Copy protection for Notecards (authors/writers/publishing)

I propose that the SL object permission system is changed, so that one cannot copy text from out of a notecard (using ctrl-c, for example) unless they have transfer permission on that notecard.

I propose this because currently, there are a lot of people in SL who are authors (like myself, and all the people who write ebooks) - who either have to live with the fact that it is easy to pirate their work, or they have to take very costly measures to protect it involving saving each page of their work as a texture and using a script on a prim to toggle through the pages by loading different textures.

This is very bad because it discourages people from taking up writing as their SL job... and thus it hurts the SL economy because it disadvantages an entire profession.

The residents suffer, too... with fewer people prepared to write, as they don't know if they'll get paid..... residents don't see a lot of the good written content they would see if we had at leat minimal copy protection.

In the end, everyone loses out the way things are now, because the writers are either burdened with un-necessary costs or they can't stop their work being copied. As a result, they write less, and so everyone in SL ends up with less good stuff to read.

Currently, the SL permission for notecards works like this :
Modify permission = ability to change the notecard and save the changes
Copy permission = ability to read the notecard, and copy it
Transfer permission = ability to give the notecard (or a copy of it) to someone else.

Now, the fatal flaw with these permissions is that none of them stops someone who can read a notecard (and thus, has copy permission on it) from selecting all the text in the card, copying it, and pasting it into another notecard which they can then transfer.
This is doubly bad - not only does it let the person effectively transfer a no-transfer item, but it also means the person gets credit for being the creator of the item (as the new notecard they send to others will have the copier listed as the creator, not the true author of the work).

The reason that I suggest we ought to make 'Transfer' the permission that is required for people to copy text from notecards is simple - being able to copy text from a notecard effectively enables you to transfer it, whereas being able to duplicate the notecard in your inventory does not enable you to transfer it.

Implementing this would encourage all sorts of written works being sold in second life - from books, to guides, manuals, reviews and so on. It'd encourage a whole section of SL's economy to grow and prosper, making life better for all SL residents.

I contacted live help about this proposal, before posting it and creating this topic. Here are some responses I got (reposted with permission):

With regard to the way notecard permissions work :

This needs more attention, dammit. Bump.

There is a temp soloution you can do..

Make an e-book reader, and put the text on a HUD.
they can use buttons to change pages.

BTW, when I say text on the hud, I mean textures. You would be able to include graphics even.. I know its not perfect, but its something.

I can't help but think this feels like e-book DRM, or PDF access restrictions, that makes the content that you purchase become less useful to you. It makes a product defective by design, no?

I understand that it's heartbreaking to see people pirate your work, but I also feel that it isn't fair to make it difficult for the users of your product to copy a line of text to IM to their friends, or for that matter, print it out onto paper, or read it in notepad when SL isn't running.

Maybe there's a solution that can leverage both?

Does it limit the consumer? yes.
The problem is that if you let someone print it out onto paper or read it in notepad, then it gets out of SL's copy-protection system and the person can thus do whatever they want with it, including post it on the web, free for all to read.
Thus, the brute fact is that if we want to copy-protect works in SL, we have to stop people taking them out of SL. We already do this with objects (ever try taking a chair in SL out into the real world?)... but we haven't figured out we need to provide the *option* to do it with notecards yet too.
I realise it is annoying that under this system you wouldn't be able to print out notecards protected with this system to read offline, nor would you be able to copy them to notepad to read them when SL was not running. I realise this does affect your rights as a consumer. I also think, however, that unless we do something like this that EVERYONE who produces written works in SL is at a serious disadvantage compared with the other businesses in SL, and the result of this is that a LOT less written work gets produced then otherwise would be.
Personally, I don't consider something that is often necessary for the product to exist AT ALL to be a defect. I consider it to be a necessary feature, part of what makes the product what it is.
Imagine, for example, if all books were distributed as text files on computers. If people wanted to read something, they just went to the internet library and downloaded a copy. They could do anything they wanted with the work, but they'd have no incentive for giving it to anyone else (except as a convenience) because that other person could also get a free copy from the internet library. This system would be free of the 'defects' of copy protection, but it would suffer three fatal problems :
1) If you don't charge people for access to this system, then the authors do not get paid, and writing ceases to be a viable way to earn a living, and, suddenly, 95% of writers quit writing completely as they can no longer afford to do it. The result is that a great amount of human knowledge is lost or simply never learned because there is no economic motivation to do so.
2) If you charge everyone a flat rate for use of the system, then you are being unfair - the people who do not use it or who don't use it much are being asked to pay money to subsidise the people who use it a lot. This is unfair because it lets people experience a free ride at the expense of others.
3) If you charged people for it individually based on how much they use, then people would just send their copies to friends, and you'd get some site like the library (say, a p2p network) which distributed the works, and so nobody would pay because they'd be able to get it free elsewhere thanks to the lack of copy protection.

