I could write a VERY long post explaining what I mean about the essential criminality of the open-source extremists' movement attached to Second Life, but it's actually easier to just display a very typical post from this anarchists' movement (see below) that I noted linked to my blog today, even though the discussion is from 2006, and originated first on Raph Koster's blog, and then went to an interview with Raph.
People like Raph, who might support open source as a good geek, and make use of open source, and plan to open source some of their stuff, don't always realize how these terms are used by extremists in Second Life *including Lindens*. There is open source, and there is open source. We don't need little lectures about how "the Internet is based on open source software". We get all that. On the way to providing all that OS goodness on the Internet, however, our homes weren't blacked out, we weren't stalked or griefed or harassed. Our property was not stolen merely because we went on the Internet, unless of course a more sophisticated key-logging hack or data-base hack was used to access a credit card, which isn't the norm. *Our means of livlihood was not stolen*. On Second Life they are now; and in the Bright Future of Second Life, where we learn that DRM "slows things down" from the former CTO and his fans, it is likely to be welded into the software and the grid. Here's the message of copybotted Second Life: Just create more stuff faster, as it will be stolen; work for big companies that pay you regardless of the perms set on your props; create experience and environment rather than objects and textures. Otherwise you will be pwned.
The thuggery and crime of open-source socialism just isn't visible often to the well-meaning eye because it appears so good, altruistic, open, democratic, and even reasonable. The idea that everyone should get to access all knowledge and property sounds eminently positive, all about "learning" as the article I quoted from in the piece about Cory Linden the other day. Geeks want to "learn," and what better way to "learn" than to be able to open up a script. Why, if you didn't have boatloads of copyable and openable scripts in SL, you would have slowed down the development of SL.
And who could disagree with that? We all realize the benefits of having non-proprietary door, notecard-giver, vehicle, etc. scripts in SL you can open and adjust and improve. Ironically, it's scripters who have taken the greatest care to make sure perms work on their proprietary scripts, however, and whatever Copybot scandals that have happened in SL, and whatever texture and design thefts that have occured and object-copy heisting that took RL-lawsuits to address, you can be damn sure that the ability to keep perms on scripts is held sacrosanct -- the one time I remember scripts becoming copyable for about 12 hours, the Lindens got on it like a 5-alarm five, and the Linden responsible for it happening was fired. They never did that with Copybot, eh? Instead, the person who made Copybot was invited to the Lab to join an elite group, Architecture Working Group to discuss the open sourcing of the grid. Go know.
When people imagine that virtuality should mean that everything should be free, it's because they think of land and objects not as the emulation or simulation of those things in real life; they think of them as mere software, bits of code, pixels. Whatever the technical accuracy of their comments, they utterly obliterate the social and human side of that emulation equation, that relates to *and values* these things in terms of labour and cash in ways that make a world. Those who refuse to recognize this valuation are inherently world-destroyers -- and world-destroyers are a group that the particularly OS extremist Lindens come from, promote, and like to keep around as they go about Bolshevizing their software.
When script kiddies say information should be free, they then go rapidly from that to saying "and an expensive hovercraft in Second Life should be free because it is merely another form in which information appears -- it's code". The problem with this self-entitled, facile and infantile thinking is that this "information" is rooted in knowledge and labour -- two things that take time, and expense, to acquire.
When you provide a world for free, with mainly free accounts making up the bulk of the population, with numerous accounts not even providing any payment information on file (so much for information needing to be free *cough*!), somebody still pays. Some think the rest of the community pays in terms of diminished capacity as resources in this supposedly no-scarcity world are taken up -- the scarce resource is FPS and sim space, Philip, duh. And others point out that ultimately the Lindens pay in more staff time for griefing patrol and everything else inherent in lots of information-wants-to-be-free-no-information accounts.
So server space, time, Linden time, other residents time and expense -- these are all laid out for the express benefit of our feted script kiddies to gambol and frolic in their sandboxes.
Somebody who makes a house or a hovercraft spends time and money -- why can't they charge? Why can't they *make a living*? Why must it be stealable by thugs? And thugs they are, as they want to knock you on the head, and steal your stuff.
Universities, parents, big IT firms, even governments are providing the bandwidth, server space, desk space, and computer capacity to sustain this open-source gang. Somebody is ALWAYS paying. Their big IT firm looks the other way; Mom pays for the kid in the basement; the university coddles kids. But somebody does pay.
Hackers reply that by having everybody use their free time and free labour, they take the enormous task of the Internet, and by analogy, the 3-D Web, something that is "doable". Of course, this overlooks the real advances of the Internet, which are symbolized by merchant sites like amazon.com or ebay.com coming along and being made possible not by lots of unpaid barn-raisers, but by Venture Capitalists.
If micro-chunks of time/labour are to be used, that opens up issues of attention, quality, supervision of the kids by adults. It's an infantile way to achieve something, in inspired, ADD-addled bursts of multi-tasking purloined off job/government/university sites. Perhaps it is inevitable in this big a technological change in history, that it has to come at the expense of some existing institution that didn't foresee the expenditure.
But...why? Proprietary interests, users paying normal subscription fees like $9.99 or $19.99 or $49.99 a month as they would for Internet or cable service; people paying for items they buy of technological use, as they would have to buy a TV or i-phone -- this is all NORMAL for virtual worlds, expected, and NECESSARY. And that means making digital rights, and managing them, and that's ok.
Whatever the role of open-source, it doesn't require stealing everyone's stuff, making it available for freeloaders, and justifying development at the expense of IP protection. It's mere Bolshevik extremism to say otherwise, and in fact those more professional coders working at real jobs will explain this.
