Should people be allowed to "rip" scripts?

It is creative, but less so than if I built it from scratch. If I buy an item from you that consists of object (combination of shaped prims), textures, scripts and notecards, but I do not like one portion of that item (say, the object), so I create a new object to stick the contents into. I have created an object. Creative. Ta-da. I have found a new way to use something. I have taken something beyond its original intended functionality. In just such a way, Linux is an outgrowth of UNIX, and is creative, though arguably not as creative as the person/people who created UNIX from scratch.

As for hacking game equipment, there are methods available to scripters to protect their scripts, and as evidenced by several contributions to this thread, they are not being hidden away somewhere. One could as easily say that it is lazy of scripters to expect such an inordinate amount of protection for their creations, but I will not.

It's neither lazy nor cheap of me to alter items post-sale. It takes time to make a new object to put a script in, particularly if I want it just-so. It's not cheap; how dare you say that, when I pay full price for an item, then proceed to take a risk breaking it by taking it apart? "willing to pay someone to write a script for you".....I DID. I paid YOU to write the script for me when I bought the item; I just decided that I didn't want the object that the script came in.

The big Games-Within-Games in Second Life are currently taking place on private islands and land owned by people; and scripters and landowners have at their disposal the ability to monitor what is going on within these game. If someone did manage to hack a game-script, wouldn't their activities trigger scripts that are set to look for suspicious activity? If the game designers are not looking for these things, cheats, glitches, flaws within their games, it could be argued that they are the ones who are lazy and irresponsible to their players. A cheat, once discovered, would doubtless result in the cheater being banned from the island, and the hole being patched.


It's not greedy of you in the financial sense. It's greedy of you to expect to have the same rights over your creations that you would have if you never sold them at all. First, I would make that point back to you. YOU MAKE A SALE EITHER WAY. I can't do anything with your script that I'm not allowed to by the script's own permissions or its actual coding. One thing in RL that I would carry over to SL is the concept that a person gives up some of their rights to an item when they market it and sell it to another person. One thing that could (and often does) happen is that the customer may find unintended uses for the item beyond what the manufacturer intended. They might find usefulness for just a part of that item.

If you don't want me to take your script and put it into a new object, code it to self destruct if I do. Or, DON'T SELL IT AT ALL. I promise that you'll have full control over what happens to it then.



Again, it is creative, as it involves creation. Admittedly, it is less creative than if I'd designed the item from scratch. It is innovative, as it takes an existing something and puts it to a new use that wasn't originally intended for it. Who are you to decide whether it's needed or not? You didn't buy the damn thing. Riding on the backs of others? If I wer rummaging through your inventory this would be the case; since I BOUGHT the item from you I am funding your creative endeavors, not riding your back. [/QUOTE]



If I make a new object to put one of your scripts in, then I have done my own work; and the work that I haven't done I have paid fairly for. If you create a dashboard for a vehicle, and I am able to rip it and put it into a custom-vehicle of mine, I ought to be able to do that. Presumably you'd have set the permissions appropriately, so I wouldn't be able to transfer it, or if I did transfer it, I woudln't be able to copy it. Either way, I'd be limited to either:
a. Keeping my one-time custom vehicle for myself, not being able to transfer it because one of its components was a no-transfer Reitsuki Kojima original, or
b. Selling it/giving it as a gift to another, but each time I did this, I'd have to purchase, at full price, a new vehicle from you, just for parts.

Eddie, come on. You are a full-on game programmer, I'm not, but this argument is logically inapplicable. Am I correct that when I buy a game from the store, it's in binary, compiled, unreadable format? I can't see the source code, I can only play the game. How would I take the rendering engine out from it? Even if I could read the source code from a game disc, this still wouldn't be applicable to second life. After all, you can sell me a scripted item that the script is locked, unreadable. Even if I had intentions to compete with you by "stealing" your (unreadable) script from an item I BOUGHT and putting it into a new item, I'm still limited by the permissions that you set on that script. Usually, this will mean either no-copy, but transfer (in which case, I have to purchase a new instance of the script from you for every custom item that I make), or copy, but no-transfer, in which case I have only the ability to make a custom thing for myself, but can't give it away or sell it.

