Gigs

For the record, I do like the phrase "Counterfeit Content" as a name for this stuff.

It does capture the essence of the activity in a way that doesn't imply that copyright or trademark is an absolute right, while still implying that the creator is being deprived of some level of rightful income. It can also encompass both copyright or trademark infringement, just as this activity might.

So anyway, yeah I do like that phrase for it.

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"It is the paramount duty of governments and of politicians to secure the wellbeing of the community under the case in the present, and not to run risks overmuch for the future" - JM Keynes

Hypatia Callisto

I don't follow any one particular school, though my affinities are closer to Austrian and Chicago types. I would label myself a pragmatist and a moderate sceptic if I were to use "modern words", and I am uninterested in being dogmatic about anything.

Probably why my avatar is a cat...

There are also huge amounts of L$ held by currency speculators. If that ever gets dumped...

Regarding hyperinflation, you know the issue with the Austrian and Chicago systems is that they ignore the dominos, right? It takes little heed of population. Hyperinflation is indeed *inevitable* in my opinion, if the dominos fall. (the people leave for some reason)

But it's not going to happen unless the dominos fall. But I am saying that it is inevitable with this situation that something will cause the dominos to fall because we have an extremely fragile state right now, economically.

For internet communities, population is far more dynamic than in standard economic models. Unfortunately this is one area I have major issues with most economic models, that it tends to assume a Gaussian curve for population dynamics. Not because its true, but because its easy... and its certainly completely untrue much of the time.

But if you were to compare something on this level in real life, you could think of the economic impacts of mass migrations, impacts of war on population and how it restructures the whole system towards innovation and employment in the defence industry and its inevitable collapse when moving towards a peacetime condition, and also how disease can cause devastating collapses of working age population.

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"To begin with," said the Cat, "a dog's not mad. You grant that?"

"I suppose so," said Alice.

"Well, then," the Cat went on, "you see, a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad."

"I call it purring, not growling," said Alice.

"Call it what you like," said the Cat.

Chantal

Counterfeiting seems good to me but not wide enough. It's generally asumed to be making an exact copy, although there is no universally accepted definition of it (as usual).

But on SL, it's not just people making 'exact copies' of something - it's using stolen items (scripts, textures) to make things of their own.

Terminology is a bugger. No states or countries can agree on what to call crimes or violations of laws or misconduct or misdemeanour anyway. Any term you use will be debated endlessly.

For info, counterfeiting is a capital offence in China and in other countries it's a relatively minor 'misdemeanour'.

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Cristiano

That word piracy is tricky too - just ask ships travelling near Somalia:

Why Somali piracy is booming - by former hostage victim - Telegraph

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WADE1 Jya

"Unlicensed copying" covers it in pretty specific terms i think. Same as you can't legally copy certain sheet music or books. Serious copyright violation.

I always thought "piracy" is kind of a misnomer, makes it sounds more exciting than it really is.... and no connection with real pirates! I mean where's all the swashbuckling, the excitement & adventure of old? Modern "piracy" is too boring to be linked to pirates in name.

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Hypatia Callisto

"Unlicensed copying" is synonymous with counterfeiting, especially if its *distributed* as the authentic thing or as a cheap/free knockoff.

Some people call genocide, "ethnic cleansing", too.

While they both describe the same thing, can you detect what is different here?

Kyllie Wylie

I do agree, but thats the trouble with english as well, you people take one word and give it multiple meanings, often changing over the years, and conversly often use mutilple words to mean one thing.

Just look at the word Computer, in the 1920's it ment a person who sat at a desk and used a adding machine:



I certainly dont think if you told someone in 2009 that you had a computer at home they would think you had 20 people in your basement with adding machines at the ready. Just as for most of the world, if you said you were a pirate in 2009 they would not think you dressed up like Johnny Depp and swung a cutlas.

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Hypatia Callisto

I'm also going to explain what is different about unlicensed copying, in the music industry.

Not all "unlicensed copying" is counterfeiting. Streaming of music is not counterfeiting for example. While it might be an "unlicensed transmission", it is not counterfeiting.

And this is where I am going to employ some ideas that are coming out of Larry Lessig, because I think in this aspect he's right. We have to strike a balance between cultural use of art. While I mostly don't agree with him... I do agree that people who are just participating in culture are not "counterfeiting". Unless they are sitting on the street corner mass selling or giving away copied CDs, they are not counterfeiting.

Counterfeiting has a narrow range of interpretation, and I am interested in curtailing counterfeiting in precisely the ways that damage the economic system in SL. I am fully cognisant of the fact that there will always be some personal use copying and transfer going on.

But what I see is an issue that arises when people can't easily make personal use of art items in a legitimate way, combined with a lethal addition of being able to profit from the copying. This is due largely to not innovating the basic product of Second Life enough.

Some SL examples.

People are not able to easily make changes to their skins, for example, so they rip the skins to add tattoos to their faces and bodies.

