The unofficial new permissions system discussion thread...

May not be your goal Cory but the result is to fragment communication - which is not helpful.

Ok. Lemme just say this as bluntly as possible.

Take this concept of talking about things on the comment section of a "blog" and shove it. Grey on white text is hard to read (harder than this fucking ugly blue on blue text, if you can believe that!), the column size is tiny, authors names are in the wrong place, it's impossible to format anything correctly, you can't edit anything to clarify, quoting for clarification is near-impossible, and no matter how many times I check the "FUCKING REMEMBER ME!" box, it doesn't.

So until you guys fix the colors, width, format, formatting options, and layout, I'll stick to using the forums. Or how about you DON'T reinvent the wheel, and use the forums for what they were intended for? Discussion!

Comments on design on the blogs are good feedback and we'll work on fixing those next week. We're clearly trying to explore the best formats for communication in both directions. What I would ask is that you give the blog a chance for a couple of weeks (after we make the colors slightly more readable). If it doesn't work, so be it, but profanity laden posts don't help.

We've gone through... what... FOUR forum revisions in the past six months, only to FINALLY end up in a format similar to that which we had in the very beginning, and now we're trying "other" ways of communication now?

What, is LL simply unhappy with forum based communication or something? I mean, seriously! The changes were first implimented to basically "reorganize" the forum, only instead of reorganizing them, they made them more complex. Then they changed the forums to try to decrease hostility by providing a place for it to grow. Then they completely removed any areas of open discussion that didn't fit a set mold. After hitting three strikes, they're finally back to what we had in the beginning, simple forum names and easily understood areas of discussion, and now LL wants to redo the way they talk to the customers?

I'll give the blogs a chance, but first you're SERIOUSLY going to need to get that navigation bar up there working. I can't exactly get to your blog from here, can I? They've been broken ever since the forum change. Is the reason why they haven't been fixed because we didn't report it on your blogs?

I received an error when I tried to preview my post to the blog, so I'm putting this here.

I'm glad LL wants communications with its customers to be more transparent. That's why this should be discussed on the forums, not on a blog. Every link people have to click to get to the discussion loses a few more readers.

Anyway, aside from that . . . I set a low price on some of my scripted items so that ANYONE can afford them. However, some folks buy multiple copies, usually to save with outfits. If the new permissions system goes into effect as proposed, I won't be selling multiple copies. Will I be able to pay rent on my shops without raising prices? How high will I have to raise my prices? How many people -- newbies in particular -- will no longer be able to afford to buy this item?

I also sell chairs. With this new permissions system, no one will buy more than one copy of any model of chair. Again, my price has to increase, and not because of increased value in the world.

Now, Cory said that this change is to make things more like RL. But it doesn't.

IRL, you can't buy one chair, make 12 copies of it, and seat 12 people. (Nor can you, at no expense, change the color of those 12 chairs.)

Ah, but this is software, right, and copying digital stuff is different. However . . .

If I buy a word processing program, I can indeed make 12 copies for my own use. However, (unless I purchase a site license) I am not supposed to make 12 copies, then have 12 different employees use it at the same time.

Neither should my one chair be copied and seat 12 different behinds at the same time.

During another recent town hall meeting, the Gov said LL needs and values content providers. He said LL wants content providers to make money. I believe this permissions system will hurt content providers' ability to make money. I believe it will cause price increases that hurt trial, new, and casual players the most.

As well, the Gov said (in response to a question at that meeting) that he wants SL to be not MSN, but the Web. Great, that's what I wanted to hear! However, here's an excerpt from the most recent town hall meeting:

"Kim Anubis: Q: How do you think this weakened copyright will be viewed by companies considering offering virtual copies of their RL products in SL?"

"Cory Linden: this is an important question, Kim. Again, we aren't weakening (c) so much as protecting critical pieces of it. I use the idea of 'strong copyright' to contrast the crazy direction that certain senators are going with the historical balance that (c)
Cory Linden: used to strive for.
Cory Linden: I think that companies that get SL will also get the IP regime that we have chose and, frankly, those are companies that we want."

Is Linden Lab's goal to build a popular game wherein the permissions system is an idealistic experiment and only those companies that "get it" will participate? (Or are you guys trying to Change The World?) Or is the goal for Second Life to be compatible with the views of most real businesses in the real world now, like the World Wide Web?

It's cool either way, but some of us had plans in the works that depended on the way we were told you were headed. Please let us know which way you're steering the bus, guys.

Thanks for opening this discussion early, and for reading and considering our concerns.