Read "Investing Time and Money in Virtual Worlds: Caveat Emptor" by Raph Koster from late 2006, which is a good way to contemplate where we are now at the end of 2007. In this piece, he makes a basically true statement, "The cost to create a minute of content has risen exponentially, but the fair market value of a minute of content has plummeted." -- but in our virtual world, with the ability to spend an hour making something and put it out to sell forever and log off, it's not quite the case as he imagines. Even so, the ability to copy what costs a lot to make in terms of ability and machinery means that ultimately, there is a really severe problem finding ways for people to buy the machinery and the Internet connection, if they cannot pay for those things by monetarizing their time on line. It's that simple. And I might add that even if parts of his future world are open to the public to modify, or open-sourced, or however it will be done, it will come at the expense of VC capital, and will accompany still having some way of making money in a business plan that will still require somebody to pay something.
"I actually think copybot is the best thing that could happen to SL.
The problem with SL, is that its utterly gripped by what bugs me abour RL. Socially constructed limits to subjectivity based on wealth. I'd love to be a hoverboat owner, but I cant afford it. Well, in my take it'd be nice to be able to drop into a virtual world and hoon about in a hoverboat, but damn it if I cant afford to in SL either.
Of course I *used* to be able to go;-
@create hoverboat
And in the old currencyless Mushes I could go "Yo, queegle, copy me your battlefrog and we'll go nuts on each other."
Richard Stallman talks alot about distopia for him being a world based on intellectual property, and whilst RL is not quite there.
And I got to be honest, I think its going to strangle the hell out of the game. Currently theres alot of discontent within SL about the intrusion of the corporates into the game. I dont blame its residents. Walking around and seeing boring IBM and NISSAN signs plastered everywhere seems to invoke everything negative about baudrilares (spelling?) hyperreal I can think of. But the growing distopia in SL is a creation of the culture of the place itself. Talking about building librarys of open source items and whatnot can draw looks of almost horror out of residents "it'll undercut my market!" and so on. Im tempted to reply "Well, why isnt that a bad thing. Its a game, and more stuff means more fun", but then I remember that many of these poor sods are attempting to actually make a living in it. Its like some sort of bizare categorical error made intentional. Well of course IBM and NISSAN will turn up. Theres a buck to be made. But wheres the fun?
Now, I dont necessarily disaprove of ingame currency. Heck, eve online is my favorite game by a mile, and the buck rules the show there. But the core undercurrent is NOT "If I move x widgets, I can trade my lindenbux for realbux" , its "man, if I pwn the band of brothers I can wave my doodle around in 3D and be the he-man I dreamed of as a child".
But I can imagine a 3d world that isnt shooty, but more social buildy, and frankly Im more inclined to imagine that as one based on a set of freedoms that precludes exploitation and constraint by wealth and intellectual property.
Well, I really hope copybot succeeds and forces some freedom into that game , because frankly if online world makers might get the idea that SL's monetisation of fun really is a good idea.
Only the cyberpunks will save us now!
————–
Now. Onto Prokovsky’s comments;-
The “select elite” you refer to is infact an open source developer group that got somewhat insanely hounded by certain questionable members of the SL community for doing something I consider really really admirable. Put in free labour into creating an open source product that lets people interface into the SL world outside of the proprietry SL client.
You’ve been hammering on about the “evil intent” stuff, by virtue of a little IRC chat, that only appears to show geek humor at worst. You keep painting the quest for freedom programmers engage in against proprietry enclosure of human creativity as if its some sort of communist plot.
The curse of SL is its DRM system. Information *wants* to be free, and the stunning lack of creativity I frankly see in SL compared to the amazing mushes and Muds of old really seem to have everything to do with the distopian system of intelectual property built in to Linden Labs software. I mean, one walks about SL and its like freaking suburbia. Hurr! Look I made my house!
SL needs a few things to do before it can flower in to the place it should be. First off stop stifling creativity with this stupid IP system. If I see a car and think “Man that’d be awesome with a pair of crazy wings and a pair of mech legs”, then it’d nice to be able to copy it and modify.
This is the reason that one of the most productive areas of IT innovation is in Open Source.
It worries me that the most creative forces in SL get stigmatised and attacked. I can think of the insanely creative builds of W-Hat, the libsecondlife people , and many others (perhaps the furries?) , that get treated like outside wierdo’s and bandits, whereas SL seems to portray greasy business folks who seem keen on forcing people to pay real money (that could do stuff like , say, buy food) for innane replicas of junk on the outside world.
Buggered if I want to buy another cheezy mansion model, I want to steal your car and attach an a jumpjet to fly to the moon."
***
You would think from writing like this that the W-hat "art" was the Mona Lisa. But it's tacky and bad and in bad taste as well as just plain bad. Remember Arahan's self-indulgent porno dreck? (Complaining about this link to porn and griefing glory only got me removed from my ability to post links to Resident Websites which I had originally retained after being banned).
Second Life would never have been populated by anything more than a gaggle of these hackers and griefers if it had not built in intellectual property rights and the land auction model to build value into private property.
What are the triumphs of proprietary work after 3 years? Perhaps it is nothing more than Stroker's bed or Svarga (which is based on a proprietary scripted artificial life scheme), but that's still something that enabled SL to grow. There are a million beautiful things for sale in Second Life. Making things like Straylight trees costs time and should garner money so that it maker can make a living. Not everyone can -- or wants to -- sponge of parents, school, or job to participate in the grand project of building the 3-D Internet.
1. "Infantile thinking" is right.
It's been illustrative to me, in this weird SL world, to discover that there is a group of people (including a lot of Lindens, apparently) who think everything should be free except for scripts.
People won't create work faster if it will be stolen - they will simply leave, and put their efforts into a place where it makes sense.
It's been obvious to me for, oh, probably over a year now, that the plan is for only outside corporations (and the development companies that service them) to survive in SL.
