Copybot copybot -- no copy !

Your example is irrelevant to the conversation, as it specifies a willing participant who could easily have given the object himself rather than ask permission that it be taken.

No, we are concerning ourself with solving real problems, with actual legitimate uses, rather than creating hypothetical arguments designed to clutter the discussion with pointless rhetoric.

But to take your argument into the real world: Sony Music released CD's two years ago that had copy protection on them that kept people from using their personal computers to make copies. It was discovered that by using a dot of ink from a Sharpie permanent marker, you could circumvent the copy protection on the CD. It was also discovered that the copy protection scheme could be trivially defeated by simply holding down the shift key on your keyboard while loading the CD into the drive.

By your rationale, Sharpie markers and keyboards should be outlawed because they are capable of assisting in the theft of intellectual property. Do you approve of the use of Sharpies and keyboards, considering they can be used for stealing music?

Do you see how silly this sounds?

I just quote this instead of the full post. Yes, it makes partially sense. We are basically selling software, so let's apply software rights. Software like QuarkXPress is sold with a dongle, to keep you from installing more than one copy. LL provides such a protection too, in form of removing the copy permission. Of course this can be circumvented. I can download a crack for QuarkXPress and break the law by installing it, because I would modify a compiled software which I'm not allowed to change or disassemble. I can make a back-up of the software, but it's the privilege of Quark Inc. to keep me from using more than one copy at once.

Now I purchase a prim tree in SL, without copy permission. I create a backup using CopyBot. By doing so, I rez two trees inworld at once. I'm not allowed to do that, the dongle-like permission system keeps me from doing so - means, I'm circumventing the DRM system. It doesn't matter that I will pick up the copy immediately and hide it in my inventory. As well as I wouldn't be allowed to install a second, cracked XPress copy on another computer, temporarily, just because my backup solution is installed there, and uninstall it again after backing it up. I'm not allowed to run it twice, period. And I'm not allowed to use any hack or crack to change the software in a way that circumvents its copy protection.

The law protect software even more than real, physical products. If I buy a pair of jeans, I'm allowed to do pretty much everything with it. But software I may not disassemble or change. I only purchase the right to use it, not the software itself. If I use it in a way disliked by the software author, he can revoke my permission of use. SL jeans are software, just as any sales product in SL.

Now, I admit that the software author doesn't have the right to keep me from creating backups. Quark's dongle protection doesn't prevent copying, only the use without a dongle. Here we need the responsible developer team of LL, not the irresponsible LibSL group, to implement a secure backup solution. It should be able to copy abovementioned prim tree to the owner's harddisk. But on re-upload we need a a check 1) is the owner of the object uploading it or someone else, 2) is the original tree still owned by by the uploader or was it traded meanwhile, and 3) is the object set to "no copy" - in that case delete any copy of it owned by the same person, either rezzed or in the inventory and copy the uploaded item to the inventory instead. Unless we have such a backup solution, every other tool used for this purpose is the equivalent of a crack developed to breach the copyright.

My example is the same as yours. In your example, your friend could just as well have traded the object back to you. But you constructed a case with permission loss due to the trade, causing the need to receive a full perm copy somehow. You do so with a tool primarily developed for stealing, in both examples. If you want to bend your example now, so the object could have been easily traded back - what would you need the CopyBot for?

The sharpie marker is a far fetched example. It primarily has a completely different use, as has the keyboard. The primary use of the CopyBot is clearly to create full permission copies of a prim object with restricted permissions. The circumvention of LL's DRM system, as laughable as it may be, is the whole and only purpose of CopyBot.

Irrelevant argument. SL does NOT incorporate DRM or hasp hardware locking devices on our systems. However, rezzing TWO copies of a No Copy/Original object in world in SL is a VIOLATION of TOS/Copyright and DMCA if duplicated with CopyBot (or any other means). Having a copy for backup purposes stored in archive/inventory in case your in world, only copy tree goes poof *IS* legal. I handle licensing and software deployment for a major University too as by means of a profession.... can't mess with me on this. :> I have MULTIPLE copies of software archived for deployment on online and offline servers that require authentication/hardware or FlexLM licenses to manage. Is it illegal to have these copies around? Nope. If I defeat the copy protection to deploy more copies that I have licenses and entitlement to - yep, big trouble.

Incorrect on both points. CopyBot CAN be used illegally as you describe, but it in of itself is not. Second...please show me where in any form that SL incorporates DRM technology in the client-server protocol and handshake to circumvent in it's current form. I'll put my dollars against your donuts if you can find where there is any client/server security beyond simply being undisclosed information. Security via obscurity is none at all. The creation and use of copybot is legal. Using it to create/recreate content that you have not purchased, created or otherwise have written consent to duplicate is unfathomably corrupt in it's concept and practicioners indeed using it in this venue should suffer consequences to the full extent of law.

I wrote a whole lot more but it would probably just end up detracting from what I did want to say.

Who, if anyone, is responsible for making sure that QuarkXPress' software gets used in a way that fits the license, and who, if anyone, has the right to take action if the license isn't honoured?

If the answer is Quark Inc, why is there an expectation that LL is somehow legally required to provide security for IP that it doesn't own? They've chosen to make it easier for creators to actually enforce their license, but in the end, the burden does fall on them, and not LL.

This doesn't mean I think LL should abandon permissions, or that it shouldn't do its best to follow through on its commitment, or that copybot is a tool with only good and honest uses. It's merely me wondering why people see an obligation on LL's part where this is none.

Not at all - in my case, I didn't construct the example, I lived it. The situation was exactly as I described, and I lost my own content, a situation that could have been repaired by use of the CopyBot. In fact, I still have two other items of my own creation in my own inventory that were permissions damaged in this way, and I plan to use CopyBot to recover my edit permission on them.