IMHO, these points establish that in order to make writing commercially viable, we need copy-protection for written works.
Yes, this can be annoying. Yes, this can limit the consumer. However, it is really the only option - we have to force people to pay for written works becuase, like any other product, they are valuable and to give them away free would mean they don't get made anymore. We have to charge people individually because to do otherwise would mean we had some people having a free ride at the expense of others. And we need copy-protection to enforce this, because if it wasn't enforced, then the individuals with lax morals would be enjoying a free ride at the expense of the honest folk, which is, of course, a very bad situation to be in.


I think that if someone wants to copy a single line of text to their friends, they can always type it out manually. After all, it is only one line. People type lines in chat all the time...
If they want to summarise a paragraph in their own words, this copy-protection system would not stop them.
If they want to briefly summarise the whole book in their own words, this system would not stop them either.
What this system does is to make verbatim copying of the text proportionally more difficult the more text you want to copy, because it requires you to type out the text.
This is a GOOD thing as it means there is little difficulty typing out a single line you want to quote for a friend, but it is a LOT of effort to copy the entire volume. Enough effort to dissuade many pirates.
I have no problem with people copying the odd line from my work, verbatim, to show to friends. I just want to make it difficult for people to copy, verbatim, huge chunks of work I spend a lot of RL time making.

With regards to allowing people to print written works they read in SL for reading elsewhere, I'm sorry, but we just can't allow this.
It's very simple : if you allow a single pirate to copy your written work into notepad, you can't stop them putting it on a website and letting 1000s of people download it who would otherwise have bought copies of your work. Letting even a single person take your work outside the shield of copy-protection, means that huge numbers of copies can be made and distributed very easily..... and you very quickly lose out on a huge amount of money.

I don't like the idea I have to keep notecards I buy in SL (where the author uses copy-protection) inside SL. I don't like it one bit.
But I realise that it's not personal - it's not me that the author is protecting himself against, it is the few people who'd happily copy the entire work and share it freely amongst pretty much everyone, which would mean nobody would then pay for the product.... thus stopping future development of the product and meaning that overall, everyone loses - the people who copy may get something free in the short term, but in the long term they destroy the product they are copying, and not just for themselves, they cause it to eventually become obsolete without being replaced, and thus, they destroy a product, or a type of product for everyone and possibly for quite some time into the future.


Copying someone else's copyrighted work is wrong, morally, because :
1) you are stealing from them - enjoying their work without paying for it, and by doing so taking advantage of them.
2) you are discouraging the future production of good quality written works, which affects *EVERYONE* who wants good quality written works to read.

The problem of copying is very bad when you're dealing with written works and anything where "the experience" is the product (like, for example, movies)...
because if someone has a copy, and reads/watches it, spending time to absorb it, they can then pass it on to someone else whilst KEEPING the knowledge/experience they have gained.
This means that each transferrable copy, even if it can't be copied, is still a deadly weapon against the product itself.


I agree, copy protection is an evil - it limits people. However, it is a NECESSARY evil.
What do you think is worse, having the content but not being able to take it out of SL, or not having the content at all because the author decided not to write it because he/she couldn't find a way to stop people ripping him/her off without paying an absolute fortune?

Thus, I'm arguging we need serious copy-protection on notecards to protect commercial written works, in the form of "unless the notecard is +transfer, people should not be able to copy text out of it". I argue this because :
1) it is morally right - it stops the dishonest getting a free ride at the expense of the honest.
2) it provides an incentive for people in SL to make things (written works) which helps the SL economy.

I agree. Hindering the permissions on a notecard should not make it invisible. It should make it unable to be 'copy/paste'ed. We dont need a new permission we just need the current ones to be a bit more logical when its concerning notecards.

Agree 100%, authors need to prevent people from just ripping off their work, as it stands, there is very little to prevent someone from taking a text based work, making a copy, and either selling it themselves, or putting in a freebie box..

nocopy + modify : causes a problem, if its modify then you have to have copy and paste as part of the editing tools. Copy and paste is not tied to a specific editor window.

Other than that I think the usual restrictions should apply, if its nocopy+nomodify it has to be xfer.

