Copy protection for Notecards (authors/writers/publishing)

On the subject of copy protection, try reading : http://www.bricklin.com/robfuture.htm
- it makes some very good points about copy protection being bad for the preservation of useful content in the long term.

On the one hand, if content producers don't get paid for their work (and without copy protection, they can't make sure they will be) - then why should they create it at all?

You can rely on the fact that many people are honest and will pay for your work... so you don't need to use copy protection. But, if you do this :
1) you have to live with the moral wrong that some people out there are ripping you off and there is nothing you can do about it.
2) you never know if you'll be able to break even let alone make money because you never know if your pay will evaporate tomorrow from people copying your work. You live in constant uncertainty.
3) Your customers can find this out, and once they do... they know they have you - they can get your product without paying for it, so either you have to be nice to them and persuade them to pay you, or you have to reclassify the product as a charitable cause, or you have to abandon making the product.


It may be because I'm a writer, and don't like the idea that customers effectively have a choice about if they pay for my work after having read it. I know it's good, I know it's worth the money... people tell me so every day. But I don't feel comfortable with the idea that *all* the money I make from writing completely depends on the goodwill of others. I want a more secure foundation then that.

Maybe the best solution is to have a system like, say, patents.... nobody else can copy your work (and if they do, they should hire a lawyer, fast!) ..... but after your patent runs out, it becomes public domain (at which point, you don't care about it anymore).

But how would that work with computer software.... would it require a government vault of source code with a release date on each file?

You misunderstood what I meant. I was talking about Notecards and ONLY notecards. The implied permissions of objects remains as [ ] copy -> [x] Transfer.

Besides, with a notecard, what kind of piracy is there? I've yet to see a notecard that I buy FOR the text inside the notecard. Last I checked notecards were instructions and information about events, objects, and services. Any "books" I've seen have been objects with textures for pages.

I would suggest that the reason all books so far have been image-based and not text based is that even a small child can see how to copy plain text file. Images, while ceertainly copyable, require a little bit more technical know-how. No one is going to make any effort to make a book available in SL until the copy protection mechanisms are at least sufficient to stop an average five year old child.

I should also point out that if the Lindens are serious about providing an open protocol to accessing SL, the illusion of "non-copyability" will be obviously impossible anyway. If bits get sent over the wire, they're sent. The only way to keep people from copying things is to keep it off of hardware they possess. Providing tools that let people pretend otherwise is a bit silly.

(And even if LL's stance on the protocol/viewer doesn't change from the current situation -- all this is still true. It will just take a little more work with a packet sniffer or such.)

That happens with DRM, too, because all DRM gets cracked after a while. And yes, with paper-based book, all those ppl who lend it to friends rip you off, too.



Well, people are living their life not knowing whether they'll be in the job next week or next month. People who start companies never know they'll be successful or not, they're taking risks.



That doesn't sound too bad. Being nice and telling them to pay.



Well, then just release it in a paper book format. Sure, it's a shrinking market and you'll not reach the billions of ppl you might, but at least you feel comfortable. But still expect to see your book in a russian illegal book site for free download in days after release, if it's widely successful enough.

But I sadly don't have any sure receipies for how to sell written works without DRM. There are tons of ideas (street performer protocol, etc. etc.), but I dunno which works.

All hope is not gone, though, for example, there is a small internet radio that works without advertising, with only listener support to pay it's multi thousand dollar monthly bills (which include RIAA fees and wages): www.radioparadise.com

All I know that if I pay money for a work (book, music, etc), I want to be able to enjoy it wherever I wish: be it on my iPod, palm computer, Linux system, etc.

Well, actually, I could use the DVD. I hacked my home DVD player to be regionless, to be able to play the DVD I payed for. I know, this is a criminal offense, lol, how ridicoulous



They should, yes. Though maybe the demand is less that what ratifies a 5000 DVD press run cost. But this is very typical: customers getting the short end of the stick, just because they live in a place where the market is smaller. In the digial age, this shouldn't happen.