A better analogy would be if you manufactured a car, and prevented the purchasers from stripping out the engine to beef it up; or sold a computer, and required that the owners come back to you for all upgrades and maintenance.

I agree that we need more protection for people's hard work, but only in preventing existing permissions from becoming broken and no-permission items suddenly becoming open-permission items. You already have the ability, using current permission settings and scripting abilities, to protect your hard work from being stolen.

If you code your scripts to self-destruct, that's entirely your prerogative as creator. If you're doing so just to limit the usefulness of the items, rather than to protect a larger system (like a PvP system from being hacked), then I would say that this is greedy of you, (Greedy, yes, for trying to maintain owner-type rights over something that someone else bought), but it is admirable that you put fair warning into the item first, in the instructions.




To Tiger, I would perhaps be in favor of changing permissions SLIGHTLY to make it that you cannot view the contents of an object that you do not own......if the owner of that object has set a check-box just so. However, I do NOT agree with the idea that I should be locked out of the contents of objects that I do own. This option, if enacted, would cause more problems than it would fix, however (it would fix that vending machine snafu that you described). Imagine finding objects over or near your land, and you can't even see what their contents are? Imagine the furor in the forums if people couldn't even tell if some object of mysterious provenance (thank you, Malachi) that was discovered over their land contained scripts or not?

I'm not going to get into a massive quotefest, mostly because I gotta run out the door in a minute, but I wanted to respond to a couple of things Unhygienix.

First of all, my post was not to you, and its fine that you responded to it, but understand that what I was saying was meant in the context of the message I was originaly quoting.

The original posters angry declaration was why do I want to, basicly, stifle creativity.

I don't.

I'm not arguing that when you create something, and put my script in it, you havn't been creative in making that original item.

But taking my scripts has nothing to do with creativity. At all.

Second, your assertation that you did 'pay someone to write a script for you' when you took my scripts out of something I made (Obviously I'm using the wrong tenses here as nothing has actually happened, forgive me). No, you didn't. I made that script for a specific thing. You bought that specific thing, then decided you didn't want that specific thing and tried to canabalize it. You might think this is semantics, but I don't. I've wrote scripts for people before. I'm fine with the concept. But thats not the same thing.

If you want to make this an issue of greed, so be it. It's not, but hey, whatever. I'll say this, though. A permission change that made no mod items truely no-mod would probably cost me a few sales. I'm fine with that. Really. I'd gladly make that trade.

As far as making my scripts self destructing... I've toyed with it. I hesitate to do it for a couple of reasons: It's circumventable, for one, since most ways of doing it without email validation involve checking the creator of the item. Also, there have been bugs in the past that screwed up the creator field of items... I'd hate for my items to self-destruct on innocent users at some point down the road because of a server glitch.

Honestly, the biggest issue is security of scripts. My stuff is just as at risk as stuff like Dark Life, were I to sell it... I use link messages to handle a lot of data anymore, and if you could sniff out those link messages by putting the scripts in other items, you could make my scripts behaive in ways I would really rather they not. Unlike Darklife, there is little at stake if you do some l33t haxx0ring on one of my planes or something, but for other projects it can be a signifigant issue. You could still get keys and codes that I'd rather you not get, though.

Reitsuki, I again ask whether you would apply these concepts of commerce to RL. Should people be legally disallowed from taking apart hardware that they have bought, or from separating hardware from software?

Essentially, in second life object=hardware and script=software.

If you buy a computer with windows on it, and you don't like the computer or it breaks, should you be permitted to take the OS and install it on a new system?

Should you be criminally penalized for taking apart a microwave oven, in order to use some of its parts for a science experiment?