Although I'm a fairly new user of SL, I've had some ideas that involve using notecards, and the ability of any user to copy and paste the text into another notecard and claim it as their own would render those ideas fairly useless.

As I intend to use SL on a fairly regular basis from now on, I'd like to see this issue seriously considered by LL.

What about making it based on "mod" permissions? If you can copy a notecard, you can mod it simply by (as you noted) copying and pasting to a new card, and if you can mod a notecard you need copy to effectively edit it.

needs to be 'mod'.

If it was no-copy / trans via your own rule it would now be copyable since they had 'trans' permision and trans would enable them to copy/paste it.

Personally since having cut/paste privledges gives 'full' privledges on the body of a written text i think the only way to use copy/paste should be full perms. But thats up for another debate.

If you could copy from a notecard with only mod rights, then you could copy it into a new notecard, and distribute it as you pleased. This defeats the entire point of having a 'transfer' permission on notecards. Thus, 'trans' MUST be required for you to copy text out of a notecard.
Subsuming 'can copy text from notecard' into the 'modify' permission is IMO a bad idea as it makes the entire 'trans' permission on notecards into even more of a joke then it already is by implementing an obviously bad "solution" to a serious problem.

The idea that more then just "transfer" should be required, though, is a serious idea.

For example... there is a strong case for making "copy" also required... because after all, if copy isn't required then people can easily make copies by using cut/paste. Even though these copies won't have the original creator.... they are still copies.

There is also a case for making 'modify' required, because part of the point of the 'modify' permission is that by unchecking it you can stop people making derrivative products based on your work. With copy/paste and notecards, people can clearly do this... so there is a case for requiring the modify permission also.

Put simply.... I've come to realise that we need to require ALL permissions on a notecard in order to copy from it, for the simple reason that if we don't, someone can copy the text out of the notecard and paste it into a new notecard. Put bluntly, copying the text out of a notecard into a new notecard gives you ALL permissions on the new notecard - so, doing it should logically require having all permissions on the old notecard.

Two other things...
1) We should be able to embed notecards with limited permissions into other notecards.
2) We need to seperate 'view' from 'modify' with regard to notecards. Sometimes, we do want notecards that are readable but not modifiable. Why not make 'modify' on notecards equivilant to 'save changes', and just *assume* that if someone has a notecard, they can read it? Atm, modify permissions are required to read a notecard - but... why not make modify permissions NOT required to read a notecard, and just tell people not to give others notecards they don't want those others to read? Why have a completely unnecessary 'view notecard' permission built into 'modify'.... which serves no purpose as you can just choose not to give the notecards to those people you don't want to read it anyway?

Permissions on notecards need a serious rethink, IMHO.

Lets look at this from a Unix permissions perspective:
Read
Write
Exectute

The third doesn't make any sense for notecards, so we'll focus on Read and Write.

In a Unix system if you can read a file, you can copy it.
Read -> Copy

In a Unix system if you can Write, you can save over the existing file.
Write -> Copy

We have transfer, which isn't in the Unix system because it's based on the permissions of the folder (if you can write to a folder you can put stuff in it), so in essence, for notecards, if you can read it, you can transfer it. After all, even if you can't copy/paste the text, or send the notecard to someone you can still TELL them about it.

So, notecards:
(These are in "if [] then [] (and [])" form)

[x] Copy implies [x] Transfer (reverse of objects)
[x] Modify implies [x] Copy & [x] Transfer (you need read it to modify, therefore you can copy it)
[ ] Transfer implies [ ] Copy and [ ] Modify

If all usable objects were +transfer, it would destroy the economy very quickly because people wouldn't buy things anymore. We need *more* protection against piracy/etc... not less.

Baen Books has been publishing online EXACTLY like this, and making a lot of books free as well, for some years now.

It increased total sales, and the authors who put books up in the free library got increased sales from their books at other publishers as well.
This doesn't seem to have happened to Baen Books, or to the people who publish in the DRM-free side of Fictionwise.
Screenshots and optical character recognition.

You're getting it backwards.

The idea is that you wouldn't be able to copy from a notecard unless you had mod rights.

No matter what you do the current set of permissions for notecards is just not adequate. We need the 3 permissions currently in existance to have an optional 'advanced permission' button that can open up more in-depth choice of flags based on object type.

Note cards could have seperate additional permissions for copy and paste (yes seperate). That way you can choose that you might want someone to have the abiltiy to just type into a notecard WITHOUT being able to multiselect. (random example).

Regardless the first three adv settings need supported by all inventory types are

Can change mod perm.
Can change copy perm.
Can change trans perm.


