LL Stands Up; Trips Again
Posted on 16. Oct, 2009 by Tenshi Vielle in Linden Lab News, News, Op/Ed
Poor Linden Lab. I feel like they’re the kid in math class who unsuspectingly had his shoes tied together and has just made a valiant attempt to stand up, only to fall flat on his face. (And this trick worked yesterday on the poor bastard!)
Seriously though…. remember Linden Lab’s Content Management Roadmap, from August 4th, 2009? Where they said they’d work hard at being more efficient for us, even going as far as to delete particular items that we DMCA by the offending creator’s name?
Lies. Or at least, so far… and as I write this, it’s more than two months later… but maybe I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let’s start with the baby steps.
XStreet Cleanup. Around August 14, 2009, Linden Lab promised to begin cleaning up XStreet of Branded Items that the creators had no right to be selling. All those Louis Vuitton, Hello Kitty, Superman, and Gucci items come to mind. Heck, they already made a pose creator clean up her entire stock by taking out all the celebrity names that inspired them. (I say inspired because, as of right now, I’m pretty sure you can’t copyright human body movements.)
Let’s take a peek at XStreet right now.
HOW CAN YOU MISS THAT? “GUCCI GUCCI GUCCI BANDANA” … gah!!!
To be fair, these listings may be quite new to XStreet, but from what I’ve been hearing LL has basically taken a “See No Evil” approach to handling things now. In fact, rumor has it if you try to file a ticket with Linden Lab about infringing content on XStreet, a URL via email is not enough – they want you to mail hard copies of URLs to their front door in San Francisco!
Oh yay! Now I can SLEEP on Louis! … a life dream fulfilled. (gag.)
Of course, we won’t even talk about how while these items are still on XStreet, LL is still pocketing cash from their sale – 5% of each sale apparently goes straight back to Linden Lab. And then if we consider upload fees, tier, and sales in-world… there’s a whole lotta profiteering going on. Yes. I did just say “profiteering”.
Let’s say there are 1,000 XStreet SL sellers. I don’t have a better number because, apparently, neither the original XStreet owners nor LL have been egotistical enough to release numbers as bragging rights. Now, let’s say each of those 1,000 sellers makes $3,000L weekly. I think that’s a fair figure – possibly even baseline.
The math: 1000×3000=3,000,000L. 3,000,000x.05=$150,000. Linden Lab makes $150,000L off of those sellers each week. 12 months in a year, so… 7,200,000L each year simply from XStreet listings, which equates to over $22,000 USD a year at sell price. At buy price, it’s more like $28,000USD. XStreet has been owned by Linden Lab for less than 12 months. Let’s just pretend that half that income is due to copyright violation items. I’ll bet Louis Vuitton’s legal team would love to hear about it. (Hell, Louis already won a few of these cases.)
I digress. I tried to report the items I found, but got this fun error:
Whatever. See no evil, can’t get sued… isn’t that how it goes?
Kat_Alderson
Oct 16th, 2009
I get that error every time I report an item, and from the way it looks, it is merely a broken acknowledgment page. If you try to report it again, it tell you it has already been reported.
Ann Otoole
Oct 16th, 2009
Better to notify the legal department of the brand owners. They will not be interested in some kid with no money. They will go directly after Linden Lab and remind the lab as to why they made that policy and why it is important that the lab hire the resources needed to police xstreet as well as second life by deleting repeat offender accounts and then having them arrested if they make an unauthorized return.
scd
Oct 16th, 2009
It's not even about them HIRING folks really – many residents willingly police XStreet.
The problem comes in where they are asking folks to do all kinds of crazy shit to get the infringing items removed.
3blahs1whatever
Oct 16th, 2009
I agree with Ann, has anyone sent any emails/faxes to those companies ? Especially including the math work down at the bottom? I dont know where the figures came from or how accurate it is but if its anywhere near accuracy I think they would like to know LL is pocketing money made from infringing goods.
3blahs1whatever
Oct 16th, 2009
I agree with Ann, has anyone sent any emails/faxes to those companies ? Especially including the math work down at the bottom? I dont know where the figures came from or how accurate it is but if its anywhere near accuracy I think they would like to know LL is pocketing money made from infringing goods.
