[sldev] The criminalization of open source

Erik Anderson odysseus654 at gmail.com
Tue Dec 18 01:41:59 PST 2007


I'm not entirely certain that I really should be jumping in here, but... I
don't really see anything wrong with them removing the UUID from the window
title.  Yes, it could potentially give people some people a point of "false
security", but there are a lot of designers out there that know about
GLIntercept and know that their products are not safe from those that want
to rip them off.  As a part of the whole CopyBot issue LL promised some
meta-tags to determine the difference between copied textures and original
textures, although I recognize that copying the UUID's doesn't help with
this.

I have also heard that CopyBot is still floating around on the grid in
various places, albiet a lot more underground than before.  And you know
what?  I'm not sure I care.  I'm glad that for the most part that the very
widely-distributed "information should be free" copybots were killed as the
required viewer version got bumped, which raised the bar and limited the
population to those with the ability to maintain the code through the viewer
changes (and their friends).   Sometime eventually I would like to see
aspects of copybots come back (it would be nice for clothing stores to
simultaneously model 12 changes of clothing on your avatar for instance)

One thing to note is that a large part of the "security" in SL is done
through the community.  Copying a UUID off of a dialog box in an official
build of SL is a lot different than sniffing the UUID off of the
packetstream or using some other tool to extract it.  If I see the UUID
publicly available I would have absolutely no qualms on using it, but if it
is made more difficult or it is made more obvious that the information is
not something that I should be having, I'm gonna be a lot more careful in
deciding to retrieve it.  I still buy CD's even though I know that I can
probably fairly easily and much more cheaply get a digitally perfect copy of
every song on it.  Am I stupid for choosing instead to buy the CD?  Are
people stupid for trying to sell it without putting big warning labels
stating that the same songs are available on the Internet?

The walls of this virtual world are very paper thin when you look at the
pieces of wood holding up the back end, the very important yet ephermal
concept of virtual asset ownership even more.  Yet in many ways it is the
glue that holds this world and its economy together.  Yes, there are plenty
of technical ways to poke holes in the system and yes it is important for
people to know that those holes are possible.  No, this should not prevent
open source applications from existing and doing whatever the heck they
think best (I consider Firefox to be a very secure browser and I'm certain
that they have plenty of "hidden" attributes in their source code).  The
idea is more of stating "this is information that you should probably not
seek".  Whether the user decides to open the door despite that message is
left to them.

And FWIW I'm running the Nicholaz build :-P

On Dec 18, 2007 12:49 AM, Ordinal Malaprop <ordinal.malaprop at fastmail.fm>
wrote:

>
> On Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:13:53 +0800, "Adam Frisby" <adam at gwala.net> said:
> > > In fact, its no different than an artist or writer selling a CD or
> > > DVD with megabytes of copyrighted content.
> > >
> > > Are you saying that artists and writers shouldn't be allowed to sell
> > > eBooks or that games creators can't sue you if you rip textures from
> > > the game CD for resale?
> > >
> > > And, by extension, that DVD copying for resale isn't really a crime
> > > because the copying process is so cheap?
> > >
> > > Lawson
> >
> > That's not what he's saying at all - and you know it. Stop being a
> > smartass.
> >
> > This is about removing functionality for the sake of appeasement to a
> > unrealistic ideal, which frankly is just stupid.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Adam
> >
>
> It isn't just about that though. When somebody says "if you don't want
> people to copy it, you DON'T PUT IT ON THE INTERNET" the implication of
> that is "these people should shut up", their goals have no validity,
> reinforced by the dismissive references to the "toy economy". It's
> either that or a tautology; clearly if you don't want people to copy
> something you should lock it in a box and bury it, certainly not put it
> on the internet.
>
> You know, they won't shut up, all the people concerned that they're
> wasting their time doing anything in SL if anybody can just rip them
> off, and LL will continue to listen to them, because (a) there are lots
> of them and (b) without content people don't come to SL or stay there -
> and that means skins, dresses, artwork, poofers and so on. Without the
> "toy economy" none of us would be here talking about it on this list.
>
> "This measure is silly and pointless" is very different from "the whole
> idea of protecting things on the net is silly and pointless (and so is
> what you do)".
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