They can survive because (a) they don't sell pixel products anyway; their true products are in the real world, and (b) if something of theirs gets stolen, they're big enough and rich enough to put a stop to it through the real world courts.
For the most part, anyway. There will be an occasional SL resident (who sells something extremely profitable, like, for instance, sex beds) who will also go to court.
But basically, for the little guy, stealing his stuff is fair game.
Apparently Torley recently called attention to how to steal textures on the SL Blog (though apparently stopped one step short of giving away the whole thing, and a poster then supplied that step).
Why? Because textures don't matter, except to texture makers, who should have more sense than to try to sell such a thing anyway, right?
It was GOOD that they did it once, REAL good, Anthony; just as it was good that people made all the content that built the world that attracted the real-life companies. But it was silly to think that LL ever really MEANT for you to be able to keep doing that.
Unless, of course, you are a scriptor. Scripts are sacrosanct. Let's not forget, as Philip once famously said, God himself is in the code.
2. I'm just REAL glad that the person who wrote the love letter to LibSL on the LL blog for creating copybot is gone. That was Cory, wasn't it? And was it Cory who finally gritted his teeth and posted okay, okay, we will say it is against TOS to use copybot to copy things not your own? Or was that someone else?
But it killed them to do that, and they only did it because SL was collapsing in their faces, surprise, surprise, as sellers closed up shops everywhere.
And during the copybot furor, I read I don't know how many scriptors get on the blog and forums and say, "Stop panicking, guys, it's ONLY prims and textures, it's not scripts!" as if that put paid to the whole concern.
3. It has also became clear to me in the weird world of SL that there are a whole bunch of people - coders, mainly - who think all content is its pixels. Or, as you say, its code.
They seriously believe that.
That's like looking at a television set and seeing only the box and buttons - not what it broadcasts! Or looking at a book, and considering it mere ink and paper.
Talk about honoring yourself!
They honor the physical aspect of the thing (its box, or its paper) far higher than anything it represents or which is communicated through it, or made with it, simply because they made the box or the paper!
It's the hopeful revenge of the mundane technician, if you ask me. The technician figures nothing could happen if he hadn't manufactured the box or paper first, therefore he is king! And nothing else counts.
Kind of like if your plumber all of a sudden decided he ruled the world.
4. This type of thinking - that your stuff should be free (but not mine), and that code is not only special; it's all that counts - is lunacy, really; lunacy pure enough to make any reasonable person head for the hills in the face of it. Yet we stay on in SL. I guess cause there's nothing else right now, hmmm.
Or maybe its to watch the early insanity, which I'm confident will lose in the end.
If LL doesn't catch on, they will lose the regular residents, and become Advertising Land for real-world companies (and it is doubtful that these companies are actually the better basket in which to place the eggs), and someone else will come along to ensure what LL once promised its residents: the ability to make things and sell them, without wholesale theft of your things.
And actually CARE about making that possible. With respect.
Rather than acting as if we were all saps to ever believe what they told us at the beginning. Rather than treating texture sellers and content creators as if they were obviously idiots.
5. As for this TMZ - who is a lunatic even compared to the regular lunatics - I wonder, has he made a house? If so, then he, too, could say, "Hey, I made a house!"
Or if he wants a car with wings, why does he have to apply wings to someone else's car? Can't he make his own car? Would that not be a learning experience? Hahaha.
5. I loved your last paragraph.
coco
Posted by: Cocoanut Koala | 12/16/2007 at 03:54 PM
The comment you quote is obviously pretty dimwitted, by somebody who really hasn't quite got out of the "but it's a GAME!!!" mindset and is also fond of parroting some poorly-understood slogans ("information wants to be free!"). There is however a point to be made I would say regarding the opening of content, and that is one to do, ironically, with the original intent of copyright.
I am actually quite fond of the idea of copyright, in that recognises a balance between the interests of individuals and society. On the one hand, it is recognised that there isn't a lot of point for one individual to spend significant lengths of time creating things if they are not then able to actually eat. (Would that we all lived in a Tofflerian leisure society where that would be possible.) Creation takes sustained effort and can't - in fact, I would say, shouldn't - be something that one has to shoehorn around a "proper job" and do for free because any so and so can grab the end result and redistribute it.
In fact, anyone who _does_ claim that is the one being the reactionary conservative, to be frank - insisting that we must all have "jobs" dictated by vested interests to survive, and anything we try to do for ourselves should be treated as just a bit of play-artistry. It is seen all over the place on the net - people heaping horrendous insults on, say, people who object to their pictures being taken from Flickr and used without credit or recompense in other people's videos.
As well as that, it is quite comic to see the backpedalling of programmer types when it comes to applying the principles they espouse to _everything_, including code. Wait - we can't possibly allow all _scripts_ to be open, there are all sorts of passwords and so on that would be exposed then. Clothes, though, and builds, and objects, yeah, that's all okay, it's only prims and textures and stuff.
---
On the other hand, one of the points about copyright is that it _expires_, that being part of the bargain - the community protects the rights of the creator for a certain length of time, and then makes everything open to everyone to build on, exploit, sell, whatever they wish, and increase the general level of knowledge or cultural development.
This is not very controversial, but one of the things about SL is that, although it is a very _rapid_ version of RL in almost every aspect, social, technological development etc, there is no expiration of copyright. I often term SL a satire on RL and this instance bears that out I would say - a script that has been closed for two years in SL is worse than Disney getting a hundred-year extension to their copyright. Copyright legislation was never intended to protect the interests of rich copyright holders (rarely, in RL, content creators, but in SL they are sometimes) and let them continue to make money indefinitely.
That is the point that sane copyright law sceptics address, and it is one that I think is entirely justified. And incidentally, for the benefit of any doubting readers: yes, I would be quite happy to see my own scripts and creations, even ones from which I continue to make money, opened, as long as passwords and personal information were not exposed, which would be a disservice to everyone that I have dealt with.
