If you have been paying attention to the feeds today, you know that something is rotten in the state of Second Life and the designers have had it. It is time for us to give back to the designers the only way we can, with out vote. We all love freebies but freebies given out that are stolen from hard working designers is immoral, unethical and just plain wrong. Situations documented here, here, and here are causing designers to stop designing, shops to close, and leaving a bad feeling over the design community.
I urge all of the FabFree readers to go and vote on SVC-676.
Here are the steps:
1. Go to: Issue SVC-676 or https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-676.
2. In the upper right hand corner it says log in, click this.
3. Type in your full SL name, first_name last_name. (I would put in cherlindrea lamont.) Enter your password. (This is a SL run site so your password is safe.) Click Login.
4. You should now be back at the original page listed above: Issue SVC-676 or https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-676
5. On the left side bar, find the option that says Voting. Under that tab it says Vote for It.
6. You have now helped many people by helping move this issue closer to the attention of the Lindens.
7. Share these steps with your friends.
Note: If you cannot connect right now, keep trying or come back later and try but please do not ignore this.
Please, if every reader goes and follows these steps it would be a tremendous thank you to all the designers who work hard to bring you all fabulous freebies. Do NOT buy anything, not even freebies, from thieves.
The original store is taken down but there are other locations so please keep voting. The also threatened to come back as alts. We need to make sure this is never allowed.
FabFree - Fabulously Free in SL 
February 2, 2008 at 7:35 pm
I hate to say that, but there may be amny readers here that will go and buy the ripped skins. It is a sad and corrupt world and I am not sure what can be done about it. I did sign the petition, and I really hope this will help.
😦
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February 2, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Thanks for posting this!
I’ll certainly do all I can to keep creativity in SL.
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February 2, 2008 at 7:51 pm
That Bonnie person is very pathetic… if s/he thinks s/he can make lots of money this way then there’s something wrong with his/her brain (oh wait there is something wrong with the brain anyways). His/her IM box will probably be filled with insults and comments lol… s/he will have a hell of a time muting everyone.
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February 2, 2008 at 7:55 pm
WONDERFUL NEWS! THE CULPRITS SHOP IS GONE!!! SHE TOOK OFF! YESSSSS!
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February 2, 2008 at 8:02 pm
I checked every location the ” skins ” as advertized. They are gone!
Bonnie is gone too, both of the culprits names don’t exist anymore. teh place where the shop was is up for sale. I truly hope, justice has spoke this time!
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February 2, 2008 at 8:37 pm
They may be gone, but the one underlying problem is.. its so possible for them to pop back under a pseudonym. Part of me wants to say a lot of the problem is the ease in which a person can create an anonymous alt (after being run out of town) and start a new business with it. It’s so very easy to do in SL without any sort of active account verification. =/ I know my opinion isn’t gonna be a popular one, but SL as it is now, has so many loop holes that people are squeezing by on. =/ The lack of LL doing anything about filed complaints is just the cherry on a poo cake.
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February 2, 2008 at 9:09 pm
Alas, I am unable to access the JIRA. I will try repeatedly, vote for it when I can, and publicize the issue on my blog, for what that is worth.
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February 2, 2008 at 10:38 pm
read and join the group PROTEST AGAINST CONTENT THEFT. try to help the cause
http://prettystr8forward.blogspot.com/2008/02/stop-leechers.html
http://prettystr8forward.blogspot.com/2008/02/call-to-all-second-lifers-enough-was.html
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February 2, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Bonnie is far from gone. Bonnie2 showed up a little while later that I remember. Now, if the Lindens actually took action after I left a few hours ago, then good, but this is definitely not the end. The person who was behind this was beyond arrogant about coming back as Bonnie2, and was shouting/spamming with comments which I won’t repeat here due to vulgarity, however they were openly mocking the designers and openly admitting that they stole the skins. Banned or not, this individual *will* be back, and definitely will not be looking to make money, they will aim to ruin SL businesses by ripping content and then giving it away for free.
Evidence on Jira shows that this person has been doing this for over two months, which is a disgusting amount of time for Linden Lab to ignore the problem. They stick their fingers in their ears and pretend it doesn’t exist because, just like honest designers, the thieves are paying their tier on time. Bottom line, that’s all LL cares about. They are paying attention now because there are a lot of legitimate designers who are pissed off about it. But to be sure, this is the first drops of a coming storm, because it will be widely known now that the theives are going to be under attack, and this will make them switch from trying to make money, to trying to ruin the economy and those who run businesses in SL.
While I am not a well known designer, I will be joining those who are going to remove current items and will no longer produce new content until Linden Lab is forced to take care of this rampant problem. I know some of the readers here enjoyed the DDR themed outfits I put out as freebies, but there won’t be any more until this is fixed. I have better things to do than to make clothes for other people to steal and make money off of.
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February 3, 2008 at 2:01 am
Lol the Lindens can simply ban that IP address or something… it’s so simple and can be done in minutes yet they hesitate to do it, even after solid proof is shown. O.o
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February 3, 2008 at 4:05 am
I Voted, and proudly! Creators are EVERYTHING in Second Life. We need to shut down all thieves.
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February 3, 2008 at 3:17 pm
@neural, i agree. they will come back. they will advertize again and again and get caught again. it costs money to get new land, it costs money to upload these tga files again and again. i saw the bonnie2 as well and i dont want to get ignorant – but the whole crew who does this ” theft ” ( including selling naughty designs skins and are advertizing on the new search page! ), are all tied in to a huge group from brazil. so therefore they think they can get away with it, because the are out of the country.
it is going to be very hard to get on the bottom of this, unless all designers go ahead and put a major stop to this and perhaps pursue a lawsuit against LL and these culprits.
the economy of SL has been in a defizit for over a year due to the constant skin theft and ” armys ” of people cheating out club owners of money due to the fact they bring all their people in to vote for them and cash in money very easily. i saw at one time ( working in a club myself ) how they cashed in more then 10k in prizemoney.
it is sickening and SL has become a platform for thiefs to make a quick dime no matter how.
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February 3, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Though LL can ban by IP address, it is very easy to reset your IP and gain a new one.
LL knows what they need to do to fix the texture ripping, and have failed to impliment it for a long time now.
As a texture artist for TRU I find this most disturbing, especially since I just bought a skin creator kit(legally from another TRU artist) and have branched into this area myself.
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February 4, 2008 at 3:36 pm
interesting… well.. i have never seen/heard about such stores… i guess its an art to steal and resell… no doubt its wrong… but then again… people from developing countries are prone to do it… coz thats the way they are bought up… for them ‘pirated/coping’ is no big issue at all…
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March 14, 2008 at 10:17 pm
i’ll vote.. but i am pretty sure i’ve seen that vectorized pic on the top right in another site..that isn’t yours..baunn, call me stupid but,isn’t that too content theft??!
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March 15, 2008 at 12:38 am
Ummm, the pic on the top right(girl) is part of the template that comes with wordpress so this would not be theft because it is part of the blog host’s preset templates that ANY person blogging with wordpress can select. Nice try. Unless you meant top left pic(SV-676), which I made myself. I will do you one better, I will even blog the proof for you, sillyhead.
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