Is open source a threat to designers?

This is somthing I've been thinking about for a while now. With SL going open source, is a new, all powerful copybot just a matter of time?

I've been making and selling clothes in SL for a little while now, I'm learning as I go and pushing hard to make my business a success. Could it be that pretty soon all my work, and the work of every other content creator, will go to waste? Is it possible for someone to write a bot using the open source code that could be used to steal anything?

Vale

sure, that's a possibility, and it prolly has already be done.

HOWEVER open source isn't a bad thing really. It shorten development times and in the SL case harness the power of the open source community to Linden lab's interests, and ultimately my and your interests.

By the past SL has seen many and many of these "non threats" thrown by panicked peoples.

90% of internet's server infrastructure is running on open source softwares, that can hardly be a bad thing.

Well, as a general rule I'm a big fan of open source, os software tends to be much cleaner and more stable than most commercial software with the added bonus that people work on it for love not money.

But, if you take a look at the landbot thread on this forum, not all 'the sky is falling' threats are false alarm. Lanbots really are eating up all the cheap land, being able to get a deal isn't possible in SL anymore because of bots.

If LL really are giving full access to the entire library of user-created content to unscrupulous developers, then we might have a serious problem. Imagine what SL would be like if the only people left in business were land barons and casinos.

Does anyone know if LL have said anything about this possibility? Have they said if there is a threat or what they'll do about it should it happen?

Vale

I was told someone was going to make an "eyedropper everything" SL Client with open source. Just for the sheer spiteful hell of it.

One thing's for sure- when all the content on the grid can be harvested with two mouse clicks, it kind of eliminates one of the big arguments for not running multiple grids on private servers worldwide. Who's going to care about their creations being secure on some "European Life" alternative SL host, when it's all been ripped off already?

There always has and always will be a way to steal content. The problem isn't the newest method of theft, the problem is theft. If your tooth hurts, do you take a pain killer or see the dentist? Prosecute the theft.

Everybody is telling things, but nobody is knowing for sure.

Open Source does not mean that there will be a huge breach in security. Sure it is possible, but also it is possible that I will be a millionaire within the next few weeks.

So sorry to rob you of your illusions of security already, but what stops somebody from buying your things and just recreating them? You all are aware that the 'Eyedropper everything' is already possible? It is called 'Screenshot' and 'Gimp'
All it takes is a little patience and a Sandbox to recreate the primstructure. Did nobody already see this as a threat? I am aware that this can happen to my creations. And... well... to be honest... it will take a considerable amount of time to do so with everything you want, but are to cheap to buy.

It all boils down to greed. Do I buy this original, great, sweet and wonderful thing for myself? 250L$? Boy.. this one... same thing... hmm... 50L$? Could be a copy? Naaahh... saved 200L$, need it be more original?

So.. if the customer does not support the original creators (within reasonable proportions) by paying the set price.... thereby honoring the time and love spent to create the... well... original merchandise... what can you expect?

I am so sorry for ranting and babbling, but I had to say that.

Sounds like a great idea.

Whats the plan for this? Is there a blog entry?

Open source was what convinced me to not even try to learn how to make decent clothing. I still make prim objects, but mostly for my own pleasure, ad if it gets sold its a bonus. I've moved my money making activities into areas which aren't affected by threats of content being copied.

As far as worrying about copy bots, I hope to keep a bit ahead. I am always thinking of something new. Wouldn't you have proof on your computer in the date ofthe photoshop file to go after a copier, protecting yourself from copiers?

I am hoping that open source will lead to us being able to upload content made in Blender, Wings, or any other 3d modeling software, and us finally being able to break through the prim limit. It may not be so easy to copy an item that is not a collection fo prims. *Pauses for a moment to sigh blissfully at the thought of extruding and object, rather than using 8 prims to build it )

Open source is good. The bad is that there is no effective way to enforce intellectual property rights on Second Life.

I'd guess that there are very few, if any, designers who make enough money from their creations that they can afford to take legal action against those who steal their works.

Here is the DMCA info as listed on the website here:

http://secondlife.com/corporate/dmca.php

It's surprisingly rather informative. Probably because people have been ripping things off from the internet for a very long time.

Cost is not how one determines the original creator of an item. I've seen people sell things that I know cost $25 from the original creator for $100 or more. And the original creator can't do a thing about it because they sold their original item copy/transfer.

I sell my items no transfer to try to prevent people from doing the same to me - but technically, people who wanted to take the time could recreate my items and sell them for more than I sell them for. You would recommend buying their rip-off items because they cost more and therefore must be the originals?

*chuckles* so, potentially, LL's policy of protecting people from copybots is requiring them to use DMCA.

.. lovely.

I suppose it makes sense.

Sounds like designers are going to need to be very organized so they have documentation on their creations.

Searching such a massive grid to stop copiers seems pretty daunting.

I guess a lot like the internet.

I wonder if this will lead to lower prices to reduce a copiers incentive. Or to designers raising their prices substatially , and then not botering to police what happens to the copies.

Clothing is actually safer than prim objects. Textures can be copied, but only in Second Life's built-in compressed format, which can't be uploaded again. Converting it and then uploading it again will mean that it is compressed for a second time, reducing quality.

I have at various times seen the couches I made at Tiger Lilly's from various freebee parts for sale for $50L or $100L. I had left them free to copy becuase they werent my creation and many of the ladies liked them.

