My Letter to M Linden About BuilderBot

Well I interpreted her use of the word "honest" as someone who wouldn't use content they shouldn't be, since that was the direction this thread was going at the time.

We all know that those freebies are full of stuff that was pirated.

Remember I wasn't the one who started playing this "data" game. Since in this case "anecdotal" is actually probably more reliable than LL's numbers, especially any they publish.

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It wasn't said that people are mostly honest. Which could very well be true.

It was said that the Majority of people are Honest. In this context, that is almost certainly false.

Indeed it is more likely many people are ignorant of whether they are using pirated content or not.

yep, its people like Gabriele that are insisting that SL sinks like the Titanic.

Seriously I don't care by this point, LL will do what they want, and they will fail if they don't tackle what kills their land biz.

Not particularly, but if you think so....



I don't think so; I've worked with a lot more vague datasets and statistical models than what I expect LL has (try modeling the world Uranium market sometime ). If they have the data, and I have no reason to believe they don't, then I think it is possible to come up with some relevant analysis of per-resident spending vs freebie use. Now, I am not claiming that has anything to do with "honesty", as that's a highly subjective judgment, but I think it would be possible to determine the financial impact of certain infringing freebies on the market as a whole. It certainly wouldn't be easy, though.

I'd have to disagree

How do you reconcile a claim that the "Majority" are a certain way when the "Majority" don't even play Second Life any more?

There cant be a data set that can compensate for that.

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Remember, these are the people who derived that only 2-4% would need adult land in Zindra.

Sorry, you were the third person who accused me of living in a small town . And if you would look back at mine, neither myself or anyone else is saying the content theft is a good thing or should be condoned. What we have been saying is that this is another in a long line of hysterical reactions that solves nothing. That Builder Bot does not make it easier to steal as was asserted by both Carl and by Desmond and that banning it would not stop, slow down and reverse content theft. Nor, if it was released, would it increase it any. If someone wants to steal then the tools available are easier to use and much more focused.

Yes we do need, just like the car key analogy, prosecution and punishment and that has been the whole point of what I have been saying. And yet people keep skipping over that, Desmond went into his incredibly stupid gun nut rant when I made a joke with Talarus that was not directed at him or anything else in the thread. Collette went off on this even crazier, "All noobs that do not have money are dishonest" crap.

I have pointed out again and again just how easy it has been to steal content here and how to legally demonstrate that. I have pointed out repeatedly that yes there is theft but the Top Content creators are not only surviving but are doing better then they were before Copy bot (outside of the global economy effect). Yet no one wants to look at these points, instead they want to derail and deflect instead.

I would interpret as such, too, though with an educated caveat: "someone who wouldn't KNOWINGLY use content they shouldn't be".



Actually, I don't know that, even now. What percentage is "full of stuff"? 3%? 5%? 55.46%? Not only do I not know what percentage that is, I have no way to determine the "pirated" status for any particular item in my inventory, either. I wish I did (which is why I call for more identification of content in my "letter". Again, though, I don't think that can taken into account regarding people's "honesty", either for or against.



That latter part is probably true, but I believe that they are sitting on a mountain of data which could extrapolate some important information regarding this subject, if someone cared enough to bother sifting through it.



What makes you say that? Why is your assertion that it is "almost certainly false" any more valid than her (or my) assertion that it is true? I think my point is actually the majority of people are mostly honest, which is a little different than either stance. I don't believe anyone is "perfectly" honest, but I do believe that a majority of people are "mostly" honest. I don't believe Jesse meant "perfectly" honest, either, but she can qualify her own words for certainty.



Yet that doesn't make them dishonest, right?

It's not about content creators, its about land rental. It's true that the very big are doing well, but I don't see that trickling down to the very small.

Land barons aren't doing so well anymore, they are going out of biz left and right. Many of the very small shops which keep land barons afloat have simply given up, as it was not worth the effort. Corps gave up their sims in SL because they didn't have enough security on the main grid.

Less land rented from LL, less money in LL coffers. There's a lot of transactions that are not getting skimmed because the sales aren't happening to other grids. Teen grid folks want to buy stuff here, edus want to buy stuff here, corps on private grids want to buy stuff here...

Its the sales that are not happening that are the problem.

