feature suggestion - all scripts should be readable

I was thinking about the whole CopyBot fiasco and it occurred to me that there is a huge double-standard at work in SL that needs to be rectified.

We all know that IP in SecondLife consists basically of three things, textures, primwork, and scripts. Of these three, textures and primwork are now 100% copyable by anyone regardless of technical expertise thanks to various efforts by W-Hat/V5/libsecondlife etc. The only thing that isn't copyable so far is scripts that are locked up inside a prim and that just isn't fair.

Even without the efforts of thieves and braggarts like the members of the above-mentioned groups, it has long been the case that some of the best and most useful textures (in texture packs for sale for instance), had to be open for them to be salable. It is also only recently that LL added that sad little hack that made "seeing the numbers" on other peoples prim work impossible (since subverted by various hacks anyway) so up until recently, all primwork was also copyable. My point is that for most of the history of Second Life only the scripters have been able to fully protect their IP while the rest of us have had to suffer.

Furthermore, whenever there is an incident like the recent CopyBot fiasco or the GLIntercept fiasco, it is the scripting community that is first out of the gate with all that "all data is ultimately copyable" line. While it's certainly true that all data is copyable, isn't it ironic that the scripters themselves have never had to suffer attacks or loss of IP on anything like the scale that the artists and the prim sculptors have?

Lastly, it is this same group (scripters) - or at least the "hard core" of this group - that is actually responsible for writing and making available to the public the same programs and techniques that are used to rip off the IP of the artists and prim sculptors! So here we have a group of hacker individuals, ripping everyone off or making it possible for us to rip each other off, yet their precious code and IP is permanently inaccessible???

I propose therefore that while the same permissions be kept for scripts that there always have been (like artwork and primwork), that a "subversive" method - possible a debug menu entry - be made available so that scripts can also be read right out of the prim. We know that the Linden "God-mode" client can read and edit any script in any prim for instance, this should be childsplay to add to the regular client. Fair is fair after-all.

I can't think of a single moral argument against it if you buy all the crap that the hackers and scripters themselves spout about the necessity of information to be "free."

As a side effect, this would put an end to all the secret subversive uses of scripting like chat-bots that are put into household items or gambling machines that are crooked etc.

Bonus!

Making scripts visible may introduce problems. Maybe the alternative of making a list of the events to which the script responds would enable both IP rights to be protected and allow user some idea as to what the script is doing.

Well my answer to that would be that texture visibility "causes problems." It's hard to be more specific without any idea of what problems you refer to though.

It would be great if life, and Second Life, were fair. Unfortunately it isn't. The texture artists have it worse than the prim artists who have it worse than the scripters.

I agree, it would be great if there were a way to (technologically) secure everyones' work, as long as they want it secured, but there simply isn't, short of getting nVidia to implement some kind of encryption stuff within their graphics cards, or having Linden Lab render everything and send you streaming video rather than geometry and textures. Perhaps there is another technological solution I haven't heard of, but none of these are feasible.

Anyway, so we can't do everything we would like to do. Does that mean we should deliberately make things worse for some people? Should people in real life not be allowed to put locks on their doors, because there are some people who are too poor to afford locks? Not a great analogy I know. Should women be allowed to bear children? Men can't do it, so we should make it fair by not allowing women to either, right?

This is the dumbest idea I have ever seen.
Maybe you should petition LL to open source the client and server code too.

Right! Absolutely no programmer has ever had their software stolen, only artists and prim sculptors have to worry about that. And musicians, but that doesn't count because you don't upload music to SL. The idea that right at this instant, as you read this message the operating system in your computer contains code that was appropriated without any recompense to the authors, why, that's ludicrous! The possibility that someone might spend every spare moment over a year working on a program, only to have it widely copied by well organised networks of crackers, that's a fantasy. It'd never happen.

The scripting community isn't saying "all data is ultimately copyable" because we're smug and safe. We're saying it because we pioneered getting our shit ripped off. You know how you tell the pioneers? They're the ones with the arrows in their backs. That's us.

But just to make you happy, I just posted the source of one of my most popular scripts in another thread. I won't waste space on doing it again... but you go have a look at it, maybe you'll figure out why I'm pleading "not guilty" to "my precious code is inaccessible".

"...This is the dumbest idea I have ever seen.
Maybe you should petition LL to open source the client and server code too..."

