From around the grid:

“Content theft would fade as a problem if the market for stolen products dried up. Some folks think copying and theft and sharing stolen content is an acceptable part of the internet culture. After all, the Pirate Party has two seats in the European Parliament. People justify it as some sort of new frontier of share and share alike, or blame the victims as greedy corporatists or minimize the theft as mere pennies and meaningless. Not only are these justifications false, they fail to recognize that content theft hurts consumers.

I am going to list a few ways I think theft hurts those of us who are not content creators. I would not be surprised if some of you can think of others. ” Cajsa Lilihook,  http://cajsalilliehook.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/content-theft-hurts-us-all/

“(…)but I think getting people to be aware and talk about the issue is what is important. So many people seem oblivious to the fact that content ripping is wrong. Education is never a waste ” Circle Widdershins, via the Second Life Universe Forums

“We Free*Stylers rarely get an opportunity to discuss content theft because we go out of our way NOT to promote sellers that sell stolen content. On November 5th there are two grid-wide initiatives aimed at making a public statement about content theft and it’s impact on all of us. We want to show our support to content creators as well as do our part to help educate about content theft.” Creamy Cooljoke, Free*Style

“…In thinking about content creators and their contributions, I imagined what SL would be without them.  This prompted me to put my thoughts into a couple of pictures because I consider our world, the world we all chose to visit for it’s ability to bring color and movement into our lives in a way not always possible in RL, would be dull and empty without them.  So for that I feel we must band together and say NO in as many ways as we can.” — Chalice Carling, Chalice in Wonderland

“Sure, one can say that amounts of money in SL are not big anyway so the loses of creators, and profits of the thieves are not big either, so the whole case is not worth the fuss. But that’s not true. Loses of the creators are big. Maybe they are not big in terms of real currency but count the time invested in the process of making things, count the expenses. Last but not the least, count the right to get compensation for own work and creativity, no matter if that compensation is small or big. Other thing is, thieves do make a considerable amounts, especially if you consider the effort invested. Yes, they steal things that, in real currency scope, doesn’t cost much. They sell it for even less. But they steal large amounts of items from all over the grid and they sell it many times. Small price * many sales * many items = considerable profit. And then, that kind of behaviour seriously damages the economy of the grid. It’s not just creator’s loss. In the long run, it’s yours and mine as well.” -dandellion Kimban, metaverse.acidzen.org

“The effect of this protest can be huge. Linden Labs indirectly receives a portion of all sales, because $L are more expensive to purchase than they are to sell back. They also make a huge amount every day on upload fees. If enough people band together for 48 hours and stopped all transactions, it would send a clear message that we will no longer tolerate content theft.” – Kellie Iwish, via Violet Sockington’s Shrinking Violet blog

Don’t have your materials? TP over here to get them!

Today at 5pm SLT I will be hosting an inventory sorting party! Here’s the location – see you at 5pm SLT!

Running out of things to keep yourself occupied? Check out Step Up! for more activities: http://stepupsl.wordpress.com/

Gabby Panacek has a great idea for those of you that want to participate but still want to support the content creators! http://atomicvalley.com/?p=850