Cristiano

In the course of several threads discussing various aspects of the severe content ripping problem in SL, the topic of the use of correct terminology has come up countless times. Some argue that it is copyright infringement only, not theft, and thus the word should not be use. Others say that it is a form of theft and should be called such. The term Copybotted is too narrow and not relevant to anyone outside of SL, and with all the other ripping tools out there now, a misnomer anyway. So what should it be called? Does it even matter?

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* slu stuff *

Aimee Weber

I find that semantics are the highest form of debate.




But then ... I guess it depends on what you mean by "debate."



And "semantics."

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Zii

How about piracy?
It's the copying and sharing of content that's been illegally ripped, I don't see it to be any different to pirating games, movies, music etc.

Cindy Claveau

(d) All of the above.

And only one word really matters: "It's wrong."

Ok, 2 words

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Siggy

I'm fine with it being brought up for debate to further the purposes of education - because with that comes the knowledge of what actually can and can't be done, and what folks can realistically expect from an end result. (that is that there is a difference in what you can expect legally between theft and copyright infingement)

When it railroads the discussion to the point where what's going on isn't discussed, but the endless quarrels over what it is and what it should be called, thats when I facepalm and exit stage right.

Or Left.

Depends on what side I'm dressed to on the particular day.

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And as it was in the beginning, so too shall it be in the end. That bullshit is bullshit, it just goes by different names.

Kyllie Wylie

Piracy seems popular...

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Desmond Shang

Words are important. Words frame the debate, inject paradigms and force conclusions.

For instance, consider a black person and a white person married by the justice of the peace today.

One way to relate what happened: "Two people got married today."

Another way that it might be stated, by a person with an agenda: "Two people committed an act of miscegnation, without the explicit sanction of God."


So you could end up arguing about the definition of miscegnation and religion all day, or you could just raise the BS flag and see agendas for what they are.

Sometimes, yes, it's important to just summarily dismiss a bunch of baloney. I can see how there's a difference, insofar as copying stuff isn't the same as a mugging in the park. But focusing on the technical differences of the crime, or worse yet painting it as some kind of potentially positive marketing thing under specific circumstances, is total bull.

Look at a guy like Stallman, who has such strong preferences for certain terms. Arguing that some terms bias the discussion. Well guess what, he's guilty of biasing the discussion too. Any reasonable person can stand back and see the fight for hearts and minds, and everyone with a dog in this race wants to see their 'side' win.

Richard Stallman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Not much is set in stone here, especially the word 'copyright' which seems to change its definition periodically and is likely to change again, the rate things are going. Pretending these issues are settled and well defined seems to be the biggest fallacy of all.

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Arilynn

Good question, Cristiano. And I'm glad to see it posed here instead of interrupting topics in other threads.

Words matter. They frame the debate and can influence the reader's perception. Every word has a denotation and a connotation, and what follows is my view of the words involved (I'm adding this so I don't have write "IMO" over and over).

"Copyright infringement" is bloodless. To me, it doesn't bring to the forefront the creator's losses. It seems to suggest something akin to trespass, a crime that doesn't involve taking anything tangible from the victim and creates no permanent harm. "IP theft" is more visceral, with the idea of something stolen in the forefront. It also raises emotional warning bells: While we may not want to be infringed upon, none of us sure as hell was to be stolen from. And the stigma seems different: I can't picture someone running down a dark alley as an anguished victim screams "Infringer! Infringer". But cries of "Theif! Theif!" conjure up such an image.

As for "illegal use" or similar terms, I think this term is vague. "Use" could be strictly personal and private, like hanging an image on one's bedroom wall. Or it could be for profit, such as reselling that image as my own over and over again. Both may qualify as "illegal use", but they are very different actions.

I do think that "theft" is not inapplicable here. "Theft" has been applied in other contexts that do not involve tangible goods, such as identity theft or theft of services. With these crimes, it is not necessary for the illegal act to deprive the owner of the item. Similarly, I think "IP theft" may be accurate even though the creator is not deprived of the original work. But when it is applied to highly limited, personal use, "theft", while perhaps accurate, seems to overstate the crime at the risk of diluting the word.