The eventual big, successful Metaverse is going to be open.
It'll have to be. Are you implying that all open source is insecure?

Well I guess I hit a nerve with this suggestion, but I am completely serious. SL is doomed to be open source anyway, recent events have proven it's completely impractical and somewhat impossible to lock it down. Why not start now?

I repeat... the voices that are saying that things like CopyBot are "OK" are those same voices that would argue against script IP being accessible to anyone. That isn't right. It's 100% hypocritical is what it is.

To answer a few of the points raised:

- Scripters have not suffered "... a little bit, but not as much as the others" (paraphrased) they have simply not suffered any loss at all. Bugs aside, there is no script that has been seen through an "exploit" in the same way that textures and prim work has. The only scripts that are open are those that are set to be open by the owners.

- Two wrongs don't make a right but the analogy about "Men can't have babies so let's stop women having them" is not very apt in this case. For the situation to be similar, there would have to be a simple switch on the back of every mans head that allowed him to have babies that was simply not thrown. Needless to say that is not the case. All assets are ultimately viewable, and all IP is ultimately able to be revealed, it's just that the scripts are locked down and no one has found a hack yet, whereas the other IP is only loosely protected (if at all) and easily revealed.

My argument is that if SL is viewed as an economic system it has to have a level playing field. Right now the only IP that is protected is script code, all other IP is in a free copyable state.

I am not arguing that LL should really force people to reveal their IP as that is just not likely to happen, I am pointing out the immense hypocrisy of the scripting community who refuse to reveal their "secrets" to the rest of us.

How can you with any moral authority argue out of one side of your mouth that everything is ultimately copyable and laud the release of IP stealing software (or at least excuse it) and yet at the same time refuse to release your own IP? That's the issue.

I think my argument is amply supported by the fact that most of the best scripters I have met in SL (and here I am talking about the true leaders not little W-Hat hacker dudes), do release a lot of their best stuff for free and often are involved in giving away or at least sharing most of their own IP. Think of people like Jillian, and Cadroe, or even Xylor. Most of the best vehicle scripts are free, most of the best vendors, etc. etc.

I am no ace scripter by any means, but when I made my free radio, I got both dumped on by some of the current radio scripters (even though the script was trivial), as well as ripped off wholesale by those who got a copy of my radio and immediately re-sold it in a locked down form for money.

I guess I am rambling now, but what I think is that if everything is going to be open anyway (and you can bet it is), why not forget about the f*cking economy altogether and open it *all* up now, instead of leaving the majority of the population enslaved to the whims of a bunch of college hackers. It's the only decent thing to do.

So just because those working with textures and prims can have their work stolen, scripters should too?

I fail to see any logic in your argument. Bitter much?

No, and no.

Scripters should open their work up to be viewed of their own accord. If someone steals it, then that is the fault of the person stealing it.

(You may notice that this is the same argument offered when someone steals texture or primwork IP using one of the existing hacks.)

Open source SL does not mean that all scripts have to be open source. One model for instance has the creator of a script allow certain "service providers" (i.e. people running sims on their machines, like what LL do now) to have their script run on the providers' machines. The script creator trusts the service provider to not make their script available to anyone else.

I'm not sure I've seen anybody voice both of these opinions. I'm sure there are some such, but don't lump all scripters into one group.

Let me make the analogy explicit:

Prim and Texture artists ------- Men
Are unable to protect their IP - Are unable to bear children

Scripters -------------------------- Women
Are able to protect their IP ----- Are able to bear children

Problems:
This is unfair -------------------- This is unfair

Solution:
Ban scripters from protecting their IP - Ban women from bearing children

The switch on the back of the head of a man that allows him to bear children is as non existent as the switch that Linden Lab can throw that magically protects textures and prims. Neither exists. It is however technologically possible to protect script IP.

The situation in its simplest form: A can do X, B cannot do X. To make this fair, ban A from doing X.

Can you give an example in which a scripter and a prim/texture artist are in direct competition? In real life economies people in different businesses have different abilities and challenges. Is it fair that someone who sells canned soup can stockpile their product for months or years, whereas a baker has to sell it that day or throw it away? Surely we should make this fair by forcing the soup maker to throw all away all his unsold goods for that day?

