Limiting theft by limiting creation

More likely it's a top 10,000, 100 wouldn't even cover one item catagory.

Perhaps only registered content creators showed in search, I would hate to link they removed the option for the general population to create a prim, but then again maybe that's a "new feature" of the MegaViewer 2.0

Doing the wrong thing, or doing something already shown to be ineffective, just for the sake of doing *something*, is actually worse than doing nothing at all.

Just because it's not 100% effective doesn't mean it's useless, everyone keeping their heads in the sand refusing to discuss/improve any idea isn't going to help either

Nobody here is refusing to discuss the matter - least of whom, me. But very few here are particularly interested in trying to obtain security by sacrificing our freedom, or throwing a whole class of people under the bus. As I have stated before: This may be a technological problem; but it cannot rely on a technological solution. When you do so, the best you can possibly hope to achieve is to stay a half-step ahead of the pirates (which is essentially what they are). The solution is two-fold: First, Linden Labs does away with unverified accounts. In that, I believe we are in agreement. If one wants to play, one will need to provided verifiable information. Second, Linden Labs *must* enforce their rights under the GNU General Public License (GPL), and Linden Labs *must* completely and consistently enforce their Terms of Service and Community Standards.

Anything short of or other than those two steps will result in failure.

We HAVE to stop all selling of ANY content.... stop any and all cashing out its the only way to stop fraud!!!
Fraud must be stoped now!!!

The 'problem' is not the copying per se. Rendering on the client is always going to expose the raw components.
The real problem arises when the copying becomes pervasive and script-kiddie level - or even worse in the case of the newer viewers, click-level.

The real problem is a LL management structure that emasculates the Lindens.
LL will allow an issue that is clearly heading for critical status to grow until it gets to that state. By the time they get around to thinking about action, the thing has grown into a monster.
Think back to the ad-tower days. Did those towers on microplots have any redeeming features? Were they spreading? Were people screaming? WTF were LL playing at?
Ditto with blatant in-your-face Search gaming.
Ditto with copying.

I was totally amazed at the nonsense between Jack and Blondin during the Zindra project.
Zindra was a very major policy action by LL, and yet it was clear that nobody was in overall charge of it. There was nobody who was monitoring the project and who could knock heads together.
LL seems to be composed of a set of separate functions that have no formal communication links to each other. If any issues falls within the brief of more than one function, then the chances of any sensible action are slim to zero.

Even at this late stage, a multi-discipline forensic team should be dedicated to trawling the Inventory and Transaction databases. Let them into every department. Start with a known violator account and go through every account that it transacts with. Look for patterns of connections. Punish savagely and publicy.
This would be to punish behaviour and not to try to make the behaviour impossible.
That sort of forensic exercise would have been far easier and effective when the number of possible targets was limited.

Go to the ISPs of the perps. Any ISP TOS that I have seen outlaws use of the connection for abuse.
Refuse to accept connections from open proxies. What legit user would be locked out of SL by that?

What exactly do you think this entails?

"Dear content thief: please send us the source of your latest released copybot viewer or we'll sue you!"
"Sure, download it here *link here*"

And then what?

The failure is actually with content creators and sellers not taking the time to fully educate themselves on copyright and how to deal with copyright infringement and find out just how effective or ineffective SL was/is on preventing "pirating" and find out what LL is legally required to do and what they are not required to do.

That isn't the same as "well, nothing to do about it, just learn to live with it" but you should have known from before you ever sold your very first creation or you simply didn't take the time to do the proper research.

People always seem to think that owning the IP rights over what they create in SL is a terribly good and exciting thing but conveniently skip over the fact that it's *your* responsability - and yours alone - to protect *your* IP and if someone infringes then it's up to *you* to stop further infringement (ie file a DMCA) and if necessary persue legal action (against the infringer - ie like Stroker/Eros did - or against LL if you feel they're not meeting the *legal* requirements for dealing with infringement - ie Stroker/Eros once more).

Failing that you can authorize a third party to act on your behalf but then you are going to have to pay for their services as well and it's certainly not going to be LL.

*risks hate and flames by agreeing with Tristin* If use of $L was limited to in-world use and not available to be cashed out then we wouldn't have tons of people attempting to make an RL living out of a "game". This account has been both premium and free during the time I've been in SL. During the time my account was premium I more or less spent my stipend in world...that was it. As a free account I've spent MUCH more buying $L than the $9.95 I spent as a premium account. Many of you are hell bent on banning/limiting free accounts. If you think the SL economy is in bad shape now, it'll be 10x worse if most residents are gone. It can be the tiny little preserve that all those who hate free accounts seem to want.

Vendors would be verified objects. Still not a solution. Maybe there's a solution on this path somewhere, but I still don't see it, not one without a dramatic disruption in what SL is to most people.

I doubt there's a technical solution, and the only realistic one along these lines would be a policy, like that against sexual ageplay, that would make it a ToS violation to sell without meeting some criteria.

