My Letter to M Linden About BuilderBot

Now that I do not know as I do not release tools that can be used to steal content. But I do not understand that if we both agree that if there is no way to limit it, that we should limit it?

Not trying to be hard on you Ghosty! Just pointing out that people are in an uproar about this and it really is not the best target. To give an idea of just how bad it is already and to illustrate that nothing can really make it worse, look here:

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-676

That should make it clear where the real problem is; LL does not give a damn. Major priority, 1064 votes and LL has not even assigned the matter to a Linden, including even giving it to Workingonit Linden.

Neither can LL.



..and lose significant non-infringing functionality? No, thanks.



Power drills AND power saws! OH NOES!

Here's an interesting little factoid for ya -- in the last few years, sales of cordless reciprocating power saws have been a bit higher than normal. Hardware/tool stores have been a bit puzzled as to why this is. As it turns out, crooks have been buying more of them than normal because they are the tool of choice used to steal catalytic converters off of parked cars. Why catalytic converters? Because the catalyst so happens to be a small amount of platinum, the price of which has soared in recent years, making the recycleable value of catalytic converters worth stealing them.

Given that situation, should hardware/tool sellers start restricting sales to legal users? If so, how will they be able to tell? Or, should the manufacturers of these saws add a large, difficult-to-remove metal shield near the blade to prevent crooks from being able to slip them underneath cars, despite the fact that such would render the tool useless for a significant percentage of legal uses/users?

It sounds absurd and far-fetched, but that's pretty much what you're talking about when you say "it should be limited".

FWIW, that's a meta-issue; though I believe your point still stands that LL really doesn't give a damn.

Similarly, with the right blade (or maybe grinding wheel), cordless tools can be used to cut through high quality bike locks. In a bike forum I read, someone recently lost a $1700 bike to such a tool.

Perhaps we should make it illegal to carry a charged cordless grinder without a license.

Well, they pretended like they gave a damn back right after the Copybot fiasco. They had town halls, meetings, discussions in the forums and on the blog. A lot of good ideas were sourced from the residents and they made out like they were going to actually give us some of the things that we're asking for today.

Problem is, that was almost three years ago, and NOTHING has happened since on that front. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

Sounds reminiscent to the dog and pony show we were treated to regarding the Adult Content issue.

I guess some things never change.

How do I make this roll eyes smiley about 50 times bigger?


You are doing a LOT of reaching here.

*shrug* Just calling it as I see it.

A backup (or maybe even relocation) service being performed by someone running the BuilderBot for (at least what as far as the LL permissions systems comprehends is) a third-party.

While I may think it's a problematic or even terrible idea, there are RL laws about that sort of thing. The mere posession of what are defined as "tools of burglary" is in fact a crime in the jurisdiction of the USA where I live. (No intent to commit burglary is required to prosecute: the mere posession is a crime, and is also prima facie evidence of intent to commit the additional crime of burglary. Just having such tools in your house or your pocket, not about being picked up casing a joint. A lock-picking instrument is one example.) And there's the DMCA, of course.

We have the exact same law in the Netherlands, but to make having them a crime, valid suspicions for their unlawful use must be present.
You're allowed to have a crowbar in your garage, but if it's in the back of your car while you drive around a suburb where you don't live at 3 am, then you're definitely getting your fingerprints filed and have the tools of the trade confiscated.

_

however copyright infrightment do not equal burglary.




Major priority means nothing, any jira user can set any priority, and everybody is always convinced THEIR problem is a showstopper.

LL doesn't bother to "close" issues i believe because peoples tend to reopen them.

What does mean something is no Linden input on such a popular issue with several workable solutions presented. I mentioned twice in this thread that there is no reason that the ripped skins are still on the grid. There is no reason anything that has been ripped should still be on the grid within a couple of weeks of being reported, nonetheless months or never being removed at all.

Investigate the report, if it is a malicious claim then you permaban the mac address of the accuser. If it is a valid claim then you mac ban the perp and more importantly; purge the database. Yes, there are ways around that but the grid could still be in much, much better shape then it is now. How much loss would someone suffer if their product had not really had time to sit on a new store shelf somewhere and if it was removed from the inventory of whomever received it? In the US if you receive stolen property, even if you do not know that it is stolen property, you receive no compensation.

Linden Labs has purged the database of items before. Why are they not doing it now?

thank you

Yeah Talarus, that one

Yes, the laws in the USA vary by state.
(My state is not one of the ones mentioned, and has different laws than you cite. I am very familiar with them.)

I've had a number of issues I opened closed "needs more information", including ones that were trivially reproducible, or that had been demonstrated to Lindens.

I think LL did a sweep a while back, simply closing any issue which hadn't had any comments or other activity for a set amount of time. Sort of "wipe the slate clean and see what people complain about now"/"let's bring down the number of open issues", bouncing it back to the users to yet again report.
'Least, that seems to be the perceivable net result of the "needs more info" spree.

But since when is a cordless power tool a "tool of burglary"?

That's kind of the point of this thread. People are equating a general purpose tool with a burglary tool.

That would be the 10,000$L question, I guess. I gave an example of a non-infringing use of BuilderBot. My main suggestion, I believe echoed by most people here, is that the solution to the copying problem is not technical. It is worthwhile to discuss technology that can enable the legal-policy approaches to preventing and remedying content theft, but it is the policies and procedures that are the answer.

Some people feel that Linden Lab does not respond adequately to instances of content theft. I would say that better policies represent a business opportunity for LL, and that they need better procedures, and will also need supporting technology.

I don't think LL is under any delusions that the can ban software in general. Even if they closed the grid and used "trusted" modules on the client end, people would still engineer around it. However, everything is going in the opposite direction -- open access, as it has been for years with this system. And LL encourages that because they believe that's what any competitor (commercial or otherwise) would do, too.

To unmuddy the waters a bit more, SI originally had that restriction but it now lets you backup anything you have full perms on:
(typos from the original XSTreet ad)

Does this mean you can in practice bypass the SL perms on an object you have mod rights to just buy linking a root prim that you created to it?

Probably not, that would show up as "unknown creator" in inventory, and SI appears to go by what shows in inventory.