I'm sure you can find open source advocates in the scripting community, and those who most certainly want to hold onto their IP. If you glom all of those opinions together then you can imagine some hypocracy, but please don't paint everyone with that brush. You certainly can't paint the libsl people with that brush, all of their code was open source right?
On the contrary, this shows that there are people in the scripting community who are for freely copiable scripts (at least some of their scripts). You would need to give examples of people who were for freely copiable prims/textures, but against freely copiable scripts.

I'm a hard core scripter. I'm a hacker, but I'm a white hat: I recognize that my skills put me in a place of trust in the community, and that I have an obligation to take care to ensure that my actions are in the best interests of the community as a whole.

Simply put, you're lumping me into a group of distasteful people, and I take extreme offense to that.

When godmode.exe was released for sale, and it allowed people to map-stalk anyone, I spoke out against that. When I discovered that libsl had created and released copybot, I spoke out in very severe terms against their release of such a tool to one of their members, Jesse Malthus. The crux of my argument was that they had an obligation to ensure that they're not creating a problem by releasing tools that make it easier for people to do malicious things in SL. The prim information may have always been available, and there is, in fact, nothing that can be done about that, but creating a tool to reassemble it in order to make an unauthorized copy is, itself, a highly unethical action, and I wasted no time in speaking out about it.

As I said, I'm a hacker. I've got a background in computer security research, and I'm all for poking at the cracks in a system in order to see just what can be done, and even to discover whether I can do things that I shouldn't be able to. As a white hat, my first action in such a case is always to mitigate the damage. I report exploits and security holes, and even attempt to close them when it's within my power. I'm careful who I share my information with in order that the damage from an exploit can be limited as much as possible. Full disclosure can be a useful tool to this end, but I do not advocate blanket full disclosure of all security problems. One person that can attest to this is Jesse Malthus, from my repeated conversations with him regarding libsecondlife's track record.

I don't feel that the libsecondlife team quite has the best interests of the community in mind. I feel their track record with godmode.exe and the release of copybot demonstrates that. While they've brought many exploits to the knowledge of LL, they've also caused a lot of problems for the community through their actions, that could have been avoided with responsible and ethical forethought. I won't go so far as to say that they're black hat hackers yet, because they are not in the direct practice of profiting unjustly from their hacking, but I do not label them as white hats.

They're giving the hacking community a bad name, and that's exactly what's led you to smear me with the same brush you'd paint them with. I haven't released any tools that compromise your copyrighted content. I've argued against the release of such tools. I'm a hacker, but I'm not a black hat, and I resent you putting me in that category. I have just as much reason to want to protect my intellectual property rights as you. Even still, I've released several useful tools with full source to the community.

"Information wants to be free" is not a blanket slogan that says that there should be no copyright protections for anyone. As 2600 magazine says nearly every month in their letters section, open source does not mean it is Good to scan their magazine and post a torrent. They need to pay their bills, after all.

As to the repeated statements by members of the community (and Philip Linden) that prim and texture information is available, remember that this is simply a statement of fact. It's not an argument that such a thing is a good idea. In fact, I'm not so happy about it, but there's nothing that can be done, so the next best thing is to make sure that people have no illusions about the truth of the situation.

Fair enough, but I think most of this post falls into the category of opinion. You obviously disagree with my characterisations and I with yours.

The big factual disagreement as far as I understand it is this part about the men/women baby/no baby:
I can see what the communication problem was in that I was taking your original anaology entirely the other way around.

My comment about the switch was meant to argue that since in SL there is a simple "switch" that can be thrown that would allow the scripts to be seen, that the men would have to have a switch on the back of their heads that allows them to have babies but that they simply choose not to throw it.

using your syntax/table:

Prim and Texture artists ------- women
have their IP viewable - ---------are able to bear children

Scripters -------------------------- men
have their IP locked ------------- are unable to bear children

Problems:
This is unfair -------------------- this is unfair

Solution:
throw the switch to make script IP viewable ---- throw the switch that makes men able to bear children

Thus I thought it unfair to compare the two since men are simply unable to have children so the comparison is not the same. Despite the difficulties of doing it (and the possible destruction of the SL experience) it is possible through various means to make all IP non-visible except to the most determined hacker. It is also possible to make all IP open or veiwable. It's not (currently) possible to make men have babies so there is not an good comparison there.

My argument was also economical and social in nature. Scripters as content creators are in conflict and competition in the silly SL economy with other content creators.

Here is a closer analogy to what I am thinking:

In a hypothetical country with three major book manufacturers, A, B and C, the government has set it up so that through various means, the books being sold are being prevented from being copied. Because of the nature of the individual products however, the manner of protection used is different in all three manufacturers.

