Stealing Second Life

Since there's been some talk about OpenGL interception lately, I thought I'd give it a go, namely to see how feasible and easy it was to rip stuff right out of Second Life for use elsewhere.

The simple answer is that it's not all that difficult. The longer answer is that it's childs play to collect all the textures from Second Life, and it's childs play to capture the 3d data itself, though using the model definitely requires some cleaning work, in that it captures just about everything you can see and some you can't - I stood on a platform 250m in the air to capture my avatar model, and managed to capture whole buildings down on the ground in the next sim. Oh and it captures all the terrain geometry too. Funky.

So just to prove a point, I stole this chopper bike by the very lovely and very talented Francis Chung and re-rendered it outside of SL (very quickly, I might add. I wasnt going for a masterpiece, just proof of concept! )

So, there you have it. It's something to consider. Something that isn't going away. Is it a good thing or a bad thing? I guess time will tell when we see how people choose to use it.





Edit: I changed the picture for a better render. The other one was just embarassing

I hope we aren't looking down the barrel of an arms race of SL-DRM.

As the existence of "grab the bits off of the audo D-to-A chip" drivers have already shown, if you can listen to it, you can duplicate it. Put another way, the only truly effective way to keep people from copying CDs is to put them in a microwave oven.

By extention, if your computer can display it, you can copy it. The only limitation is the applicable motivation.

Looking good, Kris! For a quick capture job this sure do looks great.

Love the reflections.

Indeed. The only real difference is that up until recently it wasn't possible for Joe Average to do it in a single keypress with little to no knowledge!

i think this is the thing you're talking about, no?

http://ogle.eyebeamresearch.org/

last image shows a still of a Second Life dragon on the far left, and then the same dragon rendered in another program.

Well... THAT'S the reason why SL has been getting slower and slower -- it's loading stuff way outside of the viewing distance.

It's always done that from day dot, chances are it culls some in the client and not all on the server. It's just a shame the cache appears to be so meaningless.



I'm not sure OpenGL capture really means that much does it ? Sure we can rip the vertices and textures but you'd have to remake the model as prims for it to mean anything to SL. And textures have always bean dead simple to rip ( easier than audio actually! ). You could do this by intercepting any graphics driver OpenGL or DirectX if you have the skill. Once someone puts an app out to do it there's not much we can do, it's like Introvert said. If it can be done it will be done. Creators just need to keep their ears and eyes open for pirating just like we've always had to do in the software industry. My company actually tolerates a a small amount of piracy, it's good for business believe it or not! Something the music industry hasn't learned. ( not as if we could stop it anyway )

Depends. No, as far as models are concerned, prolly not a lot of use for rebuilding an SL product in SL (though it can be done).

But it does allow you to reuse your creations elsewhere, or even use SL for prototyping models etc. I got so used to working with prims I used to be able to build something in SL way faster than any conventional modelling software.

But the main topic regarding capture has been around getting SL objects made in real life, like, your avie on a keyring, so that's another potential use.

Of course, a more nefarious use might be, say, capturing parts of or an entire sim, textures et al and transplanting them to, say, Activeworlds

And of course, it'd be remiss not to mention this is effectively one-touch texture theft for the masses. Sure, we're only talking about those already predisposed to a lack of morals or ethics in this regard, but it just got a whole lot easier, nonetheless.

Like most technology, it can be used for good or for evil

This is a powerful thing.

Once the data is stored outside of Second Life, the most powerful application will be a script that can return the data TO Second Life. One asset server glitch could destroy a product I spent a month creating.

After a texture upload / uuid -> table, I can see raw file data pasted into notecards, and 're-interpreted' back into prims with a script. Not hard to do.

Of course, that would mean anything in World of Warcraft or quite a number of places can be ripped, dropped into Second Life and sold.

At least until a few people are prosecuted for it.




For my part, I want off-world data storage. I'm tempted to rip all my stuff right now, just in case. I've already downloaded all I need to get the job done - it only took that one image above to convince me.

Not sure if I feel like bothering to script up a translator for the data and a prim generator though, but if I wait, someone else is bound to do it. If it hasn't been done already.

I was thinking of one possible solution: upon every texture upload, the texture could get a special watermark (very very small noise) in the SL system.

From that on, wherever the texture goes, the watermark follows.

Once someone saves and tries to upload a watermarked texture to SL -> alert and log! Probably a silent alarm would do better, since it would make it harder to identify and test the watermarking algorithm (though not impossible).

Yes, maybe some people might be able to remove the watermark, but it would probably catch most of the ppl.

