Second Life tool suspended, author blames Linden Lab's DMCA procedures, mentor piracy
by Tateru Nino 
Mar 6th 2008 at 5:45PM
Filed under: Business models, News items, Second Life, Legal, Virtual worlds
Cel Edman (aka Elout de Kok outside of Second Life) has withdrawn his popular, and free displacement map creation tool Sculptypaint for several days citing piracy of the packs of textures that he sells as the root cause, as well as slow and half-hearted response to DMCA notices by Linden Lab.
While Edman doesn't name specific names of those stealing the texture packs that he sells to fund development and distribution of the popular tool, he does finger one specific group for distributing his commercial products, a group called the Mental Mentors.
Second Life Mentors are volunteers who assist both old and new Second Life users, and people being people the group has been a fairly mixed bag. The Mental Mentors was a group started by Jayjay Talamasca back in 2006, and was largely formed in response to the anarchic state of the Second Life mentor group chat rules (essentially there weren't any rules, but there was a lot of angry shouting at anyone who tried to use it).
The Mental Mentors group provided a group chat environment that was considerably more relaxed (if a little spam-prone), however since it's inception the group's laissez-faire approach has attracted more than 800 users and a few bad eggs besides.
Right now, the Mental Mentors are apparently distributing Edman's commercial work both among themselves as a part of a Mentor's "starter pack" which is then distributed to, well... everyone.
"I released my latest SFT-pack around 14 februari 2008," says Edman, "Only a few days later, this pack I created was repackaged, my copyright notices and TOS removed, (all the sculpties clearly state not for individual resell/repackage). The whole pack was distributed as a freebie pack to about 800+ mentors in SL, to use and to give away 'to help the newbies'."
Edman's battling others who are selling his commercial work as well. He says that Linden Lab's most rapid response to DMCA notices raised appears to be 8 weeks, and that the result seems to be minimum-effort. Even multiple, actioned DMCA notices leave the perpetrator selling the stolen product the next day (and apparently profiting well enough on stolen goods to be starting his own island).
So, ultimately Edman's temporarily withdrawn his product, because he feels he has to do something - DMCA notices filed through Linden Lab have been ineffective and only gotten him hate-mail in response from those he's filed them against.
It will be interesting to see what happens next. Edman's tool is the most widely used tool for the creation of sculpt/displacement textures in Second Life, and it would be quite a blow for development to cease.
[Thanks to Ordinal Malaprop for the tip]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
TigroSpottystripes Katsu said on 7:04PM 3-06-2008
it sucks to have people disrespect you and such, but i kinda dislike this taking a gift to the community as hostage reaction of his (though i must admit I have no idea of what would be a better path of action to suggest him in this case :/
(on a (half)side-note, if his app was so popular among the community, there will probably be people distributing the lst released version, and if it starts to be missed too much people will probably create something similar)
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Jane said on 8:19PM 3-06-2008
One controls (hopefully) one's product by setting permissions. If this is a full perm item, the creator has ceded control IMO.
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Tateru Nino said on 8:21PM 3-06-2008
It's my understanding that if the textures weren't copyable and transferable, they wouldn't be able to be sold for the purpose for which they were intended. A limitation of the permissions system.
Jane said on 10:09PM 3-06-2008
I agree...but as a technically-challenged SL user, I wouldn't have a clue how to get around those permissions. And if they were applied, and if someone got around them, then of course that is actionable.
However, an accusation (or indeed, a defense) on blogs, twitter etc are not the way to sort this. IP theft is a serious issue both in SL and RL, and right now it's playing out like Grade Nine schoolyard stuff instead of the very real offense that it is purported to be. And this sort of unsubstantiated accusation, smearing, defense, counter-accusations etc diminish the very real complaints that SL designers have, in my opinion.
Designers may not like the LL process, but quite seriously, has it been tested in a court yet? I will bet that LL can claim it has taken reasonable precautions and that will stand up. However, court is where IP theft cases should be taken....and in this case the guilty, if found to be so, should be held accountable, not 800 members of a private group, or indeed the SL Mentor program.
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Tateru Nino said on 10:19PM 3-06-2008
Probably there's only a single person who is knowingly accountable for violating the rights and ripping out the licensing and copyright notices and distributing it to others. Everyone else probably got it and redistributed it in good faith, assured that the material was freebies.
Finding out who that one person might have been - that's a lot harder.
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TigroSpottystripes Katsu said on 2:02AM 3-07-2008
just to make it clear in case someone is still not aware of this
a texture must be full perm to to allow people that are not the uploader to apply them to prims (either as regular textures or as a sculpty map)
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Nock Forager said on 3:44AM 3-07-2008
It's another case sample of stolen use of "Another Skin". Some people even look at docments such as BSD license, GPL, etc...
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Stoni Innis said on 4:29PM 3-07-2008
The Mental Mentor member who distributed the item did so as part of a routine practice. He routinely buys items that are Full Perm and then shares them with the group so we may share them with New Residents. This was a mistake. He has advised other Mental Mentors to delete the item from their inventory. I have done so.
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Krystalle Voecks said on 12:06PM 3-13-2008
Maybe this is just an outsider's POV, but I have to ask.
If you have someone who is a mentor -- a position, one would assume, occupied by those who are teaching newcomers to SL what is and is not acceptable -- and they are breaking not only laws, but socially-accepted normal guidelines in SL...
Why is this person a mentor?
D. Lok said on 5:54PM 3-07-2008
The mentor who did this as part of his "apology" wrote this:
"AS far as I am concerned, I have done nothing wrong, full perms means just that, a notecard doesnt mean jack, it is simply the creators wishes, he elects to sell full perm things. anyway."
Shocking from anyone who has been in second life for any time-
worse coming from a mentor
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Jay said on 3:54AM 3-08-2008
That Mentor should be Abuse Reported for content theft. What was his name?
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Shannon Carroll said on 9:37AM 3-26-2008
You know... the sad fact is, that textures sold in second life are NOT all that useful to builders if they do not come with full permissions, so Cel Edman didn't have much of an option if he wants his sculpt maps to actually be USEFUL to the purchasers. This is a flaw in the permissions system, in my opinion.
The big thing that bothers me in this whole situation is that, this was sent out to the Mental Mentors group by *a* member, but it seems that *all* members are being painted in a negative light by some folks. I'm a member of MM, and I'm glad to be. There are a lot of wonderful members of MM, let me tell ya. ;) You won't ever find me or the vast majority of the MMs redistributing stuff we aren't specifically allowed to.
I've also been a buyer of Cel Edman's sculpt maps in SL - and as I already said, I would not and have not ever distributed them through any group whatsoever. I know I, and quite a few more outspoken members of Mental Mentors, have also chosen NOT to make use of the pack (and I never saw the SFT pack, but rather the ceramics pack, but that doesn't mean I didn't MISS something.)
Anyway, my point is just this: if you feel that one member of a group is in the wrong, by all means, speak up! Let that person know, let the person(s) they have wronged know, BUT kindly refrain from painting all members with the same brush, in the same light.
Just my 2 cents.
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