Anyway, I don't care much by now, I'm simply telling you there's another way, but most of you are not willing to look for anything better, so I'll enjoy seeing VRML mistakes happen one more time with OpenSim I guess. I do have some faith given what I've been told by a few IBMers but I don't see that level of insight on the SL forums, so adieu

Which? That they have the dataset, or can actually do something meaningful with it? For the former, we'll have to agree to disagree. For the latter, I don't think we have an argument. Of course, that doesn't mean someone else couldn't do something meaningful with it, presuming LL hired them to actually do it.



That doesn't mean that their history is lost. LL most likely very well keeps historical records for all residents. I would. Their inventory certainly isn't gone (well, ones which were purged, perhaps, but I don't get the impression that LL really deletes any account to the point where the actual data is sent to the bit bucket).

As for the claim about a "Majority" of anything, that's called an "ambiguous constraint". It would have to be resolved before any proper analysis could be performed. It necessarily constrains the dataset beforehand. If the purpose of the model was for all residents from the beginning of SL, then you'd naturally include data from residents who have since left for greener pastures, unless another constraint specifically excluded them.



Compensate for what? If their data exists, no one has to compensate for it.



Well, I'm also arguing from a theoretical standpoint. If the data is there, it CAN be munged. Whether LL has the expertise to do it or not is kinda beside the point, except in a practical sense. Otherwise, I can't argue with you there.

Oh hell no! Not "perfectly" honest, especially not in regards to myself. My hat has a lot more gray in it then white. Will I or the majority of people steal a car or rob a bank? Nope! I have the tools to steal content here but have never had any interest in doing so. Much more fun to create it myself or just go out and patronize shops.

If I was walking down the street and found a wallet with $10,000 in it, would I return it? Yep, I would return their wallet, along with all of it's contents, everything EXCEPT for the money and I would not even have a twinge of guilt.

Because all this posturing aside, you and I both know there is a certain amount of content that has gotten around that people use that is of dubious origin.

And that amount has grown since we got here. Every newbie you see in that Starley Skin or that Exotica Skin or that Naughty Skin. Every House with this wood texture or that wood texture.

It is PERVASIVE.

And thus the Majority of people are not "Honest" although I think the people who STAY in Second Life past those first few months end up switching to a pay for much of your content philosophy.

But the "majority" of people come to Second Life, Participate in lots of Drama, use tons of freebies, burn themselves out and leave.

By your example -

Your definition of "Honest" fits my definition of "Dishonest".

In my book -

An honest person would return the money.

Even a mostly honest person would.

I know that there is some amount; I am, by no means, "certain" of how much there is, but that's not really relevant to the point.



I won't disagree that it has grown over time. The actual extent of its growth I don't know, but I have a fairly good estimation that it is not significantly greater than the general growth of the SL population or content creation in general.

As for seeing newbies in a some particular "skin" or using some object whose contents are infringing copies, *I* wouldn't know, and I am certainly no noob. I know a LOT of folks who would also be as clueless about it as I am. As such, how can you expect noobs to know?



It may very well be, but that still is beside the point.



This is where your assertion fails for me. If someone does not know that the freebies they pick up are infringing copies, and has no reasonable way to tell, they cannot be considered "dishonest" on that alone. If that were to become a litmus for honesty, then it is likely that so few in SL could be considered "honest" as to render the term absolutely meaningless.

I mean, should we shun ALL freebies until LL gets around to implementing some way for us to know which are infringing copies and which aren't, to avoid being labeled "dishonest"?



Perhaps, but that still doesn't make them "dishonest".

It's true that a way to go from grid to grid whilst retaining at least one's avatar look if not one's inventory would be nice. I've wondered if licensing extending to various grids would be at all feasible, but the trouble is that while we stand in confusion things are being duplicated and creator/permissions mixed up and changed in many cases without the knowledge or consent of the people who first created the objects.

However, something will most likely appear to help this situation - maybe in a way we can't see at the moment. It's such a wild and exciting time - much bad, much good, energy, emotion, and change.

Kinda puts things in perspective. Thanks.

Your source?

From what I've heard, your assumption is questionable. I don't think they're on the recording industry radar screens yet, which is good because the recording industry isn't prepared for the SL DJ business model. A DJ couldn't afford the current licenses rates on their own. They'd have to depend on their Shoutcast server to be licensed, and try to find one of those. The best known service that provides licensing is Live365, and their cheapest rate for a broadcast service that includes all US royalties is $107 per MONTH, and that's for 64k sampling.

Don't forget that Internet broadcasters have to pay SoundExchange in addition to BMI/ASCAP/SESAC.

