So the first step is fixing the camera so everything is easily seen but your avi can easily navigate smaller spaces — more like in other video games, and more immersive.
Penny gives two different settings to change in order to fix that, but in my opinion, just doing the one below is not only sufficient but preferable:
To make your camera position more like other video games:
1. Go into the Advanced menu at the top of your window (if it does not show, do Control > Alt (or Option) D ).
2. Open Debug Settings at the bottom. Type in whatever is given below for your viewer version:
CameraOffsetDefault (In Viewer 1 based viewers, including TPVs like Ascent/Phoenix/Imprudence)
CameraOffsetRearView (In Viewer 2 including TPVs such as Firestorm, Kokula, Kirstens, Starlight and Catznip)
3. Then enter these numbers:
X: -2.000
Y: -0.400 (Make positive for a left shoulder view or keep 0.000 for a centred view.)
Z: -0.200
Like the new view? Pass this link around to your friends!
But the copier continues to list new houses featuring the same stolen content, which tells me that all content with the UUIDs provided were not removed — or if they were, have been replaced by identical content. And my emails requesting that content made with these UUIDs be taken down continue to be ignored. I mean, that is why I filed the DMCA notification, so that my content would be removed from this account.
Therefore today I wrote another DMCA — for the same content, only this time I only included the UUIDs, the same UUIDs included with the original DMCA and ignored.
Forget the names of the objects, forget what they look like — if they were made with these textures and/or sculpts, just take them down.
After talking to someone knowledgeable about the asset database, I understand that it is 1) possible but 2) difficult to do what I am requesting — identify content using UUIDs. I have told the IP Team I understand this — this whole process is extremely time-consuming for both them and me. But this is the course LL has chosen — it would be far easier, when presented with incontrovertible proof of copying, to ban the accounts and all those associated with them. Which I understand would not stop them, but would at least inconvenience them a bit.
I also understand, from talking to someone knowledgeable about DMCAs and takedowns, that the current LL policy to not delete infringers’ accounts until they can be said to have “continually” been caught infringing, is based on fear of litigation. Someone will sue them for taking down the infringing content and then banning their account. Something like that. Which, frankly, seems an unsupported fear in the vast, vast majority of cases, few of which are on the scale of the bunnies vs the horses, but involve garden variety rippers of very limited means and capabilities (I am being polite) ripping in the most obvious way.
The bottom line here: There are no consquences for ripping content in SL unless you get caught “continually” doing so.
Only the creators of original content are punished — along with LL, who has to expend so much time doing the takedowns involving the same people over and over. The infringers like mine just shrug and keep copying.
Slowly some other good people have emerged to take their places. I won’t name names here, because given LL’s obsession with secrecy and anonymity, it might not serve a Linden well to be identified as one who interacts with residents.
I am one of those who has been “foolish” enough, according to some, to invest heavily in SL. I quit my teaching position to run my store full time. I just bought a fourth sim. And so, some might assume, as one other merchant did recently, that I am a large merchant with some kind of influence.
My response: ppfft. There are no large merchants, as far as LL is concerned. We just don’t pay enough tier (marketplace commissions are peanuts). And my merchandise is about as high prim as it gets — furnishings and homes, most rezzed at all times, so I pay about as much tier as any merchant is going to. But no I don’t have any clout at all, as was demonstrated recently when some anonymous Linden on the IP Team decided he was perfectly willing to break the law and withdraw my valid DMCA without my consent — and then procede to ignore my emails. He knew I was utterly powerless. And who would ever know anyway?
He assumed there was no one around for me to turn to for help.
But he forgot about those other Lindens — the ones who understand what we are doing here and why. The ones who believe they are ultimately here to serve SL’s residents.
The first thing I did when I discovered that I was being stonewalled was to email the only Linden I know who has any idea who I am. I explained the situation briefly and asked if s/he knew who I could contact for help. I emailed the IP Team again and CCed CEO Rod Humble. I IMed a couple of Lindens I saw in the Concierge group. I called Linden Lab and left a message for Lisa Berry, LL general counsel (and very likely to be aware that no Linden is legally qualified to withdraw a DMCA on the filer’s behalf).
I got one response, from that one Linden I had emailed. And that Linden simply told me that the the IP Team had in fact received my emails and would be responding to them ASAP.
That’s all — but I nearly cried with relief. Until then I felt like I was shouting into some huge void.
And a couple of hours later, I got an email from the still-anonymous IP Team Linden saying he/she was sorry for the misunderstanding and that I could just reply to the email to confirm that I wanted the takedown to occur.*
I don’t know if general counsel Lisa Berry also contacted the IP Team to ask them what the deal was — why is this woman saying you illegally declined to do a takedown upon receipt of her valid DMCA? But I do know that because the Linden I emailed took the time to ask the IP Team what was up with ignoring my emails, their behavior was no longer a secret. At least one person at LL knew what they were doing. And that’s all it takes.