Should you have mandatory software installed on your iPod, to ensure that all of the media on it is paid for legitimately, and prevented from having extra non-approved-by-Apple apps installed on it?

If you would not apply them to RL, I ask why you would in SL. Now that you are in the role of creator/merchant, you see things slightly from the perspective of Epson, of Chevrolet, of Microsoft. I'll bet that these companies would LOVE to be able to lock down their products, not only for copy and reproduction/resale purposes, but also for actual USE. Imagine a world where you were not legally permitted to repurpose one type of hardware or software towards a new task, if that use were not intended by its creator.

One of the basic ideas of a relatively free market economy is that the actions of consumers will not always match what is intended by the sellers.

If a consumer in SL misuses an item, or part of an item, in a way that violates the TOS/CS, let them be punished then; do not punish all of the consumers for something that one might do at some future point.

Another thing is;

In Second Life, *as long as the permissions system is functioning*, creators actually have more protection than in RL for their creations. They don't need to hire lawyers, and spend lots of money prosecuting people who violate their EULA's. They simply educate themselves slightly about the permissions systems, set the permissions how they want, and WHAM! their items are protected. If someone wants to copy their items and resell them on the black market, the world of Second Life itself stops the would-be pirateer from copying, or transferring their item.

I think that we should strike a fair balance between the rights/abilities of creators, and the rights/abilities of consumers. I happen to think that we already have that balance.


Even if creators are able to convince the lindens to lock down objects like is being suggested here, there will still be unintended consequences. One of them will be forcing the "creativity" of their consumers into creating content for themselves, instead of buying from the would-be creators. Creators will not only lose a percentage of customers who refuse to buy their "locked-down" items, they will often lose much more because of disgruntled customers who either create similiar items themselves, or pay another scripter to create a permission-free one and then give it away for free or sell it at a cheaper price.

I reject this entire line of thought on general principle, you see. I don't equate SL with RL on a 1:1 basis. If you try that, no matter how carefully you construct your house of cards, you run into issues that cause it all to come tumbling down at some point.

thankyou, Unhygienix...

You have a cooler head then I do.

My post seemed hostile because I CAN'T BELEIVE THERE ARE PEOPLE THAT THINK LIKE THAT. It's soooooooo selfish and greedy to try and force and dictate how I use something that I ALREADY OWN.

Next thing you know people will only want to sell a limited LISCENSE to use an item, that one has to renew after an amount of time. Then we won't own the object at all... Isn't that what these people are basically wanting?

restrict restrict restrict!!! LOCK DOWN!!!! LOCK OUT!!!!

Why treat your CUSTOMERS like thieves???

I don't equate RL with SL on a 1:1 basis either.

If I did, I'd be campaigning for you to have some kind of materials costs associated with your manufacturing...... wood, metal, machining, factory employees. You'd have to put every copy of your items together by hand, or pay others to do so. This doesn't apply to a digital world, though. Once you make an object, it's all digital, so you have as many copies of it as you care to make, instantly. You can also continue to sell your items long after they've paid for your initial time/effort investment, with no further outlay of R&D or manufacturing costs.

However, the market in SL is based with a firm attention to RW economies and loosely regulated free markets. Because of this the buying and selling activities in SL have many solid analogies with RL counterparts.

It's interesting how many people as Creators in SL would want to control not only whether their items may be copied, modified or resold/transferred, but also how specifically their items may be used by customers who have paid for, and now own them.

What's even more interesting is how many of these Creators in SL demur from answering about their property rights in RL, and how they make use of what they own, when they are Customers instead of Creators.


Objet + Scripts + Textures + Notecards = Item

An Object can be no-modify, and still leave some room for what may be done with the Item.

I can do this already if I wanted to.

For the right product, I might consider it.

Don't bring drama into this, nobody is treating anyone like a theif. There is no theft of implication of involved in this.