These three is what would effectively allow for the desperately desired Creative Commons etc features (among other thigns). So you give an item away with full permissions. But you remove the next owners abiltiy to change those. Now any derivitive works they create using your creation as a base can only be given away with full perms protecting your intent of it being a open source item.

Ok since this is getting far off the 'simpler' topic i'll not go into further details. But the whole permissions system needs overhauled. Maybe the people who just finished up the group management code can do permissions next?

Indeed, the object permissions system does need overhaul.
There are a few things that need fixing, both with the way permissions work (remove modify permission inheritance, split the resell and transfer permissions, allow creative commons licencing) and with notecards (allow printing and saving of notecards, stop people pirating written works in notecards, add search/replace tools for text in notecards/scripts, etc).

I wonder when LL plan to work on upgrading the permissions system?
Personally I like the idea of expanding the idea of 'roles' as much as possible, for example , having a fine-grained role-based permissions system to replace 'friends' list, and a fine-grained permissions system for push (up for voting).

Mmmm, I wonder when 'permissions' as a general item will get on their TO-DO list.

1) I've never heard of Baen Books. If the tricks they use were really so successful, why hasn't, for example, the music industry adopted them? After all, they pay a lot of people a lot of money to figure out how to maximise sales - and surely they jump on Baen Books' business model if it could be shown it actually does increase sales?

Can you provide a link to a respected, independent source which verifies the claim that Baen Books has increased total sales using this method?

2) Sorry, but I simply do not believe you when you say that authors who make copies of their book availible free in a library get increased sales, for the simple reason that if someone has a free copy of your book, and a friend asks about the book... are you, as their friend, going to redirect them to a store to buy it? Or are you going to send them to the library to get a free copy? I think almost everyone who liked their friends would send them to the library, with the result that while lots of copies of the book would get read, very few would get sold because everyone would just get free copies. The reason for this is simple - if you hear about the book from a friend, and the friend can easily direct you to a free copy, then being their friend they probably will and this increases readership but kills sales.

3) As for screenshots and OCR - well, security is never absolute. If you want to offer a usable service you have to accept security compromises *somewhere*. The point isn't making copying impossible - just a lot more difficult. If you make it a lot more difficult to do unauthorized copying of copyrighted works.... then very few people will bother to copy them. If you make them easy to copy - many people will copy them.
This is why we need copy-protection.

This is insane.
You're acting like the people who rebelled and destoyed (some) of the machines in the industrial revolution, because the machines would take their jobs/work. They were right, the machines did take most of their work, but the only thing they could do, is adapt to the changed environment.

You should do the same, too. Working DRM with text (or anything) is an illusion. And if I pay money for a text, I sure expect to be able to print it out, quote from it, etc...

Another example: a few months ago I ordered a DVD from Amazon.com. I paid for it! Real money! It arrived, I put it in my DVD player, and... it said: sorry, this disc is region 1, your DVD player is region 2.

Is that fair? And it's just one example of DRM in action...

BTW, it fits nicely in this thread for me to admit that I have borrowed the book 'Snowcrash' from a friend in RL a year ago or so, and I read all of it, then returned it to him. I didn't ever pay for the book.

So that makes me a thief, I guess

One question : did it state on amazon.com that this was a region 1? If it did, then it is entirely your fault, for buying something without checking that you could use it. If on the other hand it did not state this, I would resell the disc "as new" and use the funds to buy one which *is* compatible with your player.

Nobody forced you to buy the DVD. Nobody forced you to buy the player either. You chose to. You did read the information about it before buying it, right?


I think people have 'reasonable use' rights to RL books - they can resell their only copy of one, for example. They can loan them. This applies because :
1) you have bought the book, and therefore bought the rights to do various things with the book, including resell it, or loan it.
2) buying the book is NOT the same as buying the information in the book. The book you can give away to someone else - you then lose the ability to use that book. The information... if you give it to someone else you can still keep it foryourself too.

I'm not in favour of *forcing* people to use copy-protection on things like books. That would be silly - there are many cases where books, and information generally, are not very vulnurable to copying.
What I am saying is that we need to give content creators the ability and right to stop people copying their works if they choose to, so long as this is obvious to buyers before they buy a copy of the work. Books aren't so easy or productive to copy... but, say, what if I had a very short document, say... 1 page long, that was very, very valuable. Say, it contained a list of important passwords to other things I own. Or it contained some brilliant new creative idea. In those cases, copy protection makes sense - because someone can retain the use of the idea even after giving/selling the notecard containing it (unlike, say, a long book which someone can't just remember the whole of).

