DMCA Counter-Notification Recieved by LL - Items Deleted From Our Inventory

People have asked me why I am posting on this DMCA Case, that it may not be wise to be so public, that we should carry on quietly and await further notification from LL. The reason we are doing this is two-fold. Primarily, we are very concerned that we have the opportunity to maintain a dialogue with our customers, supporters, and the fashion community in SL about the issues facing the availability of our products, or lack thereof. Second, we see the DMCA process as carried out by LL to be incredibly flawed.

There is absolutely no protection for the accused, and we are being treated guilty until proven innocent, and that goes against everything the American Justice System is supposed to stand for. If LL is protecting the filing party on this DMCA Case, by not even giving us an avatar name, product name, or shop, why are we expected to delete our items from our inventory, give up our real contact info, and submit a sworn statement that we did not copy another party, when we have no idea what we were accused of copying.



Below, I will post the letter we received from LL regarding their receipt of our Counter-Notification, but first I will tell you what greeted me upon checking my email today. First, I received an email from OnRez, notifying me that MY ENTIRE STOCK OF ITEMS was being de-listed as they were un-able to contact the OnRez Dropbox in our shop (we only have one). I logged in to find that not only had all the ~*FBG*~ Jelly Tots Necklaces been removed from my inventory, but that on going to the location of my Mainstore, the OnRez and SLX boxes were now missing too (They were on the bottom of the pink shelf shown above). That includes our entire product line, therefore making everything we had listed on SLX and OnRez not available for sale. This not only means we can not sell the necklace (which we had already removed from active listings), but all the work and time put into the rest of our product listing was not only wasted, and our sales on both sites is entirely disabled, including all the other products we make. We really don't sell very much on any given day, but this amounts to shutting down our shops entirely, and that is just WRONG!



When I cammed to the back of the store, to see if the other vendors were taken, they too were now MISSING from the shelves. We had already disabled the vendors, they were no longer for sale, we felt we had done what was requested of us by LL. You can see the spots on the shelf above where the vendors were located. As a result, we have no copies of this necklace left in inventory, and when this issue is resolved in our favor (as we fully believe it will be) we may never be able to get the necklace back. LL has treated us as criminals, and we have no idea what is happening on the other end of this case. This is not a texture we can simply re-upload and continue to sell after the resolution of this issue, this was built prim by prim (190 to be exact) and it is going to be incredibly difficult to recreate.

While logged, I received this e-mail from LL:

Thank you for submitting your Counter Notification. As required by the DMCA, Linden Lab has disabled the following work(s):

Description of Work(s):
FBG Bright Jelly Tots Necklace Sets
FBG Muted Jelly Tots Necklace Sets
FBG Greyscale Jelly Tots Necklace Sets

Location of Work(s):
Velvet ( 127,83,23 )
Retrology (150,182,40 )
Floyd ( 94,147,39 )
Ivalde ( 170,167,24 )

Pursuant to the DMCA, the claimant has 10 business days to notify us of filing Court action. If we do not receive notification of an action, the work(s) will be restored to your inventory. Sincerely, Linden Lab Removal Team

We now await word from the other party, to see if they plan to take legal action against us in a court of law over a $100L Necklace sold in a virtual environment, that has netted us a grand total of less then $10,000L in profits, most of which goes to paying the rentals on our shops. We still have received no information about the other party involved in this case, no response from LL about the many questions we have regarding the information we are entitled to, nor do we know what the other party has received from LL.

Thanks you again for your prayers, kind words, offers of support, and advice. We appreciate it more then you will ever know, you have all made us feel as if we are doing the right thing in fighting this, and I hope this issue allows us all to examine the way LL handles their "mediation" of the DMCA process, and possibly make it more fair and less one-sided in the future.