The unofficial new permissions system discussion thread...

Neither do comments such as that...

Since it is already possible with the current permissions for someone to take something Free to Copy and turn around and sell it, what you're commenting on isn't really a concern as much as it is a feature request.

What you're asking for does have significant merit for consideration though. It would be nice to have a license which says "this object can be copied, modified, and used for anything you want, but it can never be sold", sort of like Public Domain except with the one restriction that you may not sell it.

In RL, some products are considered "Not For Resale" and marked as such in clear text. Although these items may be freebe's or give aways, you dont see them repackaging them, or modifying their wrapper so to say. Wouldn't a simple notecard with the words "Not For Resale" included at the bottom be sufficient here?

What's the point in overhauling the permissions system if you're not going to make it more flexible and add new abilities? It is a concern as it is a limitation of the current system that leaves people like Juro and the GNU people open for abuse. If you're going to overhaul the permissions system then this, more than anything, is something that people have had a problem with the most.

Exactly Kex. There has been an ongoing frustration with several people who've contributed free objects who have wished that they not be re-sold. Unfortunately, there are people who disregard those wishes, even if it is specifically mentioned in a notecard included with the free object.

This issue is why Siggy's free items were all removed and why I decided to remove mine from the Stillman Bazaar. It's unfortunate, but what can you do.

I've requested this feature from the Lindens several times and I know others have as well. If they are going to overhaul the permissions system, I would really, REALLY like to see this implemented.

Nipping misinformation in the bud is achieved by:

a). Making sure as many people as possible know about the town hall so they can choose to get informed if they are able to attend
b). Making available a transcript of the town hall as close to immediately afterwards as possible, so those who could not attend can get up to speed.

What's happened with this town hall is that very few people went, there is much conjecture and we're going on what other people say happened without actually knowing for fact. That leads to misinformation.

One would think it would be Prong, but sadly it is not. I have a notecard in *all* of my free items asking that the object not be resold, but people routinely ignore it and put the objects up for sale. If there's a loophole in the system, people will exploit it for thier own benefit.

All of our code was written to prevent duplication of our weapons, armor, etc... It was also coded to prevent reverse engineering. If LL decides to change the permission structure, every single item would need to be recoded, to prevent any new exploits from being used to game the system.

For most people selling only a few items, this will cause a sufficient amount of work to correct. For those of us who have to maintain an inventory of hundreds of unique items, this could be the show stopper.

I doubt it will be any more confusing than the current system. In fact, I predict it will be even easier to understand than the current system because it reduces the options to only those which are fitting to the circumstances.

If implemented as proposed, new users will have a lot less to worry about when they purchase an item, because they will have great flexibility with what they can do with that item once they possess it.

Currently when we buy something, most of us have to worry about whether or not it will be modifyable, and whether or not we will be able to copy it or transfer it. Under the proposed system, most things for sale will be set as "Full Copyright" and the other concerns become moot at the time of sale, since the customer will be able to choose if he wants modify, copy, or transfer rights after making the purchase.

Search google for "Fair Use" and "Right of First Sale".

As far as Fair Use goes, it is an inherent aspect of the ownership of all tangible items we own in RL. You have the right to paint your car that you bought from Honda. You have the right to put new windows on your house. You have the right to reupholster your furniture. You have the right to smash your printer to tiny bits with a baseball bat if you get the urge to do so.

With the introduction of Intellectual Property, these same rights were granted to the owners of the IP. You have the right to modify and copy the IP as many times as you want for your own personal use (despite with that RIAA would have you believe). This is the right you will be able to exercise in SL by breaking the wrapper.

As far as First Sale goes, the Copyright Act states that the owner of a lawful copy can "sell or otherwise dispose of" the copy. LL is just complying with this law. In fact, the system we have now has been broke since November when LL declared that we own the content that we create, because we have no way to exercise this right.

This is a serious concern.

This is probably going to be the #1 concern with the new system, and what seems to have most content creators quite nervous at this point. Strict measures will have to be in place to prevent this kind of abuse from occuring, and LL will have to step up to the plate on this if they want to go forward with the permissions system they are proposing.

