OK…I bash LL quiet a lot. So, in a pleasant change, I’m going to blow them (or some of them – notably Soft Linden) kisses.
Anyone reading this blog knows that content theft is a genuine issue within SL and that, as a content creator myself, I’d like to see LL become more proactive in dealing with it.
Well, now they have, as reported by Tateru Nino over at Massively – no fewer than 50 rippers have been summarily banned from SL for blatantly stealing assets from the Linden servers.
The culprits in question had been using a Viewer called Neillife (unfortunately built on the Emerald codebase) that utilises an purpose-built exploit that fooled the Linden asset servers into providing them with items to which they had no rights to own.
This is very much a step beyond “simple” copybotting or Viewer copying as evidenced with the likes of Cyrolife. It borders on outright computer crime that can far more easily be acted upon with legal measures than protracted DMCA actions, as the violations in question were directly against Linden Lab.
And it was becasue the Viewer behaved this way that Soft and co were able to get the hackers – by identifying the object the hackers were going for, they simply substituted the original item with one that effective “phoned home” with the user’s account information each time it was illegally copied….making it a cinch for LL to round up the culprits and ban them – including the Viewer’s creator….
It’s not clear how this kind of action by LL can be broadened, but the fact that they have quietly taken such a step is very welcome; and while it would be very easy to say “well, they only took this action as a result of the class action against them”, I’d beg to differ and simply say that kudos falls where kudos is due – and that LL are to be unreservedly congratulated in the action they have taken.
My one real worry is that this success will leads to greater cries from the ill-informed (or those carrying certain grudges) for other “safe” Viewers such as Emerald, Meekat and Cool Viewer to be “banned” as third party viewers are “evil”…..
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 
So … if those culprits somehow manage to transfer these object to others, they get banned as well? .. While I’m glad the Lindens are taking action, I sense a whole new wave of griefing comming to the grid!
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From what little has been said, it appears the actions are being taken directly against those who are using the Neillife viewer to directly obtained a “marked” item from the asset servers.
I would suspect that IF the “marked” item has been passed on to others – and LL can clearly see those individuals have not themselves been using the Neillife viewer to access the Asset Servers – then the recipients would be given the benefit of the doubt. It is much more likely that the “marked” object would simply be deleted / removed from their inventories in much the same way as items that are subject of a Take Down notice can be excised from people’s inventories.
Of course, the other thing to remember here is that the success is limited: the exploit Neillife used could be identified and the single object the exploit was used to grab could be swapped for the “trap” object. Had the exploit been used to snag multiple items (ten, twenty, thirty – pick a number) – then the success may have been harder to come by.
Hence my concern that while this is good news, it doesn’t become a further rallying cry for those hell-bent (for whatever reason) on seeing ALL 3rd party viewers “killed” (“well, this shows 3rd party viewers are dangerous and its only because of the narrowness of the exploit that LL were able to take action – so we must see all 3rd party viewers banned as it is the only way to be safe….” or similar diatribes…..)
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