Content theft: SculptyPaint retires its free software temporarily
Well, way to go. I’m a long time user of SculptyPaint, one of the nicest free software around to make sculpties in a quick and dirty way. Of course as most free software developers, Cel Edman needs to sell other products, mainly sculpty packs. Well sounds like he’s getting ripped off pretty hard and he cites a few reasons on the SculptyPaint page showing his outrage. Indeed, if all of that is true, it is outrageous. Especially the bits about physical threats, and alledgely getting ripped by a big mentoring group. Of course, I have no proof of that happening, yet, but the notice on the Mental Mentor page says a lot. (removed)
I didn’t ask for permissions, lacking contact info, but here is the integral message on SculptyPaint webpage.
(— CUT HERE —)
Like one person modified my artwork, removed my name and copyright, and have been selling my items for 6 months now.. Using an army of bots to get #1 in the search. I file a DMCA, wait 2 months, Linden removes the vendor boxes. And the next week the person is selling the same stuff again. I filed already 3 times in a row a DMCA takedown to this person, and still this person with ‘Payment info on file’ is running around in SL. Also selling other artist work.
Another person has a huge record on selling stolen goods in SL, created by me and other artist. Selling stolen items for the last 12 months now, all the DMCA takedowns he received he calls just a joke. and continues this ‘bussiness’. The person got ‘payment info on file’ and his own sim.
- Yesterday I learned about the ‘mental mentors‘ group in Second Life. This group is for mentors in Second Life, who’s goal is to help Newbie`s, educate teach, lead, guide and so on. Great..
This group is rather big, about 800+ people/mentors.
I found out several of my sculptpacks I sell are offered as freebee`s by the leader(s) of this group. For several months now.
A ‘mentor starter pack’ is given out to all mentors, to help the helpless newbees in SL.
I released my latest SFT-pack around 14 februari 2008. 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 freebee pack too about 800+ mentors in SL, to use and to give away ‘to help the newbees’.
If this group was called ‘robbers from SL’ I would not care a second, but from a mentor group.. Who`s goal to educate, teach, help and lead in SL?! unbelievable.
You must know, I only can continue developing Sculptypaint and other free creation tools by selling my work in SL.
No income - no time - no coding - no tools - simple as that.
I’m sick and tired about all this crap that sucks all the creative energy out of me, standing alone in the cold here for such a long time. So decided to put a statement here for the next few days. Hope you understand.
Have a nice day!
Elout de Kok - march 6, 2008
SL: Cel Edman
The morality? Well respect the content creators TOS, or wave them goodbye. Freebies are great, but mentoring groups must preach by the example. Violating someone’s right to distribute his content like he wants to can bite back on your ass. Now, nobody can download SculptyPaint and use this awesome tool, which deprives every content creators on the grid from using it. Which is quite the opposite of what a mentoring group is supposed to do.
I just hope all of this is a misunderstanding. Time for more dialog and diplomacy, and maybe time for the Lindens to get a rapid response team for dealing with DMCA since this kind of problem will get reported more and more often.
EDIT: Ordinal Malaprop also blogs it.
ADDENDUM:
A few feedbacks are suggesting, like I thought it could be, a big ass misunderstanding. Let’s hope the concerned parties clears it out in a civil manner. While then, nothing keeps us to talk about it and maybe tell the Lindens we need better DMCA provisions.
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In defense of the “Mental Mentors” group, I believe all members have the ability to send out group notices, and I think the sculpty pack being referred to was handed out with a group notice several weeks back. The Mental Mentors is NOT an official mentoring group (ie. Second Life Mentors or Second Life Mentors Q&A). It’s an unofficial social group created for Second Life Mentors to have a place to chat free of the constraints of the Official mentoring groups.
That said, it’s a shame that Cel’s pack was distrubuted to the group in such a way, however the best thing to do would be to contact the group administrators and let them know so they can deal with it as appropriate. As a Mentor, and as a former member of the Mental Mentors group, I can say that we are often deluged with freebie items to use to help new residents with, and it’s very difficult to sort through them all to see what is legit and what isn’t. I’m sure the majority of the members of Mental Mentors would prefer not to distribute or receive items that are stolen content, so it’s likely that this is, as you suggest, a misunderstanding.
Meara, thanks a lot for your input. You probably noticed I didn’t just jump to conclusions and accused a whole group, I mean, mentors are people I have in very high esteem. Hence my final note saying it is time for diplomacy and talk. The individuals responsible for ripping the said content of it’s TOS will probably be targeted and dealt with in the appropriate way. I was just displaying this as a reminder that someone’s actions can has drastic consequences over other SL content creators. We should be thankful when given free tools and not treat every content like it belongs to us, even if they were freebies.
Again, thanks for the comment.
This whole debacle was a misunderstanding that has really been blown out of proportion. My understanding is that the person that distributed to the group asked permission, but the creator misunderstood what was asked. Then, a member of the group that joined “to keep an eye on the group” decided that instead of letting the person that made the mistake and the MM group know, he went straight to the creator and also emailed in the SL Mentor list. The majority of this entire debacle is actually about a self-appointed policeman trying to cause all the trouble he can.
