A way to deal with texture theft... but it will cost us, would you put up with it?

If it is a seperate program running parallel it is not the client. If it is built into the client and only runs when the client is running, ok. But if it exists on my computer outside of the client software, its being deleted.

Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both. - Benjamin Franklin

I *DON'T* play WoW, not only because it's not entertaining, but also because Vivendi/Blizzard thinks that they own your computer because you play their game. Addon apps can serve a within TOS function, just because I want to fool arround with SL's awefull UI doesn't make me a texture theif.
BTW, I could place a packet sniffer between my compy and SL and still get textures.

Since when is stealing a liberty in our society? And even if it was a liberty, we would be giving it up in order to protect ourselves from it. That quote doesn't work on so many levels.

If such a solution even remotely worked, I'd consider it. Fact is, DRM and memory scans just don't.

The only ways to effectively solve the problem are watermarking your own textures with a little copyright symbol or breeding a culture not savy to stealing. LL could have done this by taking the emphasis off money and placing it on customers, but too little, too late.

And to illustrate why this solution would not work, consider the fact SL can very easily be run in Wine, VMware, or any other form of virtualization. Heck, I run SL in Wine regularly, since I use Linux as my main OS.

NO NO and NO

Its not a big issue to me the "texture theft" as stated in a different threat most textures in SL and other worlds like SL are not the persons anyways. unless the said person hand paints them. and I could count on my hands how many people are doing that. I don't support this idea in anyway. spyware is not the answer.

*looks up. Blinks a few times. Rolls her eyes*

Aaaaaaaanyyyways.

I think spyware is a bad idea. Unfortunately, I can't think of any viable alternatives.

It's not spyware.

Uhm. Yes, it is.

Via dictionary.com:

"[A]ny software that covertly gathers information about a user while he/she navigates the Internet and transmits the information to an individual or company that uses it for marketing or other purposes."

It checks to see if a certain program {or programs, as there aren't many that it needs to check for} is running. If it is, SL won't boot or won't connect at all. It doesn't need to submit any information to anyone.

Thing is, that just doesn't follow. Because a) as I pointed out, SL can very easily be run in virtualized sessions and b) you would have to ban fairly rudimentary tools, like Print Screen, to make this sort of thing even remotely work.

This solution has been a proven failure time and time again. It's quite similar to the battles being fought (and lost) over recorded sound and movie signals. Since the signal must be decoded somewhere along the chain into human-usable form, it can always be harnessed at that step. This is what things like glIntercept do.

Furthermore, the Warden client does transfer this information to Blizzard, just as it would "need to be transferred to LL for disciplinary action to be taken." It's a slippery slope, and a failure of one at that.

Not saying I support spyware either, only addressing your comment.

Most of the clothes I make are hand painted textures, things I spend hours doing. In fact I know many many designers who can say the same thing.

Because no one ever buys or sells game currency in TSO or any of the other numerous games where it's against the rules?

People will aways find a way around "security" thats supposedly prventing stuff.

I run into that sort of mentality a lot - "you didn't follow all these tiny little steps that I have in this invisible notebook, so who cares if your stuff is stolen?"

I've got two words for that sort of mindset...

Yeah, those are the two.

Why would you have to ban print screen? And there doesn't have to be anything involving sending data for discoplinary action.

A possible alternative is that it checks to see if said programs running, sends a true or false answer to system at LL, what at that point you either stay connected or you don't. But then again, that could be maskable as well.

But yeah, I wasn't debating rather it would work or not. Just stating that the proposed idea wasn't spyware.

Point being. Where do you get the textures for the clothing?

I doubt you paint all of the textures that go into the outfitt. As in the design texture its self, not the clothing you upload to SL, but all the textures taken to creat that outfitt. Those textures are already created ones. so in that not truly your hand painted textures.

Because textures displayed on flat surfaces (ie. houses) could be quite easily copied.



If that's how you read the original post, that's fine. I personally read it differently, due to the mention of "like the Warden client." And because a simple "find and shut down" fix tends to not work (using Starforce as a simple case study).

Okay I'll break my silence for this post:

Age verification wasn't fool proof, but by merely being there it did discurage a lot of bad behavior. Having a warden that shuts down the game and is intergrated (meaning, if you run any SL processes, it runs too, and it shuts off when the game does) would probably be enough to stop 90% of the "steal, sell, turn profits into furniture, transfer that to a buddy, yardsale, split the reward" type activity

Anyone smart enough to mask their tracks is also smart enough not to be brazen in their theft, they do a lot less damage because they only steal to get something, the idiots following step by step guides turn around and try to make a buck, are highly visible and highly damaging...

Printscreen provides a degraded quality and it can't be used to steal all textures (like outfits for one) and you also have to have some skill to make it usable in programs I wont name for my own safty.

Nail the obvious, arogant, quickbuck rejects with this... the ones with the brains don't do much harm.

Well, there will be some things that it just can't protect against. Some guy walking up to a wall and taking a picture is one of them.

The Warden Sniffer Bot was a huge Companies (blizzard) way of overeacting... I vote no.

Even then, the picture has to deal with in game lighting, he still has to clip the texture out and make it square....

All and all, lesser quality.

Anyway, I'm going to fall silent again.. aside from helping where I can, I think I'm done with contraversial issues... I have a headache from them

Hmm, let's see.

I am not a clothing designer myself (thank GOD) but I have texture generating plugins for photoshop - these are copyright free. There are also /many many many/ texture sources that you can buy with various swatches of tiling fabric for commercial texture use - I work with Poser so I'm familiar with a lot of different sources.

If I sew a RL outfit out of cloth that I didn't make myself, is it fine if someone steals it?

Give me a break.

No. I'm sorry, but if you think anything along those lines would work, I know a man who would like to sell you a bridge over in Los Altos.

Phedre, can you drop me an IM to were I can find those plugins?

I am always making textures and more fodder for photoshop would help.