File Sharing

In regards to SuzanneC's post about file sharing, Robin asked for a longer explanation of what SuzanneC meant. Without any intentions of wanting to speak for SuzanneC, I would like to explain what I thought "File Sharing" meant in the context of the question.

If you chat on IRC with a decent client, it's childs play to DCC a file to someone. If you use MSN Messenger, AIM, or ICQ, you can send files to people. It's a simple matter of making a temporary connection to someone's client, and transferring the file to them directly.

Now, as Robin says, "You can currently transfer most things in-world fairly easily by dropping them on someone's profile." The problem with this, however, is two-fold. First, we're limited to items we can send to Second Life: JPEG's, WAV's, TGA's, notecarded text, and landmarks; it's impossible to pass Word Documents, Excel spreadsheets, or movie clips to anyone. Second, every item we want to pass on to someone must be stored on the Second Life asset server. This is bad for three reasons:

1. It adds more items to the asset server, and slows it down.

2. It means Second Life has access to potentially personal and volatile material. I cannot send photographic evidence or pictures of something I want to patend a lawyer I meet in Second Life without Linden Lab being privy to them.

3. Second Life is responsible, and an accomplice, to copyrighted material shared between players. It would be very, very easy for me to run an illegal comic book pirate-scanning service in Second Life, and until I was caught, Second Life would be as liable as AOL was when sued by Harlan Ellison. While Linden Lab may not consider logging every transaction a harmful thing, as a CEO, I would be disinclined to use SL as a conference medium if a copy of every file I shared between employees was saved on a third-party server.

This is yet another reason we need an API. With an API, Second Life developers could graft an IRC or AIM client into the Second Life client, and allow users to transfer files between each other without using SL's resources or potentially getting SL in trouble.

SL is not supposed to be a P2P network a la Kazaa. I don't think it should be used as a transport for offworld files. There are already plenty of ways to do this, such as IM programs and email.

huns, by "not supposed to be..." i can only assume that you mean it IS supposed to be a virtual world for avs to frolic through with no fear of rude interuptions from the outside.

but that's lends a point of confusion because using third party software to hand you a word document ruins my immersion. i want a plugin that allows me to hand you any type of data i like while remaining cocooned in the world.

please either shoot my assumption full of holes or clarify my resulting confusion.

i thought she ment by putting things in a group folder for the group to access

doesn't have anything to do with "immersion". there are some things sl is meant for and some it isn't and this sure seems like one for the isn't column.

email them to him. AIM them to him. burn a CD and mail them to him. i just can't see a patent lawyer logging in to look at patent doc textures stuck on a prim. he'd have to get them irl eventually anyway. besides how many people are meeting with patent lawyers in sl. probably not many.

this one goes on to say that people can use sl to pirate copyrighted stuff now. and they won't do it a million times more if they can suddenly transfer any kind of files to each other?

it's great to say sl should be able to do more but why should it be able to transfer files that have nothing to do with sl and aren't going to be used in sl? there are tons of programs out there to do this better without getting LL in trouble for all the people who'd be trading movies and warez via sl.

so all this talk of sl evolving into the metaverse, becoming the basis for a 3d www, or being a serious real world economic force is just locker room talk. it's actually always just going to be the self contained toy it is now.

thanks for the clarification.

I asked that question, so it'll be interesting to see what the Lindens say.


My point was to show that the possible excuse "people would share illegal files" wouldn't hold up as a reason not to incorporate this.


Why do people use the web to get information when they can just email someone a question? Why do people email questions when they can just send a fax? Why send a fax when you can just call someone on the phone? Why call someone on the phone when you can drive over and ask them in person? Why drive over to someone when you can just walk? Why bother asking when you can just not bother learning?

I don't know of a specific instance of why off hand, but I don't think it's a bad idea on the whole. If the point of Second Life is to exist within the confines of Second Life, then there is no reason to want File Sharing. However, if Second Life is going to be leveraged as a "metaverse" or a "w3b" in the future, people are going to want the ability to interact through Second Life in ways that can be enjoyed outside of Second Life.

I'll be interested in seeing what the Lindens have to say.

SL makes a lousy Excel replacement and vice-versa. SL is no good at compiling C code nor at washing my car. I guess my point is creeping featurism creeps, and if you aren't comfortable exchanging non-SL contact information with others why would you feel comfortable exchanging arbitrary binaries? Put another way, I'd like to see LL invest more in the services it does provide rather than re-invent any particular wheel.

Hence, "This is yet another reason we need an API." I'd rather LL focus on server-side issues, and give the users a means to work on client-side extras.

Jarod read the intent of my inquiry perfectly. SL is touted by some people - Phil Linden for example, as a means of collaborating on work. Being able to trade files easily is good for that. An SL oriented example would be two people sharing a paintshop file. Trading textures is not the same as trading the original files. It provides a great deal of benefit for a small amount of programming effort. It's a goal that might be within the SL programming staff's power to accomplish, unlike goals like seamless sim border crossing or a zero percent ghosting rate. Might as well have the work applied to something immensely useful to a large pecentage of people instead of thrown away on apparently impossible improvements to the reality of the the simulation or totally useless things like rounding off the corners on dialog boxes,

suezannec, i'm gonna tell you like i told jarod. i've worked hard for the title of "most blunt & cynical one." any further attempts to take it away from me will be met with much kicking and screaming.

i don't know if i'm more excited that people are finally coming forward to explain how useful this software can be, or that ll are actually talking with us about it like we're professionals looking for tools to build the w3b.

jarod asked in the hotline for a list of services ll never want to provide or have provided through a client plugin. i hope they treat the answer as the turning point that it is rather than post a flippant "oh interesting and everything and possibilities and hair and stuff."

Just to make it clear, I am not asking for a file sharing system in which the data is moved by SL. The music streams don't use SL's computers to move the music data. I assume file sharing can be implemented in a similar manner.

Don't you have to actually run Word to create that document in the first place? I suggest running SL maximized but in desktop mode, that way you have the taskbar and can switch off between apps with ease.

Maybe one day LL will figure out how to launch Word and other apps on the face of a prim, so you don't have to leave the 3D environment. I think that we'll have the ability to do that with Web sites in the forseeable future, since it is easy to launch an instance of a HTML viewer object (in Windows anyway) inside another program. It would be interesting to see a NeXTstep-style dock that you could use inside SL to manage your external applications.

The REAL trick then becomes giving these programs some meaningful way to talk to SL itself, rather than just giving them a host environment other than the win32 shell to run in.

Worded a bit harshly, but I agree in principle.

There are three key things that come to mind when I consider the possible evolution of today's virtual worlds into an actual "metaverse."

- Transfer/storage/execution of data not originating within the virtual world.

- The ability to make changes to the real world from within the virtual world (/pizza).

- Crossover to other virtual worlds (no single owner of the metaverse).