[sldev] Re: SLDev Digest, Vol 18, Issue 113

[Random Unsung]

Soft, I understand your desire to keep this list on topic, and to deal with "only technical matters". But it's simply not true that these issues are "merely technical" and as we can see abundantly on the texture issue, there are different schools of technological thinking on these things.

Of course it's possible to obfuscate textures, it's done all the time, and worlds like World of Warcraft or There obviously follow that practice. It really seems to depend on what mindset the coders in the project start out with, however -- whether they are copyleftists or copyrightists, and that's all there is to it. It's really a religious rather than a political belief -- but whether religious or political, it is *not* technical because it can go either way. Everyone thinks digital media can no longer protect itself, and yet, Napster is out of business, iTunes collects 99 cents, and most software companies charge for a license that expires and needs to be paid for again -- it's just that simple. Work needs to be paid for online; this is how you get it paid -- you pay for people's time.

There was a big debate here on whether obfuscation would compromise performance, but despite hearing very heated opinions on this, we really don't have a read-out from those in a position to really know -- the Lindens -- as those making claims in some cases don't even work in these coding languages, or don't work on a coding project of the complexity of Second Life.

What's lacking here is a willingness to think openly and freely through all possible options to protect IP, then fit the technology to them -- instead of making technology driven by one school of thought whiplash everybody. Is the compromised performance REALLY an issue? Can the slack be picked up somewhere else? If the obfuscation is a routine you run once a week and change like you would passwords or codes anywhere, what's the big deal? There isn't the capacity for "hundreds" of cracking webpages to appear because frankly, the percentage of thiefs isn't as high as you think -- most people aren't going to bother, or in fact they are participating in social shopping which has to do with supporting networks of friends creating stuff -- it's different than RL where you don't know the person who makes your dress or car.

Draconian social-Darwin solutions like banning NPIOF from creating or cashing out for payments of their creative work strikes me as far more harsh and time-consuming to police that this putative "100 pages of cracking pages" invoked -- I frankly think the technical solutions are more fair, and less time-consuming unless I'm missing something.

Why should everybody have to go through cumbersome verification procedures and curtail Europeans and Asians in NPIOF from the economy because of an ideological problem with obfuscation?

If the Lindens are eager not to have socio-political discussions on this list, then the focus now has to be on getting them to answer some basic questions:

1. Is Linden Lab willing to look at obfuscation solutions at all, or does it have an adamantly-opposed, ideological position against them? If so, then we know we're dealing with a religious problem here, not a coding problem, and then we, like our ancestors in RL, can deal with this religious problem by emigrating if we don't wish to create under these conditions. Answers like "obfuscation is not possible because it is cracked within days" isn't an answer, because a) very reputable coders on this list have claimed otherwise; b) real life shows us many companies relying on this method.
2. If Linden Lab is willing to obfuscate, or at least look at options to do some obfuscation temporarily until better social or legal policies are in place, then is it true that these solutions affect performance?
3. If indeed performance is affected, can the slack be picked up elsewhere or are there too many bankrupt dbase accounts in the system already crying for attention?
4. Can Linden Lab even comment on the coding time involved in a putative obfuscation operation, versus a social policing of NPIOF or thieves -- which is more costly for LL as a whole?
5. Is Linden Lab simply going to duck the coding issues, not go that route, and also duck the social policing route, not having resources or will for either, and simply leave it to people to pursue this problem with their real-life attorneys? If so, *say so*.

These are all perfectly legitimate technical questions, and without clear answers to them, this conversation will continue to churn as it has for years in Second Life.

Random Unsung/Prokofy Neva

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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: How Far For Security? (talin sands)


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Message: 1
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:50:47 +0100
From: "talin sands" 
Subject: Re: [sldev] How Far For Security?
To: "Second Life Developer Mailing List" 
Message-ID:
 <1c0afcf80806230850p37d41851xa457983851b5dbd6 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

There is no technical way to stop the copying of content full stop....the
only solutions for better protection are only going to come from the
inworld community. With any caching system thats implemented you can
guarantee that a week later there will be hundreds of  web pages out there
how to circumvent it. The trick is to just make it hard enough so little
johnny cant find the pictures to look at on his hard drive but  if hes a bit
more determined hes going to just google for a solution anyway..



Personally the only solution to reducing IP theft would be to educate the
population about the pitfalls of having your inv wiped and to not allow
accounts without "payment on file" or a RL verified account  to create any
objects with transfer permissions as I don't think a lot of the thieves want
LL to have there RL details so it will act as a deterrent. I'm sure that its
hard to implement but its not imposable and It wont stop all the thieving
and the community will have to verify all their builder alts but it would be
a start..



Talin
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