Your prim/texture business is at risk no matter what, and CopyBot has no effect.

Hiroko and Io, both of your posts could not have been more on target and are at the very crux of the copybot issue. The vast majority of the people condoning, accepting and defending copybot are scripters and non-talented/creative souls whose scripsts are either not at risk, or who carry so much subconscious and in many instances conscious, disdain toward creative artists that they can't help but emphatically voice their approval/defense of copybot while in the same breath undermining the huge contributions made in SL by these talentet prim and texture artists. This has been a common theme in every single copybot post intitiated to date.

My only hope is that LL is not of the same mindset and actually makes a real and concentrated effort to protect EVERY SL creator's IP rights, be they prim builders, texturers or scripters, by diligently countering every introduction of any copying tool into SL by unscrupulous hackers to the very best of their ability.

I can't speak for those defending CopyBot, but as far as those "accepting" it, there's another reason (and this has been mentioned before on a different thread): Scripters, especially those who are programmers IRL, have already been having our creative works pirated for years. Many real programmers and software companies have actually had to accept the maxim that "if they're determined enough to copy you, you can't stop them" for real, and had to adapt around it. Most people know someone who has used a pirated piece of software or whose kids have pirated a game. In SL, scripts are safe from CopyBot - but equally they're the only thing where someone can make a script that does exactly the same as yours, sell it openly, and not become a social pariah as a result.

Well, no, this is inaccurate. It may feel like a text file sitting in an object, but under the hood it is code running on the server. There really is a basic difference in that the effects of a script can be seen by a client without the data needed to replicated the script itself being sent to the client. This is not the case for prims or textures. When you open up a script in an object in SL, the server is sending the code to your client. The code isn't sitting there somewhere on your client until you open the object and look at the script. In principle at least, a script in SL can be as secure as your bank account details are, when you do your online banking.

Although I may have been incorrect describing it has a text file, you are also quite incorrect if you assume your scripts are as secure as you seem to.

Do you know why you can no longer reset scripts in no mod objects? Because they had to change it to patch a potential exploit to access scripts that they became aware of after copybot. That was a stealth patch that they didn't draw attention to, for obvious reasons.

I'm still not sure why the belief that LL is somehow responsible (or qualified) to protect IP rights is so common.

The permissions system probably only exists because LL realized that if it didn't exist, noone would ever want to create much content in SL because copying and reselling would be rampant. If that's the case, then it exists solely for LL's benefit because it provides a sense of (false) security to content creators. Copybot never exploited the permission system either, it recreates rather than copy. The end result might be the same, but it's still something very different and why it required fiing a DMCA.

If you find that clicking your heels together three times before you rez something gives you a full permission copy of whatever you rezzed and you resell that, then LL can ban you not because you infringed on someone's IP, only a court can determine that, but because you broke the rule that says you won't deliberately bypass/break permissions.

Since you retain IP ownership of anything you create/upload to LL, you're the one who has the burden to protect what is yours and to seek action against anyone who steals your work.

All it takes is another full permission exploit and someone can do just that. If you have the script, and it is full permission (or you could make it), then all you have to do is open it.

With the last exploit, it was the scripters who were shouting the loudest on the blog about all their hard work potentially getting stolen, cause all someone had to do was copy/paste the script off-world and LL's attempt to reset the proper permissions would not reverse that damage.

I'd say thats a pretty accurate realization.



Well then, let's see if I got this right. So because it re-creates my exact prim item, with full permissions, rather than copy it, with full permissions, it is therefore not a copy. Yet you end up with a copy...erm, a recreation...of my item, with full permissions, but I should feel better because it is a recreation and not a copy, and I get to file a DMCA.

Oo - kay



Yes, and in the meantime, my item becomes an overnight grid wide freebie. Great consolation prize it is for all of us l



I have my $300 per hour attorney standing by to represent me and my $1.50 per copy creation. And guess what, he only charges $500 per hour for court appearances. I have that covered. No worries there at all I tell you.

Textures have always been Easy to Copy by a Variety of Methods (With the exception of Avi Skins) Textures have always been the most Vulnerable Commodity in SL, and Be Honest, Most of those great textures have been Appropriated from Websites, or resources for Programs like Poser, Bryce, Et Al by people other than thier Creators.

I had someone complaining once after i Uploaded a Few that i had stolen the textures From them. I asked them if they were (XXXXXXX XXXXXXXXX) From DAZ Studios, when they Denied it, I told them that i had as much right to those textures as they did because we BOTH Cropped and Copied them from ~the Same Source~ (At least I took mine into PS, and altered them in ways to make them Better adapted to my use in SL, AND I never sold them Or told anyone they were my own work).

The Only way to stop Unauthorized use of Textures would be to Imbed a Watermark. Of course this would have the effect of having the textures Creators name all over whatever object you are creating, BUT at least the textures would be safe.

