Does this piss you off?....Texture makers who say you can't use their textures....

Well, some people just aren't so good at it, and others have no motivation because of the high quality ones for sale.

And if you _did_ prove that it was stolen, the only right you would have would be to delete it, as it would be received stolen properrty. The idea that you can "catch" a texture vendor on a stolen texture and thus gain full rights over it is entirely wrong.

Freedom isn't a warranty.

That's not what he's saying. What he's saying is, if a texture maker started legitimately selling their own textures on other grids, and someone bought one entirely legally; and then later on, LL made it possible for assets to be securely transferred between grids; would the buyer have the right to claim a refund, because they no longer need the texture they bought?



I think the issue is that the Open Source designers do _want_ to do this, but they have no idea what it is, because:

a) Textures on SL can already be copied nearly freely due to the lack of security on the rendering layer and the poor support for permissions, and texture makers accept this, so what actually is the "solid thing to prevent rampant IP theft" that they would like? Bear in mind that if it involves fixing up the permissions system, it will make the OpenGrid in question incompatible with SL. It's different for textures because for other assets it's a question of how to retain the technical protection, but textures have nearly no technical protection right now, so are you saying that you want the OpenGrids to add technical protection for textures? Or just to follow the same social protection rules as SL?

b) Often the objection eventually comes down to "the person running the OpenGrid could be anyone, and we don't trust them". But any grid, even SL itself, was in that position when it started. If the fact that SL already exists and is trusted will block anyone from ever coming to trust any other grids, and this will mean that those grids don't recieve any content, then the role of the OpenGrids as competitors to SL (thus encouraging development by LL) dies there; they'd be only usable for closed platform-style developments. If that's really the case, they'd probably like to know that now.

No, freedom is more complex than just being able to take an action. To some extent the action also has to be a good idea. If you don't have that stipulation you get into issues with knowledge mismatches and punishment (amongst other things)

Man, if I could get a refund for all the old outdated avatars I bought that I don't need any more...

I'd be able to buy a whole bunch of NEW avatars.

Wait, it'll make sense. You just gotta believe.

We keep telling them. They keep pretending it's just cranky content creators. Then they make up magic incantations like "trusted grid" to paper over the fact they got nothin'.

Assume for the moment that IP has value. Like your bank balance. Now assume that your bank says "Henceforth, your deposits will be moved around among banks. When we make agreements with these banks, they'll all promise to be good banks, but after that, well, they might get taken over and you'll lose your money, which won't be our fault." Such a deal.

I don't have a problem with that, if it is custom created meaning right from scratch without any help from copyrighted images or the like then I'll respect that. I'm not going to steal somebody's else's hard work.

I just get riled up when somebody tells me I can't use a texture that they made that has the M&M logo or any other copyrighted logo when they themselves may not have permissions to use it.

I'm not singling anybody out, just using M&M's as an example.

Man, if I could get a refund for all the old outdated avatars I bought that I don't need any more...

I'd be able to buy a whole bunch of NEW avatars.

Wait, it'll make sense. You just gotta believe.
People have the freedom to do things that don't work. That's the only way to find out what doesn't work, and sometimes it DOES work and something new is born into the world.

Freedom includes the freedom to fail and the freedom to suffer the consequences.

But there's the problem. By that logic you're free to commit murder in the USA - you're just likely to fail (if stopped by the police) or to suffer consequences (if caught afterwards). Yet in fact, nobody would say or believe they were free to do that.

Freedom is really hard. Nobody really has a working definition at all.

That's fine, but then, those content creators will never be able to complain about LL again.

LL have no more technical protection against theft of content by LL than any of the OpenGrids do. Of course LL would not steal your content, but not every OpenGrid operator would either. The only difference is that you trust LL. And if nobody will take a chance on any other grid, because you don't need to when LL is there who you trust, then, well, SL is the new Windows, and it doesn't matter how laggy and crashy it gets.

I call shenanigans. I don't really believe you're misunderstanding my point that badly. And while nobody has a mathematical proof for freedom, most people's working definitions of freedom aren't really that far apart.

2 + 2 = 5

Well, if MGM made it possible for you to purchase a videotaped copy of "Gone With The Wind", and you bought it, and later your cable company made it possible for you to watch "Gone With The Wind" any time you want, via On-Demand viewing through their service, does MGM owe you a refund for the videotape you bought?

If you go to a movie theatre and pay to watch the latest James Bond movie, and a month later you can watch it for free on cable TV's Movie Channel, does the Theatre owe you a refund?

No. In both cases, you paid for and recieved legal use of a service that was not legally available any other way, at that time. You received value for your purchase. The fact that that value was negated later by the cable company offering the film for free via on-demand viewing doesn't negate the past value that you paid for, and recieved.

Its a very clear cut copyright issue.

If they are indeed the creator of the texture, then they have every right to limit how and where you can use it.

If they are not the creator then they have no right to sell it to you, and you have no right to use it anywhere, even if you paid them for it. But they also have no rights that they can enforce on how you use it.

