Benjamin Noble

That doesn't refer to avatars. "Fictitious defendant" is a term of art lawyers use for John Doe defendants (e.g. defendants who can't be identified by real names at the time the suit is filed). It's not meant pejoratively.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_defendants

Cindy Claveau

Holy crap, did you guys read that Google doc?

Kenzo: "Second Life is a Game on the Internet and they have methods to police this which I am sure your clients had taken and I would guess were rejected because there was no wrong doing." (Just as I predicted - first line of defense by thieves is "it's only a game".)

"I am sure some of your clients owe the IRS more then that in unclaimed income from second life and the expenses to appear in small claims court would most likely cost more then that. Its in all of our best interests to end this now and put it behind us"

Second line of defense: "They're cheaters too!"

Eata

Two things I learned in court:

1) Don't comment on anything you're not required to.
2) Only make the required comments with your lawyer present.

Squeedoo S

Oh hay guyz, watch me work my mad leet phonics skillz and totally dig an even deeper hole for myself. BOOYAH.

__________________
"Happiness never killed anyone, but you can die from being too uptight..." -- a song by Wai Lana (Ohgodiwanttohavethiswoman'sbabies... D: )

Joshua Nightshade

It's actually generally free to go to small claims court. Depending on where you live. I think in New York state it's free up to 2500.00 and like 150.00 if you're claiming more than that up to 5000.00.

I could be wrong though, but typically the costs of small claims court are negligible.

Aimee Weber

LOL What a little shit.

Though I sort of suspect the possibility of an audit is one of the things that dissuade content creators from making a stink about wrongs against them, opting instead to lay low. To prove one's potential damages from content theft they will have to provide their average sales in the past for the public record. That's not a comfortable thing to do if they haven't been declaring that income, plus the IRS is more than happy to look into potential tax evasion, even if tipped off by vengeful anonymous sources (indeed that's where they get most of their tips.)

Though I suspect the plaintiffs wouldn't even bother taking this to court if they haven't been doing things by the book. So these threats look more like assholerie on the part of this jackass.

CoyoteMomiji

Also known as "sit down and shut the fuck up".

Joshua Nightshade

I honestly don't believe this will get LL to take proactive-action.

I believe this will finally be proof to them that they don't need to, that when it really matters to someone they'll sue someone else, and that's that. I think this sort of thing will honestly have the net result of LL feeling it's even less of their responsibility.

However perhaps now that people see others getting sued, and see that there are ways to track down real identities, whether you're supplying fake information or not, and especially if those lawsuits are successful, as I'm sure they will be-- maybe this will be enough of a deterrent that LL won't have to get involved anymore.

Aimee Weber

I completely agree that this will set a precedent for LL to NOT get involved (nothing would make LL happier!) I suspect this case will be officially cited as the correct procedure for dealing with content theft forever after.

Cindy Claveau

That's assuming they don't see the 20-car freight train coming through the tunnel with the big "BAD PR" banner on the side.

One of my hopes is that word of this suit gets spread far and wide on the grid so that all the piddly little cheaters, thieves and exploiters GET THE FUCKING POINT.

I know I'm going to do my part spreading the word. Newbies need to know.

Joshua Nightshade

I can only derive a comment on this from my own involvement; Project Open Letter was disseminated pretty far as about as much bad PR as you can get, and they really had no reaction for it.

Benjamin Noble

My guess is what will eventually get their attention is somebody will name LL as a co-defendant in a suit like this on contributory infringement grounds. Failing to act on a properly formed DMCA takedown notice (which is alleged here) means they can lose DMCA's safe harbor for providers and be exposed to liability. The key is whether they knew about it and failed to act on it.

Section (c)3 here is the important one:

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/h...2----000-.html

And here's a quick rundown on contributory infringement in the context of software:

http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca5...QuestionID=268

Joshua Nightshade

This IS something they should be called on. They are ignoring DMCAs; I used to send out close to a hundred a week when I was dealing with freebie resellers and I watched as the ones that came back with a response became less and less.

