The Thieves Motherload

legless. copybotters already distribute ripped content via xml files on torrents and websites. Would simply drive more people to the tos violating viewers to import all the stuff they could get off the net. Just like they do with music and other ripped off stuff so they are all already equipped and experienced in the art of torrents and have no ethical reprehension about stealing more.

Police State will have zero impact. LL has to enforce it's GPL in a hardball manner by suing the people making the theft viewers and destroying their rl livelihoods and ability to gain decent employment. Basically render them as viable as a homeless guy. All over "that video game". And then LL has to play hard ball with TOS violators in world. They will simply leave when it "gets real".

You are right, in that I am sure that IBM for example is not bound at all by the Terms of Service. They have their own deal in place, or they would never be there.

However, even if a business is big enough that it can have its own lawyers make a custom deal directly with Linden Lab, making Linden Lab assume some responsibility, it wouldn't be good business to do so if it is well known that Linden Lab can't handle the responsibility. A good business deal is one that doesn't require a lot of maintenance. A deal where managers or lawyers are on the phone all the time threatening each other about living up the the agreement becomes more trouble and expense than it's worth.

Further, such practice cuts out a lot of small businesses that may otherwise benefit from using Second Life, but as small businesses, they can't really afford an army of lawyers to not only draft the agreement, but to be available when Linden Lab starts failing to live up to it.

Linden Lab may be willing to do whatever the corporate money wishes them to do. That doesn't help unless the can demonstrate they are not just willing, but actually able.

IBM may be putting up with it, but how many IBMs are still out there ready to set up shop in Second Life? Is Linden Lab going to rely on huge, profitable companies to make investments of any significance, given Linden Lab's track record and the bad publicity that comes with the Stroker lawsuit, whether they win or lose in court?

The most damaging thing about the lawsuit ultimately is what gets revealed in public records or the media about the inner workings at Linden Lab.

I think you are being very generous to Linden Lab by suggesting that Second Life evolved in an unexpected manner. Second Life was promoted on its own website as a place where one could make real money by creating content. I've seen the Second Life website hawking someone's two-year-old book on making money in Second Life through content creation. At least back to when I came here, Second Life promoted itself as a place where people could make money through content creation, and where individual users' property rights are protected. Linden Lab promised a place where content creation, for profit, could thrive, and hasn't delivered on the promise.

I think Linden Lab is ignoring the problem as much as possible because, much as when an infant plays peekaboo, Linden Lab is hoping that when it closes its eyes to the problem, the problem will cease to exist.

I was building stuff and giving it away my first day in the sandbox. If I couldn't do it in-game, I'd have simply done it the back way, passing the scripts around on a pastebin. If I couldn't do that, I don't think I'd have bothered to hang around... that ability is what made SL attractive to me in a way that There.com and Activeworlds weren't. Making SL into IMVU or Blue Mars with uglier base avatars is not the solution.

As Ann said, it would simply legitimize the backdoors. AND it would discourage creative people, the same way the other locked down virtual environments do.

If I had to pony up a Credit card for WoW or COH, I might have kept going too but both of them offered a 30 day trial, I got hooked then gave them money for another 1-2 years afterwards. SL also offered a free trial in the way of a free account, within a few days I went premium, supplied my CC details to buy stuff inworld and have been paying LL for about 3 years since I wouldn't think I was alone in this either.

I don't think a very large percentage of SL's target market (whatever that may be) would just give it a pass if they couldn't immediately transfer stuff they create. I really don't.

However, that backdoor pass-around is so damned simple (or anyway dead easy to make one-click simple), seemingly immune to any kind of surveillance or control, and hence, I'm now convinced, a fatal flaw in all this.

I suppose one should note in passing that such verification *would* matter in the specific case of the OP, at least as I understand it, where the exploit absolutely depends on intact asset transfer. Unless there's a different exploit from what I've gathered, the backdoor would only really work for stuff ripped by copybot, the various "inventory backup" schemes, and programs like... well, the OpenGL version of the analog hole, to avoid naming names. But that's where most of the action is anyway.

In other words, if it's a server side flaw that Linden Lab knew about and should have fixed months ago?

Like I said, it's all a matter of will.

It wouldn't have mattered most likely.

If you could create a notecard with embedded items based on asset UUIDs alone then the only thing anyone really needed was a list of asset UUIDs that corresponds to items they'd want a free copy of and that could have just been distributed outside of SL. Everyone would have made their own notecards and then copied the items out of those without the need for anyone to ever transfer a single item.

