"[How To] Stop Clothing Copying"

Feature Requests Website Features
#52

Nothing is stopping anyone from walking into the Gucci store, taking a picture of a shirt and getting it made in China for a few cents instead of $500, yet people still go to the store and buy them full price. Why? Two reasons;

  1. People generally don’t like ‘fake’/copied things
  2. It’s way easier/accessible to just buy it from the store

Here are some things we could do to apply those:

  • Make stealing as hard as possible, have it so the only way to get the asset is by ripping it out of the game client itself

This would just make it more of a pain to steal clothes, will not solve the problem but it will help.

  • Add a ‘verified’ system for clothing sellers

A verified system will make people more cautious when buying unverified clothes, a smarter/more aware consumer base will definitely harm the sale of stolen clolthing

  • Have the clothing seller’s name and verified sticker displayed under the item in the Currently Wearing box on our profiles.

It would make people look bad if they were wearing an outfit that has a well-known brand on it but didn’t have the verified sticker. Like I said before, people don’t like wearing ‘fake’ stuff so if it’s really easy to tell you’re wearing fake clothes, people might be ashamed and not do it, just like most people don’t want to do it in real life.

  • More support for stores

To elaborate;

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This tab could use some features to make finding clothes new clothes easier. I think that tab should have a full on store rather than a link to see all assets made by that group. Something the group could have control over, like maybe I want to advertise my Spring clothing, I’d make a Spring 2016 collection on the group page, add a bunch of clothes to it and ‘feature’ it on the Store tab, making finding new clothing a lot more accessible. This would also get people to keep coming back to the same stores instead of venturing off and stumbling on stolen clothes.

9 Likes
#53

This is just too much work for ROBLOX staff to maintain, and i’m not going to go out of my way to get my clothing verified just incase it’s stolen.

The only way clothing is copied in HD is by downloading the asset directly off the website as me and blob stated before, it’s a insanely easy process and i’m sure ROBLOX can fix it.

I don’t care if somebody steals my clothing from the image displayed on the -1, and crops it to make it wearable, that kind of stuff doesn’t bother me.

#54

When I wrote my post I had actually profiting from shirts in mind, not just clothing that you don’t want anyone else to have.

#55

I don’t have a problem with profit, and if that’s the idea for verification then that’s fine.

But it won’t stop copying anytime soon.

#56

We can’t stop copying, we can only try to solve the problems that copying causes.

1 Like
#57

As I stated earlier ROBLOX already used a method to prevent users from downloading audio files off of the server via asset.

It’s not impossible to stop copying, the method used to download these images is so menial that i’m sure ROBLOX can prevent the client from downloading it.

#58

Go to sound page > Inspect Element the play button > Copy the “data-mediathumb-url” attribute.
Example: https://www.roblox.com/Rihanna-Work-ft-Drake-Thanks-for-4k-takes-item?id=359748862
Result: Screenshot by Lightshot thus Prima Bossa Nova
That was difficult and time consuming.

1 Like
#59

As I stated a while back, it is possible to retrieve the textures using the 3d thumbnail, which uses a good bit of freeware.

Inspecting the element of the 3d thumbnail, look for: (This is from my character page)
<span class="thumbnail-span" data-3d-url="/avatar-thumbnail-3d/json?userId=1861409" data-js-files="https://js.rbxcdn.com/47e6e85800c4ed3c4eef848c077575a9.js.gzip"><img style="display: none;" alt="T_FM" class="" src="https://t7.rbxcdn.com/fbe3ab0f75e99110c8cb35fa2c410250"><canvas height="352" width="352"></canvas></span>

(If you open the “data-js-files”, it shows that it isn’t completely made by roblox, so any major modifications outside of the intended use of it would take a while.)

Copy the “data-3d-url=,” which would be “/avatar-thumbnail-3d/json?userId=1861409”

Add roblox.com,“roblox.com/avatar-thumbnail-3d/json?userId=1861409”

It takes you to a page with
{"Url":"https://t1.rbxcdn.com/9e503168a659ef0ccfc5d2bbe90fde06","Final":true}

Go to the “Url”

It opens a page with
{"camera":{"position":{"x":-2.28341,"y":107.598,"z":20.8882},"direction":{"x":-0.40558,"y":0.40558,"z":-0.819152}},"aabb":{"min":{"x":-2.0,"y":102.5,"z":24.6022},"max":{"x":2.0,"y":108.158,"z":26.3978}},"mtl":"ef658632d6995e589ca04bbd36c1a2ab","obj":"1f2c100e10965bea3427ac512f4bc895","textures":["0209d74d14a7f3bddb5d2aeb458695b0"]}

From this, anyone can take the OBJ, MTL, and texture file.
Copy the id there, so “0209d74d14a7f3bddb5d2aeb458695b0” for the texture
Paste it after “t1.rbxcdn.com/”, so “t1.rbxcdn.com/0209d74d14a7f3bddb5d2aeb458695b0”,
That may or may not work, if not, go to t2.rbxcdn.com, t3.rbxcdn.com, and so forth, repeat until you get an image.