Posted by: Ordinal Malaprop | 12/16/2007 at 05:21 PM
Cocoanut,
Yes, I marvelled that Torley put that out there, but information wants to be free. And hey, why try to sell textures, you're absolutely right. Some of the people selling them themselves swiped them off the Internet, so why should they get to do that, so the reasoning goes.
But...of course there are many people who make their own textures and make gorgeous buildings with those beautiful baked textures, and it seems reasonable to ask that they not be copied, and that the person labouring over them shouldn't have to get a lawyer and go to real-world court to get justice. Tehre are simple ideas like putting in watermarks or date stamps -- what holds this up?
As for scripters, well, what's hilarious about that is that the very tekkies who lecture and hector you about how scripts should be made open and put on the forums and the library and help people to learn are the same ones who become uppity about their own reputation, business, and proprietary scripted thingies for sale.
I marvel at this internal contradiction within one person, and within one community. There would be absolutely nothing to stop that "DMX" from copying everything and then selling them, and expecting people to pay for what he sold lol. It's uncanny.
As far as I recall, it was Cory who both celebrated libsl on the blog AND announced that Copybot would be banned in the TOS, but it was a reluctant sort of symbolic thing only.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 12/16/2007 at 05:22 PM
I think it's more a case of "objects and textures in SL can't be protected" than of selective protection.
You see, ALL objects and textures in SL are streamed to your client, who then renders them. Even encrypting the stream wont work, since the client needs to decrypt it in order to show it.
And that information can be used to copy the item. Just like copybot did.
In the end, there is NO manner in which one can protect objects or textures.
But scripts are different; there is no need to send the source code of a script to the client. No real need to send the machine code either; just have the server run the script and send the results to the client. Thus, script can be protected where objects can't.
Posted by: rationality | 12/16/2007 at 05:30 PM
Ordinal, this idea of copyright always and everywhere having an expiration seems bogus to me. Families go on retaining the rights of their dead famous relatives for aeons.
I don't see how you could justify taking off the permissions on scripts -- or anything in SL -- within 2 years just because 2 years in the dog-years of Second Life is like 100 years of RL. The person still has to go on making a living.
You could argue that there'd be little sense to opening up old door scripts that listened and were laggy and weren't efficient and improved as later door scripts were, for example -- there'd be little value then in opening old scripts that would be made obsolete by the platform itself changing so much.
I think it's like anything else in life, and any public good and scarce resource -- which in this case is people's time, and their need to monetarize that time to live.
And that means that some things are to be construed as public utilities, that people can't monopolize, like water, say. Or air. Or electricity. That certain goods in the world should be made generally available to make the world operate. Therefore it seems reasonable to me that doors, notecard givers, simple movement scripts, etc. should be
Or let's take the famous story of the rental box scripts. There were only 2 for the longest time, and the scripters of these devices made a fortune by selling the rental boxes with a commission built into them that paid them for every transaction.
So you could buy the script outright for some huge price (by those days' standards), like $8000 or $10,000, or you could buy just one for $250 with a commission.
That always struck me as a total outrage, because the script didn't take that much knowledge or effort to create -- those simple ones of yesteryear with none of the features you see today -- but because there just weren't that many scripters around capable of taking on this job, somehow this monopoly persisted. It was the most annoying thing, as a newbie, to have to sacrifice one percent or even five percent of every transaction of every rental you made to Hank Ramos or Moonshine Herbst. The scripts would sometimes break due to Linden patches, and they would take their time fixing them.
So I remember I finally commissioned a scripter to make me my own box with other features, including discounts, to avoid these scripts, that had the feature that made Anshe her millions -- non-refundability (I insisted on *having* refundability).
And the minute I deployed it everywhere, Hank then put out his script as open source, available for free (I had actually earlier bought it from him). He then went through another updated version. So I hand it out now in my yardsale store -- but it seemed to me that the only reason he did that was to undercut another person from making a buck off the script, and ruining his monopoly (his script worked differently than Moonshine's and had more flexibility, it *did* refund and take many weeks).
On the whole, I've been unimpressed with scripters in Second Life, with few notable exceptions like Adam Zaius or Ordinal Malaprop of course.
I will go on thinking that there is something unethical about stealing work. And I don't think it's age of 2 years changes that issue.
When you say this, Ordinal: "Copyright legislation was never intended to protect the interests of rich copyright holders" -- well, I don't know where you're getting this concept. It's a socialist belief, and one that is merely a belief, not some judicial ruling.
Copyright protects the interests of creators and copyright holders. It is irrelevant whether they are "poor" or "rich", "old" or "new" or "deserving" or "not deserving". That is the fundamental premise of private property. You don't get to have less protection just because you are rich, and made money off your copyright already.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 12/16/2007 at 05:36 PM
rationality, you are not adding anything to this discussion, because your points are all very well known and we've all been over them a million times and this point is raised every time this discussion has come up for an entire year, and some know-it-all rushes to "explain" that textures need to be rendered client-side and that's what makes them vulnerable.
But other worlds and games take care of these issues in a variety of ways: 1) greater policing through a TOS; 2) obfuscation, and yes, just because obfuscation doesn't work 100 percent is no reason not to put it in; 3)vetting of content through central committees, which means that the game makers take an interest in controlling copyright theft.
Perhaps none of these three, or only no. 2, is possible in the setting of SL, but there's a bigger problem that prevents trying to grapple with this: the hacker extremist opensourcenik mindset of the Lindens in charge of this. They refuse to take it on as a task; they are stubborn and ideological and driven about it, and have the exact same mindset as this idiot DMZ, essentially.