A small group of writers that oppose the copy protection on the book industry in general and have their books published exclusively through company C threaten to use C to publish instructions on how to circumvent the government protection on copying books made by companies A and B.

The government, being scared but somewhat Wiley, agrees to work with the group to "open up " the industry and investigate options to copyright but the group gets the better of them and merely uses them to steal the secrets to the protection on manufacturers A and B. The two companies represented by A and B are now at a serous disadvantage in marketing their wares, all due to the actions of a group of writers that publish their works though company C. They still have copyright and the majority of the population (or at least the honest ones), will still buy the books, but their "secret" is out and any unscrupulous businesses can now simply copy their works and redistribute them as their own. All the works of company C are still completely protected however and no one can copy them.

In this analogy, what I am suggesting is not that the government remove the copyright from company C and throw their IP to the wind, (that would be a "two wrongs make a right" argument), but merely to to make it possible for someone who really wants to (and makes a small effort) to reveal it for themselves. i.e. to make the copyprotection on the IP of C the same strength as that on the IP of A and B. Not "crack" their IP, but publish instructions or a tool to do it if anyone wants to.

It's patently obvious that SL cannot survive as it's originators planned it without protection of IP rights. If this is not possbile with any textures or artwork or prim work (excluding corporate remedies with a RL component), then the entire economy is in jeapordy and somewhat of a joke.

At the very least what is in order is a re-evalutation of the whole concept of IP in Second Life and whether any of it should really be completely secret. I for one would support a non-capitalist, completely open source society, but that's just me.

COMPLETE BS. I've done nothing but support measures to stop CopyBot, and my only products are heavily scripted. Look at my forum posts if you're interested.

I agree with Lex.

I don't want all programmers to be lumped together with a group that releases 3rd party client hacks for fun and profit. It doesn't seem like they have LL's interests in mind.

I also proposed the following feature suggestion which might bring some accountability:
/13/07/149635/1.html

Some programmers are trying to come up with solutions and inform the community of what's possible... you just can't lump us all together. If LL chooses to not take action, it's their fault, not ours.

My sincere apologies to all those that think I am painting with a wide brush here.

I have met Lex and I know there are cool scripters who I am *not* lumping in with the rest. I specifically mentioned the fact that all the best scripters that I knew, were involved in open sourcing some of their own best work. To me it's almost a definition of a cool "white hat" scripter to do so.

The statement I made above that you quoted says that those that support CopyBot and defend it are *not* those people, quite the opposite.

What cool scripts has nimrod given to the community for instance? none. What has Baba ever done but act cool and hang around with black hats at w-hat headquarters?

But the thing is, you are painting with a wide brush. Your emphasis in this is telling: "... it is the scripting community that is first out of the gate with all that 'all data is ultimately copyable' line." You were talking about the entire scripting community in your original post.

Even if you want to say "everyone except Lex and a few others", that's not compatible with the measures you're calling for. You want to release my copyrighted material against my will, and your reason for doing so is some kind of "fair's fair" answer to our alleged hypocrisy. I make money off of selling my scripts in SL, and I definitely don't want those products "forcibly open-sourced" on me. I need that money to eat.

Why not open source land ownership as well? There's sims out there that not much is being done on, why shouldn't I be able to take it over for a few days and return everyone's stuff? Linden Labs can do a rollback and fix it, so nobody's harmed.

How about avatars? Why shouldn't I be able to take over your avatar for a while and copy all the stuff in your inventory even if it's not in-world? How about your Lindens and paypal accounts?

Yeh, there's a difference. The difference is that it happens to be technically possible to implement all these controls purely on the server. Like scripts.

Personally, I'd rather put at least part of my scripts "at risk" in exchange for being able to take advantage of the same *client side* processing power that people building stuff that's primarily rendered rather than executed can...

Can you elaborate on this, or should I be offended that you're doing such a fine job of mis-stating what I'm saying?

I believe that SL is about the only platform I've written code for where programmers NOT being the MOST RIPPED OFF class of creative artists is the norm.

And when a script is ripped off, because it's just text, it's ripped off for good. And if it's ripped off and modified the same controls that make it harder to rip them off make it *impossible* to identify with certainty that a rip-off has occurred. It's a LOT harder to look at a scripted object and tell "that's behaving like my script's controlling it" than to look at a dress and say "hey, that's my texture".