*As of this writing, no takedown has occurred, and in fact the infringer continues to list more items — and yes, with my content.
I don’t know too many businesses where you can’t ask to speak to someone higher up if the service you receive is unsatisfactory, but that’s how LL operates. No matter how awful a Linden’s performance is, there is no one to report him to — and he knows it. He can pretty much do as he pleases when he is on the job.
I have had two recent very unsatisfactory experiences with LL service people. First was a horrific live chat with poor confused Nikia, when I was attempting to discover why my new sim had not been delivered. She could barely understand the question and just kept repeating the same nonsensical claim that the Extended Support transaction would take ten days. She sunk her teeth in no matter how patiently I tried to explain that Extended Support customers like the sim seller got instant service. Nope, 10 days.
Nikia was the worst support person I think I have ever encountered in any life — and totally unaccountable. I tried several times to contact some other support person, but Nikia was waiting, and picked up every time. I asked her several times the name of her supervisor, but she said “He left” and would not give me the name, and finally hung up on me. So no way to contact anyone higher up.
Then there was whoever it was on the IP Team who decided he would take the liberty of canceling my DMCA. Evidently he thought this was a little game. How dare I express concern that the thief would be given plenty of time to hide the evidence! Was I not aware that the IP Team holds all the power and me none? I guess he showed me who is boss.
Except this is not a little game for me. This is very serious business for me. The thief has many thousands of dollars worth of my full perm content in her /her alt’s inventories. My DMCA covers ALL the copied content, not just the stuff put up for sale. I do not want it passed around, I want it deleted! And I do not want some emotionally adolescent Linden with nothing at stake and no accountablity to tell me to, in effect, drop dead. This is not a game of Mother May I. This is not about me repenting of my insufficiently obsequious DMCA wording.
This is about me submitting a legal document to protect many thousands of dollars of my property and a Linden illegally withdrawing it. I don’t even know which Linden it is because residents of SL are not allowed to know top secret information like that. And even if I knew his name, I don’t know his supervisor’s name. No, I have to deal with this petulant twit. Anonymity does that to some people on the internet and Linden Lab.
There are simply no consequences for treating customers like, say, slightly retarded children, if that’s what a Linden decides to do. Who will know? Who will know if they treat customers with contempt? Even if people like this actually do have supervisors, good luck getting their names. I am sure many Linden supervisors would be quite horrified at some of the poor service, but ignorance is bliss. They’ll never know.
There are very few jobs where you can be incompetent and not get reported by customers or fellow workers. I can only think of two — a bagger at the supermarket because most people are not going to report shoddy bagging, and being a Linden, where there’s no one to report anything to.
Goes a long way to explaining what seems to many of us the incomprehensible behavior and decisions we see in some Lindens. A company cannot have both top quality service personnel and this Orwellian anonymity. Accountability means transparency.
Example: The Commerce Team, with a horrendous task trying to make the marketplace functional — I mean, they have to actually produce results that everyone can see. Fully accountable, not only for results, but to merchants and shoppers. We know who the team leader is — Brooke — and she files regular reports to keep merchants apprised of updates. I feel like my input has value. Sure, it’s easier to hide — some days it would be great to be an anonymous creator. But that’s not how to build customer loyalty. Transparency and accountability do that.
Regarding your request that we terminate the Resident account(s). Residents that continually re-post content that is subject to a valid DMCA may be terminated under our repeat infringer policy.
Continually. Copying once is not enough. Copying twice is not “continually”. Three times would be the bare minimum. And again I have to ask, why??? What is the purpose of this policy? Why allow a proven copier to stay at all?
So there you have it, the definitive statement about whose side LL is on.
The other interesting part is the connection between “reposting” content and being subject to a valid DMCA. What is reposting anyway? Does that mean “putting up for sale”? I don’t see anything in the DMCA notice or law about selling, but about copyright infringement. You don’t have to sell something to infringe copyright.
Every article of my original content anywhere with someone else’s name on it as creator is IP theft. It does not matter if it is set for sale or not, or rezzed inworld or not. My DMCA was very explicitly about my property in inventory or anywhere else.
As I said in the previous post, my main concern is not about what is “posted” or set for sale inworld and on the marketplace, but with what is in inventories. Having no experience with IP infringement on this scale, I wanted to be very sure that LL did not intend to notify the infringer before doing a takedown — or, as I have heard of before, just telling the infringer to do his own takedown. That is just not going to work. It’s like the police ringing up a burglar to let them know they will be over later in the day to check the place for stolen property. Or ringing them up to ask them to please get rid of any stolen merchandise they may have on hands, thanks.