So when you have that attitude, there isn't any political willingness to come up with rational solutions and reasonable middle grounds and balances of the needs of software creation and maintaining a learning environment and also being able to have private property and proprietary rights.
Duh, we all get it that if you can see it, it can be copied.
What you're forgetting is that when I make a script, hey, I can see it too. I can pass it and copy it *too*. It's only permissions that prevent it from being copied, just like anything else in SL. That's the step that precedes the issue you're talking about, of things playing server side and being less vulnerable client side.
Scripts were copyable when an exploit happened once, and that means they are vulnerable like anything else.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 12/16/2007 at 05:43 PM
You're right, ofcourse. I'm not tackling the political implications, but I just wanted to point out the technical difficulties/impossibilities to those who are unfamiliar with them (not necessarily to you, I am aware that you knew this); it's not meant as an argument against you.
Maybe, yes, scripts should be treated like objects. But would that be a reason to just throw away protection on scripts? Since right now, scripts are the only thing that add value to your object, making it uncopyable. You can copy a Dominus Shadow (first thing that popped in), but you won't have its functionality.
As for the solutions: we all know LL won't implement #1, because that could make them a legal target even bigger than they are now. And in the end, a company will look after itself first.
They have stated before that they are unwilling to get into a dispute between residents, seeing themselves as an ISP.
The biggest problem with SL ofcourse, is that it is so "open" to begin with. Other worlds have either fixed content, or vet anything made in them (point #3), to the point of restricting certain activities (ever tried scripting in There.com ?).
(Plus, it's unscalable[sp?]).
The reason for the success of SL in attracting ppl who build and sell stuff, is also its biggest weakness.
The best solution would probably be some form of quick mediation process and/or form of lawsuit, ONCE -and we know how long this will take- the legal systems of the world are up to speed (no pun intended, but very relevant, considering the faster "pace" of developments in VR) on tackling virtual worlds. This will be years; they can barely handle the internet now.
But hey, I'm no expert in these matters, nor am I proposing solutions. I'm also, however, not saying that something *shouldn't* be done. I prefer to leave the bigger picture to others, I'll fill in the (sometimes technical) details.
I was just saying that the solution cannot be a purely technical one, as many people still seem to believe.
Posted by: rationality | 12/16/2007 at 06:13 PM
I'm not at all persuaded that the solution can't be a technical one, or in part a technical one, because after all, it is technology that gave us the permission no mod/no copy system on the tools. So either there is follow-up and a support of that -- or there isn't. There's a logic here, and they can't shirk it. What's needed is for the extremist in the tekkie lobby to stop hogging this debate and its follow-up, and for some reasonable adults conscious of what is needed to have a reasonable society of free enterprise (as distinct from socialism).
The Lindens offer permissions -- copy, no copy, mod, no mod. That implies some kind of duty to uphold them. I'm well aware that they want to shirk the legal implications, but since they *do* incorporate them into their menu, there are ramifications to this.
First, the Lindens need a political decision to do something about this problem and stop hiding behind the technical issues that they exaggerate because they cave to extremists. Second, they need to decide just what the duty is to the public given that they incorporate this permissions system into the tools. Third, I don't see why they can't have watermakrs and datestamps. Fourth, I don't see why "governance," if it extends to things like even considering putting Ban-Link into the tools, can't consist of some kind of help in dealing with theft.
What they need to do is have this discussion, and hear what possible solutions are, and not shut it off. Sure, they are vulnerable to every single girl who makes a dress screaming that some other girl took her dress. But given that there are real cases of dress stealing, then some more organized assistance should be in order, given that the tools enable one to check off "no mod" and "no copy" and that should *mean* something.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 12/16/2007 at 06:40 PM
Yes, there was a word missing there, which was "indefinitely"; copyright was not intended to protect rights indefinitely (rich or poor obviously, though people generally find rich copyright holders maintaining rights on things forever more egregious).
Posted by: Ordinal Malaprop | 12/17/2007 at 05:52 AM
Is there light coming visible at the end of the downward spiraling tunnel now that the hacker ethics crowd is dissolving at LL?
----
James Linden resolved VWR-1919.
-------------------------------
Fix Version/s: 1.18.6 Release Candidate
Resolution: Fixed Internally
I completely removed the UUID display from Ctrl-Alt-Shift-T "Select
Texture Info" and the title bar of the texture picker dialog. Residents
can still get the texture IDs for full-perm textures they own via
right-click "Copy Asset ID" in their inventory and in the texture picker.
Fixed in 1-18-6-Viewer, so you should see the code in the next release
candidate.
----
I hope so. Perhaps the locusts will move on to someone else's fields now.
Posted by: Ann Otoole | 12/17/2007 at 06:29 AM
You're coming out shooting too hard at "coders" in general. Programmers love code because of its possibilities, what it represents, its history, all of that. Programmers do not love code simply because they wrote it. Good Coders love code because of its inherent beauty.
It's not just because "they wrote it" as you suggest.
Posted by: Unoti | 12/17/2007 at 08:42 AM
"Maybe, yes, scripts should be treated like objects. But would that be a reason to just throw away protection on scripts? Since right now, scripts are the only thing that add value to your object, making it uncopyable. You can copy a Dominus Shadow (first thing that popped in), but you won't have its functionality."
I say treat scripts same as objects and textures. You'd see a sea change from the coder-prima donnas from 'You can't protect things' to 'we came up with this new way to protect things' in a heartbeat. It's REAL easy to discount measures to protect IP of others, when your IP is safely locked in the LL vault. Make coders IP just as vulnerable and we'll see solutions spring up like weeds in a garden.
Posted by: Maklin Deckard | 12/17/2007 at 10:48 AM
Any "open source" person who steals the content or explicitly copies the code of someone else where that content or code or other IP has not been licensed under any terms which allow the free use of such is committing an act of infringement against the copyright holder of the work in question.