Which, by the way, is completely permissible under the Terms of Service, section 4.2.



CopyBot was written as an academic exercise, not as a griefer's tool. The fact that the SL protocol is recombinant is the pivotal problem. The tool was created to test and validate assumptions made in the LibSecondLife protocol library - and as was pointed out, there is no DRM in the protocol whatsoever.

But again, it is not far-fetched at all - it is a very real, practical example, which actually happened. You can google this yourself if you don't believe me - in accordance with the DMCA, Sharpies and keyboards are illegal to sell or own, because they can be used to circumvent copy protection. This makes virtually every computer store, every stationary, hardware store and supermarket, and every single person using Second Life a criminal under the DMCA because they use or sell tools which happen to be usable for circumvention of copy protection.

I certainly don't want somebody such as yourself telling me which tools I may or may not use on my own possessions - if you want to ban tools like CopyBot because of their potential for misuse, then hand over your keyboard..

Of course, nobody seriously expects you to do that, including myself. It's a preposterous proposal.

Getting the idea yet?

You can make the same argument about CDs. If you can copy CDs, you can buy one CD, and copy it, and have one in your house and one in your car. And you can make a custom CD with just upbeat songs from the '80s instead of buying a "best of the '80s" CD even if it just has stuff you already want on it...

And you know, the RIAA stooges did make all these arguments and they helped 'em hold back recordable CDs for years.

Meanwhile, I have some items in my inventory that I don't use, and haven't bought any more items of that kind, because I don't want to have to buy a dozen copies to put in all the avatar folders I'd need to have them in to make it worthwhile bothering with them.

Meanwhile, I *have* bought multiple copies of other products that are copy/no-transfer because they're in different colors and it would have cost me more in time spent coloring them than they cost.

It just isn't that simple.

Linden Labs explanation for no-copy/transfer isn't, oddly enough, about "uniqueness". They have no-copy/transfer to enable *resale*. It's to keep you from keeping a copy after you sell it, because it would be too much work to come up with a scheme that (for example) let you have multiple copies that all self-destructed after you sold the original...

That's not what the IRC chat logs posted recently reveal.

It's a shame, because a tool like copybot with suitable restrictions could be useful... but the well has now been permanently poisoned.

I read the chatlogs, and it appears that one person was primarily responsible for the problems with CopyBot being misappropriated for improper use, and was ejected from the developer's group for doing so.

The IRC logs you mention do not "reveal" the original intent behind CopyBot, and are not, in fact, technical discussions its design or intended purpose of any sort, only that one person abused its capabilities.

No longer. That reassuring post, apologizing for the mess, saying they have ejected the individual, and that they will make sure no one irresponsible is allowed in LibSL to hurt the players and SL again, has been removed.

The person supposedly ejected is now the contact person for LibSL.

coco

I'm moving this over to feature suggestions.

And unejected later on.

*giggle* Does this mean that there is thought on a secure, tamper proof method of backing up server-side inventory on our machines in order to archive our inventory and items? I would really love to see this implemented into the SL viewer myself. Too much stuff is just disappearing due to drop-outs, glitches, whathaveyou. Thanks, Strife!

If you dont like the 'NO COPY' .. Dont buy it ... it's not for you to decide if it should be copiable at all.

Why are you blaming the creators for a BUG caused by LL?? If you dont like the Creators way of doing business .. DONT BUY FROM THEM!

I lost content too... but I didnt expect ANY of the creators to replace them. If they do great... they would get more business... if they dont.. cool too.. and they may lose business.

But to have a hacking device that allows the "CONTENTS DUPLICATOR" owners name to be seen as the creator for stuff they are too lazy to create on their own ... that is plain and simple ... STEALING!

Oooh, a new hacking tool is out? Please point out the haking/exploit/content stealing software so LL can ban it's use right now. And while we're at it, let's ban retroactively all of the other copying/stealing/exploit/hacking materials that have been more than widely distributed, within our own LL owned and operated SL forums. Because if one must go, then they all must go....yet those are legal and do the same thing in essence copybot does. Why aren't we smoking out those LSL scripts and their users too? Apologies to everyone else involved at this time. I really shouldn't bait emotional folks with more logic, but I couldn't resist this one.

Instead, argue and plea for a means to secure digital content, yet retain the rights of the purchaser/average user so that both the creators and the end user are happy. But this frothing at the mouth, champing at the bit and whining like a spoiled child routine is getting a bit thin to watch for much longer. The cat's out of the bag, yet another *legal* tool is in the wild, and yet again the content creators are preaching fire from heavans and brimstone at your soles. It wasn't a show stopper the umpteenth times the subject's come up in our spotty past. This time will certainly be no end either.

EDIT: For justice and great schpeiling... er, spelling.

I don't see a problem with making a copy of purchased items, but the situation can get complicated, depending on what the buyer wants to do with that item.

Suppose all items are by default copy, no transfer. What about someone wanting to give the item as a gift? The creator is pestered to deliver the gift item. Not everyone has the time or patience to do that all day if everything is copy/no transfer. That said, it WOULD be nice for vendors to offer 2 versions of a product -- 1 copy/no transfer and the other a gift version -- no copy/transfer but that would use up yet another prim for every item for sale and possibly force people to upload another texture for that prim. Might not be a lot of time spent for one item, but for large shops that time adds up quickly.

That said, in an ideal world I'd love for all my items to be copyable but unable to transfer, specifically shoes, clothing, hair, and jewelry. Actually, I can't think of any reason something would be uncopyable except for the gift aspect. Once you've paid for an item you should be able to make duplicates to group with outfits, etc. Maybe items could be auto set to copyable once they enter your inventory? Nah, that wouldn't work either.

I dunno, it's complicated and no matter what's done it won't please everyone.