My Letter to M Linden About BuilderBot

I think that the problem is being lost in this discussion now. It is a problem that cannot be solved by the obvious, direct means, so it is one that needs people to "think outside the box".

What are the characteristics of a person that would use this tool for illegal copying?

How would they go about using it? What options do they have? What is the possible modus operandii?

How would they profit from it? How could they turn it into cash?

Discussion along those lines could lead to seeing ways of giving a higher degree of protection to content creators and "put a spanner in the works" of those who use these tools for illegal actions.

(I hated to use ASCAP as a positive example of anything, after their latest ring-tone escapade, but...) Interesting idea. The problem is much more tractable for LL than for us because they have all the asset data including the metadata about when the asset was created, by whom, who owned it before the current owner, etc.

It's interesting that, in lieu of that data, a tool rather like one of these copying programs would be useful in detecting copied works. That and lots of storage (effectively duplicating the user-exposed asset data, gradually), lots of bots, and lots of download bandwidth. My hunch is that, without that metadata, the rate of false positives would be intolerable, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Sigh. This is what I was talking about. *This* is why I'm not in software development anymore. *This* is what I meant by "dirty".

I've got one for you, and one I'd personally do IF there was a tool for it: It's called backing up information and inventory so that you don't have to spend even more money due to catastrophic inventory loss.

Linden Lab could easily create a system that backs up all the information, flags for permissions included as well as the proper Creator and Owner tags, which is locked so that none of this information could be altered. The resulting file could then be uploaded back to the grid, overwriting whatever current information they have for your inventory within the asset server.

Note that this is assuming your use of the word 'own' to be referring to the IP rights.

Your question, with that caveat, is irrelevant. Really. I brought up an analogy with Betamax, you asked what would be a non-infringing use of this tool. That use does not have to be a use involving content you did not create or that you don't own, it only needs to be legitimate, significant, and non-infringing.

What difference does it make who's in the "owner" field of the object? If you're going to limit the behavior a tool like this, what matters is what's in the "creator" field. Even the permissions fields are irrelevant: if I give you a full perm copy of a product I've created, that doesn't grant you the right to builderbot that object and rez it in another grid, all it grants you is the right to copy and distribute it within the SL service itself.

What he's talking about has nothing to do with the software business.

If you buy a CD, there are no technical measures preventing you from making a copy of the music on it and selling it. You own the CD. You don't own the music on it. You can play it at home, for your friends, but you can't play it on the radio, or in your shop, without buying the rights to do so.

Similarly, when you buy a product in SL that's full perm, you still don't own the intellectual property represented by that object, you just own some rights that say you're allowed to redistribute that IP within the SL service. THOSE are the rights you purchased. You did NOT purchase the rights to copy it into another grid. Unless you're the creator, or you've been granted those rights by the creator, you have no rights that BuilderBot is in a position to grant you. YOU have to know whether you have those rights, or whether you're infringing the law or the ToS.

It doesn't matter whether it's software (scripts), music (sounds and gestures), pictures (clothes and textures), or anything else.

So, this isn't about software. It's about copyright law. If copyright law makes you feel dirty, join the club, but it's not the fault of the programmers, it's the fault of the legislators.

It has everything to do with the software business. He's saying he's right and you're an idiot if you disagree. He's being pedantic, and thinks it's clever. He thinks knowing syntax makes him an expert in everything.

This is the coder ethic. It's why I'm not in software development anymore.

You haven't dealt with self-appointed experts in other fields then, I guess. There are people like that in every field. Teachers, lawyers, artists, writers, poets, doctors, musicians, real scientists and rocket scientists. I've been condescended to by all of these.

As the creator of one of the popular sets of megaprims, that makes me owner of a lot of stuff I didn't build

Being in the "creator" field of lots of things I didn't build has its up sides and its down sides. Mostly up.

I'm pretty stupid when it comes to all this techno mumbo jumbo, but didn't LL themselves do the most damage against content creators when they opensourced the SL viewer?

Second Inventory
Meerkat viewer
Greenlife viewer
Etc

Didn't these all come about as a direct result of that opensourcing of the official SL viewer?

Doesn't that mean anyone with enough know-how to create their own viewer could techinically create a viewer that circumvented the permissions system to back-up whatever they wanted?

I realize this thread seems most concerned with putting simple tools in the hands of simple people and the idea that simple people can reek havoc but...

LL gave everyone a very complex tool in the opensource viewer. It is possible to modify the viewer to back up content just as it is possible to modify the viewer to get around the permissions system.

If I were in anyway smart enough to make my own viewer, the first thing I'd probably try to figure out would be back-up and storage of my own creations. The second thing might be to find a way to back-up and store YOUR creations that I legitimately purchased so that the next time there's a huge asset failure I would still have access to the "property" I purchased.

Certainly there were tools available to rip content from SL before the viewer was opensourced but it still seems to me that the best tool provided so far is the opensource viewer provided by LL.

I personally don't know how to use that tool, but if I did, I might not make as big a noise about being able to use it to back-up anything I saw as Rezzable has done with BuilderBot.

It just seems strange to me that you're all jumping on Rezzables when there could be dozens or hundreds of people working on exactly the same thing without all the fanfair, just quietly modifying the tools LL has given them to back-up anything they wanted and take it anywhere they wanted to go.