I'm sorry that we're SO used to being ripped off we sound smug. Because it's not "smug" you're hearing, it's "join the club".

Where have I "lauded" or even "excused" it?

No, I don't believe it is. Not unless Linden Labs chooses to make it all open anyway. It's becoming more like the rest of the software industry, yes, but even there it's not "all open anyway". It's all a balancing act.

Cite, please. Quoting someone you know to have scripted objects for sale in-world.

Dianne, I'm sorry, this post is an utter joke and, even worse, an example of the worst sort of prejudice and backstabbing that runs through the SL content creation community.

Every single time some issue comes up that affects one subset of products more than another, there are those from the unaffected set who say "hah, suck it up, you'll just have to live with it". This is the other way around in that there is a particular subset of products which is now affected less - potentially - by a potential exploit, and you are saying "well 'we' have this, 'you' should too".

(Of course, I've not heard of any actual instances of anyone having anything ripped off by CopyBot or anything derived from it. But the non-existence of the problem is by the by at this stage.)

You insinuate that scripters and these supposed evil libsecondlife exploiters of content are basically "the same breed" - oh, with astounding generosity, you allow that some of us might not be... how kind. That "correction" can be safely ignored as your examples pay no attention to this and work on the basis that one group ("scripters" is blackmailing LL and disrespecting everyone else's efforts. You divide the process of creation of content in SL, which involves building, scripting, texturing, all sorts to make a product - I know I do all of these things - into certain social groups, for no reason that I can see apart from to actually introduce division. And then you try to mobilise one invented subset against another invented, minority, subset.

For shame. There is not one single justification that you offer here and your entire premise is the sort of self-dividing rubbish that has afflicted the SL community as long as I've been here.

Dianne-

I presume you'll be sharing all your orginal scans, photographs and *.PSD files to help make things FAIR when all scripts are made copyable?

We want things to be FAIR right?

I understand your argument, though I don't agree with this suggestion.

If you want to make a suggestion that is on par with insecurities of other assets. You should be asking for the bytecode version of scripts. This would put scripts on equal footing as all other assets, as all assets each have their own special encoding (though some of these encodings are standard).

It should be noted that this will never be implemented. LL regularly recruits LSL scripters as programmers (here that scripters? you too can work for LL if you have the skills).

Wow, what cock-eyed logic you use, Dianne... "since my stuff can be stolen, everyone else ought to have to give their work away".... I'd rather try to find ways to keep any copyrighted works from being stolen. But, if you truly feel that programmers are getting preferential treatment over artists, then maybe you should consider learning to write code

Let's take that line of logic to it's real conclusion:

L$ should be eliminated. Remove it to remove value from SL. Remove permissions; all objects, clothing, etc. will be fully permissive and instantly copiable via the pie menu.

Sign a new contract with SL stating that you waive all rights to your creations in SL. LL and all residents hold no data in SL to be of value or protected as IP.

Now we have a little sandbox-like bit of software. Probably should drop ownership of land, too, or make plots "reservable" by paying real-world currency to LL.

Creative for the sake of being creative, right? A place to just kind of play... do these little thingers that are kinda fun. I dunno. Sounds dull as hell without a little structure to play against.


Or... we could get community minded! No, we can't really intall a technological barrier to illegal or infringing copying, but we sure as hell can watch one another's backs. We can demonise infringers - generally speaking, I'm not talking witch hunts but ongoing propoganda to influence the way folks think about it. With stuff like encouraging folks to be pround of the fact they *purchaced* a legal copy of something from a content creator, villifying faceless copybot users, holding originality in high esteem...

There are a hell of a lot more honest folk than there are thieves. We should use our strength of numbers to our advantage here, not get to dividing ourselves up into helpless lil groups of prey.

That's the craziest idea I have ever heard of here. I skipped the rest of the replies because I can't bother reading them all. This just sound like a fox in the old story whose get his tail cut, and trying to have the others does the same, if you've heard it and my memory is right.

Poor Dianne probably have his/her stuffs copied or somethings.

I won't do anything in SL if my scripts can be seen my any other. And I'm programmer.

Let me know when you managed to get MS and Adobe shipped their sources with their program, and I might reconsider.

Mmm...but write code is an art to me--it's beauty and deepful meaning behind each lines--does that make me an artist?

Yes, I'm crazy XD