Its easy to tell becuase when i made them i didnt know anything about angles, or even numbers , etc. Resulting in Couches that were slightly crooked. These "queer couches"were pretty popular (it was a lesbian club)

That was my immediate thought, but I didn't have the detailed facts to support that contention.

Copying a prim-based object is fairly easily, although if it's a complex build the time to do so may be very time-consuming and involve the expense of buying the correct or equivalent textures.

Basically, in any digital world (virtual or otherwise), the best protection against theft is the hope that the labor of copying something simply for personal use isn't worth it.

As for someone unscrupulous enough to copy and then sell, SL is still small enough that residents will probably notice a prim-for-prim knockoff and disdain the seller. If not, you just have to hope that there is a large enough customer base to support both and make yours the better value with customer service.

I don't understand how open source will change that equation.

As a proof of concept, a friend used a certain piece of software to grab the skirt texture I had made. Granted, there was probably a little loss of image quality, but not really enough to matter as far as selling another skirt made with a texture pirated that way.

Clothes are just as vulnerable as anything else in SL to someone who wants to steal your content.

Actually, that may only apply to skirts. I'm not entirely sure whether or not clothes worn on the body are baked locally or on the server. That makes a big difference to how safe they may be.

Several people know for sure, or close enough as makes no difference... I think I have a pretty good idea what is and is not possible through the open source viewer and libsecondlife, and I am not the most well versed person on either of those.

Yes, it is possible to steal all kinds of things in Second Life, and has been for a very long time. We don't see more of it happening for all of the reasons people have outlined above, and in the other 10 million threads on the subject.

To expand on your point...

The true cost of becoming successful in SL has more to do with marketing and sheer labor investment than it does in creating one specific piece of cothing. Stealing a clothing design gets you nowhere unless you're willing to put a lot of effort into selling it too.

Regardless of where you get your stock, you make money in SL by creating marketing tools (signs, boxes, notecards), buying floor space, taking out ads, and then building up enough inventory to draw people into your store and keep them coming back. Anyone who takes the easy route of stealing designs is not very likely to be willing to do hard work.

And if they do the hard marketing work, their clothing designs will be noticed. Which, when you're stealing, is probably not a good thing.

Ironically, I think the most popular designers are the least vulnerable to theft. You can copy a Blaze design, for instance, but you'll be hard pressed to equal their reputation and advertising clout. People who want high quality clothing will know who the top designers are and will shop there first. These designers also have a very recognizable style and residents will notice if they see one of those designs with another creator's name.

Even trying to spread the damage by copying one or two designs from a variety of designers would be weird, because you'd never develop a style of your own that would attract a steady clientele.

All in all, just because theft is possible, it doesn't mean that it will have a meaningful impact on the original designers.

That is my belief too. The open sourcing has already had the problems i predicted. Griefers have already made hacked clients (ShoopedLife) to allow them to bypass banning and spoof IPs/Mac/hardware... I've already seen work in progress of people being able ripoff the UUID of other peoples textures and sounds. It's only a matter of time. I was hoping that someone would make a productive SL client that would allow us to have our own Custom Interfaces that we can skin and alter to look better then what we are forced to see with the official viewer. However this has not been done.

In fact i have seen no productive clients created. The only client i have seen created was ShoopedLife... Which i do not recommend anyone using because it steals account information. I decided to use it for testing purposes, and to report my findings to LL. I made sure i used a unverified alt, and sandboxy to run it. Within a month, that account was closed. So stick with the official client ALWAYS! It's the smart thing to do.

So what i am saying is Nobody has to my knowledge yet used to open source client for good purposes. Do you see any downloadable clients out there that offer anything better then the basic one? I sure don't. And i don't particularly trust anything that isn't official. Unless someone plans on making SL 2.0 with improved and better everything you won't be getting me to try it. I want to see havok 4 on it too.

You can get textures out in a usable format. The upside is that they're flattened - any layer info that the designer used will not be there. That is, they just get the end result, not the pieces that went into making the texture.

This was possible long before the client went open source.

It's the difference between "it's possible if you know how" and "everyone can do it, right now, with one mouse click".

Maybe I should leave my house doors unlocked- after all the windows are easily broken, so unless I start putting up the steel bars, anyone can get in.

Part of the problem is that if you have the latest version of Visual Studio, you have to do quite a lot of patching to be able to use the source code. Also, instead of keeping a repository running or providing "diffs", Linden Labs release their updates to the code in single monolithic snapshots - meaning that as soon as there's a new version, all your changes are basically lost (as is your ability to build on the latest VS, unless you go through the whole patching process again). www.opensecondlife.org apparantly used to keep a pre-patched version but it hasn't been updated since the 20070126 version a few months ago.

The basic result of this is that everyone's focusing on adding features that will be approved by the Lindens, instead of taking the viewer in their own directions - because if your new feature doesn't get included in the Linden provided code, your viewer's future will be an endless struggle to keep it maintained against the tide of new Linden versions.. and you won't earn anything by your struggle, because your viewer has to be open source. And thus people seem to be keeping their changes to relatively small things like patches, bug fixes, and optimisations that will help, but won't rock the boat too much. In the current system the likelihood of there being a new client branch with spectacular changes is extremely unlikely.