Earlier this week I jokingly suggested that maybe we should petition LL to create a registry for reported, as yet unfixed, exploits (ie nothing more than "Exploit #5654" to not give anyone any ideas). We don't really know anything about it and anyone who reported an exploit and then goes public about it when it doesn't get fixed has a good chance of getting perma-banned so it seems that LL currently doesn't have to worry about community backlash when it just ignores a permissions exploits for several months. Or maybe it's just a deliberate move: if they'd fixed the notecard exploits months ago then noone would have known/cared. Waiting to fix it until it's widely used does offer a nice PR opportunity "we fixed it!" and then everyone cheers "well done LL!".

Yes, will and the corresponding commitment of resources. That is, there will always be flaws; it's a question of how quickly they get identified by the blue team and get fixed. For all we know, an understaffed server dev team heroically patched even more compromising flaws of which we all remain blissfully ignorant. (I doubt it, but I don't doubt that they're understaffed, compared to the hoards now devoted to the Viewer Of Tomorrow.)

We're casting about here, trying to come up with ways to make the whole show less sensitive to flaws, really... make it harder to exploit them with impunity, easier and faster to clean up after they're exploited, in any way that makes a difference. The big gotcha is knowing what differences any step might make, positive or negative (i.e., your appeal to the law of unintended consequences).

(And to Kitty's point: Oh. I didn't fully appreciate that no real assets had to be "harmed" in the creation of exploit notecards, but I can sorta see how it worked now that you describe it, and I can't even construct a story of how else I previously thought it worked. So yeah: another case of not knowing what differences a step would make--where the "not knowing" bit was limited to me. )

So I don't know whether we're getting anywhere or not. On the plus side, I don't recall anybody in this thread trying to stuff the open source cat back into the bag, so at least the discourse isn't trapped in that dead end... even if we haven't always satisfied the hedgehog, a goal that's usually a pretty good measure of whether anything meaningful is being considered.

Judging from how many people I've met in world who want everything without paying for anything...if it isn't free they are not interested and blanch at the suggestion of buying even 5 dollars' worth of Lindens, you are not alone.

I'm not judging their choice by the way. I am merely noting it.

LOL..

Not everyone lives alone. Some may play the game for free on their family computer, or even on a workplace or school computer. Their internet might not be paid with *their* credit card or paycheck.

Also, there are certain places (was it Denmark, and at least one other country? I wish I could recall) where supplying personal information in the way asked for with the whole Zindra rule change is not allowable by law. I still hear about people who cannot verify, and who actually wish to and try to.

With all the hassle people had with that go-round, now people want everyone to be forced to go through that? Do it yourself if you want to, but don't force it on everyone else.

Frankly there is enough tab keeping going on as it is in today's society.

Well, maybe this is ungenerous. Most dev teams I've run routinely found and fixed horrific problems before release. Just a matter of having good people and rewarding them for finding problems.

I have to say, though, that LL's "Be Happy" culture probably does NOT reward people for finding problems. I've been in corporate cultures focused on happy news, and the attitude percolates down to rank-and-file developers, resulting in fixable but hard problems festering for months and months while folks try to avoid being the bringer of bad news. And I think I see that simple problems DO fester in SL.

In order to get a good product, managers have to greet folks who find problems with "Thank you!", not "Oh God No! Don't tell M!".

LL would hotly contest that they haven't delivered on the promise. The Metanomics season opener show (I think early this month) was a blockbuster event held onsite at the Engage! expo. Philip and T Linden were on a panel with Harper Beresford and a relatively new scripter, singing the praises of content creation in SL, highlighting the possibility for real income. The inworld economy, according to LL, had just broken $1 Billion USD yearly.

Metanomics events have a multisite chat channel for audience commentary/questions, and content theft was a big issue in chat - enough that Philip and T both took rather pained stabs at responding. They were clearly unprepared for the uproar (which was amazing, since the Cryo-scare was already in full tilt, and the Neil-scare was beginning to be mentioned in groups). The topic clearly gave Philip a sad. But then, denial always gives me a big sad.

And the ripped-off creators are clearly VERY sad.

So I guess we're all even.

Could part of the problem be the seeming lack of central govt. in SL? Things like a better business bureau, copyright agency etc., all in world? Would that help things?

There is the RA system and the Lindens do a fine job of things but a world this size with a real economy would seem to need a sort of govt. in some other practical applications by now.

I'm not for anarchy, I'm for privacy in case that brings up any confusion. There IS a difference.