Third Party Viewer Policy coming soon

I remember reading of a new viewer coming out, that would allow its user to copy just about anything and recreate it...is that what they are trying to stop? If so, I am all for it. I think it will be the first of many things done to help with content theft. I do not know how it all works, but I do know that content theft is rampant..I also know that I have seen the DMCA filing work for some. If this is the idea, then I applaud them for at least trying.

They can not prevent theft of the kind that's happening now. There is no way of doing so. Anything that they do to try will likely have a negative effect on honest people ( if we're very lucky that negative effect will be limited to users of third party viewers ) whilst doing absolutely nothing to halt theft.

Content theft is a social and legal problem, not a technical one.

As far as I'm concerned anyone coding a viewer to connect to the SL grid is the same as anyone who wants to run a business, they should be fully verified or even pay for the privilage to do so. I would even go as far as they should pay LL a fee for their licence to connect and possibly be allowed to sell their viewer in return. I'd quite happily pay for something of Emerald quality compared to the Freebie LL viewer.

There goes open-source (bye bye Linux), there goes every good programmer who can't or won't invest RL money in SL, there goes any of the spirit of free enterprise (.. anyone who wants to run a business??!!). And by the way, you've missed the point that there's no way to check which viewer is being used. Ask for a check and the viewer just pretends it's something else. Similarly, there is no way to prevent assets being transferred to the clients nor to do anything about them once they get there, even if you block alternative viewers.

Other virtual Worlds seem to limit access to their servers rather well. Governments don't let just anybody run businesses n Real Life without licencing and verification either.
If someones a good programmer they will get their investment back quite easily. If they are a theif they are risking that invesment against getting caught.
If they won't risk any RL cash they probably have no confidence in their product.
LL charge US$100 per year for a licence and people fork out $20 bucks a viewer for 12 months including updates, doesn't take long to get your money back, it's better invesment than any other SL business.

Governments use open source software I've written and the only thing I've paid has been hosting fees (back before Sourceforge). The world is moving away from the direction you and Microsoft want to take it, Tegg, sorry about that.

Yet, I wonder if the Governments will let unverified people write their taxation and accounting software, you'd use freebie opensource software by unverified people for your personal records wouldn't you?

I can see how it would stifle legitimate viewer development.

But it cannot stop content theft at all. Content theft is trivially accomplished by techniques that are outside the Viewer. If somehow it becomes the least bit difficult to put illegal functionality into the Viewer, they will simply move it outside the Viewer. Not only can textures be stolen by peeking into the GL memory (already), but anything you can do in the Viewer can be done *outside* the Viewer with various kinds of network interception and/or reaching into the Viewer's internal memory structures. The bottom line is that there is simply no technical means to prevent content theft (and other grief) on Second Life.

I think these announcements are really just public relations stunts, and are based around people's technical ignorance. (Certainly LL knows the truth. And certainly 99.9% of the people who they want to impress with this latest policy balloon are not technically competent to understand that it's just silly posturing. Certainly 100% of the developers of greifing viewers also understand the situation.)

I don't know what country you live in, but we don't have restrictions of that sort in the USA.

They'll let unverified people write the operating systems they run on, and the software they use to back it up. Unverified FURRINERS, even! And some of them are really weird, too!

I do, and I trust it more than I'd trust Excel. With good reason. Even excluding things like the ability to sneak a virus, worm, or trojan horse in through a spreadsheet... Excel 2007 had a bug where any calculation that resulted in a value of 65535 got converted to 100000!

Why should that apply to viewers only?

If the concern is accountability then content creation (to the point of rezzing a prim) should be restricted to only those who are verified and who paid a deposit.

If the concern is prevention then we need to get rid of all creation and uploading tools on the main grid and require that everyone builds on the beta grid, registers their creation which is then held pending review to get exported "no modify" to the main grid (for a fee of course).

Viewers don't make content theft possible, the SL building tools that are available to *everyone* with no questions asked are what makes content theft possible. Banning every last third-party viewer isn't going to stop content theft; restricting the building tools to only those who are screened (and pay for the privilege) however will stop it virtually overnight.

If people who are use to getting something free decide to start paying for it.

Yeah, let me know how that works. Buh-bye legitimate, useful third party viewers, and content theft viewers continue unhindered.

There's a discussion going on on sldev too and an Emerald developer posted this quote from an email he says he received from Linden Lab:


> the ability to encrypt chat

Is that troubling or what?

It depends on the context. If it's solely because it hampers their ability to investigate ARs then I can see their point.

But that would only make sense if they suddenly started to actually handle ARs on things that were said over voice (and log all voice conversations the same way they log chat).

And if encrypted chat is prohibited, but scrambled voice is allowed then someone will just turn SL's voice channels into modem lines .

Don't fret. Soon we will be able to access SL from Facebook and AOL, so we won't have to worry about "My viewer can beat up your viewer."

We'll need that for when some Linden decides to ban a viewer and fails to notice that it's spoofing the official viewer and ends up locking everyone out .

This is a good step forward, though they will have to find a way to check what viewer you are connecting with. As far as I know, current viewers can present themselves as a regular LL viewer, for example. Shouldn't it be possible to verify if the code is original, and if not, verify the maker on the white-list? Some unique digital signature?

Anyway, if this prevents viewers like copybot, the PN griefer viewer, and cryolife, I am all in favor of it. It will mean removing the encrypted chat from Emerald though

In the end, I am all in favor of business licenses, like I mentioned before. Small fee (or even no fee), but registration of personal data. Verified, like they do at paypal as soon as you want to use it seriously (I had to send proof of address for example!). This indeed is the only way to prevent most theft: No use stealing a design if you cannot sell it. And limit transfer capabilities for unverified avatars, so they cannot spread stolen content as freebies either!