Either that or disallow anonymity completely -- but it may be too late for that.

But gee, that's just like RL!

If you want an environment where there are accounts that can't create anything, you are perfectly welcome to visit Activeworlds and There.com and IMVU. See where that takes you.

It is the universal availability of creativity that makes Second Life what it is, even for the people who never so much as rez a box.

Remove that and you turn Second Life into something completely different.

Well, I think the premise is that most of the nastiest copy-facilitating viewers are not being made available open-source because the people who release those viewers hope to make a quick buck from them (and/or embed some "phone home" scam or other trojanware). That of course is not universally true, nor is there much reason to hope the "killer app" of copy-viewers won't be fully GPL-compliant.
I suspect you're right that LL won't provide that service, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't. What it does mean, as far as I can tell, is that content creators will either have to be so small that illicit copiers just won't bother with them, or so truly vast--Eros-or-better gargantuan--that they can afford not only the legal fees but a whole copy-detection network.

At the very least, LL could make copy-detection easier. They get enough information to turn that from needle-in-a-haystack to shooting-fish-in-a-barrel. And it would do nothing to endanger their Safe Harbor status.

I was the latest person to suggest making everyone pay a subscription fee...got slammed pretty good for it in the blogorums.

I think if SL is a worthwhile thing, then it's worth paying for. But I seem to be in a very small minority on that. OK, fine. Let's keep access free.

I don't see how you can limit creation without massive changes in the way the tools of SL work. If you can edit your hair, you can create. And I agree that the fun of making things is a big draw for a lot of people.

So maybe this is the answer. Simply get rid of NPIOF. Make EVERYONE register with a valid, non-anonymous, email address, and provide a verifiable payment method linked to their RL name and address. Not just to access adult content, but to access SL itself.

That's always the dire prediction but the numbers never do back this up.

1 in 2 residents doesn't even spend L$1 per month so get rid half of the active accounts and the economic impact is zero.

Of the remaining half that spends at least L$1 per month only 40% actually spends more than $7.5 worth of L$.

You can argue that basics who use that $10 to buy L$ are economically important - and they definitely are - but there's barely more of them than there are premiums.

You're still left with the chilling fact that 80% of all residents doesn't even spend a trivial amount of money on SL; and what's actually worse is that an overwhelming majority of those has no intention of *ever* spending anything.

Not banning free accounts, not even banning EXISTING unverified accounts... just not allowing the creation of new unverified accounts. Take things back to before June 2006 when people couldn't get unlimited numbers of new unaccountable free alts every time they got banned.

I've never one time said people need to be premium..I have said why do they need two types of full time free accounts??
we have
NPIOF
PIOF
PIU

Two of those are free types of accounts..One is a type that is an invisible account to the system..
The other you put up some information and get some more options but you become visible..
I dumped premium myself because there was no insentive to stay premium..

My point has always been that the NPIOF accounts are the accounts being abused.
It's not been about only content theft..
It's about traffic bots manipulating traffic numbers and land bots that the second someone sets their land down for sale and has realized oops i forgot a zero it is swooped away and they took a major loss on their property.
Griefers and copybots ect..

do you really need to see stats for all those things that are abusing NPIOF accounts?
This isn't some out of sight thing like that child avatar thing..omg 188 broke the rules since 2007..

It's also not about a certain class of people..Elitist must be the forum word of the week..People seem to be just throwing it around since that "what is an elitist" thread LOL..

NPIOF accounts are not joining SL and causing all this..it's not people like you with book stores..
it's veteran players that know what the hell they are doing..
Premium accounts are abusing NPIOF
Basic accounts are abusing NPIOF
And NPIOF veterans are abusing NPIOF..

Now i know i have to be using one of those types of accounts and so does everyone else here..so how is it that i am bashing NPIOF accounts rather than those that are abusing them?
She called me an Elitist and threw me into a class of lynch mob that i don't belong.. she is the one that hasn't been paying attention or only reading bits and pieces of what i have said..

All i said was NPIOF should be a trial version to get in world to see what is in world..
Then if you like it jump to a Basic account which cost the same as NPIOF..free and with more options..

not one time did i ever say they need to be premium or look down on anyone for being NPIOF..
If anything i looked at the account types that would be abusing NPIOF..just like everything that gets abused in here that if treated right would benefited everyone..but the greedy asshats of the grid keep F**King it up for everyone else and abusing every loophole they can find..
Keep free accounts..make it so people that cannot get certain information like CC or paypal use some other form..maybe add an IFO account ..information on file account that will show on peoples profile..

