Well, not often, and not like a new resident. Until I created a new character as part of the testing for a client. Starting with a fresh new inventory, I reported on my visit to the Gnubie store the other day. In the Gnubie store, the creators of items make them for the store, and charge $0 or $1 Linden at the most for the items that they sell. It is well organised, and well ordered. You won’t find any creator’s sales items given away free, and notices ask people not to sell the items that they gather there. Gnubie store gets an A+ for honesty, organisation and generosity.

Fast forward to today, and I visited a freebie place which could not be more different….

GamersBrand has a professional logo and a private island and a lot of visitors. The traffic on the island today is 86,514, and that doesn’t surprise me as there were 90 avatars on the island when I visited, all exploring the island and everything it has to offer.

I visited the group website, but I must say that I was still a little confused about what they do. This is what they say about themselves: “GamersBrand Entertainment, LLC is an internet network featuring web service, content, and community websites devoted to the gaming community. We offer a wide varierty of online entities satisfying many needs of the online global market.” So far, so good. A little further down they say: “Our overall goal is to create a variety of entertainment sites to offer a variety of services in order to satisfy the need of an ever growing global marketplace.”

GamersBrand Island in SL consists of walkways linking vending areas containing piles of boxes. It is fairly confusing when you first arrive: some of the boxes have prices on them, and yet seem to be selling for $0 Linden. There is a huge range of stuff… clothes, shoes, jewellery, textures, sex stuff, combat stuff, almost anything that an avatar might need.

I looked into some of the boxes, and they seemed to be giving away full perms merchandise. Now I was already starting to be fairly attentive to the range of material on offer, but what really caught my attention was the fact that a number of items came up with “unknown” creator, and others showed that creations from several different creators had been crammed together in a box.

After some digging around in the boxes myself, IMing people named as creators of objects in some of the boxes, and some pretty long notecard conversations with Doug Pau, who is in charge of GamersBrand island in SL, I discovered that:

- they are selling items such as the infamous sex bed, for free, a bed which has been the subject of repeated DMCA takedowns. To be fair Doug Pau did eventually remove the bed from sale, but the rose rug — which has also been the subject of successful DMCA takedowns — contains similarly illegal animations;

- they are selling items from shop-in-a-box deals, which they may have paid 20,000 lindens for, but which they are selling as individual items for $5 lindens, thus undercutting ordinary residents who have bought the same shops;

- they are giving away items originally from shop-in-a-box schemes, and don’t seem to have much idea about whose IP they are, or on what condition they were originally released. One set of jeans, which were all boxed by the same person, shows an outrageous number of lindens on the box, but is actually free. The jeans inside have a variety of creators including “unknown”. The creators I tracked down told me that they had been chasing down these boxes all over the grid, because the jeans inside were meant to be free, but had been packaged up as part of a shop-in-a-box scheme. I’d hazard a guess that some of the boxes being sold originate here and get sold elsewhere;

(There are boxes and boxes of stuff all over the island. There are shop-in-a-box scams all over SL, involving freebies or a collection of full perms material that people have picked up from yard sales, some of it exploited, some copied outside it’s licence, some just free. Some of these are being sold, full perms here, sometimes boxed up with a price on the box. )

- they are giving away a huge range of items, having received them from diverse sources, and not necessarily the original creator. There are literally *hundreds* of items over the island now, and the IP status of many of them is necessarily unclear. I was told that they do not sell things full mods, but this is demonstrably not true. Many of the items which my alt bought or copied for free, were full perms inside restricted perms boxes. I could pull full perms animations out of the pole dancer poles, for example, too.

I have started the process of tracking down the originators for some of the full perms items, to see if they are aware that their creations are being given away for free, or in some cases, sold when they are meant to be free, and I assume that process will continue for some days over the items I chose to look at. I am also hoping to make contact with the RL company GamersBrand to see what they have to say for themselves.

