all, you would know that i know absolutely squat about building anything in SL, so when you say these buildings are the same and i see differences, i don't agree.
but i did come here to find out what lies you may have written about Ale or myself...i figured it wouldn't take someone like you long to print our conversation and i was correct. as i stated before Ale is a good and decent man, but as i also said before, i will let him speak for himself about anything you claim here if he chooses to even acknowledge you and your anger filled words.
i too am a nice and decent person, who unlike you, waits a bit and tries to understand where someones anger may be coming from. i tried to understand what was happening tonight when you just started throwing your anger (and abuse really) at me. you just seem to spout anger all over these pages, just as you do in SL. i'm not sure why you are so angry, but i do hope you feel better about yourself...hey...it takes all kinds doesn't it Prof.??
btw...i didn't press refund...you can keep your damn 200 lindens. and if i am snotty and rebellious, then you Sir are a complete A#$!
Posted by: | March 24, 2008 at 02:31 AM
Fume away, sweets, I care not. Your $200 was refunded, check your accounts page. You are also banned.
I don't think it takes really huge powers of observation to see the copying of the building here. It's pretty awful!
What's annoying is this BDSM queen crap, stamping your foot and saying, "You can't tell me where to live or what to do!"
Well, no, but...when you're on my land, and your boyfriend has stolen my builder's texture and building, and he's been ejected and banned, and you show up back there and are told that, the expectation is that you will leave gracefully. If you can't leave gracefully, the problem is referenced for you: you can't be trusted NOT to unban your boyfriend. Unfortunately, that's a function of the way the group powers work.
So sorry, but truly, you can go live next door in your boyfriend's/girlfriend's rentals based on Jessica's stolen textures ROFL.
Have fun!
P.S. yes, I realize they are a little blurry, but apparently that's a function not only of Glintercept, but of not being able to tile very well when you arrange the texture on the prim.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | March 24, 2008 at 03:34 AM
While you were right to eject in this case, you handled it in the worst possible way. Reading the chat, it seems to me that the conversation only turned south when YOUR attitude turned snotty. You started to make personal attacks against her boyfriend, and surprise surprise, she didn't like it. She never said or gave any indication she was going to undo the ban, she just didn't want to hear a bunch of petty name-calling. You could easily have handled this without making it so personal. The next time something like this happens, why don't you try focusing on the offense itself. Instead of saying "no wonder they have such a bad name", why not try saying something like "I'm sorry, but this is a behavior we simply cannot tolerate." While you are indeed dealing with low-lifes, you still have full choice and control over what you personally say. By lowering yourself through the use of personal attacks, you ceded the moral high ground, which did not have to happen.
Posted by: Doctor Decorum | March 24, 2008 at 10:57 AM
Uh, you must not play Second Life, Doctor Decorum, unless the Lindens have put in more witless last name than usual (you must have a first and second SL name to post here, or recognizable RL or blogger name).
When someone has stolen a texture and a design, telling them they are a thief isn't "a personal attack". It's a report. And a moral condemnation which absolutely must take place. This reluctance to make moral judgements in a blatantly immoral case is one of the hallmarks of the entitlement-happy set. They imagine that "you can't talk to me that way" or "talk bad about my boyfriend that way" -- and you do, too.
But...the boyfriend is a thief, and the evidence stands before you. There isn't some cover story here. And you have to take moral action, and pronounce on it, and act. It's that inability to pronounce and act that makes the lack of morality to go on. I can't imagine the mindset of someone zooming on to another's building or item and deliberately copying it. Don't any moral neurons fire? Doesn't some thought appear in the consciousness, "This is copying. This is wrong."
Let me suggest one of the reasons such thoughts don't occur, and such neurons don't fire is because the "politeness" of allowing little queenies like this and say "you can't dis me that way" has been allowed to override common sense and morality.
You must not play Second Life. Or you would understand that a person who can't see the obvious about an immoral act, and who begins to argue with you, is someone who is going to undo the ban line. And you can't allow that. Unfortunately the tools are like that, i.e. you could close the open group (which I was forced to do temporarily) but if you keep it open, and people are granted residence rights to ban or access media, they can also *unban* and they *will* unban. And then you have a severe problem: a disgruntled asshole who thinks he is wrongfully charged with theft, who has in fact *committed* theft coming back to your property and attempting to bombard it, overprim it, destroy it or crash the sim or whatever -- you can't allow that, it's not fair to the other tenants who are law-abiding.