I just want to say that I agree that the forums are a preferable method to have this kind of discussion - much more readable, and easier to follow than the blog. For one thing it is bound to become quite lengthly and having multiple forum pages will be more manageable than one huge stream of comments on the blog. And a lot of people will miss out on the blog discussion simply because it is less accessable.

I have only one comment.

Please make it easy to understand.

I am really *really* bad at math, geometry, algebra, physics and all those other +/- sciences.

If I have to sit and figure out which it is that I want to do to which object when and for what purpose... I lose money when I balance my checkbook for god's sake. I don't want to encrypt, decipher, gift-wrap, velcro wrap, unwrap, oh wait, I do like plastic wrap...



Just please make it easy, in English with instructions / examples to follow.

What she said. I hardly could follow the description on the blog as it was, and had to decypher stuff from people's comments. The chat log, once I found it, was a BIT easier to understand, but I don't like the proposed system any way, so why bother learning it in better detail until they make the needed changes?

(And I know a girl that likes being wrapped up in plastic wrap. )

Crosspost from blog with text that hurts my eyes:

Cory Ondrejka said:
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So, the question for you all to think about is whether the world is a better if only a small set of technically savvy cheaters are copying content or if every resident as the right to tinker and play with content, thus learning how to make better and more interesting creations?
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I'll take the former. If they want to learn how to create better and more interesting content, let them slave away at it for endless hours like I did, or get someone to show them how if they feel so inclined. MY content that I spent hundreds (and I am not kidding, HUNDREDS) of hours working on should not just be given blithely up to anyone who feels like they'd like to reverse-engineer it or possibly make an exact duplicate of it. I'm going to drop a phrase here, let me know if it sounds familiar... "From each according to his means, to each according to his needs." Does it ring a bell? A Russian fellow with a striking countenance uttered it quite frequently in the previous century.

I am not interested in people being able to modify the stuff I sell and I will provide the four primary reasons that apply directly to me. There are probably more considerations that are important to others.

One, like I said above, I am not interested in having it made easier for people to duplicate my geometry! I put a lot of thought and energy into my designs and I think they are pretty recognizable.

Two, reverse engineering. If you can buy my jet and put a script into it, all of a sudden, all the link messages are exposed. You might then be able to figure out how to defeat my try-it-free system (if I had one), or divine the way I do certain things (and the way I do them might have taken me ten hours and numerous different designs to perfect - now the end user gets the benefit of all that effort ON MY TIME.)

Three, as was pointed out earlier, "moral rights" as they are called in Canada. Let's say you make it so that anyone can crack open my jet and modify it to their heart's content. Well, I have seen some designs on vehicles that are really aesthetically displeasing to me. I am not interested in having something called "A-11 Slipstream" that behaves according to scripts I spent numerous hours perfecting, playing back sounds that I spent several hours foleying and resynthesizing in Buzz, etc., that has been hacked to pieces and retextured using textures that don't really go well with vehicles (concrete, stucco, wire mesh, rubber, hipposkin, anything else you might find in the default inventory - I have seen multiple vehicles in different sims in the last few days that looked like this.) If people see A-11 Slipstream, and the creator is Huns Valen, and the object looks like it was slapped together by someone who just signed up and has zero prior modelling experience, it becomes a dilution to my product line and to my reputation as a modeller and scripter. They have no idea whether or not the product came like that from the factory.

Four, if I make lamps and can sell them transfer/no copy, I'll price them at L$100. If the buyer can make copies, I'm going to charge at least L$1000 instead.

Permissions on objects already in world DEFINITELY should not change, no matter what. The current permissions system should be viewed as a CONTRACT. I have certain expectations about how objects will behave based on the permissions system active at the time of sale, and those behaviors need to stay the same.

Now, if you want to improve the permissions system, do this:

- Allow a finer grain of modify permissions, such as separate flags for ability to retexture, unlink, add content, etc.
- Allow transfer back to creator, even if the object is no-transfer.
- Instead of one kind of transfer, have two: The one we have now, that transfers a single copy; and a new one, that would delete all extant copies from the transferror's inventory and in the world, and then transfer the single instance to the transferree. The content creator would choose which they wanted. It would allow content creators who sell copy/notrans stuff to offer refunds if they saw fit.

All in all, I am getting the idea that LL is advancing a concept that the community should have presumptive rights to tear apart something a content maker sold against that content maker's wishes. I don't like it. It is too socialistic. We are talking about digital content, not physical stuff in the real world. Sure you can repaint your Honda, but if you snort the code out of the ECU and decompile it and post it on the Web, or obtain their copyrighted blueprints and distribute them without permission, you are violating Honda's rights.