At first glance, you may think that this is no different from a hundred freebie and yard sale places where things that ought not to be given away free are given away and things that ought to be given free are charge for…. But I would remind you that this is a commercial company who wishes to promote online gaming and provide what the player wants. Is this what *you* want? It looks as though they have decided that making a splash in SL and maybe a fast buck too, given the number of avatars on their island, is worth the chance that the odd creator or three will notice them and start to ask questions. Well guess what? I am a very odd creator and I ask a lot of questions when I see something that is this wrong going on.

Now you know, I feel I ought to be investigating everything there, but honestly! I could work at it from now until Christmas and still only cover a small part of what is there, because they didn’t do what they ought to have done. In the end I decided that I couldn’t investigate all … but looking more closely at the big box of textures demonstrates nearly all of the types of situations which arise with the many items on the island.

It’s a BIG box of textures… 10,000 and more it says. It has a price of $499 on it. Bargain! But wait, it is actually “selling” for $0. So… I look at the box and it tells me that lex Fitzcarraldo is the creator. I buy a box. A folder with many boxes opens in my inventory. 302 ultimate interior textures, 100 beverage textures, 100 churches and temples and so on down the folder..

Looking into the boxes, 302 ultimate interior textures all show lex Fitzcarraldo as the creator of the textures in that box – many of them 1024×1024 textures. So … if lex Fitcarraldo intended his textures to be sold for $499 dollars, how come they are set for $0 on GamersBrand?

But wait a minute… here are Linden textures, textures from Gnubie by Jai Nomad, bundled up together in one of the boxes, and without the Gnubie store terms and conditions. The box says $200, although it was inside the box with $499 painted on the side which I bought for $0.

Another box from inside this box… Drift Monde textures – never to be resold, I know, I’ve read the agreement – a whole series of Drift Monde’s textures. So… in one package we have Drift’s textures which she sells full perms on condition they should never be resold or given away… Gnubie textures which need the licence with them… textures that are the IP of the originator of the boxes, which he appeared to intend to sell bundled with the others for $499, but which are huge…. I only opened three of the boxes out of about 30 in the folder. Many have such a lot of textures in, it is quite painful to look at items in the box, and I didn’t want 10,000 extra textures in my inventory.

GamersBrand appear to me to have demonstrated no concern for the right ordering of their business in SL… the impression I get, is that if it looks as if they can attract traffic and do it on the backs of the SL creators, they will. They have not spent the necessary time in ensuring that they are not selling things or giving away things they ought not to. I have emailed the RL company for their opinion on it. When I receive a reply you can be sure I will let you know. Meanwhile, if you are as appalled as I am by what you find on GamersBrand, abuse report any IP infringements but why not email them to tell them how you feel?

Remember what they said about themselves? “Our overall goal is to create a variety of entertainment sites to offer a variety of services in order to satisfy the need of an ever growing global marketplace.” In SL that seems to involve infringing the IP and rights of creators, and promoting poor business practices. Frankly, if Gnubie store is an A+ model of what a freebie store should be, GamersBrand is the Z- what-not-to-do example to us all.

I can’t finish without a word about the lack of protection from Linden Lab of our IP as creators. Some of these items were created by people who have been issued with more than one DMCA takedown notice. Shouldn’t deliberately exploiting someone’s IP in this way be a once a warning, two times you’re suspended and three times you are out sort of deal? And shouldn’t a Linden be taking a very close look at GamersBrand Island for themselves? Is it REALLY necessary to make the individual creators issue DMCA after DMCA to take this company out of business in SL until they can tell a freebie from a full perms object and know how to work out whether something retains full permissions? Can you hear me in Chicago?

As I traveled around this morning to check out what type of animated beds are now available in Second life. I was able to find several that in one way or another was infringing on the Sex Gen Brand.

On Tuesday he (in the name of his company — Eros) filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court claiming the avatar known as Volkov Catteneo has violated the trademark on one of his devices called a Sex Gen. Stroker is claiming Volkov had copied the Sex Gen scripts and selling it for profit.

Stroker has filed a suit and is asking the judge to order subpoenas for Linden Lab and PayPal to force them to turn over records showing Volkov’s real life identity.

