Not long ago, an avatar named Skatman Shelman, his alt Skatman Edelmann, decided to start doing entire sim builds for people in SL. The problem: he's using tons of my stolen work to do them with, claiming it as his own work. Hes even got my furniture in vendors. The sims containing this work are Nosferatu, Black Dissidia, Vamps Nest and Les Carpathes.
After Filing a DMCA, waiting for 6 days, I was sent the response that "LL has sucessfully and expeditiously removed the content listed from those locations and the inventory of the avatars." Excellent, right? Not so:
Within an hour of getting this email, I went to all of the locations listed and the items have NOT been removed. 4 sims of my content still sits there, being sold and distributed through vendors, rez boxes, etc. Hundred of pieces of my work - sections form my carriageway house, my garden set, my sculpted prim pack, furniture from my store. One of the houses is even called "maison Rustique." Nice touch.
So, with some of the removals team members fired recently, it seems they are now limiting the enforcement of the third party viewer policy to merely sending you useless documents to make you feel like they have done something to protect you, when in fact they have not done anything but send you a document saying they have. Im not really up to speed on the legalities of this, but it seems to me that telling me they've acted on a DMCA when they haven't would be against some kind of law. It should be if it isn't, but then this is typical of the perfect loopholes that exist within the framework of the TOS policy and the DMCA policy that make it next to impossible for you to do business here.
Those avatars still exist in world, despite my filing on them, LL admitting that the persons were found guilty by way of removing the items from them, and despite 2 other people having filed on this person in the past for similar offenses. Just what exactly do you have to do to be removed from second life? I think we all need to ask that question. Supposedly, the 3rd party viewer policy was designed to help them remove people like Skatman and his alts, to give them more authority. From the working end of that policy (which hasn't stopped any 3rd party viewers from coming to my sim, unlike my CDS which works fine still...) I can say my experience leads me to conclude that it is designed more than anything to make it look like the lab is finally being pro-active about theft. In a word, BOLLOCKS.
I was told "If you have a problem with the removals team responding to your email - send the removals team an email." That is, according to several LL employees, "the only thing you can do." No person to speak to, no help whatsoever beyond that. Nice loophole.
SO...after all of this, Ive just decided to delete the LagNmoor sim and maintain my business in SL on the Rustica sim only. I cannot justify the cost under the current market, and under the current policy enforcement system that exists here. I will continue to operate here as long as possible. Items that existed on that sim, like my houses, will be available on the Rustica sim in vendors.
If you would like to see LagNmoor again before it is gone, now is the time. It will not be here tomorrow. Thank you to all the people who have come to it over the last two years. You are the reason I am still here.
I pray that nothing like this will ever have to happen to another person in SL.
