Monday, July 14, 2008

The Copybot Drama

It seems that that sign invited drama. It was my own fault, thinking about it so much I must have invoked Murphy's Law. The observant Hirokii Hyun sent me a notecard this evening, which was a notification that my Desperado Hat and Guy Fawkes mask had both been copybotted. The worst part: that they were distributed with full permissions in a group with over eight hundred members. This left me shaking, upset, and panicked. It's the thing you pray will never, ever happen to you.

I took a breath, and realized... I'm a concierge level customer damnit. I have the Linden hotline right there on my support screen, and if there's any time to call it, that's now. I made a support ticket and called the concierge support, and through that my ticket got immediate attention. I requested that the item ID's be removed, and that they be removed from the group notices immediately. I was also told that I could have a scanned version of my signed DMCA notice added to my ticket, and so I quickly wrote one up (not too quickly, I made sure to spell check and dot my i's). I'll be sending the physical DMCA tomorrow along with images, as well as having the image on my ticket. I'm now waiting on Linden action regarding the items.

In my panic though, I didn't know where else to turn, left in suspense and not sure when the Lindens would act, I was waiting for responses to my ticket, refreshing the page and wanting to make sure that the thief was thwarted. I banned him from my land, I sent an abuse report... but I knew that AR's are very, very rarely responded to immediately. Unless they're done by many people.

I sent a notice requesting my friends, my loyal customers, my Illusionists and members of Masqueraderie to send their own abuse reports on the thief and his alt. All of a sudden a rush of IM's in the group channel were asking for details, expressing their support and their outrage at the thief. In less than a half hour, his name was removed from search. Less than five minutes after that, as the group turned their AR's against his copybot alt, that name disappeared too.

I just want to say I have never seen that quick a response from the Lindens. I've seen swarms of fashionistas descend like a plague of righteous AR'ing locusts, and never seen a response like that. Abuse reports can still take a day or two, or at least a few hours(!) to be processed, even when filed en masse by angry shopping addicts. I've heard that even then, sometimes the culprits are only suspended, despite clear copybot abuse. I have simply never seen anything like that happen, which means you guys are clearly Extra Special Grade A Awesomesauce made from freshly grown organic Awesome. Just knowing that all of you showed such overwhelming support that the Lindens had to panic and remove his names just to stem the unending tide of reports made me feel so protected, grateful, and much more likely to sleep well tonight.

In honor of that support, and the incredible power you guys showed together, I pulled something appropriate from my inventory that I was working on, and sent it as a very grateful thank you

I feel very much a part of a family of wolves right now. And wolves protect their own. Thank you for baring your fangs when I needed it most.

11 comments:

Terry Toland said...

Linden Labs *does* use your wings in one of its random images when you're not logged in, so they better well have responded quickly! :P

Don't mess with the super awesome Siyu, or you'll have a bunch of mad hatters at your door! XD

Anonymous said...

now if only LL could respond like that every time, maybe people would get the hint and stop this copybott madness >.<

Kesseret Steeplechase said...

I am so sorry that you had to be a victim to this but so very glad things were taken care of so quickly.

<3

Miriel Enfield said...

What Kesseret said! I'm glad this all got taken care of quickly.

Anonymous said...

Here here! The copybot situation is just getting soooo out of hand. I'm glad this was taken care of so quickly.

I know I sent my AR like many other Illusion fans to that jerk.

Thaumata said...

i'm so sorry that someone as sweet as you had to deal with this at all, but very glad they've resolved it for you, at least for the moment.

i wish i could have seen their inbox. hahahaha

Anonymous said...

I'm glad this problem was solved in a proper way.

I'm also glad for the freebie mask. It looks awesome, like all of your stuff.

Thank you. And I hope you don't get stolen from again.

Mourna Biziou said...

Oh man, by the time I had logged on and learned about the drama, the offender had already been wiped from the board.

It does my heart good to hear how quickly the troops swooped in, it does!

Corgi said...

Would it be inappropriate to ask to which group the stolen items were distributed?

Tanarian

Nef said...

Right now, things are sadly still not completely wrapped up. I won't pretend that this guy can't ever come back just because two of his accounts were banned. I'm still waiting on the removal from the groups notices, so if you don't mind, Corgi, I think I'll wait on posting that. Thanks for your well wishes and your support though, and you're welcome for the mask :) But I can't pretend I haven't been demoralized by this >.<

Anonymous said...

Wowzers. Drama about some easily made shape in some lame 3D moddelor? Guess it's time to Copybot the rest of your things and port them all over the grid again. :)