Both sides deserve a satisfying system, but it seems it inherently can't be done.
Let's say SL implements a notecard type you wish for. People start buying your works, some might even spend a few hundred USDs on protected notecards... Then a database failure comes. Or Linden Labs goes bankrupt and SL dies.

What would happen to all those ppl? Their valuables would be lost, since they can't even back it up or print it. Imagine all your real, paper books on your shelves have a life of only 4-5 years, then disappear. I think that would be annoying, and it would be so annoying you'd forget about the 'it's more important to respect the rights of others'.

All DRM is prone to this. Once technology shifts, the customers lose, and have to buy everything all over again, if it's even available, because many times it's not.

DRM is not eliminating any risks. It just pushes the financial risk to the customer.

I totally agree with the importance of this proposal. Good work Angel! From my point of view this could be as simple as just fixing the Copy permissions which right now make no sense at all. What use is a notecard no one else can read? If No Copy meant you couldn't copy the card and you also couldn't copy the contents of the card to the clipboard, this would make total sense and solve the problem. Surely this is a pretty simple fix, Lindens? Modify could still let you make your own notations, changes etc. and save it back to that card but if Copy was not checked you couldn't take information away on the clipboard. Give Away/Resell would continue to act like any other object.

Has anyone thought of bringing this proposal to the attention of the few writer's groups in SL? I'm sure they don't know about it. It took me quite a bit of digging to find if as I was thinking of making a similar proposal.

SL definitely needs a way to allow people to publish text and still retain some intellectual property rights. Fixing Notecard copy permissions seems the simplest way to do it. Tell your friends

There aren't many books that I read again 5 years after reading them once. For those that I do, I'd be willing to pay extra to do this (I'd think, hey, I can get the ones I only read once cheaper, so it makes sense to agree to this).
The stuff I write is 60% about the workings of SL. If the grid goes down forever, my writing has GREATLY diminished value. I don't think customers would complain, as if the grid was down they wouldn't be able to use 60% of the product anyway, and the other 40% is mostly stuff that can be learnt and remembered.

Once technology shifts, content producers should (and in future, will be able to) exchange a copy of their product in the old format for a copy in the new format. Or just decrease the price of all copies because it's assumed you might have to rebuy them later.
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Wally Bertone, you should read this :


It appears that LL don't realise that it's not about making it impossible for people to copy, but rather, simply making it not trivially easy! We can't hope to stop determined pirates, but we can substantially reduce the amount of piracy by requiring full permissions on a notecard before text can be copied from that card.

I've been reading from the Baen Free Library for YEARS. The concept was put together (if my memory serves be correctly) by author David Drake. http://www.baen.com/library/ His story on why he created the and the same facl and excuses you're giving he dealt with when bringing up the concept. Most of the objectors by the way had their opinion changed when they saw the ultimate results. ANYHOW, I've discovered many good authors from the Baen Free Libray and went on to PURCHASE MANY MANY MANY of their other works from Baen's store as well as fictionwise.com and traditional brick and mortal establishments. In fact there are at least 5 authors that I've found wher eI purchased ENTIRE series from them. We're talking series that contain anywhere from 5-20 individual books. At $4-$6 USD a pop.... yeah do the math yourself. But then again, I could have just went to the library and checked the book out for free. But wait, that would be stealing and theivery. The poor author is going to starve, oh no!!! Please. If you're so worried about copy protection and your work being transferred, then wirting abook is probably not the field you should be in. I've given ENTIRE boxes of books to friends. Especially when I converted my library to ebooks. Got tired of lugging around a truck load of boxes full of books. So yeah, I guess I'm a no good, thieving bast--- making poor authors starve to death because I like to share and pass around their great works. Hell, many of the people I given a book to got just as hooked on the series as I did and went out themselves and purchased their own copies of the series.

so instead of being asked to be spoonfed.. go out and try the library yourself. In fact I think you may even be allowed to submit your own work. Of course if it's up to the quality of being worth reading in the first place. Or hell, you could even be the next Stephen King, Tom Clancy, Anne Macafferey for all we know. Only one way to find out. Quit bitching and turn that energy into producing viable work. O which is a concept I just got from the current book I'm reading (of course downloaded from the free library too). In fact the author is captivating my interest and I may just be hunting for some more books by them. For sale or for free, doesn't matter to me.

