Builders Beware

Late lastnight I got an offline message warning of someone in our furniture store copying our furniture prim for prim... I log on and sure enough there it was, some guy and his/a girl copying my couches... when he was confronted he claimed it was because this girl really liked the couches but couldn't afford them... he then explains how we should be careful because there is a prim copier out there and if we do not set the perms right, he wouldnt be the only one doing this...

So... he warns us of people just like him and thinks he was doing me a favor... Pfft! I have since banned him and his girl from my islands...

Please BECAREFUL there is always going to be some schmuck like this looking for a free ride by stealing other people's work and ideas!

Yep... there's not much to be done about it, though. Even if the prim copier script weren't in the wild, the newest revision of the client allows anyone to view the exact properties of every prim in a linkset, regardless of permissions. Even if you ban outside scripts, they can just copy by the numbers anyways...

I wish there were some way to actually protect our rights as creators...

You've got to be kidding me? Wtf was LL thinking?

Has anyone asked them?

Moth, flame, you know the rest.


I actually mentioned this before - I was as baffled by this change as anyone else. In the short term, allowing this kind of number access is... well, a problem.

This is actually why I do most of my work these days with real 3D conventions (which will make their way into the world eventually). The beauty of that is 3D models done at the vertex/batch level are very hard to "copy by numbers" - you might as well make your own for the work involved. The downside is streaming that data is... well, hard.

So it's getting there. In the meantime, I'm not convinced the "edit links copy by numbers" was intentional so much as an omission of the new system, so be sure to point that out to LL. I think that layer of protection, at least, should be preserved.

I was with fuzzy koala when we asked about this prim copier, to blue linden, his response???? LL has known about this exploit for over a year"


Original post on this topic:
/120/e2/44055/1.html

Really pisses me off, we show a very serious bug to blue linden, and all he can tell us is "Linden lab has know about this EXPLOIT for over a year"


way to go linden labs!

I can't afford to buy a RL mansion with a large plot of land. Can I get one free please?

No offense meant to those who build things with prims, but big deal.

Anything made with prims can copied or duplicated, and very easily. Always has been. Always will be. To me, it's the same principle of everyone walking around with a Home Depot in their pocket.

Unfortunately, prims are the one thing that aren't easily copyrightable, since unlike scripts, sounds, animations, and images, layouts of 3D modeling objects just doesn't strike me as something unique, and nothing in SL doesn't have TONS of prior art.
For the most part, if you want to protect your creations, you have to lock them down, and people don't want to do that, so they suffer for it and whine about it, and to me whining about "prim creation" is even worse.

I mean, really, how hard is it to recreate something when you have exactly the same set of tools and it's right there in front of you for comparison? That's like saying that I shouldn't be allowed to go to a store, see a table I like, and then go home and build one exactly like it for less. What are you saying, that LL should keep a database of all the objects ingame, and when someone comes too close to making a design that resembles yours, to delete all the prims and flash, "Sorry, that is a copyrighted prim combination. Please try building something else, n00blet!"

Once you get over the fact that your creations aren't quite as secure as you want them to be (and won't be secure as you want them to be for a very long time/forever), you'll remember to enjoy building things again.

Wow Nala, I am shocked to read your post... I for one am not a very good builder and when I do build something it takes ALOT of effort and time on my part... and I often see some beautiful builds around SL that I would have never thought of , nor would have I been capable to build and shape prims like that... does that mean its ok for me to go ahead and copy it prim for prim and either resell it or use for personal use?

Gosh it is no wonder people do crap like this...

There is no conflict with people doing what Nala suggests AND hiding the prim numbers.

Its probably fair for people to attempt to duplicate somethign just by looking at it. Of course people who can do so probably can do proportions well enough to make their own similar but not duplicated designs.

Though to do so in someone's STORE .. is extremely rude.

To copy something and then sell it as your own .. worse.

It isnt really fair to let them see the numbers used for the prims THOUGH.

Sensual: This is my own personal view. If I see something in prims, and sometimes just in RL, I can always see the root prim behind it and can usually twist, turn and get it to look something similar like it. This has always made it very easy for me to build things (when I get the hair up my ass to do so). I'm not saying that it's right to blatently copy someone else's work. I'm saying that for those who know about building, it is stupidly easy to recreate something already built in front of you, and the system that would have to be in place to actually "protect" prim designers would be rediculous as to stiffle creation more than promote it. Seriously, There are only so many ways to make a chair before they start looking alike in design, and I would hate to see SL deteriorate to the level of people "SL-suing" each other over the "look and feel" of a prim-designed anything. I don't believe stealing is right. I just believe that the alternative is far far worse.

Collete: If I'm not mistaken, LSL has a function that returns all the numbers and data regarding a prim prior to this last release. It wouldn't be incredibly hard for someone to script something that just outputted the numbers, and even then the question comes, where do you draw the line? If I can't see the numbers behind your prims, but I make something extremely similar just by eyeballing it, am I in the wrong then? What about using the same shape for a certain part? What if I change one prim around in the design; does that make mine unique all of a sudden? It's the drawing of the line that bothers me more.

And yes, copying something in their own store is definitely rude, but goes back to land owners setting permissions on this stuff. You can't expect everyone to have common courtesy and unlike real stores/malls, we haven't reached the point for hiring security guards for stores yet.

You made my day.