Now whether it's because they aren't bothering or lack the manpower or what I dunno, but if they tout the DMCA as the best option to get rid of people abusing content creators yet don't actually follow it... what does that say?

Oneironaut Escher

Yah, mostly it says that they are just too overwhelmed. As others have said, I think this is mostly going to set a precedent that if, it really matters to someone, taking more indepth legal action is going to be about the only way to go, which is pretty much what LL would like to see happen.

In all of these discussions of LL's incompetencies, the big underlying question is, when faced with basically an insurmountable amount of cases to deal with, do you a) try and deal with all of them and end up dealing with hardly any of them appropriately or b) do you deal with the cases that seem the most pressing (ones where people actually pursue real world measures) only, in order to make sure those cases actually get the attention they deserve.

I think the latter is about the only choice LL can really make, which means the people that aren't interested, or can't, pursue more definitive rl routes, are screwed, but at least something approaching practical attention is being done. It's basically the route that web service providers currently take.

ETA: However, I do think the few people willing to pursue the rl justice will help the many who can't by making the average joe more wary of the possibility of being smacked in rl.

Joshua Nightshade

I would feel better about them taking the latter course if they actually bothered to say that's what they were doing.

Or actually stuck to it.

Instead you get no response from them on anything until legal action is involved, or varying action that doesn't follow any established guidelines or procedures simply because either no one is given these guidelines or no one follows up to ensure they're actually followed.

And if you complain about the activity of one Linden, well, you can't. There's no manager to escalate the issue to, or if there is, you can't get in touch with them because again, you get no responses.

So you get a series of haphazard, seemingly-irrational responses to the issues they do deal with, and no response at all to the ones they ignore, which usually are more legitimate than the ones they take care of. For example I used to share a sim with a casino owner who had 35 - 50 camping chairs. The sim was nearly always full, lagging to death, and most of the time myself or my customers couldn't get in. I took screenshots of all the pads, sent them to LL, AR'd him repeatedly. I even posted a thread on Linden Answers about it which Torley, for which Torley said the casino owner was violating the ToS and could be punished. Torley didn't actually do anything, but I digress. Anyway after a month of this I got pissed off and started crashing the sim on regular intervals to clear out the campers so I could actually utilize my store and parcel. I got in trouble. Now while I know I was also breaking the rules, if LL had just done something it wouldn't have been necessary. And I think punishing me but not removing his camping pads was retarded.

It really would've taken no effort at all for LL to pull these items and deal with this account when Stroker et al took the time to compile nearly a hundred images proving that Rase was abusing something.

Offloading the cost and time involved with tracking someone down in RL to sue them is just plainly unfair of LL, but it fits with them outsourcing pretty much everything about SL but the name.

Fade Languish

Perhaps they should revise their marketing which makes a big deal about IP if there's that little they can practically do about it. It creates false expectations.

Joshua Nightshade

Well said.

Although they have revised it considerably after they had to stop regurgitating the lie about owning land in the wake of the Bragg lawsuit.

Stroker Serpentine

Cindy, this suit is going to be in the New York Post tommorow.

Also, Joshua, you cannot file copyright/trademark infringement in small claims court (I wish) It is a Federal issue.

Oneironaut Escher

I think, and I hope, that LL is taking a stance of just becoming more directly communicative/honest with the residents. When I was first hired, I thought I had a grasp of what I was getting into, but as much as I had presumed, and as much as I can guesstimate now, the overwhelming, um, out-of-handedness of this undertaking (SL) was even beyond what I imagined.

