Advice from the masses

Hello all.

As some of you may know, I'm the creator of the Lightsaber Construction Kit, but this post isn't about what it is or what it can do. In a nutshell, it's a scripted weapon. However, this post is a call for help and advice about how to proceed.

A little background:

A former employee of mine, whom I shall leave nameless, had access to a full permission copy of the script and associated prims that make up the LCK. She got herself into some hot water with the Lindens, and due to either spite or neglect, put a combination of her work pre-attached to the LCK out as a freebie. Problem is she did so with copy and transfer permissions still active. So there is no telling how many copyable and transferable instances of my work are floating around.

The current stable version of the LCK is 1.4. That is the version these leaked sabers use. I've finished the scripting and beta testing on the version 1.5 saber. My question is should I continue to offer it as a free update to previous owners?

As a policy, I support my work from v1.0 on and give free updates to previous owners. The problem now is I have no way to track who has a legit copy and who has a leaked copy.

I can put the 1.5 out for sale and tell everyone they have to buy a new one, but that might jilt previous owners and loyal customers. Worse yet, I've actually considered putting a script trap into the 1.5 script that would auto-delete itself if the script is taken out and stuffed into a version 1.4 saber.

So I'm stuck in a decision. Anyone else had a scripted item get leaked right before an update? Any advice?

XP still updates illegal copies. Why punish your current customers and have them pay again?

I'm not Microsoft.

True, but it's a toss up. Either give the people that might have the free item free upgrades (which they would already have one, so it won't matter that much (IMHO)). Or make your paying customers pay again for something that they (possibly) thought they would get free upgrades on.

Yes. I want to keep my current customers happy. Unfortunatly, I have no way to track who and who does not have a ilegitimate copy. Due to the leak, it was made with both the copy and transfer permissions set, so one person can make infinate copies and give them away for free to whomever they want. That's where the can of worms comes in because I have no way to track who has them or how many there are.

I don't have the revenue that M$ has for handling software piracy, so I'm trying to decide how aggressive to be in this instance, if at all.

Well.... how do you hand out upgrades in the first place? Is it built into the script or do you hand them out manually through a mass sending device?

Before now, I would have the owners contact me and I would verify that they did indeed have one of my sabers. Usually they'd attach it and I'd verify it, then hand them the upgrade. It was a sloppy and hit-or-miss process. The new version has new code incorporated to handle automatic updating, so I don't have to fiddle with contacting a lot of people anymore.

Unfortunatly, this hit before I could get the code put out.

It sounds to me that you don't want to give out free upgrades, but don't want to admit it to yourself.

On the contrary. I do. I mean I worked my rear off putting together the support infrastructure so I could. I just want to make sure that I'm not going to be upgrading compromised items.

Ouch, ok then you're really in a bind. I think we should start making vendors that hand out specially encoded receipts for this kind of thing.

Anyways back on topic, if you didn't make this thread you would have delt with minimal losses sending out upgrades since this wouldn't have been as public. Majority of freebies come without upgrades or are discountinued items so most wouldn't think about claiming upgrades. So now offering the 1.5 upgrade for free at this point increases potential losses both in short term and in the long run. My suggestion is let your customers know your situation and offer 1.5 at a discounted rate instead of free. Yes you'll have to deal with complaints but you have good reason for doing this and many customers (especially loyal ones) will understand your reasonings. Once 1.5 is out you can resume handing out free upgrades. The discounted rate will make sure that you weed out those with the illegal copies because they'll either a) not upgrade or b) become paying customers. After that all you have to worry about is people using your code to make their own sabers to sell wich is where you'll have a much harder time dealing with.

You have a good point, Ron. The leak that caused these to get out in the first place has been dealt with.

The person that let them out attached her own hilt to the 1.4 sabers.....

Actually, I think this person also changed the name of the script in question before setting them as freebies. So if I see someone with one, I could encourage them to switch to a different model. That might be one alternative so I can still keep everyone happy. Thanks for the input Ron, I do appriciate it.

How about an object that they drop their lightsaber into which then checks the permissions with llGetInventoryPermMask and tells you the results?

jora I keep detailed records of every purchase made from me.
if you have records could you not check to see if the person asking for an up grade was the person who bought the item.

if you don't keep records of who buys what and don't have or know ex cell then i would suggest you and any one else who does not keep detailed records get a free Gmail account.
cut and past your "in world trans action history in to a new email you send to your self and set the subject as the sales date.
the search function of Gmail is so good it will find every purchase a customer makes from you and Gmail gives you gigabits of space to use so you will never run out of room.

i have detailed records dating back to June when i stared doing this.

Hrm. I don't think that script tag works just yet, but llGetObjectPermMask does, so I can code that into the update script as a security check and have it give a warning if something's wrong.



I keep strict records of my own transactions, but in this case, the sales were handled by a third party(The person now fired from my company), and I don't think she has strict records. Once I get this situation resolved, I'll be scripting up my own vendor system that will save transactions to a history seperate from SL. When it gets large enough, it spit it off to an e-mail address.

Just checked, it works fine.

A bit of a thought that I had - change out the old ones for new ones in mass. In other words, have them send you the old one, and you replace it with a new one.

That means that you are also removing the old ones from the world.

The problem is that I can't be sure I got all the old ones out because they are copyable, but supposed to be non-transferable. The ones that leaked are still transferable, which is where the problem is cropping up. I have a way now, I think, to track them and slowly do away with them through attrition using the llGetObjectPermMask.

I think I see what you're intending. Good idea.

Actually, thinking about it last night I realised what I thought you're doing wouldn't work. I'm really curious what it is now, any chance you could elaborate a little?

I don't want to give out too many details, but I'll let you know IW.

Little bit more to clear the air, then I'll let this thread die out.


After doing some serious speaking with the person that let this out as a freebie, I've come to believe leaving the permissions intact was done by accident. Good intentions in a moment of panic. Bad way of going about it.

She has been very forthcoming with information about who has what and who she believes may have gotten a hold of the freebies. Likewise, she has given me access to her sales logs, so I have a list of legit customers. So she still works with me. I hate firing people for making an error.

The code traps are in place to catch these bad sabers, so with luck it'll be resolved.

Thanks everyone for your input.