And although I obviously was very skeptical about the possibility of LL deleting the account, it seemed to me the only viable way to expunging all the infringing content in inventory. LL may have some special means of determining which of the house and furniture textures and sculpts in the thief’s inventory are my content, but I would not know — do copied things even keep their names? The names of at least some things have been changed.
Therefore it seemed to be that the only way to delete all the infringing content was to delete the accounts of 1) the avi that did the copying and 2) the avi doing the building and selling.
I explained all this in a preface to the notification — my concerns, my preferences, my requests. And I asked for feedback on how the takedown request would be carried out, and whether the accounts would be deleted or not (who knows, maybe they are repeat infringers?) This was what I said:
If LL is unwilling, for whatever reason, to delete all accounts in possession of my ripped content – and give them time to transfer my content full perm to various others, then please let me know as I may need to reconsider.
Note that I said “may need to reconsider” and not “will withdraw”.
So the takedown team writes back and says:
Based on your request, Linden Lab now considers your DMCA complaint withdrawn. You may resubmit the complaint if you change your mind.
Hmmm. Now, two things about this. First, I asked to be advised on their course of action — and what it looks like to me is that they did indeed fully intend to give the copier time to transfer my content.
Glad I thought to ask!
However, that is not what the SL DMCA webpage says they will do. They say this:
On taking down content under the DMCA, we will take reasonable steps to contact the owner of the removed content so that a counter-notification may be filed.
“On taking down” — that means “at the time of” or something close to it. It most certainly does NOT mean before taking down content.
Secondly, just to be clear: it is LL, not the copier, that does the takedown. I don’t know if, as I have heard, it is sometimes their policy to notify a thief to do his own takedown, but that is not prescribed by the DMCA.
So there it stands: the takedown team has taken the liberty of withdrawing my complaint for me. And until the thief steals enough to be considered “continually” she is free to pursue that goal in peace.
In discussing this whole nightmare experience and my DMCA with people I have a couple of times mentioned that I thought it was possible LL would do nothing. And each time I was assured, oh, if they get a proper DMCA notice they have to do a takedown, it’s the law. Except that what they have chosen instead is to withdraw my notice for me and do — nothing.
The thief has an inworld vendor with 18 furnished houses, almost all of them cobbled together from textures and sculpts taken from houses and other things copied from me and many other merchants – and all of them on the marketplace (AKA Big Fencing Operation). One look at these houses tells you I have spent far more time on this DMCA than the thief spent on any one of his houses.
Documenting every item (that I have proof of — most of it is still sitting in their inventories) and giving the UUID of every texture and sculpt map, taking pictures of the original and the stolen items — has taken my assistant and me four days.
That’s four days of work lost — no new content for this week, no new group gift, no notice sent to my group. Think that helps sales? Thieves steal not only things, but time — and joy.
And that’s really all we are asking LL to do: slow them down! Please!
It’s all very well to profess appreciation for creators, but actions speak louder than words. So far LL’s actions have been too inconsistent for merchants to see any clear policy about getting infringers off the grid. Doing that consistently, no matter how much a game of whack-a-mole it may be, would at least send a message to merchants that LL is on our side, that it may not be able to do much, but what it can do, it will do.
The marketplace deliveries have always been bad, often very bad — but now it is day after day of failed and non deliveries. I monitor these and contact customers to give them a slurl to the item inworld, and offer to deliver it directly from my inventory. The orders that say “delivered” but were not, I have no way of knowing until the customer contacts me (or I happen to notice a one star review).
I put warnings on my kitchen listings long ago; today I will put warnings on my dining and bedroom listings: It is safer to buy inworld.
I think they may have just rolled out the server update that fixed the broken GiveInventory LSL function that made my house vendors take money from ppl and give them nothing (I went around and put a sign out by all the rezzer-vendors to buy the box, not the vendor.)
JIRAs and support tickets mostly just get ignored — I have begged and begged and begged to know why ppl buy boxes and box contents inworld and do not receive them. It is treated like it is none of my business. The response I get to most support tickets is an email two months later saying “Hope your problem got fixed, we are closing this.” What kind of company just ignores support? Isn’t good support the sine qua non of successful business?
And the person who copied my kitchen and put it up for sale full perm on the marketplace — I filed a dmca and many ARs — remains unbanned. I am not clear on what number of ppl one must steal from in order to get banned. Stealing and putting something up for sale on the Marketplace — with your store brand on the box — is not unpremeditated. It’s not an oopsie.
If LL is doing anything to indicate it is not circling the drain, I’d really like to know what it is.
La Galleria 