As a fellow skin designer, I feel that I need to give my opinions on the blantant copies of Emilia Redgrave's new skin line. While my opinions on the issue are controversial, it's a voice that is not usually heard among content creators in SL. Here it goes:
In the long run, there is absolutely nothing that Linden Lab can do to stop piracy in Second Life. The Second Life permission system is merely a form of DRM. Much to the chagrin of the record industry and the movie industry, copy-protection does not stop people from copying your products.
If there was a way to stop people from copying files, the RIAA would have invented it by now. While Linden Lab probably has smarter programmers than the RIAA, it's not a efficient use of Linden Lab's time. Any time and money spent on the effort would ultimately be fruitless. No matter how complicated, all copy protection will be broken. In addition, it will become easier to do so. We have seen it happen in the record industry and the movie industry. Widespread piracy will come to second life. It will be so widespread that enforcement will be impossible.
This leaves the matter in the hands of content creators. Here's what you can personally do to fight piracy.
- Blog! - If someone is stealing your products, get the word out! The SL community is very tight-knit and most creators love to help fellow content creators in a time of need.
- New Products - While some jerk may copy my skins, my store will always be the place to find the latest RealSKIN designs. If you want the latest skins, customers have no choice but to shop at a reputable store.
- Customer Service - The pirate that steals your skins won't have the resources to provide customer service.
- Marketing - The Pirate doesn't want to draw attention to their products so they can't effectively market them.
- CUSTOM WORK - This is the big one. This is the one thing that the pirates absolutely cannot do. In fact, as piracy becomes more widespread, custom work becomes even more valuable. Check out this quote from Kevin Kelly:
When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.
When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable.
While it may seem that taking these steps won't have much an effect, keep in mind that making money from Piracy is hard work. Often, it's not worth the effort. If you can make it harder for your pirate to make money, then you can discourage piracy.
13 comments:
I love the common sense in this post. Thinking about your post, I think you hit the nail exactly on the head.
And I've always had a dislike of complicated DRM anyway. As you say, it doesn't fix anything. Itjust punishes valid customers.
totally agree with almost everything you said with regards to piracy and how to combat it. it's upto us a community to take on the pirate. the pedant in me just wants to raise one thing - and that's that i don't agree on is your comments with regard to the music business. DRM was successfully introduced years ago (remember copy protected cds?) but due to consumer pressure it was withdrawn. the same thing has happened with apple/itunes's successful DRM but not due to consumer pressure have started to sell content DRM free)
sorry for the obvious typos - but you get my drift :)
Absolutely spot on. All the yelling and screaming and angst is just wasted effort. Piracy is a fact of the digital world and we just have to deal with it. Your suggestions are the best solutions...service, customer support and education. The reason they are thieves is because they are lazy...the more they have to work at it the less they will want to do it. Thanks for they perspective!
Custom skins aren't safe from pirates. All that it takes for them to steal the texture is for them to see it in the game. Once the texture has rezzed, it has been downloaded to their computer into the secondlife cache... then they extract it from there. Linden Labs *CAN* combat the piracy by removing textures that have been stolen and re-uploaded from the database. People who found themselves buying stolen content will end up with a missing-image skin. Linden can also combat it by finding better ways to protect the cache, tracking where the known thieves are cashing out their money, and even placing IP bans on them. There ARE things they can do, but residents need to watch out for piracy and make the community and Linden aware of it.
Hello 1st Anonymous. I would not say that DRM was successfully introduced into CD. In fact,copies of songs on copy-protected CDs were easily found on the internet.
Hello, 2nd Anonymous. You're absolutely right. You can't stop the piracy of a custom skin; You can't stop the piracy of any skin. However, you can offer services that the pirates cannot. This makes their attempt to make money more difficult.
On a side note, it would be much easier to address your comments if you did not post anonymously.
A few months back, I would have agreed with you. But after seeing how widespread this problem is, I have to disagree with you on almost all your points. I dont think you realize how brazen these thieves actually are.
1. " Blog! - If someone is stealing your products, get the word out! The SL community is very tight-knit and most creators love to help fellow content creators in a time of need."
yes, the blogging and fashion community can be very effective at putting pressure on thieves, but where there is easy money to be made, these criminals just do not care what any of us think.
" 49822.855469 shouts: MY NAME Marcelo Ferraris MY WIFE IN RL Biana Ferraris YOU ALL KNOW ME LIKE BONNIE ARADO THIS WAS MY ALT WE HAVE 100000 ALTS,I AND MY WIFE BIANA STEAL WITH COPYBOT ALL TEXTURES AND OBJECTS FROM FAMOUS SL DESIGHNERS,WELCOME TO OUR NEW SHOP !!!THANK YOU LINDEN LAB YOU PROTECT ME ALL MY LIFE !"
