Making inappropriate copying more difficult

Double meaning flag!

Kris.. you DID not try to speak the words that HE does... "please delete this thread"???
No.. no.. say it ain't so. I had such high esteem for you before now. Take them back.. please.. take those words BACK!!!!! Back I say! Back Back!

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

And I'd want texture/color to be seperate.

Basically, Cory, no permission should ever display the / character. Ever. EVERYTHING should be seperate.



I think that they're probably aiming for Havok2/3 in the next iteration of their graphics engine too. They're probably just rebuilding from scratch, rather than trying to patch the one we have now.

Yes I like the seperate options myself also.

Physics are/were being rebuilt from the ground up for havok 2 and probably would be also for 3.

Now! Look over there!

*quickly grabs the wheel and stears this thread back onto topic*

Seperate options please!

/me walks over to the embers of the discussion with a cup of gasoline.

This topic is all about copyright and protection of IP. But just as in the real world, there is a flip side that affects the end user. As a consumer, one of the things that concerns me is privacy. What if someone put the equivalent of an RFID tag in their script? Shouldn't I have the right to know if I am being monitored in some way? There is no regulatory body watching out for my a$$ here is SL, so I want the tools to watch my own. For example, if I attach something, I would like to have the option to have it tell me what functions might be hidden in the scripts even if I cannot see the script itself so that I can determine the relative safety of an item.

Any thoughts?

Screw the "but", I can't care about permissions when SL is basically broken. Hey, I thought FIXING the BUGS was the priority! Or was the bug fixing thing all a huge joke by LL.

Add to scripts:
- not possible to remove from no-mod object

Actually, this applies to any item within a object's inventory.

Azelda

Another perspective:

As mainly a buyer it is dependent on what the object is you are working with.

My first house as a newbie I built it was a box.

My second house came in 7 pieces totaling over 120 prims. While trying to assemble it
so that the door faced the opposite direction I unlinked it. I would never have
contacted seller whining, hey I unlinked it made a mess of it learned some things
tossed it in the trash. Brought another one identical style from same creator unlinked it again was more careful. Made it look like what I wanted; it was basically a template for me that’s why I bought it. Moved and got rid of it.

My third house was a $1 bungalow LL sells for newbies unlinked it built and added a second floor and an extension on the back. Changed the textures had my partner build
A stair case (not a copy of someone else’s).

My fourth house was built from scratch by my partner who likes to do everything from
scratch anyway.

The thing is I won’t buy some objects that are not modifiable… and often will pay more for
A modifiable object than for something I can not change. Oh and I never resell stuff so
my view is a little different.

Things I will not buy if not modifiable (unless I absolutely loved them):
Houses Furniture Plants Textures
(for the most part pretty easy to make on your own)

Things I may or may not buy if not modifiable:
Clothing (can make these but a little more difficult) won’t spend a fortune on it unless
I love and frankly you can pretty much make your own one of kind fashions.
Here its A matter of loving the designer. Never copy these why bother…but d

Things I buy that are not modifiable:
Animations
Scripts
Some heavily scripted objects (guns, cars, boats etc..)

As for copying also dependent: Two bushes one cheap say 10 Lindens / no copy/ no mod/ no transfer/ another 40 Lindens for a bush that was copy / mod and no transfer.
I bought the copy /mod and no transfer because it meant I could cut down on the
mumber of prims in the bush and make the hedges I wanted for a quarter of the cost.

Don’t really care about transfer or resell…

I create heavily scripted aircraft. If it were possible for the textures to be changed, It would be nice without giving full mod. I don't want any scripts being added to them. Nor do I want them delinked. I don't want the scripts viewed, modified or removed. I don't want the textures sounds, and scripts to be copied. Just allow retexturing.

The ability to allow retexturing, and scaling, without giving full mod permissions seems to be the high point in this thread.

It seems to me, that, adding those permissions as separate permissions, would satisfy most builders and Consumers in SL.

I also like the seperation of modify permissions being proposed here. But in terms of GUI and the ensuing number of requests for seperation that may result from the change, why not have the permissions interface merge with the primitive editing interface? Have a checkbox next to everything in the object tab that, when checked, states that the next owner will have the ability to modify and see that value. Ill attach a picture of what I mean.

Also, seeing that the current interface really blows when you want to make a change to many items in bulk, why not include buttons to "check all" in a particular group of permissions boxes.

Cory,

You know that everything mentioned so far in this thread is merely a stopgap measure?

The number one rule of MMOGs is: never trust anything running on the client.