It is much better for the buyer to evaluate the permissions on the object for themselves and choose whether or not to make the purchase. If they don't like the permissions, they can hire someone to custom-build an object for them, or they can (GASP) work their asses off for endless hours doing it for themselves, instead of expecting to receive the full benefits of someone else's hard work delivered to them for pennies on the dollar.

As a closing thought... if you force a system on the world that takes away rights from content developers, those developers are likely to pull a Microsoft and use product activation-like schemes to ensure that their hard work isn't (ab)used in ways that they find offensive. The economy is a very complex system and trying to tinker with its foundations could cause a lot of unnecessary grief. Moreover, IT WILL SEEK TO CORRECT ITSELF, as with programmers implementing product activation-like schemes, &c.

The second thought that ran through my mind today when I heard about the changes is that in my next patches I should include a way of simply "destroying" all my existing work that others own, just in case the permissions system lets them alter it in ways I don't like.

I shouldn't be thinking things like that. I shouldn't have REASONS to. And the product-activation scheme is one I'll probably end up having to move to if I even stick around SL.

(BTW, Lindens, if I -were- to decide to leave SL and didn't want my content to be operating under this new licensing agreement, if I requested that you destroy all existing objects with my name on it as the creator, but not as owner, could you? Would you? I'd be willing to pay each person affected by this L$1,000, even if all they have is a plain, untextured cube, as I don't think I've ever recieved more than L$200 in donations for any of my work (and usually I recieve and ask for nothing), and I wouldn't want anyone to feel cheated, even though I DID create the stuff.)

And I'm right along there with you...

Funny that I'm one of the people that was waiting on edge for discussions to open about permissions, and thanks to the obfuscation of the Town Hall meeting on the subject (I actually found out about it AFTER it had taken place -- good one). I'm a lil miffed.

After reading the comments, logs, 3 times to make sure I think my understanding of it was correct - it seems to me that none of the problems I saw were addressed.

When I want people to tinker with something - I make it that way...
When I want to make something to sell in world - I make it that way..

And ne'er the twain shall meet.

The reason for that is because without exception everything I've ever made for the purpose of instruction has been used to rip off other people... and that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

And thats the dilemma -- I like Cory's thinking, I like his ideals... I used to have them. Then I co-founded a lil store in Davenport (some may have heard about) and tried to put it into practice.

And thats where it falls into a huge bucket of shit.

Folks don't want to make better and more interesting creations... in the post GOM/IGE world of Second Life a lot of the people only want to make money.. by any and every means available. And how much the better if they just have to cannibalize someone elses work to do that..

As a result I pulled a lot of my free works from the world.. I'll see how this pans out - if it goes the way I think it will I'll just remove my for sale works from the world and build for myself only.

Little by little - watch the world shrink.

Siggy.

FWIW, and I don't think thats very much in this thread from a Linden point of view at least, I totally agree with everything Huns said (its what I've been saying for a long time, only he manages to put the whole thing far better and all in one place ). And I agree with everything Siggy said in response.

In an ideal world Cory, fine. But this is not an ideal world - there are people in it. So yes, I'll take the former in your choices ('the world is a better if only a small set of technically savvy cheaters are copying content'), in that it is the lesser of two evils you are presenting.


If I want people learning from my stuff (read ripping me off and selling my hard research and work so they can do it without putting any thought or effort in) I would set the perms to reflect that, thanks.

If perms worked, that is, of course.

Ok. I think I've just figured out what the problem is.

Creativity is dwindling. We have hundreds of copies of the same club. No one has created a new flashy popular gizmo in a while. LL sees that. So they're trying to create something to fix it.

They're going at it backwards though.

LL thinks that if they let "the common man" (or whatever you want to call the socialite non-creators in world right now) see how the creative "elite" (I hate using these terms, mostly because it's more the other way around right now, but... *shrug*) do things, the "common man" will be inspired to do creative things too.

What they don't understand is that the reason why creativity has dropped off is because every time someone creates a fancy new toy, someone else comes along, rips it off, and resells it. So creators have stopped creating.

So what they're trying to do is make it EASIER to rip creators off, so we can have even MORE bad copies of good things running around. Why create something new when you can just copy something someone else has made and sell it? Sure, it might inspire one or two more people to create things, but it will end in a bunch of copy-cat things running around. Guaranteed. Anyone who doesn't think so, hasn't been in SL for a while. And EVERYONE agrees that people just making copies and selling them is BAD.

LL's approach doesn't make much sense, does it?

What LL doesn't realize is that SL is a place for creative people to go. Or it was, at one time, before people started getting ripped off. Since creative people are naturally attracted by this place, all they need to do is keep attracting creative people and the creativity will come back into the world.

