I was going through the Second Life Blogosphere when a particular issue caught my attention. That issue is about Stolen Skins (or textures). Texture (skins are just textures) theft has always been a big problem in Second Life and many designers, specially the popular ones, have had their textures stolen and sold at very low prices. This is very unfair for the designers because creating an original texture, specially an original skin, is a very difficult process. I know how hard it is because I tried creating my own skin once. That is why I understand why Skins in Second Life, specially the good ones, cost so much.

The Unfortunate Truth

So, you’ve finally created your own original Skin and it was so good that it became popular, you became popular. While you were enjoying your new found fame and fortune you received news that your amazing and original skin was stolen and now being sold by someone other than you. You were shocked, surprised and then later mad at the thought that someone has stolen your creation. In your confusion and anger, you asked yourself how it was stolen.

Sad to say my friend, stealing a texture, specially a skin or any clothing texture, is as easy as downloading and installing Second Life itself. Using a third party Second Life client, you can easily dump or download all the texture on a target avatar into your computer’s hard drive and that means skins and clothing textures. You’ll get both the baked and actual .TGA files. See how easy it is to steal someone else’s hardwork?

A thief can just buy an original skin then download it easily. Actually, they don’t have to spend anything because they can always download the DEMO versions of the skin then just remove all the watermarks and then upload it and sell it as theirs.

As far as textures are concern, no one is safe and that is your Unfortunate Truth!

A Hard War To Win

It is a hard war to win and only Linden Labs, the developer of Second Life, can do something about it. Linden Labs must developed new measures to protect their creators and combat this practice permanently. What those measures are? I honestly don’t know but we can do our part by voting for Stopping texture theft and stop spreading of stolen items at jira.secondlife.com.

Anyway, as long as there are ways to dump textures into your hard drive (actually they’re already there even with the regular client) and there are no extreme measures that will deter texture theft, or make texture thieves stop and think twice, then winning this war against texture theft is almost an impossibility.

Residents Fight Back

Concern residents are taking the matters into their own hands. See the photo below, residents have started to protest inside and outside the shops of suspected skin texture thieves. Unfortunately, an in-world protest can only do as much without violating Second Life’s own Terms of Use. In fact, acts like these can also be classified as a form of harassment or grieving since, admit it or not, the suspect still has rights but what else can anyone do? Filing a DMCA complaint against the offender takes a lot of time and sometimes they’ll just take the shop down only to open a new one somewhere else.

Photo is from Ornamental Life

I guess for now, while there is no clear solution to the problem, residents should stay vigilant and should continuously inform the general Second Life populace about these offenders. For example, FabFree’s post on the issue contains steps on how to vote for Stopping texture theft and stop spreading of stolen items at jira.secondlife.com. Other Second Life resident owned blogs that blogged about the issue are:

• Second Arts
• Fabulously Free
• Style Your Destiny
• Essence of SL
• Subtle Submission
• and there are others more…

Something must be done because if not content creators may stop creating new and original content which will leave us with recycled, stolen and highly saturated items and objects in-world. This is not limited to texture and skin makers. This concerns all content creators in Second Life. Their creation, your creation, must be protected against those that profit from the hardworks of others. Vote for Stopping texture theft and stop spreading of stolen items in Second Life today!