There are plenty of things that keep most people from copying, especially the casual 'opportunist criminals' that do the bulk of the stealing. It's nontrivial to reconstruct source data, unless someone has spent a fair amount of time to create and distribute software to do just that.

This is exactly the "we can't have total security, so let's have none" argument.

It makes no sense for cars and houses either; most people lock both, and last I checked cars and houses are still sold with keys. Nobody's hotwiring my mustang easily either; like many modern cars the engine controller won't work without identification of the chipped key. Forcing common criminals to grab those with flatbed towtrucks. Knowing that, I don't generally park in a way that someone could easily angle a truck near it. And yep, this is the car that poor misguided Des bought outright with cash earned in SL.

The solution is to make a clear statement when business is being affected, followed by financial steps if there's nothing done about it. And you are precisely correct, I'm not going to share what business steps I'm taking, but rest assured I am doing something.

On the one hand, our service provider can ignore DMCA violations, or on the other pass out permabans and hardware bans with them, and make clear policy statements much as they did with sexual ageplay, scam banks and gambling.

Sure, it's quite possible to get around a hardware ban, but let me tell you, most people can't even figure that simple thing out. I get emails all the time from residents when LL actually does it to somebody, asking what they can do about it, and they are always quite mortified regarding what 'partial measures' can actually mean to them. All the forum braggadocio is gone at that point.

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Regarding elitism mentioned somewhere above... you bet ~ I'm about as elitist as they come. If I didn't use my own critical thinking skills and relied on the common wisdom of the forums, I'd be in the same boat as the rest of you.

When I hear content creator friends talking about losing 20 or 30 thousand dollars a year because they had their stuff ripped and passed out for free in myriad Businesses in a Box, it's a no brainer.

Some of the opinions expressed here are so completely out of touch with business reality on the grid it is mind boggling ~ the only thing I can imagine is that everyone making these statements doesn't actually know *anyone* making a solid income here. Not all are victims of content theft, but a hugely significant fraction suffer from that exact issue specifically, explicitly and painfully. And no, I'm most assuredly not going to mention names.

It's true, I'm nobody special, and that's a key point. I respect the business views of those who do better here than dumb ol' Des, a lot more than those who don't.

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Incidentally, in my travels I have experienced a society where there was virtually no crime whatsoever due to fear of punishment alone ~ oh yes, it's possible. It's painfully clear that very few of you here have ever actually experienced such a thing. This was Pinochet's Chile in the 1980's.

It's also obvious that my business opinions aren't appreciated, and I'm not going to waste my days arguing about them on forums. The lecture about how firing range practise was good preparation for dealing with an intruder took the cake; that should have been it right there.

I'll keep my real efforts focused where they matter, and save these forums for the simple commentary and fluff.

So here's a win win for all of us:

Des out of thread.

The problem is, that already happened inside SL, and not with BuilderBot. The tools the crooks use don't require you to have a whole sim to rez the result into.

The threat from BuilderBot is moving content OUTSIDE SL, and creating a viable grid using content that people created in SL... created for use in SL... without their permission. And the only even potential solution to that is DMCA against the other grids, trying to get LL to ban BuilderBot won't help.

I, too, have pretty much had it with this thread. A couple of cheap parting shots:

I'm not sure where the idea of "banning" BuilderBot arose, a misunderstanding, or strawman. I don't think there's anybody advocating that. Some of us would like LL to reiterate its stance about misuse of such "tools" to infringe copyrights, and to make it clear to Rezzable that widely distributing such a tool--with perfectly predictable consequences--would be irresponsible.

I admit that I'm perhaps uniquely unqualified to fairly judge the benefits of this or similar programs as "tools." There's not a goddamn thing on the grid that I'd spend even minimal time and effort to back up, if I had it in inventory or rezzed on my land. That's not what I find interesting about Second Life--I'm sorta here for the journey not the destination--but I acknowledge that the economy relies on others feeling quite differently about what they acquire on the grid. I can only try to empathize with that instinct--and mostly fail.

This talk of small towns and rehashing of Rousseau v Hobbes makes forums fodder, but is beside the point. Some people steal. If they steal a car in Second Life, they don't have a car, they have an auto factory. And the mass market of savages, however noble, just can't tell the difference between a real Mercedes and the ersatz Murcedes, identical in all but name.

More germane, I think, is deploring the current state of IP law--but it's not a simple topic. Some are apparently unwilling to consider the complexities and just declare that any IP is wrong; all creations "want to be free." Down that path lies poverty for everyone who thinks for a living.