Filing DMCA against a fellow resident who stole from us personally is more to protect ourselves and our work, but submitting tickets against a fellow resident who is infringing on RL copyright, is more so to protect LL and theyre stupid as hell if they turn a blind eye. LL is like krez mcallister – they got away scotch free for so long so they think they can continue to stay in their fucked up ways and everyone will go along with it.
3blahs1whatever
Oct 16th, 2009
I agree with Ann, has anyone sent any emails/faxes to those companies ? Especially including the math work down at the bottom? I dont know where the figures came from or how accurate it is but if its anywhere near accuracy I think they would like to know LL is pocketing money made from infringing goods.
Filing DMCA against a fellow resident who stole from us personally is more to protect ourselves and our work, but submitting tickets against a fellow resident who is infringing on RL copyright, is more so to protect LL and theyre stupid as hell if they turn a blind eye. LL is like krez mcallister(aka francois ghost, aka jewish gearbox, aka etc) – they got away scotch free for so long so they think they can continue to stay in their fucked up ways and everyone will go along with it.
Merlynn
Oct 16th, 2009
Shouldn't take an act of god to remove items like Gucci, Prada, Vuitton and Chanel virtual knock-offs and the like, from xstreet OR in-world… I'm about 99.9% certain that no one on the grid has permissions to sell virtual recreations of any of these corporations' goods, but I guess it's possible (yes, I HAVE seen a profile or two that contain a 'letter of permission' to sell a certain extremely well known RL brand, but I seriously doubt the legitimacy of that particular 'permission slip.) .
I understand the reluctance of LL to get in the middle of resident vs. resident accusations due to the sometimes 'witch hunting' mentality that spawns some of the DMCA filings, but come on — when it comes to globally well known trademarks that are obviously victims of infringement, what does it take to get LL attention? One of these days one or another of these victims of trademark infringement is going to get seriously pissed and take SL away from ALL of us… one really meaty lawsuit from any of the afore-mentioned corporations might be enough to do exactly that – right or wrong, deeper pockets prevail.
Shopper
Oct 16th, 2009
Yes they love to profit off copied and trademark infringing items but when a store costs them a little money…Like hmmm offering free, demor or cheap promo products to in-world residents and they want to clamp you down.
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Commerce_Office_H...
A big change is a comin' and not for the merchant's benefit
Jori Watler
Oct 16th, 2009
not for the benefit of the merchant? I can see both sides of the coin – as a shopper – "omg.. no freebie" or as a merchant .. "they want to make all items as PAY – to get the commission"
Also .. from what I have gathered – LL is trying to "clean" up Xstreet – and we all know how that will work -
Jori Watler
Oct 16th, 2009
not for the benefit of the merchant? I can see both sides of the coin – as a shopper – "omg.. no freebie" or as a merchant .. "they want to make all items as PAY – to get the commission"
For LL – it's about "cleaning" up the listings – or so they say, but it would seem they want their piece of the pie – that 5% – for ALL items listed on Xstreet.
Also .. from what I have gathered – LL is trying to "clean" up Xstreet – and we all know how that will work -
:))
Oct 16th, 2009
Why do we care?! Big deal if someone is knocking off Gucci. RL handbag knock-offs are big business in the States. I would think Gucci is more concerned about those anyway. And why does it hurt us? If we don't like, we don't buy. Better to focus our attention on the SL content creators who are being copied then corporate giants. I mean, who really cares.
Jori Watler
Oct 16th, 2009
I for one would love to know who is the marketing genius at LL – as their definitely sucking ass!
3blahs1whatever
Oct 16th, 2009
"rumor has it if you try to file a ticket with Linden Lab about infringing content on XStreet, a URL via email is not enough – they want you to mail hard copies of URLs to their front door in San Francisco!"
Says who? I hope that is just a rumor. If not it must be LLs way of trying to turn people off to the idea of filing a DMCA.
Also, the new content road map is scary, not necessarily a good thing IMHO. Just like the elitist modiva move, and land community "partnerships" they do, the content road map seems it will take only a handful of people who meet very strict criteria and oh well for everyone else. It was obvious it was coming.