Linden Lab rounds up and ejects a bunch of copyright infringers
by Tateru Nino 
Oct 5th 2009 at 11:00AM
Filed under: News items, Opinion, Second Life, Virtual worlds
Now, we must admit that we find this one both amusing and appropriate. In short, Linden Lab has sent 50 or more Second Life users who were using the after-market NeilLife viewer on the spank-bus to ban-town. Not just for using the viewer, but for copying content that they shouldn't ought to have.
What's clever is how Linden Lab caught and detected them.
Now, obviously assets get transferred to viewers from the servers. That's the whole point of the server/viewer relationship. The servers tell the viewer what assets are around, and the viewer prioritizes and fetches the assets that it is interested in.
Not every asset is necessarily in the vicinity of the viewer (eg: profile pictures and some other things), but the ideal conformant viewer asks only for what it is supposed to get, and doesn't then immediately replicate in-world copies of it, or whatever, in ways that infringe on the rights of others.
In any case, it seems there was this particular asset that many users with... let's call them non-conformant viewers were grabbing and replicating. As we understand it, the Lab slipped the asset out from under the UUID, and replaced it with something (that we presume was quite similar) that called up the Lab and let them know who the naughty person who copied it was.
The NeilLife viewer creator (if 'creator' is the appropriate word as it was just another after-market viewer with some exploits added) and quite some tens of the users of that viewer had their accounts banned pretty much outright. Not because they were using a non-conformant viewer, but because they were using it to infringe (and apparently doing it pretty darn stupidly at that).
As a bonus, there would now be a documentation trail supporting US Federal criminal charges should the Lab find that any of the banned users are overly vexing or troublesome.
Well-played, Linden Lab. We – along with the vast majority of your users and customers – are rather looking forward to hearing about more actions like this.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Phoenix Psaltery said on 11:55AM 10-05-2009
About f@$^ing time.
P2
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Tateru Nino said on 12:11PM 10-05-2009
It's possible there have been other such actions. While the Lab's failures are pretty public, it seems to be quite secretive about genuine successes.
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Maggie Darwin said on 12:24PM 10-05-2009
Well, they might feel that crowing about successes might compromise their methods.
Tateru Nino said on 12:33PM 10-05-2009
I'm not sure that would be the case in practice. The notion that any given asset could be 'booby-trapped' to tip off the Lab about infringers seems to me to be a powerful deterrent.
Ciaran Laval said on 12:16PM 10-05-2009
Fabulous news and well done to Soft and those at Linden Lab who were behind this move.
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Morgan Northmead said on 1:16PM 10-05-2009
Is there a legal way to move purchased, transferable content from the Second Life grid to another grid such as open Life? I dont want to violate any intellectual property, I just want to move content to a different venue.
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Tateru Nino said on 1:22PM 10-05-2009
The creator could provide what's necessary, but regardless of permissions, they would still have to authorize it for it to be lawful. Regardless of the permissions set, a creator has not necessarily given consent for content to be duplicated beyond SL.
Lewis Luminos said on 5:21AM 10-06-2009
About effing time. I hope it's a sign of LL being more pro-active on this issue and it's not just a one-off occurrence.
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HoneyBear Lilliehook said on 2:29PM 10-05-2009
This is fabulous news! I hope LL stays aggressive on this activity...it's long overdue.
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Cindy Claveau said on 11:58AM 10-07-2009
Tateru said: "It's possible there have been other such actions. While the Lab's failures are pretty public, it seems to be quite secretive about genuine successes."
Very true, and not much different from other such stings in other online worlds. But in this case I think they've finally come to realize that public perception was starting to get away from them. With the arrival of Neillife, Cryolife, Thuglyfe and other such theft tools their best approach was to let everyone know that they're not nearly as powerless as it would seem.
Deterrence as a strategy is efficient and effective. And that's what this is more than anything else.