I'm suprised people are just now posting about this, I noticed this in 1.6 preview sometime ago. Even if someone can copy something Prim for Prim, they can't texture it or script it. I usually custom make all of my textures "by hand" (that is such a funny term in a digital sense), so copy away, you can't exactly duplicate it. And if you do, rats ass, its just a SL, I don't live off of my SL money, and I can always make something new.



I believe Anshe, one of the great visionaries of SL, predicted that people from poor countries would flood SL, copy or create everything possible and sell it all like Wal-Mart. The day is a coming.



If LL tried to enforce any sort of copyright or protection 80% of the in world content would be gone, which might be a good thing...

lol and then there really would be an FIC.

From what I've seen, people get up in arms if there is even a remote facsimile of an object they made. Personally, I like either rebuilding things so I can figure out how it was done, or so I can have a modable copy that I can work around and play with for my own use, so yeah, I've copied before, but I like to think I take the high road about it. and not that I deny the original creator money; I'll usually buy the original if just to have that copy too. But not everyone has money, and since prims don't cost anything, remaking something is trivial.

Maybe going back to charging L$ for prims would put a bit more value on their use and construction, but I think that'll happen the day ratings actually mean something again.

"That's like saying that I shouldn't be allowed to go to a store, see a table I like, and then go home and build one exactly like it for less."

Exactly. Sort of like, hey, if you really want to go to all the trouble of standing there in the furniture store measuring the table, then go home, look for the right wood, all that, and go to all the trouble of building the thing - more power to you.

Of course I don't think this would be great in the game, where, unlke in rl, all the other players in the game can see your product as well as the original product, so it's not quite analogous.

But the idea that most people would rather just buy the table in the first place is analogous. I think the the bulk of players would rather pay for something than go to the trouble of building a reproduction of it themselves.

Even building a copy is full of building frustrations, and I think just whole bunches of players don't want to build these things.

Correct me if I'm wrong. I just don't see a huge amount of players spending their time building things.

Having said that, if I saw somebody copying something I had made, I would be pissed off and probably come in here to create a thread about it, lol.

I agree with those who said there is no reason why not to have all these numbers hidden as they apparently were previously. (As long as I can still edit linked parts separately when I'm building something.)

coco

P.S. If they start charging for prims, there will be nothing left for me to enjoy in the game. Not charging for prims is the ONE THING that makes up for everything else that is crappy about the game. It's the one thing that people without rl money to spend on the game can do and enjoy doing.

I support this feature! Linden Lab should curb innovation and experimentation in the name of copyright protection. The world would be a much better place if they would be more strict about inforcing the terms of service and protecting the rights of builders to make a living. People who copy builds need to be punished for what they do. Of course, I actively endorse any policy that will bring Second Life crashing down so that some other, better, and more open system of 3D collaborative design will arise, so maybe it'd be best to ignore me.

Jarod makes a good point .. if The Lindins worry too much about individual Intellectual Property rights and rob content and profitability from the game .. some other game will spring up to replace it.

Then people wont have ANY customers.

Thats what i mean .. Eyeballing it should be fine .. for example you could look at a Table in a catalog and were you a wood worker make somethign like it.

Its the copying/using of the exact numbers id think is the problem that worries people. And to be honest by the time you spend THAT much time , probably cheaper to buy the item. For a real Builder though its different, they might be more interested in knowing how to do something.

The main thing, though is that people dont steal someones work. Making a knock off copy for your own use, or in learning how to build something, or even improving on an idea for your own use isnt the same as copying someone's work and giving it away or selling it.

And a lot of that would be up to the honesty of the imitator[/QUOTE]

TYhis is exactly what I am talking about, I am not talking about looking at it and take the idea, I am talking about going into edit mode prim for prim and copying every exact measurement...

I added a question about this to the Hotline Forum:

/invalid_link.html

This is called "reverse engineering" and it's a GOOD THING. I can tell by your misuse of the "quote" tags that you're not a programmer, so let me explain something in a very condescending tone.

When people are learning to program, they're given blocks of code to type in, compile, and debug. As they go on and understand what this code is, they start fiddling with it, adding to it, replacing bits of it. Eventually, by monkeying around with an EXACT COPY of some code, they can spawn off entirely new programs.

It works the same way in real life. People take things apart, understand how they work, and build new stuff from the understanding. Right now there are a lot of legal battles going on because big, heartless corporations are making the same argument you are: people are learning how we do things, making money from it, and we want it to stop; we don't want people to take things apart.

I'm going on record as refusing to believe that you'll lose money if people boot leg your stuff. Anyone could sell exact copies of your stuff in SL and all someone has to do it click on the item, see that you don't own it, and know it's a knock off. This is a DIGITAL WORLD, there are no back alleys with people in trench coats selling knock-offs to unsuspecting buyers. Caveat emptor roughly translates to "use the pie menu, moron" in Second Life.

What you're getting up set about is that people are learning how you do things and it's going to hurt your monopoly. Kris Ritter pulled the same stunt when someone figured out how to build their own "Dance-O-Matic" several months back, but I have yet to hear of any big name dance machines built by anyone but Kris Ritter. How about you?

Either quit polluting the Second Life ideaspace with these DMCA-poisoned memes or do it a little better so you actually scare people away from this proprietarily doomed experiment.

False. If they right click on the object, they'll see the creator tag and the owner tag are the same -- that is, the name of the bootlegger. Any reference to the original "creator" is gone entirely.

LF

Well I don't support it, but I am really sick of the baby phat photo sourced outfits with the babyphat logos on them