Limiting theft by limiting creation

Then what you say is, "Any solution would have negative consequences, balanced by the good."

That's far more politic than putting words in my mouth that appear to make me look very selfish. And you weren't talking about everyone; you were specifically addressing content creators, saying this is their problem and they need to deal with fixing it.

I'm more interested in people trying to actually think through these suggestions, most of which are made carelessly and ambiguously, and identify the pros and cons.

BTW, I don't have an iron in this fire. I'm not arguing for any particular approach, only against those that would be untenable. I've made my preferences known, but I'm not deeply ensconsed in my position, other than that it's foolish to be vague about potential technical solutions, or to assume that technical solutions would be simple and painless.

Does option 4 really work? Does it have unintended consequences we haven't considered? Are there other fruitful technical possiblities we haven't considered?

I never said you did. However, you have repeatedly referred to "pre-6/6/6", where there was some amount of financial boundary in place (requirement of payment info at the least).



So, if PIOF was required, there would have been more people willing to do it, but somehow verify-for-transfer would result in LESS people willing to do it?



Everything has a psychological hurdle. Downloading/installing the client (will it harm my computer? will it work? will I have to fight with it to get it to work?), logging in for the first time (will it be too hard? will other people help me? will I encounter bad people?), creating (can I learn to do it? will people laugh at my first creation?), et cetera. What is one more MINOR psychological hurdle to some of those MAJOR ones?

..and I suggested MAKING it an obvious benefit by telling them WHY it is important to verify, and WHY the restriction without it makes sense.



Dude, I *WAS* THAT GUY! So are a LOT of people, probably even YOU. I gave up my credit card info when I joined SL, and didn't think twice about it, because it was REQUIRED at the time. Doing what the service provider required to participate in the world is no different than obeying a "house rule" (like taking your shoes off in the foyer) when visiting someone's home. If they go out of their way to explain why, and it makes sense, WHY is it so frickin' hard of a hurdle that it runs you off? You're already at their house, they ask you to remove your shoes in their foyer to avoid tracking dirt and debris onto their expensive rugs, or where their infants are playing. Are you going to tell me people are going to say "screw that" and then turn around and leave? Because that is basically what you are saying people will do when confronted with a similar hurdle to participating in SL as creators under such a rule.



Then it is as I said; disingenuous. I i's NOT the same thing, and you knew it.



I didn't verify to get on adult land. I don't have any desire to go to adult land at the moment. If/when I do, I'll verify (if I even have to; I verified with Aristotle years ago, and I have been PIOF/PIU since I joined), because that's what is required to go there. The verification isn't the hurdle to me; the desire to go there is, and, no, the verification "hurdle" does not affect my desire to go there AT ALL.

Exactly. It is almost to the point of a non-issue. The only real flaw is that "verification" just isn't possible for some people, because there is no authority available or willing to vouch for their credentials. Not that there absolutely has to be, of course, as long as the vast majority are certified in some way. Even still, there will always be some folks who will fall through the cracks; no system is ever going to be "perfect".

Having it required to play, and having it required for what might seem a minor feature of the game, are fundamentally different.
That's what I'm saying. Make it "you have to take off your shoes to come in the front door", not "you have to take off your shoes to go into the nursery and formal dining room".

Oh, I am not ignoring it, obviously. However, I don't believe it is something to which LL HAS to subscribe with respect to its customers. In other words, LL shouldn't have to guarantee anonymity of their customers to itself. That's almost patently ridiculous. As a business, I WANT to know who my customers are. In some situations, it is even required by law for you to know some amount of anonymity-abrogating information about someone. I am not saying that I know that is the case with LL, but I think they have very good business reasons for piercing the anonymity of their customers for themselves.



Sort of; just make it so that if they try to give something to someone else, the server won't permit it. They can't set anything for sale, and the llGiveInventory function call fails if they are the owner. It doesn't change the permissions on objects they own. It's just an extra check in the normal inventory transfer process.



What burden? The permissions on the objects/assets themselves don't change. If an unverified buys a vendor (after being told by LL in as many ways as prudent that they cannot transfer objects until the verify), and tries to set it up, finding out that it fails with a very specific error message everytime someone tries to buy something from it, what problem is there? They contact the creator of the vendor, give the error message, and the creator responds with a pat answer "you have to be verified before it will work".