Greetings Elsbeth. First, thanks for posting here. See, this is why im always moderate when I don’t have all the facts. I hoped to get some reactions from members of the said mentor group, which is what you bring me here. I wanted to report the fact that SculptiePaint is out of the traffic, and give the creator’s version. I’m very happy that you and Meara stepped in to give in more precisions. As I said in my article “I hope this is all a misunderstanding”. And you seem to support that. Then my view on it doesn’t change, time for discussing all this in a civil manner. Hope everything clears up because this is a loss from both sides.
Thanks you very much for stepping in.
I can’t make head nor tail of this. However, in my world, adults don’t carry on like this…they take proper action. I have no clue how someone can give away something for which there is no permission to do so. I similarly have no idea how someone can copy something for which permission has not been given.
If it is content theft, there are ways of dealing with this. Blogging, twittering, and “reporting” on Massively.com are not the ways to seek redress. IP is a legal issue, and IP theft is a serious one….did the creator follow the guidelines or just complain to all and sundry? I cannot tell.
The problem with it all, Jane, is that IP theft is not really that much on the rise but is getting more and more discussed and reported in the public. The reason why we are all talking about it, is because little is done from the Linden’s side. They don’t ban repeated offenders and takes a lot of time to react to DMCA notices, which is the biggest part of the problem. So, the reason why we all blogged it, is because of that growing concern about inaction in those cases. Nicky Ree filed 2 complains against aDiva for texture theft and nothing has been done yet after months. Theres a plethora of similar cases emerging. Since there is no real technological solution to it (DRM is made of fail) there’s only one way, the legal one, and while this is not enforced, raising awareness may be the only way.
Addendum to Jane, if you read his note, he did file a series of DMCA complains, and that is the legal thing to do. He broke down on the system inefficiency, in my own humble opinion.
IP is a legal issue, why do we expect a company to determin it? That is for the courts to decide, pure and simple. Nicky Ree has to file a claim in civil court…that will mean more than all the DCMAs in the world. and the same with other victims…this is a RL issue with RL consequences. I am sure that LL will say that it has taken “reasonable precuations” that will stand up in court. Therefore, it is up to the victim to seek redress from the perpetrator….not up to LL to arbitrate.
LL doesn’t have to arbitrate but they have to answer to DMCA notices under a reasonable delay, as any content providers. IANAL, but each time my hosting business is served with a DMCA notice, we have a delay to answer it. Since LL is going to get a lot of those, of course we expect them to deal with it as any content providers. Problem is, if we need to go to court for every little infringement, this is going to become even more inefficient. If im not mistaken, this is the reason why DMCA exists in the first place.
Sure they do….but so far, no one has presented more than claims of theft. But I’ve seen those claims presented as fact in several sources and conclusions drawn….plus a whole bunch of “mentors” are thrown into the mix as if all 3000 of us are tainted by it. And I object strenuously to innuendoes and unresolved claims being presented as ‘facts’ that smear an entire group…as if “mentors” have a special obligation to know what the heck they receive. Or as if Mentors make the alleged theft more egregious…which I’m sure people like Nicky Ree would dispute.
I still don’t have a clue what this item is, whether I have it, whether I’d use it, whether it’s theft, or who did it. Indeed if anyone did. But it’s all over the place as if it’s fact. And that is not right.
@Jane2
Oh dear, I agree. It’s still a claim. And even if the claim is true, I cannot see how it would be targeting more than one or a few people.
I want to make very clear, if you insinuate I take any terms of the Sculptypaint announce as “facts”, I beg your pardon. I reported it as a user of SculptiePaint, and maybe because I thought there was a lesson to be learnt. As I have great respect for mentoring, or any mentoring groups, being close to a few mentor friends, my least desire is to see that in another irrational fiasco.
As facts build up, I will update this post with more info, and honestly I’m very glad you can provide some input about the case. Seriously when I read it I was shaken. I posted it for discussion and more feedbacks since I felt concerned about it. If you have additional facts about the claim, please feel free to post.
Second Life News for March 7, 2008…
From: An Engine Fit For My Proceeding Inaction, deletion Quote from the site - With reference to my previous entry: an instance of a situation which has caused a significant person within SL to stop producing products has come to my attention.
From: Se…
Well, the creator cannot expect to get redress through the press, so to speak. Is LL slow to act on these things? I wouldn’t disagree with him…it’s a serious issue in SL, and a number of designers are growing more frustrated over perceived lack of action.
However, if the creator felt that this was his only way to get justice, why didn’t the creator name names? The entire paragraph about the Mentor group is written in the passive voice…all 800 members surely didn’t do this. So if he’s going to accuse people, then have at it..but put his money where his outrage is and name the alleged perp. I still don’t even know if I have the item in question.
Broad Brushes…
We are not the damn Borg.
……
Um. I realize comment #14 looks a little odd - but honestly, there was a lot I wanted to say on the subject, so I felt my blog would be a better way of posting - the excerpt shown is fully explained in the post (hopefully.)
I will just say again, CodeBastard: Thank you for not being one of the apparent many who are bashing all mentors & mental mentors.
LOL wont be long sweetheart, I’m answering to your post on your own blog. =)
[…] With that in mind, the results of widespread copying and lackluster enforcement has been drastic. Shops have closed, designers have stopped producing new works and fewer people are creating for the service. Some have even hypothesized that the rampant content theft is partly to blame for the decline in membership over recent months. […]
I read this furthermore to this case: a new case of IP theft concerning the Mental Mentors group that may be of interest to people:
http://praddles.wordpress.com/2008/03/26/15/