Designers Applaud New Texture Theft Policy

by ZachC

The big news this past week was the announcement of a new texture theft policy. This one has some real teeth, so those who think they can continue stealing and get nothing more than a hand slap better wake up. There is now taking texture theft as seriously as those of us who’ve had to endure watching as these slime balls steal our work. 

The link to the new policy is posted here on The Voice, but to make it easier to discuss I’ll post it again here: 

Texture theft:

First Offense

• All known avatars will be temporarily banned
• The user will receive an email to all known email addresses educating them on the severity of texture theft and warning that any future theft will be cause for immediate, non-revocable expulsion from There.com, VMTV.com and all other worlds operated by Makena Technologies.
• The user will be responsible for repaying TBUX made by using stolen textures.
• The user MUST respond to notification stating that they will comply to the Developer Submissions Policy prior to being reinstated

Or, in extreme cases:

• All known avatars will be permanently banned from the service
• The credit card attached to the account is banned 

Second Offense

• All known avatars are banned –
• The credit card attached to the account is banned 

Subsequent Offense

• New avatar’s banned
• New credit card’s banned
• Hardware ban 

Appeal

A user will have the right to appeal a first time or second time offense.  The Submissions Group Manager will adjudicate an appeal and he will make a final decision in each case. 

If a user appeals and wins a case, the user will be considered “educated” and will be considered to have received one warning.

Item Recall

Whenever possible, all items sold with a stolen texture will be recalled and removed from the world.

As I read this, it appears to me that what’s changed are the consequences of texture theft. Here’s the original policy which is still posted on the Developer Pages:

Unauthorized Asset Use, more commonly known as "texture theft," is a form of copyright infringement. It is when a Developer takes a texture or model file created by There or another Member Developer and incorporates it, in whole or in part, into his/her submission without having authorization from the copyright owner. While there have been instances of Developers resubmitting model files created by other Developers without permission, the vast majority of cases have been texture related.

When we are notified of a texture theft situation, our Approvers will conduct a thorough investigation. If it is determined the complaint is valid, the following actions will be taken:

1st Offense: The product will be retired (with no refund of submission fees) and the offending Developer will be educated and suspended from the Developer Program for a period of at least ten (10) days.

2nd Offense: The product will be retired (with no refund of submission fees) and the offending Developer will be suspended from the Developer Program for a period of at least sixty (60) days. The Developer will then be required to pay a reinstatement fee of up to T$100,000 if he or she wishes to reenter the Developer Program.

3rd Offense: The product will be retired (with no refund of submission fees) and we will take swift remedial action, up to and including the offending Developer's permanent suspension from There.
Note: "Retiring" a product means that all related auctions are automatically ended and no new copies of the item will ever be created (through the Developer site or otherwise).

Please be absolutely sure of the merits of your case before filing a texture theft complaint. We have received many unfounded complaints, and they take just as much time to research and resolve as those that are legitimate. If we receive more than two (2) unfounded complaints from a Developer, we reserve the right to no longer investigate claims on behalf of that Developer.

Since both are still available, I’m taking the dangerous step here of assuming that the only change is the penalties. Since the most recent would supercede what came before, and nothing else was posted, that seems to be logical. Hopefully There will update the policy on the developer pages to make this more clear.

Based on the new texture theft language ALL textures in ALL virtual worlds operated by Makenna including There and VMTV are now protected. If someone steals a texture from There and uses it in VMTV, the texture theft policy comes into force.

Some questions were asked in the open forums. SvengaliBob from staff replied:

1 - Reporting Texture Theft: We will ask that the developer who cries "foul" gives us evidence: supply us with the filename of the stolen item, and the filename of the original item, And include the world that each is in.

2 - Wherein it is possible, we will provide refunds to innocent victims that bought something not knowing that they had bought stolen goods.

3 - Retroactively applying policy is tough, and this will be handled based on the circumstances. I will say that texture theft has always been against the developer submissions program, so even if this happened prior to this revamp in policy, there will be consequences. However, if a developer stole two textures 3 years ago and has been a great addition to the community since that time, I don't want to be in a position where I have to ban the developer for something that s/he did that long ago... So, sorry to be non-committal on this point, but we will take it case by case.

4 - Because of the privacy policy, we will not reveal a case to any user except those involved. While public hangings have some entertainment value, they just don't work well with privacy policies ;-)

5 - VMTV and There.com - Sorry if that was unclear. In the language of the policy, I try to state that the rules will span Makena Technologies operations - meaning the worlds we operate now. So, if a Dev steals from There.com to place it in VMTV, the developer will pay the consequences in BOTH worlds. Tarring and feathering sounds fun, but has anyone made the Tar/Feather texture yet? ;-)

I’ve heard some saying that the penalties are too severe and that people need some time to understand and be taught that they can’t use the textures in the resource files. Finding and using those files takes time, energy, knowledge, and software. If someone has all that and can’t figure out that using them is stealing then we have a more serious problem than I thought. I know that when I came into There almost 4 years ago and began creating buggies, I didn’t have a clue about texture files. When it was explained to me and I finally found them, I understood without having to have it explained to me that these were other peoples’ creations, so while I could look at them and get ideas from them, using them was STEALING. How hard is that to figure out?

I like the new policy and penalties. I don’t think honest designers will be impacted. If someone is so stupid they can’t figure out on their own that submitting other peoples’ work is wrong then they don’t need to be part of the developer community in the first place. Colleges and Universities penalize, expel and terminate people for plagiarism. Should each and every new student or staff member need to have plagiarism explained to them when they walk in the door? Stealing is stealing. I have NEVER understood why that’s so difficult to understand. Don’t get me wrong, I’d like to see the new policy posted prominently when someone signs up for the dev program, but not having it there for now isn’t a showstopper for me. It’s about time people were held accountable for their actions.

Next week I’ll get back to reviewing buggies, but I felt the new policy was important write about.

 

 

Disclaimer:  The views in this article do not necessarily represent The Voice of There or its staff. These articles are provided solely for entertainment purposes only.