I know that sounds all lawyerly, and I am not one, but that's the plain truth of it.
Open Source is not communistic. The founding fathers were, in fact, to some degree, the first open source activists... a government of the people, by the people and for the people encourages active participation in the formation of laws by everyone.
Also, if you look at copyright and patent laws of the early US they are very much in the favor of returning works into the public domain after a reasonable amount of time.
Copyright law was originally for a term of 14 years only... and I believe patent law was less than that. At the end of that term, the intellectual property was put into the public domain for anyone to use.
It is companies that have twisted these laws to serve themselves.
As for extremist... people who take things and steal and claim it's open source. They're wrong and they're the one's given the rest of the people who are doing it right a bad name.
Stealing is not open source. Open source is the creation of something with the express intention of letting it be freely used by anyone.
Sincerely,
Anony Mouse
Posted by: Anony Mouse | 12/17/2007 at 10:56 AM
You have to use an SL name if you wish to post here, it's a rule.
This idea that "copyright was only intended for temporary" use is one of those memes one finds very deep-seated among the copy-leftist gang, but it's merely their interpretation. Copyright is intended to protect the creative work of the creator primarily. The idea that this protective act somehow contains embedded within it a time lapse isn't an accurate representation of the intent of copyright at all. Copyright gets extended, and lasts long periods, all the time, and too bad for you. That's because it is intended to protect *property* -- and that matters. People value it. They value it by a) putting copyright on it b) respecting copyright.
The fact that some kinds of things expire and go into the public domain isn't somehow a green light for everybody always and everywhere about everything to demand that it expire -- and expire on the timetable they think is fair, like "2 years" or "60 days in Second Life". That's absurd.
Open-source has as its heart the idea that labour can be taken freely -- so it is communistic and socialistic in its essence. The "democracy" that it espouses has an adjective -- social or even People's.
People who espouse or tolerate the open source movement do so in the belief that the good of making something freely available and taking people's labour and product for free outweights the bad of that confiscation. I don't see that it is the case in Second Life.
There's also this hugely, hugely deep-seated religious belief in open-source that by open-sourcing something, you 'find all the bugs' and you set gadzillion legions of script-kiddies doing sweat-shop labor finding bugs and reporting them and patching them.
But...you could also do this by paying competent adult coders a decent salary and putting them at the focused and scheduled task of finding bugs, which they might *gasp* find just as easily as kids staying up all night in Mom's basement hunting bugs instead of doing their homework and getting a good night's sleep.
The idea that "they do good by finding bugs" is so ardently held that none dare challenge it. But...if you look at the actual bugs found and issues closed, by and large they are on really arcane issues that are not show-stoppers or critical or even in demand as annoyances. Go and look on the JIRA. The JIRA tells the story, I don't have to find it for you, it's all there.
One of the biggest fallacies -- the Big Lie, really -- of open source is that it "encourages government for the people, by the people, of the people." Nothing of the kind. It encourages authortiarian rule by a handful of elitist coders who even keep other coders out. All you have to do to see exemplary proof of this statement is to watch how open-sourcing has worked in SL. The Lindens invited their special friends to an exclusive, closed meeting to discuss the so-called Open Architecture Group. Not even all their loyal buddies got to find out about it. They then launched this group, and they continue to hold it as a bastion of elitist coders, who are hostile and aggressive about outsiders, even harassing me and goading me simply because I attended a few of the office hours of Zero Linden and asked one question.
They are tremendously self-satisfied, smug assholes, every one of them -- except for those who are just plain unhinged and wacky and imagine they are altruistic. It's really a sight to behold, and as I said, you don't have to go looking far, just read the office hour transcripts and the JIRA, and that entirely tells the tale.
There is absolutely no effort to involve a larger, non-technical community in issues that in fact profoundly affect them far more than these indifferent and cynical tekkies who view SL as a sandbox to crash, not a world to build.
It's like this: how can we play petanque with pianos, and hurl them at people's heads, rather than solve the problem that makes sound clips for piano music only play in 10 second bursts so that no one can get the pianos working in SL...
And Maklin is absolutely right, watch how fast those solutions would spring up like weeds if their own hide was at stake.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 12/17/2007 at 11:41 AM
Couple of interesting things there in the waves of mudslinging and name calling that I would like to address.
Firstly the Lindens. You don't seem to be willing to grant to the Lindens any rights at all, but that is just silly. To give you a metaphor you are playing lego in their lounge room. Every bit, every byte, every virtual object, belongs to the Lindens. It is very cute to argue for hours about your 'copyright' while ignoring the lego is all the lindens and they can do the hell what they like with it.
Secondly like so much IP debate you try and pretend you have something intrinsic and naturally 'property'. But you do not: what you have legal rights that flow from your relevant legislature or ruling junta.
Posted by: jasmine Anadyr | 12/18/2007 at 01:41 AM
Actually, there really is no way to secure textures in a game like Secondlife. There truly isn't. I've been messing with the source for months now trying to devise a way to do it, being a graphics designer/coder myself, and can't. It's simple.
Any encryption of any sort you stick on textures will have to be decrypted SOMEWHERE to be displayed. That will be the point of attack. Even if it's right at the monitor, where you can grab a screenshot, or take a high-rez photo and clean it with photoshop. If you display it to the user, the user can devise a way to take it. The only way to enforce your rights with this is, ToS and LL, for what that's worth, or the RL legal system, for what that's worth.
Scripts can be fixed techno wise by LL, because there's no reason for the user to see the script. It's all server side processed.
And for the record, I love OSS. I think it's an awesome, powerful way to code. Being able to mod the source of a program to fit my needs is a useful useful ability, and the power of a million eyes looking for bugs is unmeasured.