Keep in mind, we're talking digital work here, not tangible real life items which have a significant cost to reproduce. The same argument can be made for CDs, DVDs, and other digital works (and the ??AAs make this claim as well). Most of us think it's fair to make multiple copies of those works to play in our car, or at our place of employment.

I contend that the world can also grow and flourish even more when new users have the ability to customize the things they buy to their desires by the rights given to them when they unwrap the package, rather than being stuck with what they are offered.

I think you're making a bit of a non-sequitor here. Nobody's forcing creators to reveal all their secrets and open up all their scripts. The system is just being retrofitted for the realities of Copyright law that were introduced in November. The system we have now is the one that's broken.

See the following...
I'm making an educated guess that once the foundation for the new permissions system is in place, additional licenses like the one I mentioned will be much easier to implement, since they will quite likely be written into a new abstract permissions layer in the SL code rather than hacked, copied, and spliced into many various places in the existing permissions system.

Actually I'm pretty sure that you're referring to are those things you see marked usually with "Not for Resale" or "This unit not labeled for retail sale", such as "Fun Size" candy bars and the like.

The reason they are marked such is becuase they do not contain a UPC label, and the notification is simply make the retailer aware of this fact. It is not forbidding them from reselling it, since you can't force something like that upon someone without a contract.

I'd like to illustrate some specific scenarios in which the proposed permissions system introduces a problem. I hope these can be addressed by Cory.

1. Customer buys plane, and loses it on first flight

Customer buys a plane from me that's sold under the full copyright license. In this case, they do not have the right to copy, or modify, but can resell. Customer doesn't think (or know) to "break the wrapper" and immediately rezzes the plane and flies off. Within five minutes, they've been booted from their plane on a sim border and have lost it.

Customer comes back to me demanding a replacement. I know that they bought it from me, but I have no proof that they actually lost it. I'm technically under no obligation to provide a replacement, but I have a pissed-off customer if I don't.

This puts the onus on the customer to somehow know that it's a good idea to "break the wrapper" and make a backup copy. I don't expect many customers to be familiar with a) the risk losing a vehicle, and b) how the permission system works. Why should they?

Any new system should allow vehicle makers to protect customers from loss.

2.) Someone approaches me saying that they lost a plane. I have no record of a sale to them, and have no evidence that they ever owned one. Turns out the bought it from Joe Reseller, who refuses to provide any support. I have another angry customer.

3.) Someone approaches me saying that they lost a plane. My records show that they bought one, but what I don't know is that a rumour is now going around that I give free replacements to anyone who claims to have lost a vehicle. We then have a whole bunch of people with an extra "replacement" copy, which they sell for pure profit.

4.) Under the old permission system, Customer bought a plane that was sold as mod/copy/no-trans. He makes a dozen copies in various folders for whatever reason, and has a couple in-world. Some are modified. LL introduces the new permissions system and all copies become no-mod/no-copy/trans. Customer has enough copies to go into business selling my planes for half of what I ask.

In this case, I depend on the continued use of the no-transfer permission to keep me from being put out of business.

5.) I sell helicopter scripts at L$50 per copy. They're usually used by people who create a vehicle, but don't have scripting knowledge -- they just want to make their creation fly. In the current system, they'd buy one copy for each vehicle. In the proposed system, they'd buy one copy and could "break the wrapper" and outfit every single vehicle they create from that point forward. Pretty good deal for L$50.

This last case doesn't bother me as much, because they can't resell their copies. It's for personal use. Other scripters may not feel the same way, however.

6.) I sell a framed, original photograph to Customer. In the current system, I'd sell it as no-mod/no-copy/transfer. In the new system, Customer has the option of "breaking the wrapper" and making unlimited copies.

Customer not only decorates his home, office, and friend's homes by placing copies in them. Customer buys up a single copy of several artworks, landscaping items, and decorative items, breaks the wrapper on all of them, and goes into business -- for a fee, he will decorate and landscape people's homes with copies of these items.

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I do support the concept of allowing someone to resell, but the above issues (and abuses) must be addressed and prevented.