Offenses in Second Life are connected to people. The idea that you must hate the sin and love the sinner is a great and noble goal. However, the customer service state does not allow you the luxury of religious-style missionary work. Precisely because you have other law-abiding customers whom you must serve, and not hold up the entire show over a thief.
Gosh, I'll bet standing there allowing the girlfriend of a texture theft the luxury of pretending there is some moral ambiguity here, and saying "I'm sorry, but we simply cannot allow this" totally ineffectually.
The concept that you "cannot sink to their level" or you "must not cede the high moral ground" is a wonderful 19th century gentleman's concept. Perhaps it plays in Caledon. I'm not playing it. People understand only force. They'll get it from me. You can't steal textures and stand around whining that the problem is the rudeness of your landlord. The problem is that your boyfriend is a low-life.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | March 24, 2008 at 12:18 PM
So this would represent the kind of "rule of law" you would like to see implemented by the Lindens? Ban mouthing and kick/banning because of someones *relationship*.
Neat: you make FIC look hip.
Posted by: John Lopez | March 24, 2008 at 12:41 PM
Sorry, but that's what you have to do in a situation like this. These rentals aren't the Taj Mahal. They are small, cheap, rentals. $200/100 prims. If they were made $300/45 prims, like the ones next door, perhaps they could pay for justice as you imagine it could be meted out, with time-consuming, long, warm reflective conversations.
There isn't any lack of due process here under my rules. Somebody who has stolen a texture and copied a building -- and their girlfriend, who wasn't the paying tenant -- was evicted. All perfectly normal, and legal. Perhaps you thinkt here should be discovery, adversarial defense, and a trial procedure but then...you can pay for it. Unfortunately in this limited situation with this limited time for expenditure of professional ability and with this limited cost coverage, this is the amount of justice you get.
The girlfriend merely comes back and moves in because she hasn't figured the story out yet. When it is told to her, she gives some lip. I didn't immediately evict her for moving back in because I can't know whether she is in fact a girlfriend, just a passing friend -- whatever. People move into houses with 3 or 6 avatars swarming around all the time, one of whom pays, and the others who may have only the most casual relationship to the paying tenant. I find this constantly.
But once I see that she is a) a close girlfriend and b) prepared to see her boyfriend as only innocent until "proven" guilty and c) a threat to the community because she will unban him, sorry, but I have to think not of you and your liberal and excessive notions of how justice can be meted out, but of the other tenants who will be moving out or made very angry if they now face another griefing attack on this sim from an angry accused boyfriend.
Sorry, but this is one of those things that extremists who take liberal notions to the extreme don't understand about how their mushy liberalism becomes extreme harshness in a jiffy: they don't have a plan for the rest of the community, and their rights, and their leases, and their reasonable expectation of a non-interefered Second Life without angry boyfriends prim-bombing the place.
And angry boyfriends *always* prim-bomb the place, let me tell you, I've seen bunches of them.
If mouthing off were a criteria for banning someone, I'd have far few customers. I ignore most of them. It's only when they become an interference with the rights of others, and threaten the entire business, too, that I have to say "sorry, you get evicted from the group". It's rare that I have to apply such extreme measures because by and large, even allowing for a wide latitude for assholery, most people in SL are decent and follow simple rules.
Let me tell you, doing this sort of work day in and day out, reverse-engineering the Second Life social platform, I get some really huge insights. I'm going to post more about this soon.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | March 24, 2008 at 02:34 PM
"Let me suggest one of the reasons such thoughts don't occur, and such neurons don't fire is because the "politeness" of allowing little queenies like this and say "you can't dis me that way" has been allowed to override common sense and morality."
Your above quote continues to prove my point Prok. Even people that don't know anything about this are saying you were snotty first. Btw you say you don't care, yet you continue to throw names at me, when you really don't know me at all......why? Just because i am Ale's gf in Sl and his good friend in rl as well, does not give you the right to assume that i can't be trusted, or that i would have even stayed around long enough to have the chance to un ban him. Now you are saying, for no reason that i can fathom, that i am a threat to your community and a threat to your entire business as well?? WOW! You can flatter a gal that way!! NOT!! After having experienced your negativity, your blatant name calling, and the joy you seem to get out of being rude to those you don't even know, i want you to know that i wouldn't have wanted to continue to live there even if it was free. I'm quite sure your rates are as cheap as they are because you have pissed off most of the people you have come in contact with in your time on SL.