How do they do this?

By doing what Huns and Siggy have said. Make the PRESENT permissions system MORE flexible (and fix the problems it has), and people will feel "safe" to create again. Nearly EVERYONE hates the fact that if an object is transferable, it's resellable too. Yet LL's going to make that an even EASIER thing? Everyone hates it when their name disappears from the Creator slot. Everyone hates the fact that people can't transfer items back to the creator. And many people hate the fact that they can't choose whether to buy a copy or trans object.

So do what Huns and Siggy said. Make the permisisons system we have NOW more flexible, AND include an option that a creator can set that, when the creator turns it on, allows people buying the object to decide whether to get copy, or trans. Or hell, just give us the finer control, and sellers will add in the option between different permission sets on their own. (Though coding one in would help it be used more often.)

All this proposed permission system will do for creativity is MAYBE make it easier for do-it-yourselfers to learn, maybe make 'em learn a day or two faster, and DEFINITELY make it easier for people to rip others off.

What's with LL reinventing the wheel this week? First blog discussions (which we have something like six or seven people against, and none (but the Lindens) for), now a completely new, and even more unworkable permissions system? Blah.

Hilarious way of saying it, but the truth is so unfortunate. John Worfin said, "Character... is who you are in the dark." Well, guess what, anyone who's been selling or giving away stuff in-world is likely to have a very good and very specific idea of how other SL residents can be expected to act "in the dark." A few will actively thank you for your contributions, some will behave neutrally, and the rest will steal from you simply because they know they can get away with it. And they have. I reported someone for distributing copies of my IP without my permission. LL told me that they'd deleted all the offending copies. Later, someone other than the original crook sold a copy of the object to an acquaintance of mine for TWICE what I was selling it for, even though LL had told me they'd deleted all the offending copies. Same geometry, same script. This acquaintance realized that she'd been duped and asked me, "Say, didn't you make this originally?" Of course I had made it originally.

Too true. Sadly, part of the human condition is that we are prone to have systems of ethics that we simply ignore once they become inconvenient. If the commerce system changes such that content creators lose their incentive to share, the amount that they are willing to sell, barter, and give away will drop. As a result, the cool factor in SL will decrease. People will get bored more easily and leave. Moreover, they will tell their friends. When I was training to do tech support some years ago, we were taught that a good experience is likely to be communicated to perhaps three other people, but a bad experience is likely to be communicated to twenty or more.

PRETTY DIRE HUH

In the town hall meeting, it was mentioned that there may be a script function to detect when an object's wrapper is broken, so that the object could IM back to the creator or whatever. . .

Now, let's say I put a script on something I made, and also a notecard with the explicit warning:

"If the wrapper of this object is broken, it will expode".

I don't see how, with the warning, this would be immoral or unethical. If people didn't want to buy items with bomb wrappers, then they wouldn't have to.

Now, have I just effectively eliminated any chance of there being that script function? If so, then that means that LL is set to go ahead with this regardless of what we want, which I just don't think is the LL that I know.

I saw that mentioned as well, and will AT LEAST llDie() any object of mine that has it's "wrapper" broken (if not send out massive annoyance drones to the person who broke it, orbiting them). But I still think that we don't need this overly complex (and limiting)permissions system, when all we need is a bit more detail on the current one. The ONLY point of the proposed permissions system is taking power AWAY from the creators and giving it to the people who want to rip us off.

Cory Linden is quite clear about this. It is because of legal reasons having to do with licensing of content. Rather than repeat him, I'll refer you to his original posting.

Now, a lot of people have been harping about the drawbacks of the proposed new system, and while I agree there are plenty, I want to talk a bit about potential benefits to developers. I have a vested interest here, as I'm a professional programmer and I fully expect someday to be doing business as a SL scripter/builder.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could put together an item wherein the parts that make it special are protected, but the rest of it could be modified to suit the buyer? For instance, you could sell furniture with custom sit animations that were protected, but allow the buyer to change the texturing to fit their decor. That would actually make your products more valuable, and it's less work than trying to create enough color schemes to make everyone happy. I don't know if this is feasible in the model Cory Linden proposed, but since things are open to discussion, I'm going to advocate doing something that makes just that possible.

Another suggestion - the whole breaking the wrapper to make copies... It seems that if you allow a buyer to make a backup copy in her inventory, but not necessarily allow her to rez the object multiple times, that would satisfy a lot of customers. I think that copying and fair use in a digital world need not be modeled on the limitations of the physical world, and there are several levels of copiability (pardon the neologism) that would be useful for different purposes.