This also applies to DVDs if I moved to the USA would I have the right to expect companies to provide me with a new DVD because the European ones I have are not compatible in the US?

LL enforces DMCA claims, even though it may be a pain in the butt to chase the paperwork down and get them to take down a texture store selling blatantly ripped off content. We trust them in part because we have no choice. They have been the only game in town. But they have developed a track record over time, and we don't see rampant cases of Linden Lab employees selling copied sexgen beds, or other stolen content. So we are willing to continue trusting them.

As a content creator, I may look at an individual grid like Legend City, and may choose to trust their claims that they will also protect and defend my IP rights, or not. But that then is MY choice, as to whether or not to trust this "new kid on the block".

But to make a blanket statement that any SL grid content should be freely transportable to ANY grid is an entirely different prospect. That is like saying that since I trust my brother-in-law with my car keys, and was willing to loan my car to a friend last weekend, that I should leave the keys in the car and allow anyone who wants to do so to take my car and use it. ANYONE can fire up a stand-alone grid using OpenSim, and can connect that PC to many of the open grids that are out there today. It isn't a matter then of "do I trust this one specific new grid". It's "Can I trust everyone on the planet who has an Internet connection and a reasonably good PC?". And the answer to that is, "NO.".

I'm not misunderstanding anything, I'm pointing out the problems in your definition. Now, yes, I'm taking your definition kind of literally, but it should be possible to change the definition to make that no longer a problem. But for freedom it doesn't seem to be, there is no clear-cut definition of freedom that works. And even the one I think you're trying to describe is only one potential definition of freedom ("negative freedom". Whereas products like SL should, ideally, aim for positive freedom. After all, the real world is built around negative freedom, and if it was giving people what they wanted they wouldn't need to escape..

It's always possible to jump ship to another grid and leave SL behind, and gamble on that grid operator instead of LL. But, see, if that grid is interconnected with a bunch of other grids, it's not that I have to merely trust the grid I join, but I have to trust the scummiest, sleaziest grid that is now or can ever come to be interconnected.

It's rather worse than that, really. For over a year now it's as if there's been a big sign over AWG saying "join in, pretend to run a 'good grid', and later you can likely steal everything in sight." While there undoubtedly are perfectly reputable grid operators, the odds are vanishingly small that there isn't one planning to pilfer IP already connected.

It would be nice if there were some way to manage grid interconnection in such a way that IP value is preserved. Lacking that, there's a choice: interconnection, or IP worth having.

Sure. But no other grid will ever have the position of being the only game in town. And if nobody trusts them now, they'll never have a track record in the future.

Oh, and if a grid doesn't enforce a DMCA Safe Harbor claim you can sue the grid operator.



And that's quite true. But how are you going to make that decision? It has the same problem as search gaming, if there is anything which is known to encourage creators to trust a grid, every grid will do it including the thieving ones. Is there some way the grid operators could break the adverse selection? Would proof of high investment in the grid do it, or some kind of formal contract?

Nobody is going to be untrusted by everybody. Everybody will have an opportunity to get a track record, one way or another.

Nobody is going to be untrusted by everybody. Everybody will have an opportunity to get a track record, one way or another.
I didn't give you a definition.

"I won't trust them, but somebody else will." The usual result of that is that nobody trusts them. (Or the people who do trust them are their friends, and so their track record "doesn't count".)



No, you gave some parts of one, and you were applying one.

I think the success of Prince Whatsisname of Nigeria indicates the opposite. The fact is, no matter how unlikely things are, if there's enough people in a community SOME of them are going to trust even the most unlikely folks.

I've experience with *several* networks that have been built on the kind of recursive trust basis that we're talking about, and only a couple of them has had *any* success keeping bad actors out, and that's only because they were built in response to several generations of previous networks growing and failing because their mechanisms for keeping bad actors out weren't good enough.

Fidonet got the nickname "Fight-O-Net" because of all the drama.

Usenet and Usenet-like networks, and IRC networks, have all grown, fragmented, grown again, balkanized, split, reformed, split again, ...

On the Internet... even with the force of legal contracts, we still get world-wide internet splits and associated drama... and what's happened to email is practically the poster-boy for this whole problem.

People WANT to trust, people WANT to cooperate, if that wasn't true... if we weren't social animals... we wouldn't have a civilization any more than housecats do no matter how big our brains and clever our opposable thumbs are.
I was pointing out some consequences of freedom, not defining freedom. You keep arguing that there should be some kind of warranty against failure, that if everyone can't succeed it's not really "your life", that freedom isn't freedom if everyone can't succeed, that if you try and fail you weren't really free to try.

But this thread shows otherwise. I'm not sure a single content creator has ever posted encouraging people to trust OS grids, or even any one particular OS grid. I mean, this isn't to say that those people aren't social or trusting, it's just that the degree of trust involved is a bit greater for many of them than just regular social trust.



But the issue of "you're not free to commit murder" shows that it at least matters _why_ you failed. And some people aren't even free to try, since you have to deal with psychological issues, too.