Really, I think the stance LL needs to be taking now is a directly honest one: "Holy Crap! We were expecting this to be something big, but as, no one else has undertaken this before, even our expectations pale in comparison to the reality". I think one of the things that, ironically, has hurt LL, is, just how good they were at customer interraction and support in the beginning, and how much they'd idealistically like to continue to be so. Sincerely, indivualistically, each Linden is a super great person with a lot of passion about continuing SL's development toward something great. The unfortunate reality is it's just beyond what they can manage as a group. I know I harp on the "I used to be a Linden" thing, but, still, as a fervent supporter of SL and LL, it's one of the best things I can honestly point to to say that they are sincerely trying their best. I know it's idealistic, and possibly impossible at this point, but I think the best thing that could happen would be for LL to lay it all out there: "We sincerely love SL, and we're trying our best - this is just, in so many ways, beyond the scope of what even a company 10 times our size could be doing. We're doing the best with the resources we have, and we really want to work with the community to make the situation the best that it can be. We do really try our best to listen to what the community is saying and welcome your continued input. We promise that so far we've been doing everything we can to accomodate this wide range of opinions and will continue to do what we can to accommodate that in the future. Please let us know what we can do to continue to strive to do that."

I know that LL is Extremely appreciative of the efforts of Stroker and the others to take as much of this rule and government solidification on themselves as they are, as ultimately, the residents are the best people to suss out how all these things are going to work.

Cindy Claveau

Or (c) Hire more people to cope with the workload.

But hey, maybe that's too simple.

EDIT: I should expound on that even though my morning coffee isn't done, yet. I've long maintained that LL could handle much, if not most, of their enforcement load via technical solutions. By building features that allow each avatar to be autonomous regarding what we see, what can push us and what can 'harm' us, they could have dumped a ton of their AR load a long time ago. Adding push restrictions to land was a help, but not all land has push disabled. Most landowners now go "no build" to avoid prim griefing, and the result is that NO prims can be rezzed by anyone, even if they're not malicious. By muting visuals, they could have eliminated a slew of the ARs based on tree and prim encroachment on parcels - something I understand still takes up a lot of their time.

A more bulletproof permissions system should have been a priority for them 2 years ago, when it first jumped up and bit the whole grid. That was back when the grid wasn't even 1/8 of the size it is, now, but apparently it never occurred to them that there were still things out there which could break perms.

Had they done all that - and I'm not pretending that either of those options would be easy - they would have had a lot more time to worry about content theft and copyright infringements. They could possibly have had more time to think about the sim save/reset problem from the viewpoint of an exploiter. That's one thing Origin (UOL) and Verant (EQ) learned early... if there's a way to exploit code, someone will find it and use it. Every. Single. Time. But unlike LL, those two game companies took strong measures to punish dupe exploiters and fix the exploit quickly.

Stroker Serpentine

This JUST in...

"BOOTY AND THE GEEK"

An informative piece on the FRONT cover of the New York Post. Unfortunately, the online version does not include Thomas Simon's RL photo. (The print version does)

http://www.nypost.com/

Adam Zaius

Click the next image button -- photos there.

Oneironaut Escher

I think (c) is generally the first thing they've attempted, but unfortunately it just isn't practical, and that's what they've come to realize. They can never keep up with scaling in more employees, attempts to do so have failed miserably and lead to the 'trying to do it all and not being able to properly do any of it' conditions I've been mentioning.

That's why I think being more directly honest about the situation with the residents is their best current avenue. They're going to have to make it known that the very real situation is, personal attention to these situations isn't practically scalable.

I know other games manage their worlds and scale as needed, but IP conflict issues are fairly unique to SL as SL is about the only one that lets their customers retain those rights. These questions of IP and such in a virtual world are doubly tricky as what the rl rules/laws are and such are still being decided, making each case require that much more personal handling. Couple all of that with matters of different country's laws and jurisdiction and there really isn't much way LL or any centralized company could deal with it all. It's going to have to come down to the individuals.

Thank you for your post - very well thought for someone without their morning coffee

Polymorphous

Regardless of whether LL can step up, I think Stroker and the rest of the plaintiffs really rock!

__________________
-Polymorphous Projects in SL

Oneironaut Escher

Much agreed.

I mean. . .