Second Life designers burned at Burning Life
by Tateru Nino 
Oct 27th 2009 at 10:30AM
Filed under: Bugs, Business models, Exploits, Crafting, News items, Second Life, Legal, Virtual worlds
Remember Kevin Alderman (known in Second Life as Stroker Serpentine), CEO of Eros LLC who is one of the plaintiffs who have filed a lawsuit against Linden Lab for negligence with respect to security and failing to act in accordance with their obligations under the DMCA? Well, it can't be a good week for either him or for the Lab.
During Linden Lab's Burning Life event in Second Life this year (a sort of living pop-art showcase and party that draws many spectators) persons only presently known to the server logs left a cache of copied content, including at least one of Alderman's latest products, and a whole swag of other content belonging to other designers – free for the taking.
It isn't really Burning Life's fault, but if you had to place the stuff somewhere where many people would take it, none-the-wiser that it was unlawful content, that would be the best place at this time of the year.
These aren't just simple rips, either. They're clones. For all intents and purposes they are copies that are identical in virtually every respect to the originals. Right down to the object ids, apparently. They remain somehow full-permissions until taken out of inventory and placed in-world, we are told.
We're aware of one recent exploit (that Linden Lab have presumably patched in a recent update) which allowed the wholesale duplication of items that were flagged no-copy. However, something has been done here which also exploits the permissions system and temporarily makes the objects open-slather. Some users have been giving the content away, unaware that it was provided through an exploit.
Linden Lab has a content blacklisting system, but given that these objects are identical (to the system) to ones legitimately purchased, to blacklist one would be to blacklist all copies of the item, legitimate or not. Linden Lab should, however, be able to work through the system logs and identify the rogue copies and individually destroy them, but this would be a time-consuming and unenviable task.
For the designers whose expensive creations have just been handed out willy-nilly this represents quite a blow. For Linden Lab, who are due to file a response to Alderman's lawsuit asserting negligence in security and intellectual property obligations, well, we don't think they're feeling much like smiling either.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dedric Mauriac said on 1:15PM 10-27-2009
This is similiar to linking to free copies Metallica songs on the RIAA entry on Wikipedia.
Reply
Mo Hax said on 1:25PM 10-27-2009
This post of yours Tateru, finally got me thinking enough to make one of my own Porn, Ice Cream, and Stolen Virtual Stuff. Thanks for the push.
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Tateru Nino said on 1:37PM 10-27-2009
All part of the service :)
Yo Brewster said on 2:09PM 10-27-2009
Wow, I was surfing around a little bit and it's scary to see how easy it has become to steal scripts from any object at this point. I always felt pretty good about scripting in Second Life since that was one thing people couldn't copy but ... I guess that was then and this is now. Not good, not good at all!
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Evalia Magic said on 2:22PM 10-27-2009
Pretty horrible. Not really Linden's fault that people realize the best way to disperse stolen goods is at one of the largest annual events of course - it's just common sense.
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mrp421 said on 2:24PM 10-27-2009
all of this theft was done using Neil life, at least that is my guess. LL only slowed down neil the last time he was caught.
I have been doing a lot of research into this topic..... my wife is a content creator and i have been trying to find ways to fight this
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Wjowski said on 3:31PM 10-27-2009
Is it me or does Second Life only seem to get mentioned around here in connection to it's current scandal/controversy?
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Tateru Nino said on 8:02PM 10-27-2009
Those are its newsiest moments, but certainly not the only ones.
skulls said on 1:36PM 10-28-2009
Neillife must die.
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Antonius Misfit said on 9:26PM 10-28-2009
Thuglyfe too.
kullervo said on 1:40PM 10-29-2009
I'm waiting and waiting for LL's promised on-line DMCA filing system. It takes me an hour every time I have to file one, and I've filed several. LL reacts fast to the filings, but they are a swift pain in the fundament.
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Tateru Nino said on 7:17PM 10-29-2009
I've never heard anyone describe the Lab's response to DMCA filings as swift before, quite honestly.
Actually, DMCA notices *can* be filed online, and Linden Lab must accept and process them (as the DMCA requires them to) if the notices are submitted correctly (they're allowed to ignore incorrectly submitted notices).
We're considering a short how-to on that.
kullervo said on 8:18PM 10-29-2009
I get a removal within 48 hours of faxing the DMCA, so I'm happy with the response times. But the process! Ugh!
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