Some of this feels a bit like spin from the competing interests, with "theft" on one side and "infringement" etc. on the other. All of it seems wrapped up in issues of both law and morals, both of which make me tired. So time to -->

Ann Otoole

Yea sure use the word "Piracy". Now go look at what the penalties are for "Piracy". Might decide it is not the correct word after all.

The requisite wikiness:
Although it would be great folly to fancy all those copybotters as fancily clad daggers in teeth blunderbuss and cutlass wielding marauders it simply isn't the case. Besides I am willing to bet the death penalty still applies in many countries.

Counterfeiting may be closer but my bet is on there is no description for the activity yet other than something related to data theft (except you already had access to the data)

An unlicensed copy and when published to be sold constituting copyright infringement is likely the best descriptor.

The ship is dead in the water unless Linden Lab rewrites the TOS to forbid network access by unauthorized viewers. The coders at LL refuse to allow this because they know their buddies would instantly become felons so you can forget about LL ever getting serious about it. I.e.; Linden Lab formally supports viewers coded for the express purpose of taking unauthorized copies.

My observations over time indicate any attempt to enforce IP rights results in increased retaliation by way of making it more difficult to enforce IP rights. For instance on xstreet LL no longer allows residents to report trademark infringements after LL suggested they were going to take a stand on it resulting in an increase in the use of "inspired by" preceding the infringing mark. And the Lindens looked so cute in their infringement avatars from Hellraiser and casper too.

The paddle wheel goes backwards faster when you tries to sail her right mateys.

Good luck. Ain't a damn thing gonna change no matter how much people scream until the entire technical staff at LL is replaced since they run the company. Not Klingdon. This much was proven last week. And I am not calling for such action. Just stating that the technical people own and manage Linden Lab and the executives are just show ponies powerless to do anything about what is going on. Right, wrong, indifferent that is the way it is. Now if LL were managed like your normal IT department how far along would SL be? Still 2004?

The more I read about it the more it actually looks like privateering.

Charles_D

But where are the unwashed hoodlums wielding scimitars in all of that?

REAL piracy damn well removes the original. And sinks the bloody boat after.

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Ann Otoole

Remainder available at http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/di...file=484-502.9

Yes buried within that cleverly written penal code (particularly in section 502) is the answer you seek. It is theft. And the penal code is from the USA State of California and thus applies no matter how strenuously you object and sling glasses of EFF & anti RIAA koolaid at it. You were lied to. Sorry. Linden Lab probably needs a better legal team and better HR team PDQ.

Innula Zenovka

In the UK we have a couple of specific offences; depending on the exact circumstances, copybotting is almost certainly an offence under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 (maximum penalty, 1 year in prison or unlimited fine, or both, as I recall) or the Trade Marks Act 1994 (10 years and/or unlimited fine) or both.

Desmond Shang

Hm. Well that would certainly apply to Californians, or others acting in California... I wonder how similarly phrased it is across the United States and the rest of the western world.

The internet is a funny thing, too... as crazy as it sounds, if you are in one country, a blog is hosted in another and the blog writer in yet another, and there's a crime... there are rules about 'where' various crimes actually take place, and whose laws apply. It's really sticky, and lots of stupidity comes into play.

Ann Otoole

Not really. This is why IP mask blocking was invented. If Godaddy can figure out how to deal with miscreant infested geographical regions then so can LL.

Oh wait everyone is supposed to be all happy hah hah and all dance around the bonfire singing tra la la.

"Please don't be bad and hack the crap out of USA company systems!"

Right. Good dope they smoke in San Francisco.

Sonja Aeghin

'Copybotting' might be too narrow to some, but to me it has always implied a particular brand of digital piracy/copyright infringement, though it has become the umbrella term for content theft in general.

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Hypatia Callisto

When I suggested the word "counterfeit" all the same laws apply about copyright, trademark, and patent rights *in the real world*. The situation is exactly the same.

Counterfeiting is the act of making an illegal copy, and that's the closest term to the activity in SL you are going to find.

Theft also still applies

For example, one of those real life activist groups against the activity of counterfeiting.

Alliance Against IP Theft

look familiar? Um, yeah.

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Hypatia Callisto

Lets break this list down in a way that applies to SL:

When something goes wrong with that SexGen bed you bought off the fleamarket, ringing up Stroker is not guaranteed to get you service on the item. He was a nice guy for taking care of customers of his counterfeited products, but he is under no obligation to do that.