It's a text file. You shouldn't be publishing books a Word documents (that is, selling the .doc file), it's rediculous. If you DO release it in a digital format you go for something that isn't so easy to copy: a PDF. If the PDF gets distributed by someone for free, it's still the same PDF.

What you're trying to do is rewrite Notepad (is and always will be "if I can read it, I can copy it" here when what you REALLY want is a medium to distribute text that has some for of protection against copying, but is easily editable inworld.

OK. any and all references to "libraries" or "loaning your book to a friend" are moot. Neither rob the author of any income as THE BOOK WAS STILL PAID FOR. And at any _single_ point in time only ONE person has that book. As for time frame where you are worried about data loss most books that are used DO go bad after a few years. Thats normal. I have about a half dozen series (each between 3 and 12 books in total) that i've purhased MULTIPLE times. Cause i buy a book i want to read. I read it. Couple months later i read again. I usually end up giving it away as a present or donating to a library.

If i evver get in the mood to read that series again (you HAVE ever watched a movie more than once right?) i am perfectly happy to go purchase them again. I'm supporting something that i REALLY enjoy and its worth the extra cash to me. Its a product that the creator DESERVES to make a living from. I saw Matrix 1 in the theatre about 4 times because i went to see it with seperate groups of friends while it aired. I saw the LOTR trilogy twice in the theatre for the same reason. I also have purchased the DVDs for each multiple times for myself and gifts.

Content that is good is worth virtually any price.

Now back to libraries and how this relates to permissions. If you purchase a book from a store you must put a LOT of effort into making a copy of it. Painstakingly type the entire thing out, or manually scan a p age at a time and end up with it in a format that is not true to the original.

Now with SL and a (no-copy) advanced flag that effects the ability to copy/paste the contents this holds up EXACTLY as it does in real life. With a book being forbidden from copy/paste you have the exactl same requirement and hassle to duplicate the work (steal it). With a transfer flag and a (normal) no-copy flag this is the exact same as 'loaning the book' to a friend. Actually its LITERALLY the same thing.

Having copy/paste permissions on the other hand is like giving them not only a copy of the book, but giving them a printing press, infinate supply of paper, binding and ink and the encoded data needed to run the press. You're not givin them the book. You're giving hem the rights to resell said book with no developement or manufacturing cost and only being paid the price of a single hardcopy edition.

Pheonix is flat out WRONG in their position on th is issue. Notecards need to be handled differently than other inventory items. Period.

Phoenix isn't WRONG, you can't--with digital data--completely separate read and copy, it's been that way on *nix systems from the very begining. Try it with websites that have copyrighted pictures and attempt to save it. No matter what kind of java script or whathaveyou going on, I bet I can still get at the image by itself.

What we need is not to change how notecards work (in terms of permissions), what we need is a notecard-like asset that once transfered is a single item. Uncopyable, Unmoddifiable, Unselectable. One--very easy--solution is to allow notecards to be saved as a series of textures (series so that a notecard with 20,000 words isn't one texture 10,240x256 pixels (made up numbers) and completely unreadable, but rather 40 textures 256x256 pixels).

It's not the best solution, which would be to create a new asset that could be called "book" and is edited by the creator as a notecard, but when sold/given away acts like a book does in real life.

Pheonix is wrong in that writing by hand or packet s niffers is a valid excuse for not protecting notecards. Hell EVERYONE knows that you can use external programs to save ANY texture you want. But they still take the time to code an explicite feature where you cant 'save to disk' a texture without full perms. You can VIEW it. You can use it on objects. But you cant save it directly (effectively cut/paste it). Notecards deserve the same treatment.

