Recent Intellectual Property Theft Incident

This is reposted from the Facebook SL Fashion group discussion board. A truly horrible situation, and the secondary vendors in this case are as victimized as the vendor whose property was stolen.

This is a fairly serious issue in Second Life, not just the fashion industry though that is where a huge cross-section of theft occurrs. A content theif takes advantage of other people not only by ripping off their work, but in this case taking advantage of the familial trust of another shop vendor.

It seems there may be more than just the shoes mentioned in question of content theft. Vanya and Brett had no idea that the objects that Seven Farella was putting up for sale were built using stolen textures and sculpt maps. They have since shut down the seVan sim to go through the inventory and make sure none of the remaining content that was presented by Seven was stolen. Both have made apology posts, and posting textures to make sure that they've got all of the stolen ones replaced with new textures.

http://7van.wordpress.com/2008/03/15/sevan-public-apology/http://7van.wordpress.com/2008/03/15/a-letter-of-apology/http://7van.wordpress.com/2008/03/15/the-wood-in-question/

Its unnerving when things like this happen, because its not as easily discovered like the freebie/cheapie box of full perm items and textures are. Discovering the truth of this required a lot of work in Photoshop and in SL to reproduce, and the methods aren't always something people think to check on.

In the case of stolen textures, the easiest method for Linden Labs to correct it would be to add special coding to the edit windows that causes the texture box to static out into an unusuable texture whenever someone tries to snapshot or print screen. I'm not a programmer, so I'm not quite sure how complicated it would be to add that as a forced core file to SL, but logically speaking it is the easiest way to put a stop to this kind of content theft.

Content theft is a HUGE crime in Second Life, and if any members of this group think they may have bought something that was made using stolen content, post the information along with why you think it is, and we can help track down whether or not the content is legitimate.

And of course, this group won't tolerate content theft either, and any designer that participates in such willingly will no longer have their items posted here. Designer or regular group member, actually, who participate in content theft won't be tolerated.

This is a horrible thing to have explode again right before RFL, as it casts a shadow over the content creation world. =(