That does bring up an important issue, though. With verify-for-transfer, when you go up to a vendor, will it be something that some unverified put up that will take your money and not deliver product? It will mean people would have to open the profile of the owner and check their verification status before paying (which I often do anyway for other reasons), but it really is no different than someone setting out a "vendor" with the intention of scamming someone by giving them an empty box. If LL does everything they can to make sure they inform new residents of what their unverified status means, then there is no excuse when they pull some stunt like that.



With verify-for-transfer, you can still have anonymity in SL, so I don't see the argument. Even if LL does away with anonymity completely, requiring verification (again) for access, it is well within their right to do so, regardless of objections. The only consideration they would have is what good they would be trading for the bad of those who object strenuously enough to depart as a result of the decision. It may be that the good won't outweigh the bad, which is why I think a compromise is in order. The compromise is one where some of the existing bad is curbed for a little good, and I think the good in that situation will outweigh the bad. I don't know for sure, but I have yet to see a convincing argument to the contrary, OR a better solution.



I think anonymity in general is important, but not in all cases, and definitely not in cases where it becomes detrimental to the business allowing it to be practiced unnecessarily.

LL didn't start out with anonymity. Before 6/6/6, you HAD to provide some kind of verification/payment details to join SL, even if it was free (for the first account, anyway).

How is the guy going to be any more "sucked into it" if he would object to verifying for transfer, but instead it is "required to play"?

I don't even know what you're arguing for anymore.



That wasn't the point of the analogy, but it obviously wasn't the best analogy to make the point, given that you decided to use what it was lacking as a distraction to the point.

Because he's more likely to take his shoes off to get into the house, than to get into a room he doesn't think he's interested in until he gets there.

That's OK, I'm totaly nicking your analogy.

I want to get people into the formal dining room. I don't care how many are in the house if they can't get into the formal dining room. But if most people don't know how cool it is in there, they're just gonna walk on by and check out the den, never realizing what they're missing. If they took their shoes off before they came into the house, they'll come into the formal dining room, and we'll have a great party there.

Aye, and I have not suggested restricting the act of creation, just the act of transferring that creation to another.



Aye. Insidious? In what way?

Why would he be more likely to take his shoes off to get into the house, because he wants to, than he would be to get into a particular room, because he wants to?



Then I'll "nick" it right back:

Thing is, with verify-for-transfer, the formal dining room isn't even in a room off by itself; it is right there, adjacent to the main room of the house, with a wide, obvious path to it, and everyone can see people from one room to the other. Someone tries to walk from the main room to the formal dining room, across the wide threshold, and the hostess stops them short, saying nicely "please take off your shoes before walking into the dining room", just as the BIG ASS TEXT on the party invitation said. Everyone else in the dining room has their shoes off, so WHAT POSSIBLE disincentive would someone have to say "no thanks" and then go and sit down in the main room? His feet stink? His shoes super-glued to his feet? What?

You are still asking someone to give very personal information (CC) to a untrusted, unknown third party (LL). The person that WANT to join will, no matter what. Except ... the information will be useless. How will you verify my infomation? I am not a US or EU resident. Therefore I can give you any name and address. And I doubt LL can get into the South African Population Register. Not that it's without errors in any event. If you require a CC, it's not that hard to supply one. Credit Card fraud is not all that hard to pull if you know how. Illegal, yes. Impossible, no.

Then you end up no real effect on the really determined copybotter, and you turn away the casual guy that are not interested in taking off his shoes now, but would in 6 months when he's made some friends.

The vast majority of the time you use your credit card, write a cheque, or show some form of ID (like to buy booze or cigarettes), you're giving very personal information to an untrusted, unknown third party. Did you know that more credit card fraud comes from information harvested by employees at stores and restaurants where you physically surrender the card for them to process your payment? All of the credit card fraud I have experienced against my accounts has been from cards which were used that way and NEVER used online. If anything, I trust LL with my personal information more than I trust the waiter at the local Mexican restaurant that I regularly visit.



