The Thieves Motherload

http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/general-sl-discussion/35930-thieves-motherload.html

This merits bring it to everyones attention in case you do not read the SLU forums and I suggest that people read it.

Originally posted by Stroker and I quote a small section

This is why I've said it before and I'll say it again.

Who are you? Does Linden Lab have your identity on file in their office?

They should. The days when it's OK to have anonymous accounts in SL are over.

Linden Lab needs to grow a spine, ditch that Aristotle piece of crap, and start keeping their own records on their users. Make a decision that all avatars must identify their real life selves to Linden Lab, with absolutely no exceptions whatsoever. All unidentified avatars shall immediately have their ability to transfer inventory to other avatars, even so much as a texture, permanently revoked. Give them a suitable grace period, 30 days, 60 days, whatever, in which to provide their real identity to Linden Lab. Those who opt not to do so will be permanently deleted from the grid with extreme prejudice, no appeals accepted.

Drastic step but one that is necessary to start getting a handle on this stuff.

That must be the worst case of content theft ever in SL. Stroker listed a load of creators who were ripped off, but he hasn't listen them all because there were too many to even get to.

I imagine that LL is expecting the court to find in their favour against Stroker et al - that LL is not responsible for the protection of people's virtual goods, in which case LL doesn't need to put much effort into making everything secure for the current generation of users, and that'll be right up their street.

It's quite a common occurence for me to feel disheartened by LL's incompetance, stupidities, and such, whether or not they affect me personally. I don't know if any of my stuff is in this lot (probably not) but it's still another of those disheartening LL failures.

Yep it sucks but the floodgates are still open..................................

This is a big one. It really shows they don't care and are incapable of managing the service. I wouldn't blame the persons affected, and any content creator in fact if they just shut down It doesn't seem worth it any more.

Two days ago, I was chatting in a texture-maker's group I belong to when someone came into the conversation offering everyone a free (and loaded) texture organizer. It was more than a little suspicious, so a few of us went and grabbed it to see if any of this particular texture-maker's work was in there. This organizer contained 10K (no lie, TEN THOUSAND) full perms textures from every major texture artist in SL. Two of us spent a good deal of the day sorting through the textures, listing the artists, and contacting them about the theft. TEN THOUSAND. I have never seen theft like this in SL. Someone spent a LOT of time sorting these textures, categorizing them, then loading the organizer into boxes and putting it in every major sandbox and freebie shop he/she could find. Very, very frightening.

This just really sucks. I feel so sad for the affected content creators. And as a content creator myself, it really makes me wonder why I should even bother creating new things for sale here, beyond doing building work on a per-client basis, where I get paid in full for each build, and expect no ongoing income from repeat sales based on my past efforts. The concept of being able to create new content and generate ongoing sales income here from things I have already produced is becoming a very dubious one indeed.

Everywhere I look, the bottom is dropping out of things in SL as far as prospects for commercial development here. Declining sales income, rampant content theft... I just can't see any real company giving SL any serious consideration, unless it was for advertising (which many have tried, and which has been an epic fail for virtually all of them), or for strictly non-commercial uses (public gatherings that are international in scope, but requiring relatively low peak participation at any given moment). Maybe businesses will find some use for the behind-the-firewall product. I don't know...

I really see no solution to this sort of rampant theft, short of shutting down all access by unverified accounts. I never have understood how LL justified the idea of allowing completely anonymous account creation in a system that had any hopes of hosting real-value commerce. Even if they had never committed the folly of moving to open source on the client, the availabliity of instant anonymous account creation makes it far too easy to commit theft or other inappropriate acts, and get away scott free, because even if that account is banned, they can't trace it to its source, and you can have a new account minutes later.

Or maybe it is time to abandon this grid completely, and start fresh? Create a new and entirely seperate grid with a closed access route, better security, and actually benefitting from the lessons learned from SL so far. No anonymous access, period. Better avatars. Better permissions system. It might well be worth starting everything over from scratch, if that next generation actually eliminated many of the idiotic limitations and flaws in the first implementation.

But does Linden Lab have the vision, the foresight, and the technical capability to do that?

nothing intelligent to add....just a sadface...it just efffffing sucks.

Never mind that, do they have the DESIRE to do that. It's one thing to try something and mess it up, which LL does on a regular basis, but there are so many glaring problems that they seem to just ignore In any event it just gives one more reason not to invest anything of consequence either financially or emotionally in SL, at least under the current LL management is concerned.

Huh? I gave my real name, address, and bloody credit card number to LL the day I signed up. Didn't you?

It would take more than that too though.

Right now most copybotted items end up with the copier's name as the creator on the prim since they don't have to care about that account, but if everyone had to be payment verified again then they'd probably shift to using someone else's full permission prim as the basic building block (which seems to have been the case reading the SLU thread).

It's long overdue but we really need a "Last modified by" field as well.

This blows.

I would think selling SL as a business communication tool is rather difficult when security is so lacking.

Communication isn't exactly stellar either.

/me points at https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-658.



Sure.. Forget to pay tier and see how quickly they communicate..

"Failed to open"

Sure.. Forget to pay tier and see how quickly they communicate..

They have the technology to have any number of identical grids running in parallel.

However, even for the most obviously lucrative business case (setting up a single separate grid for RL business and education), they have not made this leap. I have always wondered WHY ... but if I had to bet on why, here's my best shot:

Companies that both develop a service platform AND are a service provider are always at war with themselves. The development team is probably extremely reluctant to see the services team put up any grid that, unlike the beta and teen grids, may require a different set of features. For example, whiteboarding is very important for a business/edu grid, and a low-priority frill for SL. Encrypted IM for groups, very important for business, a luxury in SL. Jiggly boobs, evidently very important in SL, probably a negative in business/edu.

This is not a vision issue. It is a cultural issue within LL that they MUST get over. They must find a way to not only deploy different grids, but to roll out different features on different grids. It's complex, but not at all impossible.

LL wants to position SL as a corporate (not only) communications platform. Targeting multi billion $$$$ companies like IBM, SUN and the like. On the other hand they can not even ensure that a single small prim can have any form of security and copyright protection. I don't even start talking about communication security after the latest blow from the lab to declare encryption of chat and IM a violation of TOS.

There is something very very serious wrong here. And not just since yesterday but for years. And it's being ignored for as long as SL exists. I'm not running a multi billion $$$$ biz, but if so it would not take me too long to find out the answer: FAIL. Complete FAIL. So what is holding you up?

Theft is real rampant now.....i'm reading different incidents on different forums. Another bunch of PIOF users are stealing Weaponry & Combat HUDs and selling them...using Neil Life. LL needs to prosecute the Neil Life developer imo. Can't really stop the Copiers within SL....just too many of them.....LL need to go after the developers of illegal viewers instead.



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Teh Lab needs to fix their damned server/simulator code. There the problem sits, not on client/viewer side. Why nobody gets that? *sighs*

You don't fix a web server exploit by declaring Internet Explorer or Firefox or Opera or Safari or or or for illegal!!! And Teh Lab simulators are nothing but web servers!

Snap! I was going to use the word "will" in place of "desire", but that's exactly what I was going to reply to that bit you quoted.

What server exploit fixes would you recommend....and how does it effect the Client viewer thereafter?

I just blogged about this, from my extreme layperson's view.Please feel free to comment with additional insight if you are inclined.

I used to chalk up a lot of this stuff to sheer incompetence and inexperience. A bunch of California geeks who really don't know how to get out of each others way.ince the M and M regime took hold, I think there is a lot more calculation mixed in with the incompetence. They have a plan.........