https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-676
And VOTE! Make your voice heard! The votes are only at 600 this morning. Haedon sent out a notice to our group, which consists of nearly 3000 users. There are lots more who aren't in our group, so that number should be considerably higher than 600! The jira always runs slow (at least for me anyway) so be patient. If everyone hits the page at once, it's going to be even slower. Please, please make it a priority to go and vote on this issue!
The process is extremely easy, and here's what you should see:
Now you need to login to the jira with your Second Life username and password. This is a Linden Labs site, so your information is safe. It's no different than logging into the SL website.
Once you're logged in, on the left hand side of the page you will see this:
This is where you click Vote for it. The page will reload, and you get this:
Content theft effects all of us. In this situation skins are being mentioned specifically, but there is so much theft grid-wide. This impacts the creators the hardest, and first. When our work is taken out from under us, and given for free or next to nothing, we're 1) losing sales and 2) forced to lower our prices to get sales back that *should* have been ours in the first place.
I read a blog entry by dandellion Kimban this morning, and would like to quote parts of it here. Her original post was regarding free skins, but it so applies to this situation of all content being stolen. I found it a really thought provoking article if you have the time to read it. (emphasis added is mine)
"On the other side, there is just one item that keeps its price stable: land. And may I say, compared to anything else, land is too fucking expensive. And, it is very important, land tier is paid in US$, not in lindens. Even if you are living on an estate and pay your landlord/lady in lindens, they pay US$ to Linden Lab. All of a sudden, we are not talking microcurrency linden peanuts, we are talking hard green cash recognizable in any bank on planet Earth. What does that mean?
That means that content creators are working for third world wages while land barons are doing serious biz here. And, mind yu, making skins, hairs, scripts and all the rest of lovely things we use takes a bit more knowledge, skills, creativity and time than buying an island, placing prefab houses and renting all that. All of a sudden there is an ethical problem of giving those skins for free! Dropping prices is not a good idea anymore. Dropping prices is taking money from content creators. And content creators need money. They need to be payed for their work and they need to cover their expenses. They need to pay for the land their shop is on. And that price won't drop with everything else."
Those two paragraphs tell more than anyone could explain in a whole dissertation. When we lose sales because we've lost the content that we spent time, effort, heartache, and money to create, we lose the ability to pay for the land we sit on. If we can't afford our rent, or our tier, they kick us out. We can't keep an island for free, believe it or not! (The Lindens frown on that for some reason.) If we can't pay the rent, they're going to kick us out to find someone who can.
This effects every single person on the grid. When the content creators are not protected, when we can't make enough sales to cover our business expenses, there's not going to be anything for the rest of the grid to buy. Which effects the economy. Which effects Linden Labs. Which means they're not making money to cover their business expenses (servers are expensive!) and will either sell out, or close down.
This is not a minor situation! As Ming-Ming would say: "This is sewious!"
Here is a poignant video from Minnu that sums it up nicely.
And if you've gotten this far, for the love of all that is created on the grid, go VOTE already!!!
2 comments:
I was so careless with those two sentences. That post wasn't against free content, I give those skins for free on my land. That post was supposed to start some thinking about why land is so expensive. But never mind that.
Texture theft is something different. Though I just casted the 619th vote on the JIRA, I doubt that will do much. Question is if Linden Lab is going to fight the war against thieves, and even more important one is if it is their job to do that. If somebody steal content from your web site, do you expect web host to do the justice? Or you go to the police (which then gets all the stealer data from the web host)? Linden Lab is service provider, not a police.
But then, going to the court against somebody because of second life biz.... Rare are those that earn enough to do that. And that is where the center of the problem is. Right where the point of that quote is: doing virtual biz is making you earn far less than you need to run that biz.
Seeing as how it's Super Tuesday, I voted :)
Seriously, LL NEEDS to make this a priority. I can't believe the powers-that-be still don't understand how important the creators are in SL. The more widespread theft becomes, the more creators will leave. If the creators leave, many residents-- the paying, shopping, and spending ones-- will follow.
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