That's what the skinthief Bonnie Arado was spamming to theft protesters today. The last time he was caught by bloggers for selling stolen skins, he threatened to release all the skins full-perm. This guy is a criminal and he cannot be shamed by anybody's moral outrage.
2. "New Products - While some jerk may copy my skins, my store will always be the place to find the latest RealSKIN designs. If you want the latest skins, customers have no choice but to shop at a reputable store."
And it only takes a few minutes for the thieves to take your brand new stuff and have it up in their own store by the time you've finished writing your fashcon announcement. Emilia Redgrave had her skins stolen on the first day of release. Plus, no matter how hard you work to release new content, you'll never be able to competete with the variety of these skinthieves who are offering all of the best skins of SL in one place.
3. "Customer Service - The pirate that steals your skins won't have the resources to provide customer service."
Ok, I agree there.
4."Marketing - The Pirate doesn't want to draw attention to their products so they can't effectively market them."
If only this was actually true. If the pirates confined their activities to backwoods locations and selling out of the back of a van, so to speak, then this piracy wouldnt be that much of a real problem. But they don't. They know there are no consequences and they operate with complete impunity. Take a look at the classifieds. The #1 ad is a place that's selling stolen Naughty skins. That's almost $1,000 US a week to advertise stolen merchandise. He's outbidding the original creator on advertising and has been operating for months.
5. "CUSTOM WORK - This is the big one. This is the one thing that the pirates absolutely cannot do. In fact, as piracy becomes more widespread, custom work becomes even more valuable. Check out this quote from Kevin Kelly:
When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.
When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable. "
Sorry, but the SL economy is just NOT set up for custom work. Very few people are going to pay a designer $$30 or $40 an hour to do custom work, and even fewer people can make a decent living offering it. The only reason SL is viable as a business is micropayments. Creating something like a skin line is a massive amount of work. You need to be able to sell hundreds of copies in order to be adequately compensated for it. But that becomes increasingly difficult when you have to compete against your own products.
The content theft problem is getting worse as these thieves are realizing that there is no penalty for their actions and they don't even have to hide it. LL created this problem by going to unverified accounts, and its about time they take some kind of proactive action. They've already lost alot of their large corporate accounts this year. Their big showpiece crossover, CSI:NY, has turned out to be somewhat of a bust. Its becoming clear to the corporate world that SL is not the big marketing heaven it was touted to be. Its time LL foceses on the real lifeblood of SL, the content creators. If the small businesses stop making new stuff, SL will really be in trouble.
I agree with both Stephen and Annyka - there are two salient points here.
1. Customer service. The actual maker can offer far more customer service than can the thief. No question there. I've moved far more over to doing customs and general sim work due to theft. If a custom is stolen, generally the creator cares somewhat less because they've been paid very well in advance for the development time. It still sucks, but it sucks somewhat less if you've been paid already.
Stephen is right here - custom work is going to become the premium. Getting *exactly* what you want will cost you.
2. LL has to stop accepting adverts from people who have clearly stolen content. Obviously the ad system is broken and needs an overhaul in the ethics department.
I was really glad to see this post. It needed to be said. Piracy is not going to stop. And honestly SL is a have full of copyright and trademark infringement. Designers of all calibers and individuals don't think twice about scanning a swatch of fabric or uploading a picture of a cartoon character. Honestly, its very sad that some people can complain about things being stolen and taken when they do it themselves.
Thanks for the post, Annyka. Is it really true that the number 1 classifed ad is from a pirate? That's completely insane. While I still believe there are several steps that content creators can take to prevent piracy, under no circumstances should LL accept payments from known pirates.
It is both sad and discouraging to see the theft running rampant in SL.
I certainly don't see LL doing anything about it in the future unless they are forced to, via court injunction or something along those lines. I simply see no motivation for them to get involved, which is truly disappointing.
As Annyka said, LL needs to remember that it's the individual businesses that are keeping SL going as the RL corporations make their mass exodus back to a world they understand.
The one bright spot that creators have is their customer base. The majority who appreciate the work that goes into making content in SL will buy from the original creator, and as Stephen said for the customer service and as a way to support those who do the work.
Part of the fight is to educate consumers. Will there be those who will buy the rip offs to save a couple of bucks? Absolutely! But we still need to reach those who are purchasing stolen property out of ignorance.
~Ari
Bonnie Arado or Marcelo Ferraris Real name is Marcelo Rodrigo Ferreira.
He have an bank account on
Banco Bradesco
Agencia: 2147
Conta Corrente: 21593-7
email: marceloferraris@rg.com.br
Telephone number: (55)(62) 8434-1109
He lives on Brazil
He use this back account to sell lindens.
Lets find him and make him pay for all stole skins and all the dirt lindens that de got
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