I just think you're all pointing your guns at the wrong fellows. If you had wanted a perfectly secure environment to create in, maybe you should have made your stink when the viewer was being opensourced. Or at least realized when you started creating in an OpenGL environment that you would need to take legal measure to protect your creations as no technological measure would secure you against the "Open" part.

Just my $L2 perspective as someone who doesn't really know.

Good point. So there's nothing BuilderBot can look at to REALLY tell if it's legal for it to back up a sim to another grid.

Which raises the question, have you granted people the right to take your IP represented by those megaprims to another grid?

Second Inventory and BuilderBot don't contain any code from the open source viewer.

But it'd be silly to think the libsl folks haven't made some of their progress by studying the opensource viewer code. That, and LL employees assisted in the development of libsl before the release of the code.

So yes, LL is directly responsible for some of the damage, but they don't see it as damage.

FWIW, I've hacked the viewer both to create some new functionality for a project I was working on and also to see how easy it'd be to copy stuff with it. I, with tons of C experience and some book know-how about C++ but no practical experience, was able to create a shape, texture and prim copier that beat the hell out of copybot, in about a week. While working on animations (I stopped working on it before I finished code to copy animations) my research turned up a 20,000L bounty put out by the libsl people for reverse-engineering the viewer code that encodes animation uploads.

So yes, the libsl folks do study the viewer code.

I don't know. I know the OpenSim people make a point of NOT studying the viewer code.

That would not have "unhappened" if the open source viewer hadn't been released. People would still be writing and distributing these tools if the open source viewer hadn't been released. The person I was replying to was pointing at the open source viewer, specifically. The work that all the people have put in to the development of the viewer through the open source viewer project, that all of us are benefiting from, doesn't need to be slandered like that.

(edit: or do I mean libelled? I am not a lawyer)

I'm absolutely certain that people have done this, because I've done it and did not find it difficult. See my response to Argent.

I don't believe them. This is very common geek bragging. "I didn't do it the easy way."

The person you were responding to didn't know the full extent of the damage. The answer to his question is "yes, LL has enabled these tools, with direct assistance to their authors, even before the opensourcing of the viewer."

This whole discussion and the points against the infringing uses of BuilderBot just reinforce the need for one of the TOS clauses which all of us who use SL have had to agree to. Linden Lab owns all content. It sounds like they're usurping our rights but it's actually necessary. As somebody else pointed out, receiving a full-perm item in SL does not grant you the right to reproduce said item outside of the Second Life grid. It only grants you the right to distribute as many copies as you wish INSIDE OF SL (and in some cases you don't even have that right even though it is full-perm).

The clause that stipulates that Linden Lab owns the content which the content creators in Second Life have created, allows them to pursue people using tools such as BuilderBot to export Second Life creations illegally to other grids. Should Linden Lab choose to actually enforce this particular clause it can be of a benefit to the people who stand to be negatively impacted by unauthorized uses of BuilderBot.

One would hope that somebody at Linden Lab is working towards actually enforcing our existing copyrights by dealing with people illegally importing Second Life creations into other virtual worlds.

No, no, I think being able to use this tool for your own content that you've created is fine, and in fact it would be a pretty worthless tool if it didn't do at least that. I'm even willing to concede use of it for content you own a copy of, but are not own the copyright of, i.e. as a way to back up, and yes even to take to some other platform, since that's the purpose of the tool at it's root.

I'm talking about using the tool to copy objects you do not own (possess) AND do not own the copyright to. I'm not saying anyone in this discussion *would* do that, I'm saying this could be what the tool is capable of doing, and I am opposed to that particular functionality.

My apologies for the misunderstanding.

No, this isn't "I didn't do it the easy way". This is "The viewer code is GPL and we want to make damn sure our code remains BSD licensed."

I don't care what you think their motivations were, it was casting aspersions on the open source viewer, and that's what I responded to.

Yes, I'm going to have to adopt a different lexicon for this discussion or something. I've confused the issue by not being clear enough.

Absolutely, this thing should look at the creator field. It should also look at the 'owner' field in the case of group builds, etc. I thought about this last night after getting away from the PC, and it would have to have at least that much capability to remain ultimately useful: it has to copy what I create, and it has to copy what my group creates. I'd even be willing to say that it can copy objects I possess, but do not necessarily own the copyright for (backup, move to another platform, whatever).

As I said in another post, when I referred (inneffectually) to content one does not *own*, I believe I would be speaking of copyright AND possession; i.e., my neighbor's skin store, for example. That would be a functionality I would not approve of.

They explicitly say they don't. What Linden Labs owns is a grant to distribute what you upload and create within the SL service itself, and they own the actual bits and bytes and servers. You retain ownership of the intellectual property involved.

BuilderBot, SI, GreenLife, Meerkat, all of these tools can be used to copy content you don't own to other grids... but that's a violation NOT because Linden Labs owns it, but because neither Linden Labs nor anyone else has been granted those rights except in specific cases (for example, Franimation Overrider is GPL, Flight Feather is BSDL, etc...).

What does the owner field tell it, in group builds or not?

Ah, well, you see, that's a copyright violation. If I buy a copy of someone's Waves, that doesn't mean I'm allowed to copy them to another grid.