On Second Thought

The post that I am responding to here, has been up for several days now, but I only just stumbled upon it a little while ago. I’d like to respond to some of it, although I know that in many senses I am just wasting my breath. I really get the impression that people simply want to blame the entire Mental Mentors group for the actions of some… and it gets a lot frustrating, and a little hurtful. I love being part of the SL™ Mentors group, and being a Mental Mentor, too. I have made wonderful friends through both groups and activities associated with them.

So, even though I feel that I am wasting my breath… still I have to open my mouth. :)

… [R]ecently, [Mental Mentors] came under close scrutiny by the Content Creation community after Cel Edman’s sculpty packs were released to over 800 members on the Mental Mentor channel. The Sculpty packs have served to help countless people across Second Life® and I always admired Cel for helping make sculpties more accessible for all. It was at this time I questioned whether I should stay in Mental Mentors, but as one of the group leaders made an apology and it seemed a genuine mistake, I let it slide.

We’re all entitled to mistakes, right?

Every week, the Mental Mentors send out a “Freebie Box” which is aimed at providing materials to help mentors help the community. A great idea!

Or is it? It was Cel Edman’s sculpty packs that were released in this box in the first place.. The measure put in place to stop such an incident happening again was that the group administrator would now check all the items submitted for the box to make sure they were okay to be sent out.

Yes, as a matter of fact, it is a great idea to send out the freebie boxes! :) We as members of MM do need to be careful with what we submit for the freebie boxes, and there is a matter of personal accountability to discuss, as well. While we can ask, and expect our admins & officers to check content before they actually pack it up and ship it out, we can not expect them to be familiar with all content in SL™ or who it was all made by.

A freebie box sent out this week contained full permission plant objects by Blazed Undercity. The textures on these plants looked awfully familiar.. as builders and landscapers, me and my sister Rrishanna Regina immediately recognised them as being the same textures as used by the Heart Garden Centre.

Now Heart Garden Centre is one of the biggest names in SL™ – you won’t go for long without seeing plants made by these two talented designers. So an IM to Lilith Heart and she came over to our home to take a look at the objects which had been sent out on the Mental Mentors channel.

Lilith immediately confirmed that they were indeed her own textures, which may have been copybotted or ripped using a third party program. As someone who has recently seen his own furniture ripped and stolen, and being sold in Second Life®, I could relate to Lilith and felt for her.. when you see content which you’ve worked on for days/weeks ripped off in just moments and being distributed without your consent, it really is heartbreaking.

Me and Rrish immediately let the two group owners know of the situation, and the group administrator began talking to Lilith about what had happened. I was IMing one of the group owners – my concern wasn’t so much about the situation specifically as that was for Lilith to take up with the group owners.

My issue was for how Mental Mentors would react to this issue. My own thoughts were that the freebie box that gets sent out needed a rethink. I offered a simple suggestion – creations made by mentors themselves can be the only objects sent out in the freebie box. As a designer in SL™, the thought of my own creations being ripped off and sent out in a mentor channel disturbs me.

This was indeed an unfortunate situation, and one that I am very sure that no one meant to have happen. However, none of the officers or admins deliberately sent out stolen content, and when it was pointed out that there was a problem, by Prad & Rrishanna, the officers of MM made it a point to send out a notice making it clear that there was a problem, and what we had been asked to do by Lilith (delete the questionable content).

For the record though, while I had seen many of their creations around the grid (Heart Garden Centre’s), I never knew of the business by name at all until just a few weeks ago, and I have been in SL™ since 2004. So, it is not unreasonable to give the officer(s) of MM the benefit of the doubt, and say that they were not familiar with the textures.

Mentors are there to set an example for SL™ residents to follow and be there to guide and advise those who need it. To me, the Mental Mentors group was failing to carry out its duties appropriately. It appeared that nothing had been learned from Cel Edman’s attempt to draw attention to theft in SL™. This was further affirmed when the co-owner of the Mental Mentors group said this to me:

“it is better for you to find your item than for it to be places you do not see it”

Did I read that right? Am I really supposed to be happy that my content could be distributed to 800+ people, but it’s okay because I know where it’s being distributed.. it’s only a mentor channel full of active members who will then pass the item onto other people..?

First and foremost, the Mental Mentors group is not an official mentor group. You have to be a mentor to belong to Mental Mentors, but you do not have to be a Mental Mentor to be a Second Life® Mentor. No, you are not “supposed” to be happy that anyone’s illegitimately obtained content could be distributed to anyone, 800+ Mental Mentors or otherwise. I do not condone sharing pirated, illegitimate, stolen, or unauthorized content in any manner, be it through a group or otherwise. No one should be happy about anyone’s content being stolen and/or redistributed in an unauthorized manner, mentor or not.

But again, you can not expect the officers & admins alone to know where all the content in SL™ comes from, you can only ask that they respond to a problem if they see it themselves, or have it pointed out to them. You can not hold someone accountable for what they do not know. That is unreasonable.

Specifically regarding the quote stating “it is better for you to find your own item than for it to be places you do not see it” what I read is pretty much exactly what it says, but to hopefully clarify how I interpreted it, I will rephrase: “If your content has been stolen, it is better that you find it than for it to be out there in the wild without you knowing about it.” And this is true. If you do not know it has been stolen, how can you do anything about that? How can you file a DMCA notice, how can you get the thief to stop selling it, and claiming it as their own? So, I’m afraid I would have to say, that in my opinion you did not read that right.