Not really anything sinister or even surprising here. I won't go into real world economics because I feel it has very, very little bearing on SL economics beyond basic principles such as supply and demand and so forth. Anything else is at this point simply personal desires, preferences, and opinion. I've stated what mine are and don't feel like draging meaningless real-life comparisons into the issue.

Reitsuki, we'll probably have to agree to disagree on this one, and each of us hope that the Lindens see things our way.

I don't think the comparisons are meaningless, however. You buy something. You find some way to take it apart, and do something with the pieces that wasn't originally intended, like using a lawnmower engine to power a go-kart. The comparisons are real, and again this touches on larger issues such as in the "avatar bill of rights" threads going on elsewhere in these forums.

We often have abilitiees to do things in SL that no specific rule or UI widget restricts. How many of these abilities are considered "rights" of ours, deliberately granted by LL, and how many are simply oversights that just haven't been addressed.....yet?

I don't re-market other people's creations, or parts of them, but I'll still defend vocally my "consumer rights" (such as they are, in a virtual world) to do so.

I mean come on... you basically want to CONTROL the object and what we use it for even after we buy it!!!

think about that for a second... we buy... but you still maintain the control... that is what you are wanting...

I sure hope that you plan on giving things away for free, because expecting us to buy something yet not own it is silly...

on another note,

I'm going to be completely generalizing and stereotyping...

but this does not suprise me that the two largest proponents of this horrible idea are seacliff residents. (and probably republican

I'm sorry, what reputation does seacliff have now, besides being a natural looking sim?

I'm not sure about the 'republican'... being brittish, and ashamed of my government, I'm not even sure which side im on THIS side of the atlantic!

Yeesh, Yashu, don't attack the people, just attack the arguments.

I just had to quote myself there... lunchtime at work on a hectic day, blah.
Its amazing how that bad example caused so many posts! I appologise and will use better examples in the future

Yashu, this whole 'dicating how you use something you own' and it being 'selfish' is wacky. I'm being selfish in spending time designing and scripting my little fun gadgets? Wow, strange how so many people want to buy them when I'm being such an selfish, greedy, controling person! Forget the fact that they only do one thing... forget the fact that you can't really use them in any other way than they were designed... forget the fact that i reguarly give ALOT of my stuff away for free, usually to people that are nice enough to stop for a chat as they fly around seacliff... forget the fact that if you really badly want the script I spent my spare time writing I would consider negotiating a fee for it... ah, no, forget that... thats being selfish and greedy isnt it

And I'm still smarting about whatever it is you meant by "but this does not suprise me that the two largest proponents of this horrible idea are seacliff residents". Hell, we're more like a hippy commune here than a capitalist paradise!
Please do me the courtesy of explaining what you mean? I'm proud of what we've done on that sim.

(edited cos i bothed the quote above hehe)

well it was mostly in jest...

perhaps a bit low brow...

my apologies...

I have recieved none but a snobbish attitude by it's residents...

and here in this thread we have more snobbery... content snobbery...

You talk about negotiating a price for the script if I want it "that badly"... well guess what... IF I BUY YOUR OBJECT, I DO AND SHOULD OWN ONE COPY OF THE SCRIPT TO DO WITH HOW I PLEASE.

I look at this from rather a different direction than what's been mentioned so far.

Let's say Person A creates a clever script of some kind, puts it in an item, and sells it no-mod. The item looks and acts very cool.

Let's now say Person B takes that script, rips it out of the item made by Person A, and puts it into some different item, and sells it or gives it away. It makes the item made by Person B look and act pretty darn cool.

Let's say Person C is the new owner or sees the item. They say, "wow, what a cool item! Who made this?" Answer (as far as they can tell): Person B. Perhaps the creation parameters of the original script are still visible, but are they likely to check? Probably not. (And not to re-open the whole rate debate, but if they decide to rate the creator, who gets the credit? Person B.)

What's fair about that?

In fact, if you want to talk about comparisons to the real world, there's a RL word for this: plagiarism.