I am all for protecting your intellectual property rights, but I was wondering if Stroker is reaching outside the box– I have tried to conduct a small bit of business with Stroker and found him to be an unreasonable grouchy individual who seemed rather full of himself. Full of himself or not, if someone is “stealing” from him — he should be able to protect his property. I met with Stroker for a few minutes this morning and found him in a helpful and concerned mood…. I am leaving the Strike thru area, because early last year in a very short conversation that was the way I felt about him… Maybe it was just a bad day for him that day.

In a statement to “The Tampa Tribune” Stroker stated:

Volkov Catteneo is not the only avatar who has done him wrong. “A lot of people copy me, copy my work, copy my ideas.

Because it’s an anonymous platform where you’re an avatar cartoon character, as opposed to a real-life person, people think they can operate with impunity.

This brings us to the point of asking, is what Stroker is seeking relief for actually an infringement on his intellectual property or simply someone that is “bottling another cola?”

Upon speaking with Stroker this morning I mentioned to him that I just looked around and found there are a lot of “sex gen” knock off in Second Life now a days… Why is he picking this particular person?

Blatant disregard–basically said “Try and stop me”. It wasn’t an easy decision, I hate lawsuits. You spend enormous hours pouring over Poser/Photoshop just to have someone copy it and profit [from it]. This has been a long time coming…the majority of Merchants here are fed up with being ripped off.

Stroker is hoping to make an example with this lawsuit. “We’re doing the best we can to protect our product, our income, our intellectual property,” he stated to the Tampa Tribune’s Elaine Silvestrini. “We’re hoping that this is going to send a message to quote unquote hackers and anti-establishment types that just because it’s a virtual platform, we’re not going to sit idly by and let you rip us off.”

I would like to call to Stroker’s attention that imitation is the greatest form of flattery. If this Guy/Girl has actually copied your animations and scripts, I hope you are able to hang his/her ass out to dry.

This, to the best of my knowledge, is the first attempt at a real world lawsuit attempting to protect virtual intellectual property, and it probably won’t be cheap. I asked Stroker about the expense:

Those that know me…know my motivation is not primarily profit….I probably give away more than I sell, and many [merchants] that I know are single Mom’s and stay at home parents who can truly benefit from the ability to create an income here [Second Life]. I have 3 very close friends who depend on SL…its the perfect scenario…they can stay at home with their elderly parents and/or disabled children and STILL earn a living… that [lack of concern for others work] is what pisses me off most…no consideration for the livelihood of others.

Stroker and his attorney, Frank Taney or Thunderclap Merlin in Second Life, are working on a tutorial-esqe blog that will give step by step instructions on how to protect your IP and do it cheaply. (Should go live in the next couple weeks… I will post about it when it does)

“Did you know that you must have a copyright registered to file in federal court? asks Stroker… “it only costs $45 to file and soon it will be $35 for an online registration. Registered copyrights entitle you to triple damages and recoup of attorney’s fees.”
“All the precedents to acquire personal info are out there–set by RIAA and others,”
Stroker Serpentine tells me. “You really are not as anonymous as you make think.”

How do you think it will go? What is your opinion?

Link to this page

If you can’t read the text in the picture above, it states: (emphasis mine)

Special Offers for Second Life Residents
To support the availability of voice in Second Life, Linden Lab is proud to offer selected headsets at a DISCOUNT through GBH Communications, Inc.

These products were pre-qualified and selected by Linden Lab as ideal for use in Second Life, but purchase, shipping and support is provided by GBH, not by Linden Lab.

If you have questions regarding products, services or orders please contact Sandra Stapleton at sstapleton@gbh.com.

Notice: I emphasized the word discount… we will get to that a little later.

When I first saw this page I thought it was a Linden Lab Second Life Product Store page, sinceI didn’t see the standard disclaimer we all have to use; Second Life® and Linden Lab® are trademarks or registered trademarks of Linden Research, Inc. All rights reserved. No infringement is intended. This made me look closer at the url and saw that the page was on GBH’s domain, leaving me wondering how much Linden Lab actually has to do with this page or the discount it claimed to offer Second Life residents.

Lets get to the headset they were featuring so prominently on their product store page.