Let's examine this one closely because it has horrific implications on the microtransactions system.

When someone sells items for L$ that are counterfeit, they are doing a few things.

Yes, they are possibly depriving Stroker of a sale. However... it gets worse.

They are contributing to a surplus of available goods, which drives overall prices down. This helps cause *deflation*. (this is even more an issue when the items are given away for free)

The second whammy is that when they cash out of Second Life, they are destroying L$, and as most of their customers are not the ones who are interested in buying full price, these people probably would have never bought the item otherwise. Then you really start the deflation.

And we are having a deflation going on in the L$. LL has been supporting that situation by "printing" more currency, which they do profit from.

The third whammy is that competitive products in lower price ranges are pushed out of the market because the people who would have ordinarily bought their merchandise have flocked to the more expensive goods which are now competing at their price point.

So what do we have?

Money made by counterfeiters that would have ordinarily gone to legitimate business, not just Stroker but also smaller businesses. While Stroker may benefit from these sales to some degree, the smaller businesses do not enjoy the level of brand recognition that Stroker has and are pushed out entirely.

These are the same issues that exist in SL. Also another impact: as copying of digital data is trivial, these people are reducing the level of information that would be ordinarily in the society. New innovations on products never created because nobody had a profit incentive to do so. This even impacts Second Life as a whole, when the diversity and level of volume in trade goes down over time and LL makes less money from land rental and skimming of L$ to $$ transactions.

Gigs

"Intellectual property" is a bullshit phrase as well, designed to make people think that copyright is on the same level as property rights, which it demonstrably is not.

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Gigs

But it's not. I don't want to see people take other people's creations and sell them! My interest in the debate is not "pro-copying everything regardless of the creator's granted license".

My interest in the debate is to avoid washing away all the subtleties of copyright, fair use, public domain, free speech, etc with emotional and loaded terms that imply some absolute right of creators that never has existed.

Hypatia Callisto

I'm going to add...

Supply Linden won't be printing money for sale forever to allieviate the destruction of the L$ from counterfeiting. It's a bandaid. It's not sustainable for anyone, not even LL, and history has proven it in Real Life. When people finally flock to an alternative, I have a bad feeling of a network effect happening which will be like this.


8 weeks to set up the dominos, 2 hours for them to tumble. This is about right. There is a long build up and seemingly "stable" period before a network effect causes a domino collapse.

And what sets off the dominos is usually not one of the dominos. It's something that hit a single domino from outside the system. Be it government, competitors, any combination thereof or something we can't imagine yet. It will not be something inside SL that sets off the dominos that are all prepared to fall, yet seemingly deceptively at equilibrium at the moment.

It takes a while for the dominos to fall, but when they fall... watch out.

Ann Otoole

You should demonstrate your cause by making sure 100% of all work you do is published, free, and in the public domain for all to use as they see fit including to profit from with no compensation or attribution due you.

After you do that I would love to see you back up your position with facts. After all you said "demonstrably" and it looks like there is a wealth of evidence out there that proves you wrong. All it takes is a law and you must obey whether you agree or not.

Specifically this law spells it out for you: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/di...file=484-502.9

Hypatia Callisto

Gigs never gets a point.

It totally describes what people generally call it, regardless of what Gigs wants to call it.

but I am in agreement that intangible property is not the same thing. However, the economics governing copying intangibles like money and even the copying of intangibles involved in the production of products in real life is exactly the same thing.

I can manufacture my whole sim in plastic if I so wanted if this makes Gigs happy

Gigs

You should learn to read. I'm not against copyright.

Gigs

Hyperinflation of the Linden Dollar has been predicted for a while, mostly by Austrian types like myself.

As near as I can tell, the constant influx of new people is creating an atypical demand for the L$ which is different from most standard economic models.

I would say the closest real life analogy would be:
* a small island
* that relied nearly exclusively on tourist income
* had its own currency
* merchants that basically accepted no other currency
* automatically opened bank accounts for tourists

It seems that the stagnant L$ sitting around in inactive accounts is a major factor.

Anyway I'm not sure what this has to do with copyright... you are really pushing a metaphor too far here, but it is an interesting discussion in its own right.

Hypatia Callisto

Well, to be fair, I used the word "counterfeiting" which isn't the same word nor does it mean the same thing. So... your tangent would be more applicable to my discussion