One question. The community (or part of it) has asked for some restrictions for ages. Now they finally are making a start, and most reactions are negative. Now I know that LL is good at doing things wrong, but shouldn't we be glad they are at least making a first effort?

I think the Zindra affair has shown us that skepticism is quite warranted. LL has a sound track record of either doing things the residents clearly don't want, or taking something they are asking for and convolute it, employing it in the most ham fisted and draconian way possible that it does more harm than just leaving things be. Until they shpw otherwise, I expect no change.

Still it is quite easy to comment from the sideline, like we do here. Many changes (like the Zindra one) are done against most residents will, but are part of a bigger plan.

Adult changes make the grid ready for the big audience for example. And probably for the merge with the teen grid as well. And let's face it, the opinion of a few forum voices do not carry much weight in the big picture.
Now of course they messed up the move to Zindra in certain points, but in general, did they do such a bad job? Considering that the change to a separate adult continent was not to be avoided, how should they have handled it without anyone complaining? Probably there is no such way.

One thing is certain: The quickest win for LL is in communication. Inform the users. And I truly believe they are trying to improve that. The way they communicate in groups like Zindra Alliance and the XStreet Merchants group, show that.

Don't get me wrong, I did not become a LL fanboi all of a sudden. But some days the permanent negativity towards LL just seems wrong.

*peers back at 06/06/06* Yeah.. that was about the time my faith in LL's ability to plan ahead got totally wiped out.

I also recall people asking for more transparency from LL in what they were planning to do long term, so we could either help or GTFO. By not really having done so, I get the feeling LL is just making it up as they go.

Of course, by making it up as they go, I more should say, they aren't enacting changes, but more like they are reacting to changes. Being so reactionary means that they aren't planning ahead, aren't putting tools in place and probably have no idea what they are really aiming for in the long run.

In other words, they aren't inspiring much confidence with each change they bungle or botch and they aren't getting as much credit for the things they do get right.

Registering a new viewer for every one-line change you want to test in-world would kill the open source viewers completely.

Maybe M wants to do that, and this is his way of going about it.

As for encryption, if LL thinks business is going to be interested in DOING business in a place where LL can listen to every meeting, they have another think coming. Banning encryption would hand that potential market over to IBM.

Communicating to targeted groups is one thing, they have to vastly improve communications with all of their customers.

Yes, I think they bungled Zindra pretty much right out of the gate. And it is still a mess.They communicated it poorly, their definitions were and are still undefined, and they aren't doing much to enforce their regulations. They doubletalked and backtracked the whole way, and are using a broken verification system as the lynchpin of the whole affair.

I'm not saying creating Zindra was a bad idea, I see it's merits. But they have taken many good ideas and totally botched them upon implementation. Open Space, Ageplay Policies, Gambling and Banking, Ad Farms, these are all examples of things that had to be dealt with, and LL either ignored them far too long, or dealt with them hpahazardly causing more turmoil then necessary.

I'm not saying the minority of squaky wheels who post here should hold any special sway with LL beyond any of their customers. SL is their game, they can do whatever they wish. But Jesus, have a sensible plan and implement it like a real business instead of the bunch of stoner geeks they keep appearing to be. They are a business. Act like one.It will make it easier for us to decide if we want to stay, or GTFO. If the really do want the masses here, including *shudder* teens, they have to stop thinking they can be our friends when it comes to managing their service.

The encryption of communication could be properly controlled, as this is a critically required feature if LL want's to do anything with corporate customers. They ignored and left this out to 3rd party developers like all the other things they did not want to hear or improve. Now they lose massively ground on the viewer front because everybody jumps to a better and more stable viewer like Emerald the Lab has no control anymore over.

They also ignored the people screaming about content theft for years now, by not fixing server permissions, settings, protocols, you name it. There is a term for it, due dilligence, that LL, one could say after all, intentionally ignored for reasons we don't know or could ever understand.

Now again, they drop some cold water on a hot stone, by blaming 3rd party viewer developers for the failures and ignorance of LL itself. They knew the problems for years, they even banned active developers like Maike Short who brought up security issues, just for naming them. Security through obscurity or by silencing people? Great! But never works! And still they have not done anything to close the holes and vulnerablilities in their server code, which is nothing but a web server. No responsible company or developer would do this, be it Microsoft or opensource Apache just to name two.

After all LL has to do something as they now face serious legal complications. But to condemn 3rd party viewers is nothing but a marketing gag and not even this as it backfires big time and doesn't do anything that could help the situation nor reduce content theft in the long term. The Lab does not address the root cause, that is their server code, their protocols, and user eductation together with proper (legal) mitigation measures like DMCA.

You should not applaud LL for this witch hunt against 3rd party viewers!

(x-post)

In the UK, you have to be on (one of) the Government Suppliers Catalogues to be employed in puplic sector work - that means going through an accreditation process and proving that you comply with the standards decreed. This applies to both individuals and to companies.

.....however, as far as 3rd party viewers are concerned, I look at them from the consumers pov. What do I want in a viewer? Obviously I want "clean" software - I want to feel confident in what I am getting and I want support. I can't expect LL to support every 3rd party viewer - so I think they do need to be specific in registering "approved" ones. Goodness knows, LL support has enough problems without compounding things with a multiplicity of non-standard viewers. MOst of the third party producers are unlikely to have the support organisation to deal with a substantial user base. They are all very well coping with a few hundred - but could they provide user support for hundreds of thousands?

ORLY?

http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2009/02/25/235006/government-pushes-open-source-with-10-point-plan.htm#

I've worked on some of the stuff they'll be using, and they don't know me from Adam.