Plantronics Audio 550 Binaural USB Headset with DSP
The PLTX-AUDIO-550DSP is a Binaural USB headset using DSP technology.

Price: $80.37

I didn’t know what kind of discount this would be, so I decided to do a little search and see what price I might buy this headset for on other sites. I went to PriceGrabber.com, which allows you to do some comparison shopping all on a single page, and found the Plantronics Audio 550 Binaural USB headset with DSP in the price ranges: $51.91 – $87.76 from 29 Sellers. 27 out of the 29 websites would ship this headset to my home for less than $80.37. So that is a really nice screwing discount being offered by GBH.

Watching the pennies, the best price I could find shipped to my door was at Computers All Services who offers to ship to my zipcode for $58.76.

I have already used Google’s checkout gift of 10 dollars credit on a purchase for new people who use Google checkout to purchase something off the web, but if I hadn’t this headset could have been delivered to my door for $54.95 from Sector 29.com (then click the checkout options)

I am not familiar with either of those two sites and decided to check Amazon.com, and found this same headset for $60.79 & this item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping.

Needless to say, I am not impressed with this discount being offered Second Life Residents by GBH, and am wondering if Linden Lab has anything to do with GBH. I will say that GBH does not have the standard disclaimer which is required for the rest of us to use the registered trademarks.

Thanks Cat Cotton for the post on Second Citizen which sent me to the site in the first place to check out the Linden Lab product store.

Do you think Linden Lab has arranged some deal with GBH? I would like to hear your thoughts.

Edited 27 may 2007 to add:
I do not spend a lot of time reading what I feel is an almost useless Official Second Life Blog, but this morning I decided to spend a few minutes there. I had my question answered about LL arranging some deal with GBH. Jeska Linden posted on 24 May 2007 “The Plan For Voice” in which she states:

Need a Headset?
Looking for an affordable headset so you can check out the new Voice feature? We know that headsets can be expensive, so we’ve made an effort to help you keep costs down by creating a special partnership offering new headsets at a deep discount. We’ve made arrangements with GBH, an audio/video product supplier, to supply a range of high-quality, pre-tested headset options that work well with Second Life Voice. Please visit our partner site for more information on these headphones.

This sure leave me with a bitter taste in my mouth over Linden Labs apparently rather seeing a profit by allowing residents to get screwed ripped off than getting a good deal. I want to know where is that discount supposed to be?

[Author's Disclaimer. Call me biased. I've been playing Final Fantasy games since they game out first in Japan. Yes, I had a Famicom. Squaresoft is in my heart and soul. Every single one of their world's are beautifully designed and a lot of well thought out battle scenarios and balancing of jobs and skills. At one point in my life, I even had Ergheiz and Einhander (both little known Square games except by fans). Of all of the large world's that definitely be in itself a MMORPG, I have yet to lay my hands on FFXI, the only true MMORPG by Square-Enix. Why? Asian companies rarely have their players pay upfront for a game, and then ding them for a subscription and on top of that, micropayment. It just doesn't happen. That's a total western thought process. I can't help but feel screwed when I don't play for a month because my real life just happens to take priority. Thus, sorry Square. Otherwise, I'm still as big a fan as any. ]

Design: FFspirit.net is a well thought out site although there’s something to be said about the navigation. The overlay images for the cover is very much like opening sequences for FF. The maroon and light grey scheme is a typical light and dark color contrast scheme which makes it easy to read. There is plenty of imagery from FF covers, concept art and such which somehow makes me doubt that it constitutes as fair-use even though there’s a disclaimer at the bottom with “no trademark infringement intended.” I’m no copyright attorney, but I’m pretty sure you can’t use imagery like that especially if you’re integrating it directly into an advertisement. At least that’s the thought.