There are a lot of free scripts and tutorials around, and I applaud people who are willing to make them and give them away. I have given away several scripts myself. But I'd like to have a choice about whether I'm giving something away. I'd like to think, if someone sees something I've scripted and thinks it's cool, and wants an item they have to act the same way, they'll contact me and ask for a copy of my script, rather than trying to rip it out of something I created and pretend they wrote it. If I knew others were interested, I might even create a simplified version with comments that the next owner could easily read and modify, so they can get it working exactly the way they'd like. I might put that simplified version in the Wiki for all to use. Or I might put the no-mod script itself on sale, with some directions for use, and let people have at it. But it would be nice to get a little credit. Perhaps a mention in the description: "Blah-blah functionality by Nekokami Dragonfly."

But perhaps I have oddball ideas like this because I work in academia, and acknowledging authorship of ideas is kind of important to academics, seeing as it's how we make our livelihoods.

All that being said, I think anyone should have the ability to turn off a script in something they own. Like that maddening sound loop on the Money Tree.

neko
(Oh, and I don't live in Seacliff, wherever that is, nor am I a republican.)

ok the existing permission system can prevent that... if the script in the object is no mod/no resell, then problem solved...

I still have freedom to use the object and contents as I please and I can't resell it and take credit.

However, you still have the problem of being able to hack into the scripts' communication systems.

If we scripters could sell scripts -without- the prim containers in packages that people couldn't pull apart, then there would be no problem, but the problem is that our programs can be taken apart and used in ways that we can not protect against.

Mole,

Prong has already posted an assertion that you CAN NOT take apart his game-system scripts and hack them to do something unintended/damaging to his game. Care to take him up on that?

If you cannot, then perhaps it would seem that scriptors already have at their disposal the means to protect complicated, multi-part scripts from being hacked by outsiders.

plus the whole system should not be changed... locking out EVERYONE, for a tiny number of scripters who's applications would be effected.

It makes much more sense for those scripters to use their kung fu to develop ways to fix their own problems... WITHIN THE CURRENT SYSTEM... and it seems this is already being done.

If the system IS changed it would be proof that a WHINY VOCAL *FETID ELITE* can change the game for everyone if they complain to the right people.

I just talked to half the residents on seacliff, and none of them have even heard of you, so i think you must have met a visitor. We can't trap errors like that.

Then go for it if youve bought any of my stuff. I cant speak for other people though.
Man, I give up feeding the trolls. Have a happy life
(sorry if i have appeared snobbish to ya here, Yashu - you just caught me on a bad day)

"Fetid elite"? That phrase sounds familiar.

Who is "complaining to the right people"? It's an open discussion, and I've seen good points on both sides of the issue. I may have my opinions, but that doesn't mean I don't listen to the arguements.

You should probably check the agreement you signed when you bought and installed Windows or OS/X for your computer. And your word processor, and your graphics program, and heck SL itself. You almost always are 'buying' software under a liscense that restricts you from doing all sorts of fun things with it. This is not a new concept, exclusive to a tiny minority of wanna-be demigod scripters in SL. It is one point of view of how software should be handled. You may not agree with it, but it's one viewpoint, just as valid as yours.

Anyhow.

As I said, I respect other viewpoints. I may not agree with them, but I respect them. I think a number of valid complaints have been fielded by both sides, and while I'm dissapointed by the lack of linden commentary on this issue, I'm not surprised.

But I'm not going to debate things when the debate sinks to name-calling, attempted character defiling, and a shouting match. And besides, the Korg Effect has kicked in. The tin-foil-hat fallback of the Fetted Inner Core has been invoked, and the rest of the thread will probably spiral into a nonsensical discussion about that instead of the real topic. It's kinda like Godwin's Law, except only applicable within SL.

If the thread survives, and anyone still cares to discuss this, I'll still be here.

reitsuke, i'm boycotting your products from here until eternity and 10 days aftr that. you are a creativity facist.