- edit - (clarification)

My point with all was also to discredit that pictures should be used as an alternative (NOT to discredit a seperate inventory type). Just send this new inventory type as text and make it display non copyable. Among other things text takes less bandwidth to send and another thing everyone knows is LL sucks at bandwidth management. Dont need yet another ineffecient implimentation.

With all due respect, Phoenix Linden's position is untenable. It is not trivially easy to copy a book. It is technically possible but not trivially easy. And not usually economically or physically feasible. Saying LL won't separate copy from read because someone can sniff packets, etc. just doesn't make sense. With this logic, why copy protect anything in SL? Scripts? Textures? Why does it make sense to allow me to copy protect a bracelet or motorcycle I make but not a book I write? To me it just sounds like a rather lazy rationalization for the rather sloppy status quo.

So what if it's a text file? A basic pdf file (before they started adding encryption stuff in newer versions) was also just a text file with markup not contextually disimilar from html. A pdf file is nothing more than a text file with markup and a viewer program that doesn't allow cut and paste options unless the author has allowed that option. And yes, some of the PDFs I possess were written with that allowed.

Yes, I guess this is approaching the "reinvent the pdf file" stage if you want to be pedantic, except without any provision for forms or markup in the file. So what. SL is also reinventing IRC, paper doll, file sharing, web browsers, and a few other pre-invented things. One more can't possibly hurt.

1) I'm not asking to be spoonfed at all. Whatever gave you that idea?
2) I'm asking for LL to add a few lines of code to the CTRL-C copy function that refuses to copy if the text selected is from a notecard which you don't have +modify, +copy and +transfer permissions. If the copy is not allowed, a dialog box should pop up explaining that the creator has specified that his/her work cannot be copied. It's a small code change which should be very little work. It would make a great difference to my confidence in using SL to sell my written works, because I'd have that nice feeling that comes from knowing that my work isn't so easy to pirate that a 5 year old could do it.


You can't completely seperate read and copy. But you can at least stop some blatent copying, and SL can notify people when they try to copy a no-copy work that they shouldn't be doing this.
Personally I don't think that saving things as textures is a good solution, because it's easier, more convenient and simpler to just add the option to notecards to stop their text being copied. Doesn't require adding a new type of object and all the code that goes with it, either.



Completely agreed.
LL take reasonable steps to prevent obvious copying of textures in SL. Ok, you can still copy them, but at least the creator's intentions are clear with textures, even to those people that try to copy them the easy way.
LL should, if they're serious about encouraging content in SL, apply exactly the same thing to notecards - allow us to stop them from being trivially copyable, too.

It's a solution that is simple, probably easy to code, doesn't increase bandwidth usage substantially... and is generally a good idea.



You've got it.
Currently, notecards are trivially copyable by any 5 year old. Textures aren't. You can use external programs to copy textures, but it's a lot harder then selecting them and hitting CTRL-C.
If LL is serious about honouring the intentions of creators with regard to what can be done with their work, then they should treat notecards like they treat textures - if the creator has stated they don't want them copied, then it shouldn't be trivially easy to copy them!

We can't stop people who're really determined from copy them, but we can and should extend the same basic level of anti-copying protection to copy-protected notecards as we extend to textures. It's relatively easy, fair and consistent to do so.

Oh, I thought you were lobbying for writers distributing work (novels, poems, etc) in SL in general.



This is stupid. Content producers (well, most of them) will be nowhere by the time the customer would need a format change. The customers is probably out of luck, his/her money down the drain.

And of course they won't decrease the price, who would, that never happens.

I faced this in real life, too: I tried to go into a bookshop, to buy a (or almost any) Stanislaw Lem books (in my local language, not english). There aren't any, I was laughed at. Then I looked at the national local web bookshops, but with not much luck. They all say 'hey, Stanislaw Lem is no longer trendy, so noone has it, not even in the warehouse'.