Oh, absolutely, but as has been argued by others, doing so is actually another BIG threshold that the would-be infringer has to cross which takes it from simple infringement into the big-time world of fraud. Infringement probably won't get them much other than a slap on the wrist, but credit card fraud almost guarantees jail time, and it guarantees that the boys (and girls) in blue will be MUCH more eager to chase them down.

Ultimately, there is no way to verify ANYone. Even ID in person can be faked. However, that's not so much an argument against using verification for the purposes of establishing legal standing than an argument against the accuracy of verification itself.

The funny part is, if you use my personal info to go and create something of your own, then sell it, I could conceivably claim copyright on it, and take it away from you.

It's also a bit problematic if you use my info to go and infringe someone else's creations, and they go after me. However, once I absolve myself of any tie to it, they're going to come after you with a vengeance for a far more significant crime: Identity theft. Copyright infringement will likely be added on top of it as well, and will likely draw more severe penalties, because there were aggravating circumstances.



Well, no one here is under the illusion that this will stop the "determined copybotter"; in truth, nothing likely will. The idea is to raise the bar to where there is some resistance in someone's mind to becoming that "determined copybotter".

And they say "sorry", and politely turn around, and go to the party in the kitchen where they can keep their shoes on.

OK. What's the problem, then? They made a choice, and they are off in the kitchen having fun. Just as if the rule was "take shoes off before entering house, period", and they chose to go to the neighbor's house instead where they could keep their shoes on, and had fun at their party.

You might want them to be at your house's dinner party in the dining room; I'd rather just have them in your house period, having fun with the rest of us.

Yet if susch a system had been here since day 1 then few people would care about the extra hoop or 2.
You would have to allow limited editing such as positioning and size changing, perhaps color/texture. no link/unlink objects created by others.

I'm still thinking a selling license is the way to go US$10 for those verying and US$20 for those who can't or won't verify their RL details to LL.

If you don't trust LL why are you openly connecting to them, don't you realise their viewer could be a big trojan farming any information you keep on your computer.

Because now we have a two-tier upstairs-downstairs household. Whether the segregation is voluntary or not, it produces a kind of household that makes my obsessively egalitarian Australian blood boil.

Obsessively egalitarian!?

Um, ok, as long as Yumi's downstairs..

So essentially, the license to steal will be $10 instead of free.

Without consequenses for content theft, the proposed changes are meaningless.

I hate to remind you of this, but as Kitty already pointed out, this house has already been built with a bunch more than just two tiers. What's one more, for a good cause?

I can accept that you don't like it; there's plenty of things I don't like that have been suggested, and many that have been implemented by the Lindens. However, I am trying to find reasons to accept or deny suggestions based on a bit more concrete notion than whether you or I (or anyone else) like it.

I like to think of myself as obsessively egalitarian as well, but I guess, like so many things, such concepts mean different things to different people.

Thus, what I find attractive about it is that it promotes creativity and creators, and dissuades those who would infringe on said creators' efforts, while not imposing a significant hurdle to those with a desire to join the first group (at least, in theory). At least no more significant a hurdle than requiring everyone to be verified just for access.

Ultimately, I can live with "everyone verified for access", but I don't think it is going to be as "egalitarian" a solution as you would like.

That's just my opinion, though.

No it hasn't. All accounts in SL have the same in-game capabilities. Yes, my alt Argent Koskinen can't visit Zindra. But he can get to Seal Cove and my alt Argent David can't. And neither of them can get to The Old Lab. That's access control, not capabilities.

Changing that will radically change the nature of Second Life, for the worse.

Umm.. the whole point of capabilities IS access control, and to what extent.



Well, then, I guess we're back to the same place we always end up: agreeing to disagree.

I think that it would be a good change that would change SL for the better.

Yeah make them risk $US20 that they can get their money back in sales before being caught.

Nah, can't do that, it's cruel, they might lose money and then we would have less theives interested in SL.

Sounds like a real consequense to me, a financial one, whether they use a false ID or not, they can lose money, if the problem continues make it US$50.

If people just come back selling the same stolen content two weeks later using the same avatar, there is no risk.

How about before trying any new measures, we see how enforcing current ones works?

That's crazy talk!

I suspect because it's far too fair and egalitarian, and doesn't fit the agenda of certain posters around here.