Also i have come to learn by reading over your many, many pages of complaints about SL, in one form or another, that you are just a very unhappy person with way too much time on your hands. So if you think i am fuming, you are quite wrong. at this point it's just entirely too funny to me that you are this upset over something that is part of a game. but you continue on Sir with your game and your SL that seems to have become your rl. continued good luck in renting out your places there in A'ksha Oasis...the best that i recall they were usually empty, even if they were cheap.
have a great day Prok!
Posted by: | March 24, 2008 at 03:33 PM
Actually, I see nothing wrong with what you did: the ejection of people from your land (with a refund) at your whim is exactly what most would do. Most would have done it with less insults to the person proper, but we know "Insults are what I do", as you said a few posts ago.
Just keep in mind that LL sees about the same amount of "value" in your Tier as you did in that rental. You seem to expect LL to expend effort on some Greater System of Justice and Democracy when you get banned from their forums, when in reality you are a replaceable renter (and one that makes them cranky from time to time to boot).
Posted by: John Lopez | March 24, 2008 at 05:48 PM
No, I sure don't expect LL to do anything of the kind, when they have gadzillion more customers than me, and a software to create and test, and other, bigger fish to fry.
No sirree, I sure as hell don't.
What I do expect of them is to do the same thing that I do:
o maintain the rule of law with a TOS that is fair, that is binding of the ruler as well as the ruled (they don't do this)
o interpret the TOS with the higher aim of maintaining a viable community, not merely to take it literally as a weapon to club this or that person
o enable people to face their accusers, hear the accusations against them
I don't curtail my residents' freedom of speech, except for the large rentals group itself, where I tell them not to chat as it bothers everybody. I keep several other groups I encourage them to chat in.
Most people won't join a group to chat, they prefer to lock up the attention of everybody in a group where they can't chat to try to grief or make a point.
The Lindens were not following their own TOS when they banned me, and they know it, and they admitted it. They did it for 'business reasons' and they did it to placate a little mob on the forums that included their NDA'd darlings.
It's not expensive to fairly interpret a TOS. I think it's more expensive to *not* maintain it.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | March 24, 2008 at 08:34 PM
well, there is one extenuating circumstance with the theft of the house design... at least Ale's houses actually fit in with the surroundings.
Posted by: Tammy Nowotny | March 24, 2008 at 10:59 PM
? not sure what your point is. Why is copying something in an environment somehow mitigated because those copies...fit in the environment?!
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | March 24, 2008 at 11:05 PM
A mentor steals designs and textures.
Bad enough for anyone, but a mentor doing it?
Let him come on here and explain himself, if he can.
coco
Posted by: Cocoanut Koala | March 25, 2008 at 12:32 AM
A mentor steals designs and textures.
Bad enough for anyone, but a mentor doing it?
Let him come on here and explain himself, if he can.
coco
Posted by: Cocoanut Koala | March 25, 2008 at 12:33 AM
Your expectations are actually quite reasonable:
* Violating the corporate side of a corporate/customer TOS agreement doesn't just create bad blood; it also weakens it in a legal sense (judges don't care to enforce provisions against one side if the other side failed to meet their obligations).
* Selective punitive use of a TOS does likewise, and creates uncertainty among the customer base.
* The third (hearing accusers) is an admirable goal, although the one most distant from current practice. I can't think of any corporate/consumer online TOS that includes such a clause, noble as it would be to have. (E-Bay just yanked the ability to leave feedback about customers from the sellers, the closest one comes to such a system).
Finally, anyone who doesn't keep group chat under control is just asking for people to beg to leave the group... SL really does need administrative groups that only allow conversations to be started by group owners or those granted explicit permissions.
Posted by: John Lopez | March 25, 2008 at 12:53 AM
No, actually placing the stolen houses right next to the original houses makes the situation even worse. I was just commenting obliquely on how rare it is when one build actually complements the surrounding builds. (And I am reminded of the current Coke/Coke Zero commercial where an analogy is made about building a house eeriely similar to an existing landmark.)
Posted by: Tammy Nowotny | March 25, 2008 at 09:54 AM
If I were looking for someone to build something, I don't think seeing "::+Elite BUILDERS of Second Life+::" would convince me to employ them.
Superlatives = Irony.
After seeing an endless stream of reseller domains names with "Bulletproof" that aren't, "24/7" which don't answer their mail, "Top Notch" which run rock-bottom servers, etc... the more grandiose the name, the worse the service.
Posted by: Crap Mariner | March 25, 2008 at 10:15 AM
Heheh, right Crap! What I find hilarious with all these kids in SL playing store, when they make a business that spells lie ~~$$@*Brittany's Designs~~$$@* nobody can remember how to spell it or do anything but paste it, and they won't be able to do that always, so it isn't memorable and portable. You wouldn't remember which thingies came in that silly name "Elite Builder".
