Hubris, was Re: [sldev] Cache politics: performance vs obfuscation

[Kent Quirk (Q Linden)]

On Jun 9, 2008, at 5:22 PM, ordinal.malaprop at fastmail.fm wrote:

>
> On 9 Jun 2008, at 11:34, Thomas Grimshaw wrote:
>
>> Dante Tucker wrote:
>>> Lets all just stop pretending anyone who wants to steal textures  
>>> can't with the current system. Anyone who wants them can already  
>>> get them. The only thing storing data raw would do is make them  
>>> more accesable to people who don't want them and have no knoledge  
>>> of how to get them currently. And if they don't want them then  
>>> whats the harm?
>> Agreed.
>>
>> I tire of people moaning about IP security.
>>
>> Your stuff is already stolen, deal with it.
>>
>> ~Tom
>
> Not to pick on Tom particularly here, but this is the sort of m  
> message that reinforces my opinion that:
>
> (a) the people involved in discussing assets don't understand what  
> those _creating_ the assets want or think;
> (b) they don't care.
>
> The level of snobbery applied here is breathtaking, endless  
> references to pitchforks ho ho, you know, they're all irrational  
> peasants. But even in the current situation, textures not being  
> instantly obtainable by just going to the right directory and  
> dragging to somewhere else is a disincentive to pirates.
>
> YES, we do all know about glintercept and all the other ways to get  
> hold of textures. YES, we know that there is an intrinsic problem  
> here, that displaying the damn assets implies that they are received  
> by the client. YES, we've all heard these teenage extropian  
> "information wants to be free" tropes, thanks all the same.
>
> Amazingly enough, people appreciate the practical issues. What they  
> don't like is the idea that they are being treated as idiots and  
> rubes by LL and assorted geeky types because they dare to get  
> worried about the reason that they are there and building the world  
> for you lot to play about with in the first place. Because, you  
> know, if it wasn't for people who make content, you and I would not  
> be here discussing this stuff, as I've said before.
>
> If you can't offer anything to content creators apart from "ha ha  
> your stuff has already been stolen stupid n00bs" then you might as  
> well close the whole company down right now.
>

Boy, I can totally see both sides of this argument.

It's true -- if we're displaying it, it can be copied with a  
relatively small amount of work for a motivated individual with  
technical skill.

It's *also* true that if it's trivially easy to copy it, it will be  
copied much more frequently than if it's slightly harder. This is why  
"security by obscurity" is popular. The extra step makes it obvious  
that you're taking some measure -- no matter how simple -- to break a  
protection scheme, and that sense of an explicit violation does deter  
a lot of people.

So while I completely agree that there's no way we can provide true  
protection, I also agree that simply stuffing the files into a  
directory using standard formats is kind of like leaving your bike  
unlocked in the street -- someone will ride off with it who might not  
have bothered if you used even a cheap bike lock.

Personally (I'm not speaking for Linden here), I think that if we want  
to change the way we do caching, we should make it slightly  
complicated to grab items out of the cache by NOT storing them in  
standard formats.

	Q