See also: http://nexisonline.wordpress.com/2009/10/04/re-neillife/
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pills said on 2:36PM 10-05-2009
"Content creators" are the devil
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Valradica Vale said on 3:47PM 10-05-2009
I am thankful for LL efforts in this area. I have products where I have spent hours perfecting scripts and animations that I am NOT willing to give away and its nice to know that there is action being taken where most of us are quite powerless.
As to pills comment (11) about "Content Creators" being the devil: if you really think that, pills, go ahead into Second life and don't use any of the Devil's products and see how fun that would be on your little sleezy island with nothing on it but dirt and water. But remember, if you make your own content to make it interesting, you will then be joining the ranks of the devil's "content creators".
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Ari Blackthorne said on 6:18PM 10-05-2009
Have also found a way to actually DETECT the Neillife viewer in world even if no abuse is being made. Now I am of the mind that the viewer itself is not evil, the abuse of it is evil (yes, I've used it, am familiar with it so I could write about it at my blog).
I am working with a creator now about how we can make the tool that actually detects the viewer anywhere in the sim. Unfortunately, a tool such as this could be abused (A.R. a person with the viewer... which unless they are abusing it is really kinda wrong I think).
But the big fear as expressed through the SLogosphere is how Cryolife can be detected, but Neillife can't. Actually... it *can*.
Intend to write about it tomorrow with a bit more information after I complete some more tests tonight.
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Abriael said on 9:10PM 10-05-2009
personally i think there's absolutely no reason to use viewers as neilife or cryolife if not for stealing. Other viewers like emerald are MUCH better for any legit use.
Melissa Yeuxdoux said on 8:09PM 10-05-2009
It will be interesting to see the next step in the arms race.
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Jay said on 9:43PM 10-05-2009
As I mentioned a few weeks back, the Lab *do* have technological means to detect copyright violation.
Interesting that this only came out after Stroker started proceedings to get a class action listing. Now the lab can say "But we do try, look at this, 50 people ban hammered".
Fine by me, as long as they keep it up. The lab cannot stop here, they need to keep finding and banning.
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Tateru Nino said on 9:47PM 10-05-2009
Granted, we're talking about a single asset that may have taken thousands of man-hours to identify. This may not be feasible on any scale. The important thing, however, is that the effort was made.
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Antonius Misfit said on 11:27PM 10-05-2009
"The creator could provide what's necessary, but regardless of permissions, they would still have to authorize it for it to be lawful. Regardless of the permissions set, a creator has not necessarily given consent for content to be duplicated beyond SL."
This is indeed correct. The CMT system was designed to convey and enforce basic usage rights solely within SL. To fully address the case of inter-grid use, a content creator must attach a license clause permitting such use, and LL could implement a grid permission(CMTG) that exists only to tell legit backup clients(Meerkat, Imprudence, Second Inventory, etc) that this content can be exported.
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Ari Blackthorne said on 12:16AM 10-06-2009
Actually, I have a lot of stuff I've created. I've used Meerkat to back that stuff up to my local computer. While fiddling with neillife, it works just as well - except it doesn't have permissions checks - that's where it runs afoul. But the point being, there's no good use for a gun, either, right? :)
Just saying there always is a good use for a tool, unfortunately, many will abuse it.
As for me? I'm way too invested in SL to even think of doing anything 'naughty' with it. No, I don;t plan to keep using it either - it has some bugs. But while I looked at it, I did find where it did have some useful options (as tools) for creators on their own stuff.
I will be explaining how i discovered how to spot when it is in sim. Now if we can make the tool that will auto-detect it, we'll have something.
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Phillip Vought said on 2:40AM 10-06-2009
There's a horrible legal problem for LL now that they've done this..
By using the DMCA takedowns LL remained neutral, a common carrier that didnt take independent action.. now, LL has taken independent action demonstrating that they have the means to track and remove offending material.
This could be devastating for their legal engagement with Stroker Serpentine.. He can shoot down their common carrier claims by simply demonstrating that they have methods they can deploy as they choose..
Its nice to see script kiddies that are lawless punished, but at what cost to the legal entity that is LL.
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