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | March 25, 2008 at 10:18 AM
I'm finally considering filing DMCA against an especially egregious prefab ripoff artist.
It's one thing to have some bimbo smugly tell me that the house she sells is "simply inspired" by one of my best selling designs (inspired seems to mean copied prim for prim with three prims changed around), but with this other guy, I found out about it because a customer thought we had opened a new store location- he has ripped off a dozen of our houses, and literally copied my business partner's box art designs. So I have some boilerplate DMCA thing to prepare and fax. Who knows if it will work- I doubt it, but sometimes I guess you have to try, and show you tried.
Posted by: Ace Albion | March 27, 2008 at 07:00 AM
There is a great deal of cash to be made from making ugly houses into beautiful pieces of property. However, all investments have problems. Flipping houses and real estate investment if pretty low risk unless you an inexperienced and uneducated investor.
Posted by: buy houses | April 01, 2008 at 07:05 PM
The first thing I built in SL, was a copy of an existing house I was renting but without all the flaws. I'm a perfectionist (if anyone has seen Monk, the TV series, they'll know what I mean) and I can't STAND bad seams, ill fitting textures, etc. It drives me nuts and my landlord happily obliged me when I asked if I could replace the existing house with a more perfected version.
So yes, I copied the house, used similar textures (but higher resolution ones) and kept the overal shape and look of the home except it had better scripts, less wasted prims, perfect seams (math, folks) and perfectly proportioned textures.
Am I in the wrong here? It was not to sell for one. I didn't make any money of it, and I think that's where people need to see the difference when they go accusing others. Often people see something they love as an idea, but want to make their own version.
The man you accused of stealing probably copied the design because he liked the design but didn't find a place that sold it. It's easy to think the worst of someone ("he stole her work! Low life!") when reality is that he probably liked her design and wanted his houses to go along with yours. A uniform landscape & style boosts prices on both sides of the property lines - ANY real estate agent.
The only true mistake he made was to copy her textures. Copying an overall design is allowed by copyright rules anyway unless you got a specific patent on it which I highly doubt. Of course, he could have contacted her but some people prefer to tackle things like this themselves.
Posted by: Icarus L | April 10, 2008 at 08:03 AM
Icarus,
You must have a first and last Second Life name or recognizable RL or bloggers' name to post here so that you can take responsibility in the community for these kinds of snipes.
Basically, you are full of shit up and down. You don't get to copy your landlord's house just because you think it needs "perfection". That's copying. If it is not on open permissions, the intent of the creator is to sell their work *and that's ok*. The world isn't about endlessly providing you sandbox space and the free labour of others for you to "learn" and "perfect". Go make your own goddamn perfect shit.
Furthermore, the issue here in my rentals isn't somehow an "imperfect" house. The builder here is a professional, established builder working for SL as well as RL companies with very fine texture work. There isn't anything to perfect here, only to copy very badly, as anybody who examines the screenshots can tell.
The person here deliberately copied the design to make a profit. Whether he himself sold the house or not isn't clear, but the purchaser of his house *is* making a very healthy profit off the rental of these copied houses.
Nobody asked this "creator" who is in fact a low-life thief to "harmonize" the community -- nor did he seek to cooperate with neighbours. He just copied it because he felt like he was entitled and could do whatever the hell he felt like.
There isn't a "mistake" here but a *crime*. Copying the design and the textures is *wrong*. I'm not going to take on some sort of copyright fine points here because we all know what is morally wrong here: copying and stealing a design.
The reason you are morally challenged is that you imagine that because technology enables you to do something, you can do whatever you feel like to expand your ego and personal interests.
The fact that this low-life didn't contat either his landlord or this builder illustrates very perfectly that this isn't about "learning" or "harmonizing the neighbourhood" but low-life theft.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | April 10, 2008 at 08:40 AM
Wow. Remind me to stay as far away from your Sims, "your" builders, and anything else having to do with you as is pixelly possible. What a horrible attitude you have. What's sad is you have some really valid points, but the way you express yourself isn't going to sell anyone on them.
And the way you treated the perpetrator's friend was unforgivable. Before you ask, no, I don't know either of them.
And if you're thinking that this comment is coming away after the fact, that this post was made forever ago? You're right. See how long your vitriol lasts in cyberspace?
Posted by: Celstarra Dubrovna | November 07, 2008 at 03:45 AM