Iris Wants to Know: What Are Your Experiences with the DMCA Process in Second Life?

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

With the removal of the Wowmeh mesh body line from Second Life, there's been a lot of talk about whether or not the DMCA process is helpful in SL, or just a huge hindrance. In case you missed it, the Wowmeh body was a phenomenally successful mesh body that was the target of a DMCA takedown. Creator Baby Ghosn maintained that it was unjustified and malicious, but as she was unwilling to release her personal information to someone she claimed was purely a troll, she decided to revamp Wowmeh and replace any potentially dubious components. When she released the new body it was taken down again, allegedly for being a re-release of a taken down item. At that point Baby called it quits, saying that the process of supporting and defending Wowmeh was more than she'd expected and was willing to take on. 

While Hamlet has already explained his position that Second Life and the DMCA process are incompatible, I'm not so sure. That's why I want to hear from SL designers who've ever tangled with either end of a DMCA. Click here to fill out a super-short survey and share your experiences, and share it with fellow SL content creators! Next week, I'll report back with results and the most interesting feedback received.

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Janine Hawkins (@bleatingheart on Twitter, Iris Ophelia in Second Life) has been writing about virtual worlds and video games for nearly a decade, and has had her work featured on Paste, Kotaku, Jezebel and The Mary Sue.

Comments

[Shockwave yareach]

IMHO, everything dealing with inworld stuff should be handled inworld.

Someone stole your stuff and is selling it? Complain to IP Linden. A quick check to see who had it in inventory first decides the winner. Warnings are given for the first two offenses and banning by credit card number follows. (It is easy to get around a ban, but getting replacement credit cards every time you get caught is far harder, and the bank eventually will quit doing business with one who "loses" the card too often.

But this requires LL be active in there world again and actually think, having to make good decisions about who is violating TOS and who is not. I don't expect that to happen. LL wants to tell everyone what may and may not be done in their little wonderland. They want to pass laws; not enforce them. Which is sad because had LL simply had a way to evaluate stuff as copies or not, and got rid of copy bottled stuff and the plucks who use it, the entire copybot matter wouldn't have mattered, as the gear and the thieves would be tossed out as quickly as they came.

[Pussycat Catnap]

Wowmeh shows why handling it inworld won't work.

It is quite possible that the wowmeh avatar was lifted not from another SL user, but an external 3D model.

Looking at the wireframe screenshots posted in the commented to this same topic last week - you can see it was a very high polygon model. Likely for 3D art.

It is possible the person selling it modeled it and just happened to use such detail - detail which creates a lot of lag in SL.

But that person was also a seller of just one product, that model.

And modeling the human form is the hardest task one can attempt in 3D modeling.

As I noted in the comments of this topic last week: It is perfectly possible for a person who has never been inside of an airplane before to get into a jetliner and solo fly it from one coast to the other on their first try.

But the odds are not in that person's favor.

So... it is also perfectly possible that the maker of Wowmeh modeled that model... but...

It is much more likely it came from somewhere.

And that likely place... is not another SL maker. The polygons are not ideal for that - and screenshots of its wireframe alongside other SL models show that no known matching model exists.

More than likely, it was lifted from some model made for 3D art - you can buy these easily, or download them from illegal listings... And then you have your goods.

When outside work gets brought into SL... the DMCA works to allow that to be challenged.

A lot of content is showing up in SL right now that came from 3D art or video games. Walk around SL and it won't take long to find some of it... some of it is... quite popular. Some of it predates mesh and can be found in sculpties - but it took more skill to translate complex models back then as sculpty only allowed for a precise number of vertixes.

If you don't want a DMCA system, we need to go back to not just the pre-mesh era, but the pre-sculpty era...

[John M.]

I've had another Second Life user re-selling one of my full-perm products as their own for a couple years now. I have tried to speak with the user, but have been ignored, and so I issued Linden Lab several DMCA takedown notices over a lengthy period of time. Nothing has happened yet, not even acknowledgement that they received my notices. I'm not sure what else to do to get the offender to remove my product.

Mine: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/RW-Sculpted-Coffin-Series-1-Full-Perm/1632341
Thief's: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Sculpted-coffin-vampire/3891640

I am completely in favor of a fair and just copyright and DMCA-compliant Second Life. I see real-life products being copied into Second Life illegally (meshes, audio, textures, etc) all of the time, but there is almost nothing ever done about it. To me, this is a sad state of affairs, but it's up to the copyright holder(s) to issue the DMCA notices. My guess is that they just aren't doing it, either due to ignorance of the infringing products, or the scale/impact of the infringement doesn't justify the action, I don't know.

Maybe they're just being ignored, like myself?

[Pussycat Catnap]

There is no reason for them to limit flagging stolen goods to only the rights holder. That is a lazy move on LLs part to comply with a legal requirement without actually making it viable for rights to be protected.

Anyone should be able to flag that stolen coffin sculpty. They even stole your advertisement, and its obvious which is the original because they even lacked the skills to properly compress their jpg file for the advert...

I just tried to flag it, and the only relevant option was for 'MY' IP rights.

There is no option that says "this is stolen goods" that would then, in a proper situation, result in them looking into it.

[irihapeti]

i think the big hole in first to file is ripping models from 3rd party sites and uploading to SL. don't think the 3rd party creator is going to be happy with this bc RL law and that

if could not upload anything into SL and was inworld tools to create all materials/objects/models then first to create would probably work kinda sorta. However would still have to determine what a derivative is. Or even inspired by. Gets murky when get into these areas. like my blue boxes linked on the Y were inspired by some other blue boxes made by someone else linked on the X

DMCA is not the best perfect system in a imperfect environment but I think is the best can do in a commercial setting where uploading is allowed

[Queen Herouin]

I think this DMCA business has gotten out of hand. I heard that this week banned and ghetto booty have now been DMCA'd???? With phatazz already dmca'd there is no one left to have created mesh ass and legs?? I mean where is this stuff coming from. I think it should be made clearly public who filed the claim and why, and until it's proven, content stays in world.

Here's a great case example where RL law steps in and clarified that the misuse of copyright claims should not harm the other party. No legalese from me, not my specialty, but you'll get what I mean when you read the case synopsis.

http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=f168b6e8-dfba-40aa-96cf-4d0bc071ee5b