The simplistic, "free as in beer" advocates have counterpart crazies on the other side, who simplistically decry all Open Source to be Communist. The lunatic fringe of these two camps create much heat and no light; it's very difficult to advance any real discourse once these positions are battling it out for title of Master Debator of the Moot.

..and quite a few have done just that. Prim Mirror (and the upteen million derivatives), CopyBot, various cache contents viewers (Slice, SLMIV), complete 3rd-party clients, etc. Most(all?) of which have been stated by Linden Lab to be "legal" for non-infringing use.



You obviously have a selective reading impairment. Nothing in what Feldspar said which you quoted even remotely hints at any such thing. He never suggested that permissions systems or other protections currently available in SL should go away.



Translation: "I'm a rich SL bigwig, so *I* know everything!"



Oh, by all means, please do throw your financial weight around, you virtual money-making powerhouse, you.



The gambling policy in particular being such a rousing success, of course.

Who are you trying to argue with here? Yourself? What are people (such as myself) asking for? Oh yeah, a POLICY statement regarding LL being more proactive on DMCA violations and giving us better ways to identify infringement to get it nipped in the bud sooner.



One word: ShoopedLife. What does this have to do with the issue again, exactly?



I see, so making fistfuls of money is the prerequisite litmus for intelligence and common sense. I don't know how I have missed that all my years. Truly a revelation.



I'm actually sorry to hear that. I hope they filed DMCA takedown requests when they found out.



Of course not. It would require making scads of virtual e-bucks to have any conception of what is really going on.



"Money talks; bullshit walks." Fortunately, I only subscribe to the latter of those two phrases.

Let's hope LL agrees with you.



Well, if you think you have enough money and influence to prompt LL to implement Big Brother Content Creator Support and Potential Infringer Electrocution System v1.0 for you, who am I to stop you?



Your BUSINESS opinions are respected. However, I have yet to see any BUSINESS opinions espoused by you in this thread. Mostly just a bunch of trolling from an unexpected quarter. The above quoted piece being a fine example.



/me waves.

Sure there are, that's what this whole thread is about:
Banning BuilderBot is the basis of this thread, not a "misunderstanding".

This thread is not "information wants to be free" vs "reasonable people".

This thread is "ban the VCR, CD writer, and MP3 player".

From the OP's letter, hence:





After losing hundreds of hours of work PERMANENTLY due to asset server screwups, griefers, etc, you might think differently. I, for one, try to keep backups of everything I make, precisely because I have lost enough work from LL bitrot to make such effort worthwhile. I daresay I am not alone in that, and definitely not the most impacted by it, by far.



Which makes a good argument for content authentication and identification systems, NOT banning tools.



I don't think there has been much representation of either camp here (well, at least Prokofy hasn't shown up yet, anyway ). Most of the "heat" of the debate centers around the issue of banning tools which can be misused, but also have significant non-infringing uses. The rest of it is posturing, with both sides claiming they have their fingers on the pulse of content creation and the causes of the downturn of the SL economy. Most of it is sensationalist hyperbole, designed to generate emotional response, rather than reasoned debate (let alone real progress), which is precisely the tact used the LAST time this issue was a hot topic.

In the end, who lost out the most over it? The content creators themselves, by their own hand, no less.

So your incredibly stupid and uninformed views on guns with your"statistics" which you never responded to should be considered as a business opinion? The same can be said for your statement that your very locked up GMC was stolen and so you damned sure lock up the mustang you bought with SL money to keep it from being stolen, even thou it did not help at all the first time is business advice?

The only two examples you gave of content theft had absolutely nothing to do with Copy Bot or Builder Bot. Your first did textures that have been vulnerable since before SL was created and if nothing else should demonstrate that people survive and thrive despite it. Your second never had any content ripped from him, he instead gave out the full perms copy to an associate that he had to then turn around and justifiably sue. Once again, his example disproves your theory that this would be the end of SL. Despite the animations being passed around like candy and his beds being sold for pennies, he is still here and in fact I popped in there a couple of weeks ago and he had moved. His new place is one heck a lot bigger then the last time I saw it before he went to court. So is this because Stoker is doing this for a hobby, dumping money into SL and making less then before the lawsuit?

So yes if you want to come back and discuss business instead of sniping then good to see you. Go back and look, there was nothing unfriendly that I said in my responses until you started being an asshole, glad you can justify that one to yourself.