Angel.

Scripters tend to "accept" copybot because they tend to better understand the limitations of technology.

A real-life analogy is the entertainment industry. Even the most sophisticated copy-protection mechanisms used by the music industry can be easily defeated by the pimpled-faced kid with his measly tape recorder.

So what's the point? The RIAA and MPAA are forcing the industry to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in DRM technology, even though we all know it's futile. All just for show -- to "appease" artists and "industry bosses" who don't know any better -- at a great needless cost for all consumers.

What many designers and texture artists (and musicians) are asking for is simply unrealistic. That doesn't mean Linden Labs shouldn't take some steps to prevent the most blatant forms of unauthorized copying, but it has to be understood that whatever protections can be put in place, it will be defeated with little effort.

It's been a month after copybot and the world didn't come to an end, despite the mass hysteria.

So the next time YOU burn a CD with your favorite MP3s -- or listen to them on your iPod -- you will know better.

-peekay

Musicians, digital artists and now photographers all have had to deal with theft. Some of you make it sound as if this was unique to software developers and fyi not all SL scripters are RL programmers. I also really resent this attitude that we are all thieves and now we are "learning our lesson" well not all of us steal everything. And comparing Madonna or Adobe losing a sale to some person sitting in their basement at their computer losing their meagre little SL earnings is BS. Not even close. One can absorb the hit the other cannot.

They are? *gulp*. Good job I have the lingerie buisness to fall back on...

In all seriousness, _nothing_ in SL is bulletproof; just like first-life, if you have a good, profitable concept, somebody out there is going to rip it off; scripting just adds a couple of extra hurdles, but nothing insurmountable. The only way to keep on top of the game is to innovate. Sure... people are starting to rip off my lucky chairs. My answer to that - the MobVend. It's huge; another killer concept... in fact, the buzz around MobVends is probably bigger than the lucky chair phenomena right now. By the time mobvend clones appear, I - and my customers - will be onto the next big thing.

(that's not to say I won't bad-mouth those who rip off my work. Somebody is open-sourcing Lucky chairs? How kind of them. It's nice to be rewarded by the community for having a totally unique, innovative idea, isn't it? Do you think you could maybe open-source tringo, sexgen and bloghud while you're on with it? ...those designers have had it *far* too good for too long... )

The trick with staying secure in SL - whether you're making clothing or scripted goods - is to be a moving target. Innovate - don't commoditize. Yes, scripting gives you a bigger head start - but that's all it is; a head start... a delay for the people trying to copy you. If you get yourself a reputation for quality - the kind of thing that has people queuing on your doorstep on the day of release - well, that's golden. Originality is what really matters.

"Talent Borrows, Genius Steals" - Oscar Wilde

"...and Shit copies." - The Designers Republic.

The problem is that originality doesn't scale too well.... In other words, it's not clear if enough people are having enough original ideas for the number of businesses active in SL at the moment to survive.

I've been playing almost a year now and there has never been a time when scripts in no mod items have been resetable. Just ask those people with those old starax wands or whatever they're called.

There is an Open Source alternative to Sexgen, it's called Multi-Love Pose. You can get the script in the Script forum here.

It isn't as feature rich as SexGen and doesn't include the one thing that sells SexGen. The animations.

I think you could if you went to edit the item then went to tools 'reset all scripts in selected item". It would allow you to reset without viewing the script. I think though that it was cause the SCRIPT was no mod...not sure about the OBJECT.

I dunno about tringo, but both sex gen and blog hud have had their open source equivalents for quite a long time. (MLP, and Ordinal Malaprop's blogging thingie) In both cases it's not the script quality that offsets the commercial products, but the added value of extra content and services (animations for sex gen beds, blogging web site for blog hud) ... which, ironically enough is the very thing scripters tell the other people to do in order to maintain their business in the sea of copy cats. (provide your customers with extra service and benefits)

I specifically used the words "In principle ... can be as secure ...". I am well aware that exploits may happen.

/139/e5/149985/1.html

http://forums.secondcitizen.com/showthread.php?t=5673

That is correct. I don't know if it can be got around by making the object modifiable.

Edit to add I was in a lot of pain last night and was probably very unclear the way I was posting. God knows I was cranky.

Well why doesn't someone go to my shop and buy one of my items...that would be a good "modifable Object" test. ^_^ The items say no mod but that is for teh scripts ONLY and the object is mod...so should work.

Sorry couldn't resist the plug.

So is this an indication someone cut class when they were teaching Sex Ed, or is it the world's worst pickup line?

I think Hiro put it a little strong, but the basic message I take from all this is that things are going to get more competitive in SL - assuming it keeps working

Since unlike RL, SL products of all sorts can have behaviors, my expectation is that people will expect more and better intelligence in most things they buy.