People are not able to easily export/import things like shape meshes or builds in Second Life to import to a 3d program to further modify them, so they resort to ripping the things out of the viewer. (ETA: opensourcing the client has been both a massive help and a bane with easy copying regardless of perms in this area)

The texture pipeline for a long time ran over UDP and was unreliable, so the sim and client was sending everyone each individual texture on an avatar, so we didn't get additional layers for the av, and this facilitated trivial copying of clothing assets with copybot and rogue clients and even a nude patch for SL. Not to mention the fact that the additional texture download is a drag for simulators having to send them all in crowded events, which inhibited their ability to scale... and impacted another bug that SL sims had with caching to harddisk because it would run out of memory.

Yeah... none of us can fix these things, only LL can.

Ciaran Laval

Language evolves, the words aren't that important. I made a tongue in cheek comment about "Software Piracy" in another thread, but by no stretch of the imagination is what was originally considered piracy in any way similar to piracy in the form of copying software or films, yet people understand what both sorts of piracy are.

They can call it "Banana splits" for all I care, as long as I know what they're talking about, then the phrase works.

Meat Popsicle

Can you please change the picture on your profile thing - it is freaking me out - you are using a pic of a RL friend as your thumbnail./!

Kyllie Wylie

oww Banana Splits......




Ummm..errr.... what were we talking about again?

Hypatia Callisto

That reminds me of a funny Richard Feynman interview that ranks among my favorites.

and the funny part is I think he got the name wrong again here, too. But I bet he would be able to recognise the bird.

Might have been one of these.



It's a hermit thrush but who cares really if you can recognise it and understand what the bird is?

MoxZ Mokeev

Plagerism. The bastard son of theft.

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Wipe your mouth, there's still a tiny bit of bullshit around your lips.

Tyche Shepherd

Plagerism, The bastard son of theft.

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Charles_D

No, you'd dress in military surplus Chinese uniforms and carry an AK.

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"Werewolf, n. A wolf that was once, or is sometimes, a man. All werewolves are
of evil disposition, having assumed a bestial form to gratify a beastial appetite,
but some, transformed by sorcery, are as humane and is consistent with an acquired
taste for human flesh."
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

Hypatia Callisto

Plagiarism is the brother of Counterfeit. But alas, even "identical" twins are not exactly the same, this goes for plagiarism.

Nobody accuses someone of plagiarism if they copy a Prada purse and resell it for 30 bucks down at the wharfs.

Argent Stonecutter

Unless people are actually boarding ships at sea and pillaging them, the term "piracy" is probably going to cause as many problems as theft, copybotting, or distimming.

Free Xue

Start fresh, call it caflimmaging, define it, and no more confusion. So...

Stop caflimmaging my Second Life stuff, you dirty slagnorfler!















Should probably define slagnorfler, as well..

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1 User Threw Up a Little In Their Mouth: Free Xue

Argent Stonecutter

Supply Linden is not printing money to prop up the L$, Supply Linden is printing money to weaken the L$.

Argent Stonecutter

Finally, here you are. At the delcot of tondam, where doshes deave. But the doshery lutt is crenned with glauds.

Glauds! How rorm it would be to pell back to the bewl and distunk them, distunk the whole delcot, let the drokes discren them.

But you are the gostak. The gostak distims the doshes. And no glaud will vorl them from you.

Hypatia Callisto

While I agree that's what it's doing, do you really believe LL knows what they are doing?

I think they are trying to maintain a level price of the L$, even if its the completely wrong way to do it.

Loads of L$ is sitting stagnant in the accounts of currency speculators and land barons. If we see a slide of that money get sold all at once, we're fsked.

Argent Stonecutter

The sign explains a lot of things about COBOL.

COMPUTING DIVISION.
COMPUTING SECTION.
BEGIN.
MOVE CORRESPONDING ERNEST-YOUNG-MEN AND ERNEST-YOUNG-WOMEN TO THEIR-SEPARATE-DESKS.
PERFORM STAND-ROUND-LOOKING-STERN BEFORE PROCEEDING TO PHOTOGRAPH-SESSION.
END.
END PROGRAM.

But, seriously, we don't have that kind of computer any more... but we do have real pirates, and the real French navy.

Argent Stonecutter

That's crazy talk, I tell you!

Hypatia Callisto

to move into the tangent of how printing money weakens the L$:

A lot of money is getting swept out of the system via classified ads and fees inside Second Life. These are the sinks that act as a speedbump for people not abusing resources on the network, etc.

There has been a fall in premium accounts and the amount of stipend has been reduced, so now LL isn't printing as much money to cover the sinks. Premium accounts by virtue of paying a subscription, were paying for their lindens that were getting printed as part of the membership.

Some refer to this as the "velocity of money" but all you need to keep in mind is that more money is leaving the game than entering it, so LL is printing money to maintain liquidity. However, another problem is that money is also stagnating, as well as money not being at a sufficient level.

So we have two problems, and LL is reacting by printing more money to try to maintain currency flow. This is in a word, bad. Those who have large amounts of L$ aren't encouraged to actually trade it, they let it sit.

So now we have deflation due to two reasons, not one, and LL has to print more money to make up for the fact that there's not enough money flowing in the system to provide a stable medium of exchange.

A stable L$ makes it easier for merchants and land barons to price in L$, which due to the design of the system is the only currency people use inworld.

Now, in a situation of hyperinflation, which generally follows a period of deflation, can you imagine yourself as a merchant having your money devalue literally by the minute?

It can happen. It has happened, and I worry about it happening here.

Kyllie Wylie