A notice did go out that night about members of the group being “advised” not to send objects which they did not make themselves.. a weak notice, which gave no apology and did not explain why such a decision would be beneficial to the group. I then received a confrontational IM from one of the group owners that I “had gotten my wish” and the freebie box had been axed. Which wasn’t my wish, and wasn’t what had actually happened, but I wasn’t in the mood to fight over something as pointless as that.

Here is your so-called “weak” notice that, you say did not include an explanation. From a notecard dated 2008-03-24, two days before your blog post.

Good Evening Mentals,

Its come to our attention that in the contents of Nature Package - Arrangements which was passed out on 3-24-08, that the creator that made the palms allegedly stole the textures of Lilith Heart. This has not been proven yet and Lilith will handle it on her side. What she is asking is as a courtesy to her, if you would all please just delete them she will be most grateful. This is why it is so important that when you send me items that we would prefer for YOU to be the creator of the items. We also do love to see your creativity. If you have a dear friend that would like to donate an item we will gladly take it please make sure to ask them for what perms they would like it passed with. Send me in a folder the item and the notecard so that it can go out with the perms notecard in the MM Goodie Box. Unfortunately things like this will happen in SL™. Again nothing been proven so please do not mention anyone as a thief to others. The item was NOT stolen it was created by someone else. If the textures were used of others that we cant possibly know.

Thank you all for being so understanding in this matter.

I’m sorry, but I do see an explanation there as to what happened, and that explanation makes it clear to me why they would prefer that we Mentals send out our own creations. The card, quite rightly, explains that there is an instance of alleged theft, and also clearly states what we, who might have received the package are being asked to do. (Delete!) It doesn’t seem to me, at all, to be a weak explanation or weak apology. It also states that the item was NOT stolen - which is also technically correct. The textures may have been stolen by the person that created them, but the items as delivered to the group were not prims created by someone that had been exploited in some manner. While you, Lilith Heart, and 10,000 other members may be 110% sure that those textures were stolen from Lilith, that is not for those of us who have never compared them to originals to say. So, to be technically correct, the notecard states that the item wasn’t stolen, and that the textures were allegedly stolen.

Yes – the item wasn’t made my Lilith. We can deduce that from the object being created by “Blazed Undercity”. However, the textures used on the object are exactly the same as those used by Lilith.. and seeing as Lilith creates all her own textures, I think that’s a little too co-incidental. It seems more likely to me that Lilith’s textures were ripped, placed on prims and then distributed.

Again, you recognized the textures, but I wouldn’t have. I took a peek at the items in that box before I got the notice letting everyone know that those items should be deleted. I wouldn’t have known them to belong to anyone other than the person whose name was on the prims, if it hadn’t been pointed out. Perhaps that is because I am not a landscaper or builder. I have only purchased one set of things from Heart Garden Centre ever, and those would be the only items I personally could ever specifically identify as belonging to Lilith Heart. I’m sorry, I guess, that I am not as informed as you. But, it was a good thing that you were that informed! Why? Because you spotted the problem and went to the people that should know. In my opinion, in you leaving Mental Mentors, Prad, all you’ve really done is removed a set of vigilant eyes that might be able to help spot more problems if they happen, and let people know about them.

As for the Group Owner stating that only 50 mentors may have looked in the box, I think that’s a ludicrous point to be making. Does it really matter how many people look at it? It’s there and it’s devaluing the work that content creators do in SL™.. it makes me sad that mentors can actually think like this, and I’m not even sure I want to carry on creating in SL™.

I agree with you here, Prad. It makes no difference at all if it were 5, 50, 500 or 5000. However, we do not live in a world where precogs lounge around in a pool all day making prophecies about who might be thieves - so we can’t stop things before they happen. We can take action when something does happen, though. We also can not expect people to do anything about things that they are unaware of!

[14:25] Group Administrator: To bad for Prad…. he will have to get over it. Lots love the box and lets not forget that Mentors dont get paid, some dont have money to buy items. We have many gracious friends, creators that DO send us their items.

Mentors don’t get paid, so they should be allowed to distribute stolen content?!? That kinda did it for me.. the owners and administrator of the group obviously have no regard for the hard work that content creators put into their creations and aren’t interested in supporting IP rights.

They are giving the majority of Mentors in SL™ a bad name and that makes me sad. So many mentors support the creators and IP rights, and are against theft. I’ve now left Mental Mentors as I cannot be a part of a group that has no regard for IP rights behind closed doors.

NO! There is no excuse for using, selling, giving away, or sharing stolen content! I agree with your sentiments here, too, Prad. Again, though, like I said, in removing yourself from the group, you’ve removed someone who might be better able to help spot problems than some others. At least in some departments. ;)

However… you say that “so many mentors support the creators and IP rights, and are against theft,” but you seem to not give that same credit if Mentals is added into the equation. I assure you, I support content creators in SL™ - it is in my own personal best interest to do so! But, even if I were not a creator, I admire so many of the talented people who create the things we wear, live in, drive around in, etc that I would hate to see someone else’s hard work taken and used to make a quick buck by someone else.

In fairness, it is not all of Mental Mentors that does not support IP rights. Many Mental Mentors are also content creators. Many who are not still support those that are. It is not anybody in Mental Mentors who is giving “all” Mental Mentors a bad name. It is those who paint all Mental Mentors with the same broad brush as those members they feel are not doing the right thing that are giving us “all” a bad name.

Both Creators and Mentors play a vital role in Second Life®, and I am proud to participate in both programs. Both need to be united to help make Second Life® work.

Wholeheartedly agreed.

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