Even though I would've payed for it, and I was interested in it, I couldn't get the book.

Well, okay, gladly there are antikvariats and libraries, which, as a last resort, help in these cases, and they luckily did.

But how will your (or any other writer's) novels get into libraries? How will all these DRM'd stuff get into libraries? How can someone get them from libraries for home enjoyment (or even, 'owning'?

It seems the technology is out there -- ALL the books ever written, ALL the films ever played, ALL the music ever composed, ALL the broadcasts ever broadcast can be held in digitized form in a room less than a size of an mid-size apartment today, yet we make newer and newer obstacles to block ourselves from making it happen.

Well, if this is your only problem, add a text to your notecards, to make your intentions clear:

That won't help. Nobody ever reads copyright notices. They consider stuff like that boring (and it is). What would help is if when people go to copy the text in a notecard they lack full permissions on, a dialog box up comes up that says "the creator of this work has copyrighted work has prohibited its copying. If you wish to copy it, please contact <object creator name>". That would be actually useful.

Not knowing the law doesn't free anyone from the consequences. Not reading a copyright notice doesn't lessen the violations (and probable punishment).



No.

The only acceptable thing (but this is the absolute maximum) if a dialog box came up, that said 'You may only copy this text for personal use.', but would still let the user copy the text.

Why? As I said, I sometimes like to print out stuff, so I can read it on the way, or away from my computer, or I would just want to copy it out so i can read it 'offline' (you don't have ADSL everywhere). As people are, I don't know 2 weeks ahead what will I choose to copy or print or when. Therefore, if a dialog popped up saying 'please contact the creator to print out this text' (and wait a week), I would say f**k.

In SL, where we cannot even be sure known griefers will be caught and banned, what chance do you think content producers have of stopping content piracy? None.

Personally, if this copy-protection system were in place, I would imagine that 95% of notecards would be distributed with copy/transfer, and probably mod/copy/transfer, permissions, because most people *want* their notecards of information to travel around (e.g. vendors).
I'm not opposed to printing notecards, I think it's a great idea. I just also think that we shouldn't allow people to print copyrighted ebooks, because that gets around the copy protection.
Realise, if this were implemented, I hope the only people using it would be authors who'se work you shouldn't be copying anyway. This proposal helps to enforce a pre-existing author's right to stipulate what people may do with their work. Just as, with objects, the creator can stop you copying them, transferring them, etc, with notecards, authors should be able to stop others copying/printing/etc their work.

The books in the "Baen Free Library", and in fact every book released through Webscriptions from Baen Books, are completely unprotected text in HTML, PDF, and a variety of handheld reader applications.

The music sold by eMusic is unprotected MP3.

These are not "analogies" with libraries or loaning your book to a friend. These are real working examples of digital distribution of works without protection that actually work.

And who cares if you want to print it out? Your purcase price DOESNT INCLUDE THE RIGHT to print it out. No matter what you WANT its not what you are getting for your cost. In these cases your desires do not matter. The only lisence you get with the purchase is to read it. Thats it. Just because you _want_ to do something that you are not allowed to do matters not. Tough. Deal with it.

They also CHOOSE to distribute it in that manner. Many other places are not so lenient. Its a choice. Not every author chooses that library. And the title "Free library" generally implies pathetic security. Its FREE after all. Still a very invalid point for what the intent of the original poster is trying to do.

Aham. So the needs of the customers (like me) are irrelevant.
Thank you. I sure won't be spending money on content producers with mentality like that.

Good vendors should ensure that their customers are happy and that they are satisfied. What I requested (printing) is nothing out of the ordinary, it's an everyday (any day) case, and it's just one.

I'm beginning to realize people who sell with DRM (or restrictions BEYOND what LAW specifies!!!) are bad vendors, bad content producers, who don't care sh*t about their customers.