Quote:
Originally Posted by Sobriquet Kryakutnoy  I don't understand why people immediately expect LL to take responsibility in handling IP cases.
Don't get me wrong, I am by no means an apologist for Linden Lab. But they only provide the platform for content creation. They can be reasonably expected to provide tools which assist in defense of your creations against blatant copying, but it seems to me like violation of resident-imposed terms of use on their creations and Digital Millennium Copyright takedowns are a process to be handled though the government's judicial system if one expects to see results.
Sure, it's arguably even more painful to deal with the government than with LL, but I don't see how it can be made the responsibility of anyone other than the creator to proactively defend their intellectual property.
If a DMCA takedown is ignored, that is ammunition for further legal action, where information will be officially subpoenaed from Linden Lab regarding the account holder in violation of the takedown, whose ass is then dragged to court.
I guess it's more convenient to just say "Oh, LL is refusing to ban this person after I have taken the initial, basic steps in fighting them. This is all their fault." though.
</ranting>
I'm off to hide in my corner, again! |
In the long history of
SL, LL has never once flatly and resolutely weighed in and said "Stop doing this. It's unacceptable." While you have a point, and I have said this as well, that if they ignore the DMCA they open themselves up to lawsuit, most people who do not make a lot of money in
SL and create content as a hobby don't have the finances and resources to sue LL. Not to mention filing a DMCA on their ISP would shut down at least half of
SL depending on what ISP you target, which is something people are reasonably hesitant to do.
Given that for so many years the promotional materials LL provided championed this atmosphere of "HEY LOOK! They MADE all this!" some of us expect a little bit more respect from LL on this. Willingness to follow through on the DMCA. Clearly saying that content theft is unacceptable. To date they have not done this, at best you can get a handful of wishy-washy Lindens almost complaining, others do not care. Given that we built
SL, we made it popular, most of us are hobbyists and not in it to make money, but to share creativity and tools with others, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that LL be more proactive in taking care of the content creators first.