I've hit too many topics for one comment already. Enough for now.

Yes. However, one of the parts that make many many many great creations in SL special is the geometry itself, which unfortunately is not protected with the "breaking the wrapper" idea in place. I do agree with you and suggest again that a restricted modify ability be in place when a wrapper is broken rather than granting full modify rights to the object.

hmmm.... I just wonder if it will be possible for them to implement this in a way so that people who wish to rez 2 or more copies at a time can pay for more without the system getting confused as to which are copies of originals and which are original copies. heh.

I may just be tired and already jaded when it comes to this topic but the more I read on this issue the less I believe that a "simple" system is the solution to all the problems. I'm now preparing to be verbally beaten for saying that.

-Meiyo

I'm just going to say, Lindens, go read Huns's post. Read it many times. Print it out and stick copies of it up everywhere. Learn it.

He is exactly right, and his feelings echo my own perfectly.

I will also add, that I'm going to be like Molecular if this goes through. Any object of mine that has the wrapper broke *will* self destruct. Period. I do not make my objects so that people can tear them apart and tinker with them, see how they are made, then start selling cheap knockoffs at fleamarkets.

Thats if I stay. Honestly, I would be less inclined to stick around if this happens than I am now. I may not.

If this new system allows for scripts to be viewed, you can also count me out as a future developer. I don't spend literally hundreds of hours building things like parachutes just to have somebody dupe them overnight and undercut my pricing. And, if you plan to open up pre-existing scripts, I'll pull everything I have in world. Huns sums it up very well - no need to elaborate.

"Self Recall" code
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Funny thing is I went back and saw the post about self-destructing products, and I was just thinking the same thing. I now want future control of my items that are in world in the event something like this permission system is implemented. Simply having them coded to email a 'product validator' object when the are rezzed should work. The 'product validator' either emails back an OK, in which case the object works normally, or it sends back a NAK and error string. Then the product states why it is recalling itself, the product validator refunds the purchase price and the item self destructs. Obviously you would have to do checks on the owner's name to prevent multiple refunds, but that is just details. This is not against the TOS is it?

I *think* scripts can still be kept no-view, I don't know.

But I just realized a problem with all these validator and self destruct systems... The same weakness rental vehicles have right now. No script areas. Just do all your dirty work in a no-script area, and you can play to your hearts content with it.

Plus, I can already feel the sims lagging from all the creators putting self destruct, recall, kill-switch, and validation scripts in their stuff.

Addressing something kex said, however:

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.

For point 1) If I buy a copy of Microsoft Windows, while I may have the *right* to modify it, I am unable to do so, because microsoft does not provide me with the source code (Beyond what modifications microsoft decides to let me to). How is this any different? I let people who buy my products modify them within certain constraints (Texture, color, etc, are all easy to allow modifications to), but I do not give them the ability to tear it apart and see exactly what I did. I don't see this new scheme giving me this protection, I see it taking it away.

For point 2) And yet people who put out software go to incredible lengths to prevent this ability, and it's apparently perfectly legal. CD protection. Software keys. Server validation. Etc. However, limitations of LSL and SL in general make implimenting such schemes within SL tricky at best, or more realisticly futile.

For point 3) Right of First Sale is dubious at best. There are any number of examples all over the buisness world, at every level, of cases where this is violated on a daily basis, and nothing ever is done. I do not have the right to re-sell most of the software I own. Heck, in some cases I don't have the right to sell *hardware* I own. Etc. In many cases, the legal loophole so far as I can see is that you don't technicly "buy" them, so much as you pay a one-time licensing fee, or at least that's what Microsoft and others would like you to believe. If this new mess of a permission system gets put in, LL had best include the ability to do something similar.

In short, I'm not selling you a chair. I'm selling you computer code that happens to form a chair within SL. I want my code as secure any major software company's code is.

I have a simple question for those who are so fiercely opposed to this proposal:

If this permission system were in place when you joined SL, would you have turned right around at the door and cancelled?

Once I started making things and found out people could pull them apart and resell them?

Yes.

Corey seems very concerned about the lack of innovation recently. And he thinks it has to do with people not being able to learn from others. I have an eye opener for him. The reason people have been less innovative lately is that they can't be sure that SL will be working tomorrow. Personally, I have slowed down development due to dissappointment with SL stability. Now they are just going to make that 1000% worse by making a huge new shift in the system. Does anyone remember how innovative they felt after the Tax snafus or after the shift to land based prim limits (I dropped out of SL for 4 months after that one)? I say stabilize what we have, make small incremental changes to the permission system and rejuvinate some confidence in the system.