Content: There might be something to be said about trying to navigate from one page to another on the menu system, as well as the GKWorld links for the merchandise. The total straight off link to GKWorld makes you wonder if this site is affiliated with GKWorld, or if they’re just trying to look bigger than they are. The forums have massive amounts of posts from FF readers and I personally really like the fact that while they are reproducing news from other sources, they link the source and give their take on it. It’s good to see that credit is given where due. On the flip side, like the imagery issues above, I’m also pretty sure that the ringtones that they provide are out of fair-use rights. One of the songs is the complete FF X-2 Opening themes. I didn’t listen to the rest, but I assume that they were also complete songs instead of the usual under ten second clips. Again, not an attorney, but this could become a serious copyright violation if Square-Enix decided to run down the sue-happy route.

Overall: The design is good, and for a fan site (at least that’s the way it seems to be), it’s a well-managed seems to have very recent news about all things Final Fantasy. There is also a link to a buy/sell gil site that I would assume is against FFXI TOS. I personally would probably use the forums if I had more time, but the rest of the site needs some work in removing the infringing items in case some legal issues arise.

Along with several of my fellow bloggers, I got me along to Kaneva to join up and see what the new virtual world was like. As is already well known, Kaneva has two layers of membership: you begin with a MySpace type of profile and progress by some arcane procedure to be invited to the 3D world.

The differences between Kaneva and Second Life are likely to be many and varied, but one of the biggest currently obvious is that items uploaded to your profile page are subsequently available in the virtual world. The video playing on everyone’s profile shows an overview of what is possible, and includes film of a user page, with an uploaded music video playing on the page.

Like many MySpace and Bebo profiles, the Kaneva page allows one to upload or link to audio, video, photographs and written material. Like MySpace and Bebo, many people put music video, music, photographs they haven’t made and written material they haven’t written onto their pages.

The terms and conditions, which flash past as you sign up, and then again on uploading material, state that you must own the copyright of the items that you are uploading, and basically washes their hands of any responsibility for the things uploaded.

I am an oldbie in terms of blogging, having started my first blog in 1998, when there were only seven – yes! seven – other bloggers in the UK. Or at least, only seven that showed up in searches. However, I have avoided learning how to upload and download audio and video until now… mainly due to laziness, lack of HD space and confusion about the legality.

It seems – although I am ready to be corrected – that linking to an item which the author or creator has placed on view for all to see, is rather different from capturing that same material and then uploading it to a new site. Especially when you have agreed to terms and conditions which assert that you have the right to upload the material.

Now, obviously, a brief trawl through any user pages for MySpace and Bebo will reveal a lot of people using images, video and audio for which they are not the creator and copyright holder. With small excerpts, I presume one could argue fair use, as one can when quoting a few paragraphs from a book… but a whole video? A complete track from someone else’s audio?

I have the same ambivalence that every creator must have. If the profiles have any point, it is to show the world our personality, our likes and dislikes. Part of that is the ability to share the things which move and excite us. I would like to have a complete list of all the works that appeal to me on my pages… on the other hand if someone hijacked my own work, I’d feel more than a bit fed up. I want to respect other people’s rights to own and control their creative output.

It seems to me though, that many of the hosts for these pages also have an ambivalence. They set up terms and conditions that outlaw the very thing they encourage people to do. Not just the hosts… someone posted the procedure for taking video from publicly hosted sites, downloading to your computer and then uploading, via keepvid, and there are a myriad of webpages which provide tools for taking video and audio from one place and putting it in another. All of them require you to acknowledge that you won’t be using those facilities for doing what you are doing – taking other people’s stuff.

I am not even convinced that creative commons licencing would necessarily give one the right to download/upload material in the way that one is encouraged to do…. It seems that even if you are trying to be really, REALLY, careful about what you do, it isn’t easy to find the information required to decide if it’s all right morally, ethically, legally, to do that.

I have been watching a lot of TED videos from previous years, including one yesterday about a plan to make textbooks into a huge available library for collaboration and creating customised materials. I would love to live in a world where all creative material was made available in one enormous pool for people to share, collaborate and create new things. Intuitively I feel that has to start with individuals having control of their creative output… if they are not able to control it, they are likely to guard it all the more. Oddly, I think that having control will make it that much easier to let it go.

Which musings do not make it any easier to decide whether downloading a video from YouTube and uploading it to a profile site is an acceptable thing to do….