I'm not in favour of forcing everyone to use copy-protection. In many cases, copy-protection is counter productive. What I am in favour of is allowing people to use copy-protection on things they create - because there are some classes of things, such as short stories, password lists or similar which aren't economically viable to sell without copy protection, simply because people can copy them whilst retaining their use.

Yes, I should've guessed that it'll be me, the paying customer at fault
Yes, amazon.com stated that it's region 1. I didn't have any other options: this particular DVD isn't available in any shop in the world, it's a more rare piece.

I agree that it's totally my fault that instead of going to ThePirateBay.com and downloading a warez edition, DVD rip of the movie (for free), I chose to pay for it.



Well, welcome to the digital age, lol.



If the text is very valuable, anyone who'd like to copy it needs to just hire a cheap text typist to transscribe it. Again, if the text is valuable, copying by retyping (or OCR) will be relatively cheap.

But it's the concept that hurts more, you're saying to your customers: you are thieves, therefore i restricted all your rights to this work, be happy that you can read it AT ALL.



The practice is that if you let anyone use strong copy protection, people will use it irresponsibly. Everything will be 'maximum protection', just because people are greedy.

PS: Theoretically I could accept a kind of 'content protection system' that doesn't put a paying customer in a disadvantage to a copying person.

Eg. if someone downloads a DVD rip, he can make a backup of it, use it on his Video iPod, PSP, etc.
If someone buys the DVD, he can't transfer it on his iPod, PSP etc.

But of course there's no such system.

The nature of technology is that it empowers us to do things we could not do before.
Some of the products of technology are good (cars, clean water, computers, etc), some are bad (nuclear weapons, some "medical" practicies I don't want to think about, etc)... and some are in between.

In this case, machines are not taking over the actual work - they're simply making it easy to copy the work. It isn't a case of adapting to the technology overtaking you, it's more a case of fighting against people who use technology to steal what you've already done.


Being a paying customer doesn't make you always right. In this case you bought something you knew (?) that you couldn't use.

Companies do stupid things all the time, they always have. If the demand for the DVD is there they should bring it out in more regions.



So.... because we can't really stop people stealing stuff, we shouldn't even bother trying to stop them?



Most customers are good. The problem is that there are always some bad apples and if left unchecked they can put you out of business.

Are you hurt by the fact that police forces exist? Or do you accept the govt's justification saying "there are some bad apples, we need to have police because of the bad apples, not because of good people like yourself". Police, and laws, limit your rights. They stop you doing things. Where I life, they will stop you if they see you carrying a weapon - something that *could* cause harm, even though you may be a perfectly good person, they have to stop people who carry weapons because to do otherwise would leave the bad people free to ruin things for the rest of us.


Of course some people will use copy protection irresponsibly. There are some people who use *everything* irresponsibly! Anything that exists is abused by someone, somewhere, at some time. People can also be greedy by nature, too. SL is prone to this - lots of people abuse SL (ever heard of 'griefers', for example?).
The question isn't "will some people abuse this", which is always answered 'yes' for pretty much anything you can name. The real question is "is this a good idea"? and I think that without copy protection it just isn't financially worthwhile to be a writer in SL, because people can always pirate the efforts of your hard work.





I'd love it if copy-protection software allowed you to take your content with you. But, unfortunately, it doesn't, and it can't. If it did people could easily break out of the copy protection software and the entire point of copy protection in the first place would be useless.
I agree with you - it is a pain in the ass sometimes. But... without it, content creators simply wouldn't create the content they create because they'd know they have little chance of getting paid for it. I'd rather have the content, even if I couldn't take it to another computer, then not have the content at all because the maker decided it wasn't economically viable to make it due to the rampant piracy.

Oh, and what's the advantage to you of paying for a copy-protected DVD or whatever over just copying an illegal one? Well, not much, seeing as you won't get caught for breaking the law and stealing because there were no other witnesses.

Similarly, what's the advantage to you of respectfully disagreeing with someone you meet on the street late at night, over just punching him and walking away? Well, not much, seeing as you won't get caught for breaking his face because there were no other witnesses.


You see my point? The criminal justice system isn't perfect. Copy protection isn't perfect. The criminal justice system exists to protect society from the bad apples. The copy protection system exists to protect against the bad apples. You can break the legal law and the spirit of being a good person... without getting caught. So why shouldn't you? Well, if you care more about getting stuff for yourself then you do about being a good person, go ahead. But, on the other hand, if you believe it's more important to respect the rights of others even when you lose out by doing so... then you may see my point.