You said you verified but are still NPIOF..They should give you something on your profile other than NPIOF and should give you more option..Info on file or something..

i'm not saying get rid of people at all..just give them more options to get off NPIOF and make it a trail so these asshats don't have someplace they can make all these alts that can go around swooping in on land or sitting in boxes over clubs or or grief people at leisure or stalk people without recourse or whatever..make it more of a bitch for them..not for the people just coming in..it's not a cure it's just something that will cut down on it..
i don't think we will ever be rid of the hard core asshats abusing the system..

Honestly I think malicious viewers not respecting the GPL is overall a positive thing.

Everyone can compile the viewer since it's really little more than following the steps; you don't really have to know why or even what you're doing.

The pool of people who can turn the official viewer (or a legitimate third-party viewer) into a copy/malicious client and add the necessary UI or code to use an exploit is significantly smaller on the other hand.

If someone does do the work and releases the source then the pool of people who can distribute that viewer is basically "everyone" again and it's easier for someone else to take the next step and add some more bad things.

Similarly: content theft is bad, but if it's going to happen you'd really want them to sell it rather than distribute it full permission for free. The impact of the first is relatively low and stops once you deal with the seller; the impact of the latter is far worse.

If they can't sell their cracking viewers they're less likely to create them. After all, isn't that the argument for locking down creation in SL in the first place... it's needed to protect the profits of many creators, so they'll continue to create?

QFT

(Sometimes he's a very sensible ferret.)

There's nothing preventing anyone from charging money for something that's GPL licensed so why wouldn't they be able to? Just as long as they provide the code on request (which they don't even really need to do to people who didn't buy it).

I guess I'm missing something but I'd be far more worried about a viewer that anyone can compile because the source is right there along with it (and verify it for included backdoors) than a closed source binary someone is trying to sell for L$5k and where you have no idea what was really added to it.

Even if you assume that you can do *something* - based solely on GPL compliance - to avoid anyone distributing any malicious viewer then everything simply migrates back to libSL which is BSD licensed and where LL isn't a partial copyright owner so the issue won't come up.

You'd have a better chance with waving the TOS around since "copybots" (in the most general sense of the word) are damaging to the service (aside from being outright prohibited as well) since that's where it matters what a "client" does rather than what it's licensed under.

Well, I wasn't specifically thinking of your remarks when I responded to Melita, Ceka. There are a number of others here who are very explicitly and directly attacking NPIOF accounts.

In part, I am concerned about the general principle that is being articulated by some, that NPIOF needs to be targeted because this is where the abuse is coming from. I would argue (in common, I think, with Melita) that the proper response is to target the abuse, and not the supposed source of it, because if you go after NPIOF accounts generally, you are going to nail many many more people who are innocent than who are guilty. This is too much like waving stats that show that most crime originates in the ghetto, and that the easiest and most effective response is therefore to bulldoze the ghetto and deport its citizens.

There are technical means of tracking down abusers -- tracing and banning people by IP is surely one method that won't be perfect, but would be a lot less indiscriminate than going after an entire class of residents. In general, LL could do a LOT better than they are at targeting and dealing with abusers, on a lot of fronts: I don't think they've even really tried very hard, to be honest (which is surely part of the point of Stroker's lawsuit?).

One final point: a lot of people are going to be frightened off if LL gets rid of "anonymity" in SL, even if nondisclosure remains the principle in-world. We've seen a lot of panic over the verification system for just that reason.

There's nothing to prevent you from charging money for a product in SL even if there's no restrictions against copying it on, so why shouldn't you care if people can copy it? Why would someone refuse to make stuff unless there's protection, if it doesn't matter? For the guy trying to make money from a cracking tool the situation is even worse, because he KNOWS his customers are crooks.

This is why LibSL is a better platform for "professional cracking tools" than the open source client, and why LL actually enforcing the GPL would slow the development of new and more aggressive and user-friendly tools.

Are you basing those figures on the number of "residents" LL brags about (how many millions are there now?) or the maybe 100k who actually log in on a regular basis minus large percentage of those who are bots?

Please explain *how* GPL enforcement of any kind would stop malicious viewers?

It doesn't affect their development, nor does it affect their distribution, nor does it stop anyone from charging money for a compiled copy, nor would they have to made the code available to anyone except people who already bought it in the first place and then only if they specifically request it.

What are you going to do? Pay for a malicious viewer, request the source, compile it and redistribute it for free to everyone in SL just so the creator can not longer profit from selling it? And conveniently leave out the little fact that by doing so you just made the impact far worse by giving more people access to a "copybot viewer" they never would have paid for otherwise?

http://s3.amazonaws.com/static-secondlife-com/reports/marketplace_stats/2009-11-07/logged_in_users.xml - Logged in the last 30 days

http://s3.amazonaws.com/static-secondlife-com/reports/marketplace_stats/2009-11-07/monthly_customer_spending_distribution.xml

Even if you want to argue that the half million who didn't spend at least L$1 are just accounts who logged on a few times and then left (or are bots) then that's still only 40% who actually spends even a trivial amount of money any month and still 60% that has no signficant economic meaning.