If it is really that important that an exploit not be used, you should probably have such a system in place anyway just to be safe, since there have been ways to copy things many times in the past due to bugs, lag, crashes, etc.

That is a fear-inducing false statement.

Most people selling only a few items will probably not be significantly affected by this change, if at all, since most would simply convert to Full Copyright. (Keep in mind I am interpreting and using the words "most" and "will" literally in both your comment and mine)

Edit:
Cubey, now that's the kind of constructive post we need here! Those are all well-founded concerns that need addressing. This is exactly how we should proceed to make some progress with sorting this out, by coming up with specific scenarios which should be looked at and discussed long before any of this begins to be implemented.

First let me say that I'm now reminded why I didn't want to become a lawyer lol

I think this is one of those agree to disagree situations.


Is it that you don't know the permissions you're getting or want different permissions than what you're getting? or both?


Maybe many of us have just gotten too comfortable with this decision being in the hands of the creator rather than the owner. :-/


Could there be a happy medium for SL that will still be compatible with the idea of making things in SL nice and legal? I mean like not full modify rights but not 0 modify rights either... you can change colors, textures, etc. but you can't rip the whole thing apart? This may be far from possible but it's just an idea.


Why are the objects we create in SL (objects not scripts) not similar to RL software? This is prolly a stupid question but if we can have software inRL that is licensed for only once instance (you can't make and use many copies at the same time) why can we not have a similar idea applied to things we create in the world? Is it just a totally different concept that's not compatible with what else we are trying to get from the permissions system?


I see what you are saying however, I'd rather like to find a way to encourage more and more PD items without making everything you create be modifiable by the next owner. (Another agree to disagree point I believe.)


Actually, from what I've read and heard so far, I'm pretty happy with the proposed permission system for the scripts. I prolly should have stated that in my last post. I'm really focussing on permissions for objects, especially nonscripted ones.

-Meiyo

Ok. All of this stuff is making my head hurt. CC BY-ND?! WTF does THAT mean?!

Anywho, I've barely pieced together parts of this and have one question (which I also asked in the comment thread on that blog, but prefer forum discussions immensely).

I sell scripts in object shells. This allows me to simplify the script use of things by placing them in objects that already function correctly, so that the enduser doesn't have to create a prim and drop the script in himself. I sell these objects as nomod/copy/notrans. Infinitely copyable, but not transferable to anyone else, and not modifiable in any way. This lets me keep track of who has an object, and more importantly who to give patches to when I upgrade, and it also insures that they don't change my work in some way and either alter it or put their name on it.

Where is this option in this new proposed system? I'm not seeing it.

[/b]

If I remember what Cory said yesterday correctly, all items made before the new permissions system is implemented will be able to remain no-transfer as a special condition. Anyone else remember this?

-Meiyo

But will they remain no-modify?

And will I have the nomod/copy/notrans ability with the NEW permissions system?

I have no idea to be honest. I realllly wish I had kept my transcript now. LOL

Simple answer is no. I read what you're wanting to do from your last post...
Lemme say tho that you shouldn't have to worry about the scripts getting ripped off. The new perms for them should keep them from getting stolen. *I think*. The problem with your situation really just boils down to something like cubey's: keeping track of who's given the object to which person. Maybe if they implemented some way to make a report of transfers of items you create... I dunno. :-/
-Meiyo

In terms of Object Oriented design, I think I'm getting a feeling for why permissions are being rewritten in this manner. And it does come down to elegance and simplicity.

If you're going to re-do the permissions system, you might as well start clean and wipe out the old crufty one completely. We know the old one is crufty because there have been many loopholes and bugs since SL went live. I get the feeling that the existing permissions system is built upon many disparate chunks of code spread throughout the SL source, which are probably somewhat hard to track down when a bug is discovered.

Knowing that you're starting over from scratch and that you're going to have a complex system that will probably need to be added to in the future, you create an "abstract" class. This is a framework, if you will.

Once you've built the framework, now you need to extend the abstract classe into several useful classes. Let's call these "licenses". They are not literal licenses, they are just an implementation of the abstract class where you fill in the details and define what should be done when an event occurs, much as LSL is written to be event-driven. Each license is a distinct instance all it's own and each works within the abstract permissions framework.