Posted by: shinji moonbeam | 12/18/2007 at 02:16 AM
I posted this on the blog post about the main stories of last year, but I suppose it is more appropriate to repost it here.
IP rights? Thiefs? Copybot? I’m afraid the worse are yet to come.
How about copying and extracting entire sims and avatars?
http://blog.crystalstudio.ca/2007/12/planet-builders-re-orientation-island.html
Posted by: Alex Nikolaides | 12/18/2007 at 04:17 AM
jasmine, the Lindens grant IP rights and property rights through their business model. Read the website. I don't play lego in their rec room; I pay them money that enables them to keep their rec room running, and I get the rights to their legos. That's a big difference from this authortiarian camp that you imagine is the case where people have no rights. Of course we do: we pay for this. They know it. They offer it this way. This *is* the system.
The Lindens never, ever use the argument of their little weeny fanboyz and girlz such as yourself to the effect that "this is our playground and our toys and you can have a turn but otherwise GTFO". They never, ever imply that they are undermining their granting of intellectual and virtual property rights in this way. It's only the zealots trying to protect them that say this; they know exactly where their bread is buttered.
shinji, your loving of OS is what is preventing you from finding any solutions. And even if there aren't technical solutions, there are social and political solutions. Once again, there are legal ramifications that flow from the system of putting permissions on the created items with the tools. If you tell people they can make these permissions, they have to count for something. You can't just treat them as minor switches checking the overall flow of copying and theft in SL.
as for copying and extracting entire sims and avatars, I'm well aware of this; this Crystal Studio is the group that I quoted in favour of Cory's copy leftism, if you read my article and its links.
Perhaps it will take a real-life lawsuit, perhaps it will take LL pursuing them and banning their accounts, I don't know. I imagine that they have their Linden faction rooting for them.
I also thought it indicative that this video clip at Crystal Studio has the usual thuggish shooting war game intrinsic to the world, and that they lifted a copy of Orientation Island. My God, if they can't do better than that, they don't deserve to have any customers -- on the other hand, if they draw off all the thuggish war-game script-kiddies from SL, maybe it's a good thing.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 12/18/2007 at 10:16 AM
PN: 'This idea that "copyright was only intended for temporary" use is one of those memes one finds very deep-seated among the copy-leftist gang, but it's merely their interpretation.'
US Constitution, Article I, Section 8.8 "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
errr.... "limited times"? Perhaps that's where those wacky Bolsheviks of yours got the idea. (And yes, we're all aware that the Court's decided that 'limited+=1' is still 'limited').
Posted by: Latransa Pera | 12/18/2007 at 03:45 PM
"Any encryption of any sort you stick on textures will have to be decrypted SOMEWHERE to be displayed. That will be the point of attack. Even if it's right at the monitor, where you can grab a screenshot, or take a high-rez photo and clean it with photoshop. If you display it to the user, the user can devise a way to take it. The only way to enforce your rights with this is, ToS and LL, for what that's worth, or the RL legal system, for what that's worth." - shinji moonbeam
Typical OS coder black & White thinking -- 0 or 1, all or nothing.
MOST of the piracy in any game or situation is CASUAL. Same way most thieves look for the easy mark...the lone person in a dark street, unlocked door, etc. Most the SL thieves are untalented hacks grabbing textures and copybotting things they cannot make with their limited imaginations and no motivation.
Put in encryption, including the cache...you would block the VAST MAJORITY of texture piracy. SURE, a few ultra techweenie OS goons of the info wants to be free variety may decript it/take hi-res photos, etc...but the vast majority of the people would find that too damn hard (A hi-res photo, edit in photoshop...why not just MAKE a texture? It'd be easier).
Locks don't keep our houses 100% safe, our cars 100% safe, nor do police keep us 100% safe on the streets, but I'd hate to see the anarchy that would result without them in place. It's all about deterrence....doesn't HAVE to be 100%...but without it you get anything goes theft like we have in SL.
But reading the techweenie OS'ers posts above and in the story, I can see most of them are the kind of people locks are for RL...and encryption online.
And for the record, being an IT PROFESSIONAL (as opposed to an OS user), I see OS as encouraging theft...just look at how many truly uncreative 'lets clone a for pay program's look/feel/function since we don't have the brains to make an entirely new one' OS programs are out there...Hell Linux is mostly just a surface-level rip of unix (I don't care what is 'under the hood', so don't bother telling me how it differs from unix).
Posted by: Maklin Deckard | 12/18/2007 at 04:19 PM
Nice try there, Latransa, but you are literalist -- and selectively so -- like any other geek. Read what I wrote, with caps for emphasis:
PN: 'This idea that "copyright *WAS ONLY INTENDED* for temporary" use is one of those memes one finds very deep-seated among the copy-leftist gang, but it's merely their interpretation.'
Now read the whole of this law CAREFULLY, with emphasis added:
US Constitution, Article I, Section 8.8 "TO PROMOTE THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE AND USEFUL ARTS BY SECURIING for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the EXCLUSIVE RIGHT to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
The main thrust of this law is about promoting progress in science and the arts. This is done by SECURING EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS to property -- intellectual and creative property. The fact that this is to be done for a limited time IS NOT the main purpose of this law; that is merely a clause modifying it.
It's very important to get it straight in your head. The idea isn't to give temporary rights so you can grab someone else's work -- on a schedule you determine.
The purpose is to secure exclusive rights for authors -- and that concept has on it a modifying clause that makes sure that this isn't done for eternity, even after someone's death or 100 years.
>errr.... "limited times"? Perhaps that's where those wacky Bolsheviks of yours got the idea. (And yes, we're all aware that the Court's decided that 'limited+=1' is still 'limited').