It's almost certain that objects are stored on the client as a linked list or array, and that each object is a class or structure. It would be pretty trivial for someone to set an object's parameter, for example x scale, to an esoteric value, and use a memory scanner to locate where that parameter is stored. From there it is jeu d'enfant to deduce the storage structure, and hence read the parameters of any object.

Whilst this sounds like a lot of work, only one person ever needs to do it, and build it into a utility that does it for you. Such utilities exist for example for Everquest (http://ethernalquest.com) and Diablo II (MapHack etc).

In the long run, trying to secure objects and textures within the client is like building a sandcastle as the tide comes up.

Off the top of my head, there are five approaches to get round this:
1. ignore the issue, hope it doesnt happen
2. use an OS that provides security against memory scanning
3. adapt the game logic to what is possible, rather than fighting against it
4. degrade the data before sending it to the client
5. something else

Option 1 is a non-option
Option 2 is not currently viable, because both Windows and linux do not offer such protection. In any case, I'm not sure it's even theoretically possible, because it's sufficient to either directly hack the OS, or run the OS in a VM.

Which leaves options 3, 4 and 5:
- adapt the game logic to what is possible, rather than fighting against it
- degrade the data before sending it to the client
- something else

Azelda

[P.S. You could probably secure the client if you owned the client, ie it was something like a dedicated console that you leased out, something like a cable tv decoder]

Edit to say: one way of working around this issue would be to provide a mechanism for registering an object in a central copyright, or similar, system. Then, if another similar object is created, it would be fairly easy to make a semi-automated system to check how similar the two objects are.

Rather than selling the object physically to someone, you would sell a licence to use your object. Well, you could provide the physical object too, but in any case the core of the transaction is the granting of a licence to use your product.

Since the licences are stored on the server, it's easy to secure who has a licence and who hasnt.

YES!!! Don't understand why you can even open a no mod texture in a mod prim



YES!!! That way we can remove stupid scripts and add our own (which is always better)



NO, don't want anything hidden, a No Mod Notecard should not be able to be viewed or removed anyway.

Just my thoughts, the most important thing is the textures, no reason they should be shown when they are no mod, they should appear as a no mod script, black!

Yes


Depends on the item. To a buyer the no mod should be ok for the majority of the time.

On the other end of the scale, I don't think there's enough objects that are mod-able. If I buy something IRL, I can rip it apart, re-build it, change things, etc. In SL, that ability isn't there with a lot of things (vehicles in particular). If someone breaks something they bought from you because they didn't know how linking works, that's their own fault, and vendors should say "If you unlink this and it breaks, tough luck", much like how it works in the real world. If I buy a DVD player, re-wire it, and something stops working, I can't take it back to the manufacturer and say "I re-soldered the main circuit board and now it doesn't work, fix it under warranty", they'd just laugh at me.

So, in short, I think the existing "no-mod" permissions are too restrictive, and that people who try to mod things and break them should be told up front that they'll get no support in that situation.

I change my mind. I like this suggestion betterer.



Well, I think if the person doesn't own a copy of the texture in their inventory, then they shouldn't see the texture when they go into Build mode. But yes, obfuscate UUIDs too.

And prevent scripts that copy and overwrite the creator's preset permissions. And that take over the creator tag altogether.

I think that's perfectly reasonable. It's also reasonable to pay extra for a modifiable version of a product. For some things I'd pay double to get the modifiable version. No I don't mean paying double expecting help from the creator if I break it.

What I'd really like is to be able to buy a version of a product with permission to modify and copy for my own use, but iron-clad no transfer. I mean huge safeguards against duping. Dupers spoil games for everybody else.

The content creators in SL don't earn what their time and talent would be worth in a RL content creation job. The least LL can do is protect their works. Then they won't worry about some cheater messing with that product, maybe changing it to say made by so and so, or maybe messing it up, but reselling it with the original creator's name.

We need built-in checks using information on LL servers to make sure there are no unauthorized copies of anything. Sure that might be more cumbersome to the purchaser, but if creators aren't protected they'll just make things for themselves and their friends, so the would be purchaser loses out too.

You should also add creative commons like permissions, like forced sharing (the copy, modify and transfer bits are always on, which allows gpl like licences to be enforced), no commerical activity(you can only sell items for $0 (the selling function allows for a useful box of stuff extraction)), no derivative works is already implimented, and attribution which adds an enforced history of who created/modified the work. Maybe you can also add to the history a granularity of major and minor edits.