The obj and mtl are simple text, copy to notepad/notepad++ and change to the proper file extension.

The texture file is optimized for obj objects, but it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to modify it to the shirt/pants template.

This is tested in chrome and firefox

I don’t have any experience in extracting files like this and I figured it out a way that would require tons of work to fix, imagine what an experienced hacker could do using the proper tools.

(And now I just enabled the developer community to extract high quality textures from shirts/pants/hats)

The same results can be created using the roblox studio export to obj feature, good luck securing that!

2 Likes
#60

Of course it is.

You are rendering it in your browser. Obviously the texture is in memory somewhere. How many times do we have to say it.

1 Like
#61

Again, me and blobmista4 explained the much more oftenly used and efficient way to steal clothing in high quality.

There has to be a way to stop something as easy as typing “asset” into the URL from downloading the actual file.

And, I can assure you that 75% of the people who freeload off of other peoples clothing won’t take the time to learn that method.

@EisnteinK ^^
As I said, they already stopped it from being accessed by -1 and then typing asset.
It’s clearly possible to do the same for shirts.

1 Like
#62

As a Roblox developer, it is currently impossible to keep people from stealing and copying clothing on the catalog.

CLEAN UP THE CATALOG:
ROBLOX’s Image Uploading system automatically accepts pre-uploaded images, which means it has the shirt templates and stuff saved on its database.

With a simple database search it should be able to grab every single shirt with the same template ‘image’.

It can identify the original asset by it’s ID.

It should delete every single shirt / pants template that has been copied except the originals and by the original creator.
(It would identify the originals by the older asset ID) (Smallest Asset ID with the same template)

PREVENT SHIRT COPYING BOTS:
The same way assets get denied if you re-upload an asset, it will get denied if you re-upload it and you aren’t the original creator of the ORIGINAL asset.

17 Likes
#63

I make my reuploader bot simply change one pixel on the shirt. Entire system defeated.

Not denying that this is an issue - but it’s very hard to solve.

14 Likes
#64

Hi sk3let0n,

This has been brought up many times before. Anyone looking to discuss the topic should review these threads before doing so. As @AbstractAlex mentioned, it’s not an easy fix – if it were, we would have address it by now. It’s as, if not more so, difficult as the botting issue. Any “aha!” solutions aren’t going to solve the problem.

A quick rundown of issues I’ve pulled from existing posts:

  • Someone can easily bypass by changing a single pixel
  • Clothing makers will sometimes publish contract work to their profile so it can be reviewed, and then allow the contractor to re-upload to their group/profile to sell it. This would delete all of those pieces of clothing and prevent them in the future
  • Auto-deleting all existing copies would not work, as sometimes they’re not perfectly stolen and are deformed before uploading making them an imperfect match
  • It is only possible to check exact similarity – not by a percentage, as it would have to iterate over every existing clothing item which is infeasible

No matter how much support this receives, an impossible problem still has no solution, and if we’re looking for solutions we’re not going to find any through forum discussion. If clothing theft bothers you so much that you want a solution ASAP, review the existing threads that have been posted and brainstorm solutions with that knowledge in hand. You will be spending days/weeks/months – this is not something that can be solved with cheap tricks.

9 Likes
#65

i wish if roblox would do soemthing about it.

#66

If you have any suggestions, we’re all ears.

#67

the way ppl copy clothing is from changing last number of id… roblox can just block site after they will try to get on template page.

#68

Changing the ID worked in the past, but it’s not how clothing is stolen anymore. These asset pages had the full-res version of the clothing removed years back, so if someone tried to copy the image there the uploaded copy would be blurry. I agree that this page shouldn’t be visible as part of a larger change, as it’s just weird in general to expose internal stuff like that, but it wouldn’t stop asset copying.

#69

What about a heavy watermark?

1 Like
#70

That’s no good either. They’re using the full-res asset that’s applied to characters. If we apply a watermark to it, we get a watermark on our characters.

1 Like
#71

I can’t remember how you would do it, but couldn’t you “block” the image with something else ontop to prevent right clicking the image?

It wouldn’t entirely fix the problem, as there will be inspect element - but it will trip up a lot of people and make the process of copying harder.