They didn't get rid of SECURITY EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS, and that's the part the Bolsheviks refuse to admit.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 12/18/2007 at 04:41 PM
To address Maklin. Yer right, I agree totally, and I do think there should be more done to protect content. I dropped my old "self", that made a decent amount of cash for me, and LL, as a point to LL over the whole thing during the CopyBot fiasco. Literalist coderthink says though, the second one person finds a way to do it, everyone will know. Nature of the internet. Look at the local script kiddy scene for a reference. Not one of em knows how to black hat infiltrate a box, most use scripts written by others. Will be the same with SL if it's secured. I don't think that's justification for leaving things wide open though.
Prok: My love for OSS doesn't keep me from seeing a solution. As addressed, the current solution for texture/build theft in game is via LL police and/or RL legal system. I find LL to be sorely lacking on all fronts in addressing this. They KNOW it's impossible to solve "in the code", so enforcement via social and ToS/EULA ways should be given the highest priority.
Also, it was really a stupid move to OSS the viewer and keep the server code closed. As we can see, too many exploits are being used over being reported. It would have been better to throw it all to the winds if LL wanted to OSS it all, but that would have demolished the social constructs that have been built over the past years, which, put mildly, would have sucked. Should have kept it closed, or used a modified OSS license that would have given LL, or affected parties, the teeth needed to chase down people who craft exploitative clients (Shoopedlife, GridShepard...)
Posted by: shinji moonbeam | 12/18/2007 at 10:17 PM
To address Maklin. Yer right, I agree totally, and I do think there should be more done to protect content. I dropped my old "self", that made a decent amount of cash for me, and LL, as a point to LL over the whole thing during the CopyBot fiasco. Literalist coderthink says though, the second one person finds a way to do it, everyone will know. Nature of the internet. Look at the local script kiddy scene for a reference. Not one of em knows how to black hat infiltrate a box, most use scripts written by others. Will be the same with SL if it's secured. I don't think that's justification for leaving things wide open though.
Prok: My love for OSS doesn't keep me from seeing a solution. As addressed, the current solution for texture/build theft in game is via LL police and/or RL legal system. I find LL to be sorely lacking on all fronts in addressing this. They KNOW it's impossible to solve "in the code", so enforcement via social and ToS/EULA ways should be given the highest priority.
Also, it was really a stupid move to OSS the viewer and keep the server code closed. As we can see, too many exploits are being used over being reported. It would have been better to throw it all to the winds if LL wanted to OSS it all, but that would have demolished the social constructs that have been built over the past years, which, put mildly, would have sucked. Should have kept it closed, or used a modified OSS license that would have given LL, or affected parties, the teeth needed to chase down people who craft exploitative clients (Shoopedlife, GridShepard...)
Posted by: shinji moonbeam | 12/18/2007 at 10:18 PM
Prokofy nice try. You should take your own advice.
I think you'll find when you read the website that their lounge room is open whenever the hell they like, and they can kick you out of their lounge room individually whenever the hell they like:
"2.6 Linden Lab may suspend or terminate your account at any time, without refund or obligation to you.
Linden Lab has the right at any time for any reason or no reason to suspend or terminate your Account, terminate this Agreement, and/or refuse any and all current or future use of the Service without notice or liability to you. In the event that Linden Lab suspends or terminates your Account or this Agreement, you understand and agree that you shall receive no refund or exchange for any unused time on a subscription, any license or subscription fees, any content or data associated with your Account, or for anything else."
I can see after that Prokofy why you might not bother to read the legals, but it gets worse.
Far from them granting you rights, you may or may not have rights granted in the various countries of the world, you grant to them rights in respect of pretty much anything in world, as illustrated by this small extract from clause 3.2:
"Notwithstanding the foregoing, you understand and agree that by submitting your Content to any area of the service, you automatically grant (and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant) to Linden Lab: (a) a royalty-free, worldwide, fully paid-up, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license to (i) use, reproduce and distribute your Content within the Service as permitted by you through your interactions on the Service, ..."
That is just one example of the rights you grant them, you give them quite a lot, this is you giving them rights over the shapes you make in their lounge room with their lego blocks.
Now I accept how you might have got confused SL have a vested interest in making their private contractual virtual space, appear to be a real public space with a real functioning free market. Take those concepts away and you have a much less marketable product.
But talk to the casino operators (pick ones that didn't just go underground) who unilaterally found their part of the lounge room closed over night. We all know the LL drivers for that decision, it makes sense, but it doesn't change the reality it is their lounge room. Yes you have to pay a rent to get in, and they don't have to refund it if they kick you out.
Posted by: jasmine Anadyr | 12/18/2007 at 10:42 PM
Prokofy nice try. You should take your own advice.
I think you'll find when you read the website that their lounge room is open whenever the hell they like, and they can kick you out of their lounge room individually whenever the hell they like:
[I've been spammed out go to the ToS and read clause 2.6]
I can see after that Prokofy why you might not bother to read the legals, but it gets worse.
Far from them granting you rights, you may or may not have rights granted in the various countries of the world, you grant to them rights in respect of pretty much anything in world, as illustrated by clause 3.2.
That is just one example of the rights you grant them, you give them quite a lot, this is you giving them rights over the shapes you make in their lounge room with their lego blocks.
Now I accept how you might have got confused SL have a vested interest in making their private contractual virtual space, appear to be a real public space with a real functioning free market. Take those concepts away and you have a much less marketable product.
But talk to the casino operators (pick ones that didn't just go underground) who unilaterally found their part of the lounge room closed over night. We all know the LL drivers for that decision, it makes sense, but it doesn't change the reality it is their lounge room. Yes you have to pay a rent to get in, and they don't have to refund it if they kick you out.
Posted by: jasmine Anadyr | 12/18/2007 at 10:44 PM