Now you have a system where content creators can choose which "class" (license) within the permissions framework exhibits the behavior that fits their preference the most. Along with that, you have a system already in place which makes it easy to add new licenses.

The big picture is the permissions system needs to be more robust, but we can't just add a whole bunch more checkboxes, because that will not only get exponentially more complex as some combinations may not be possible, but also much more confusing. Can you imagine a screen where you have a dozen checkbox options and radio buttons for allow-this, but not-this, except-when-this?

Instead this system makes *each possible* type of digital rights behavior into a "license", from which the content creator can choose. Now all the code for that behavior is in one place, and does not need to worry about the complex interactions that can occur with a matrix of checkboxes. The code for that behavior can be specifically tailored to that license.

This provides an excellent Object-Oriented model which will be much more reliable, be much less prone to bugs, and much easier to extend when future permissions models are needed. I presume the limited number of licenses which we are starting with will be just the beginning of the set. With such a system in place, it should be easy to create other licenses which each behave differently.

Instead of having a matrix of checkboxes, you present the content creator with a list of mutually exclusive licenses which have their own behaviors.

*THAT* is how it will be easier to use.

I think even considering the old "permissions bits" to still be there in the new model is old-way thinking. They probably won't even be there. The inherent behavior that may cause them to appear to be there will just be the result of the code written for the license-class.

It's tricky having this discussion on both the forums and on the blog (http://secondlife.blogs.com/prompt). The goal of having it on the blog is *not* to "hide them away." Instead, I'm trying the blog out as a better way for me to communicate with all of you on a wide variety of issues.

I realize that this is a change, but I hope that you bring your opinions to the blog and post them there so that I don't miss them. Thanks!

The problem is (and I posted on the blog), that this issue is so important I don't think it is wise to constrict ourselves to a medium where we can't inherently clarify our errors by editing, format our text for clarity, and are hampered by poor visual design -- tightly wrapped text, poorly contrasting font color, and poorly positioned comment attribution (it looks like the name goes with the comment below it instead of above).

Click Here.

It's toward the bottom of the page.

Plus it hides such discussions away from the forums.

I realize you say that such is not your intent, but it IS a side-effect nonetheless. Hell, the fact that there was going to be a town hall wasn't in the annoucements forum, so I missed the opportunity to attend, the proposed changes are a locked, buried thread in the Feature Feedback forum, and so far this is the first REAL thread we've had on the topic, period.

It may not be your -intent- to hide this proposed change from people, but it's certainly happening nonetheless.

Plus the blog is just plain harder to get to, by the fact that I don't visit it regularly, and have no need to.

That said...

In today's MMOG market, there's a typical setup of sorts. There's a server you connect to, and clients. I don't know of many MMOGs that allow you to modify the client (i.e. Hack, alter game files, apply unapproved "patches". For example, City of Heroes has started banning anyone that changes their client's map files to include other points of interest within the world other than the ones provided by CoH. The most annoying result of this is since they didn't include the locations of stores on the provided maps, you have to memorize their location. The commonly used map-hack (which was merely a single texture replacement) showed the locations of these stores, but people who use them are now banned.

Similar things could be pointed at in the non-MMOG game market. You can't take a CD, "break the wrapper", no-cd-crack the EXE file, and hand a copy off to someone else without breaking a law. Hell, as I understand it, EULA's and the like prevent you from altering the game even if you're keeping it for yourself. I don't know if this is true or not, but it would make sense.

Yet in this proposed permissions system, unless I'm grossly misunderstanding it, it sounds like you can do just that with the prims that make up an object. How is this ethical? How does this make any real-world sense? I realize that the majority of SL creators are GPL/OpenSource fanboys (sorry to use the term, but I can't think of any other way of saying it), but some of us out here don't LIKE our work being open to modification. And I dare say that LL wouldn't like it if someone modified the SL client to interface in a different way with the SL servers.

So why is this proposed permissions system being thought about? It sounds like something that would be a good reason for me to leave, and on the way out ask LL to destroy any object with my name on it as the creator.

Click here.