And implementing this would be easy: just the upload handling code would need modification.

someone on teh scripting forum already coded that script translator. it takes a .obj and outputs a text file, which you then import into SL and run as a script. it rebuilds the .obj in world.

the problem with it is that each face of the .obj is rebuilt as a separate prim, so even a simpel model out of world could potentially take thousands of prims to rebuild in world. tens of tousands even. sim author says it's crashed his machine and brought a sim to its knees when the script tried to rez like 50,000 prims pretty much all at once.

the thing is, it actually works.

...waiting...

were you expecting one? what would it be? 'oh we'll stop using opengl immediately!"

Don't forget three cheers for Jared Godel for publicizing this so effectively and letting every greifer and otherwise nefarious resident know how to do this long before a fix is available from Linden Labs.

It would have been foolish to keep quiet about it wouldn't it?


That being said, LL does have a fix is in the works for stamping textures, and the OpenGL vertice stealing could be considered the off-line backup that everyone has been asking for since forever.

Linden response:

Not sure how "proving first use in SL" is any kind of fix for combating texture theft.

For example, about a month after I came to Second Life, I found a piece of artwork in SL that I recognised rather well - since it was an original work by me from several years previous. I used to also find textures in use in SL that I created originally for other resources. No, I didn't upload them to SL first. But I sure as hell have every right to use them if I want to!

If I have to upload every little texture and piece of art I ever published on the net or in any other resource that could potentially be ripped into SL so I can "prove first use" it's gonna cost a lot of Linden Dollars

The only time it might help is as an extra verification for the Lindens should someone be AR'd for misuse of a texture in SL that already exists elsewhere in SL, but then most of the time its going to be pretty obvious who did it first without anyway. And it certainly shouldnt be the only and indisputable measure of the 'winner'. Don't think that people wouldn't have the cheek to AR someone for using their OWN textures... it happens. Trust me!

Did that feel pretty surreal? I always think it's kind of a jumble emotions when a creator sees their work in a place they didn't expect to. And what happened next? Hopefully your "fan" was respectful.

Yeah. It was kinda a 'woah' moment. But in a previous life I did a lot of artwork and had websites that provided textures and stuff. There's a lot of my work out there, so I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised.

What did I do? Nothing. It didn't really bother me. It would bother me if we had this 'first proof of use in SL' thing, though, which sounds like a very bad idea if you ask me.

The "proof of first use" would still be overridden by your RL creation of the artwork; the matter from that point is a simple copyright infringment claim.

DRM and such won't do jack, but a lawyer might.

Point one, it would have been foolish. Now that Francis Chung sees how easy it is, he can decide to either copyright his textures, decide it's not worth the effort, or decide that the cost of theivery in Second Life is too expensive and go texture for another game. To paraphrase Dr. Weir, "This would still be happening whether I exposed it or not."

Point two, there is no "fix" for the problem. This is not a bug, a hole, or a cheat; this is how OpenGL works within your computer's memory. This is essentially routing your speaker wire into a microphone jack to bypass iTunes DRM -- oops, there I go again. The only way to "fix" this is for Linden Lab to watermark each image when it gets formatted through their JPEG 2000 libraries; that'll eaither put an ugly LL on every image or they'll use some kind of stenography to embed dates within the image -- the latter would be cool because it'd be both invisible to the naked eye and prevent people from just reuploading an exact texture.

...or Linden Lab could go the Sony route and install spyware on people's computers that would disable GLIntercept. That, though, would kind of blow the hypothetical secondary market of 3D printing, though.

Point three, spell my frakking name right, Diana.

Point four, Jeska, just ignore my email. Kthx.

I'm assuming it's ok with LL since they're linking sites for it in the Fan Sites section.

What part of there being nothing LL can do about this do people not understand? They could rewrite the entire client to render with a proprietary engine rather than using OpenGL. But short of that, the best they can do is provide data to support someone's claim that rights belong to them.

From the inworld perspective, despite past concerns, people are still selling avs that clearly violate the trademarks of companies such as Disney and TimeWarner. LL knows this; but is rightfully of the opinion that companies should discover these infractions and take action on their own behalf. Why should LL go out on a limb to help them? It's not their responsibility. I'm sure they'll provide data to Disney et al when the time comes, just as they've offered to us should we decide to pursue a course of protecting our own texture copyrights.

I still don't get why it's considered oh so cool of people to talk about the ability to capture wireframes and steal textures, as in the this thread, but oh so wrong of Jarod to talk about the ability to capture wireframes and steal textures. Well then again, maybe I do get it and just want to give people more credit than that.

Oh and thank you Dianne for prompting people to go search for a locked and buried thread so that they can learn to do this. It would have been foolish to keep quiet about it wouldn't it?

I own/operate a web-based company selling original textures. Like many SL residents and/or store owners, I have the similar problem of finding my textures being re-sold inside SL. I have been making textures since 1999 and have found over 500 of them (some present even after a take down demand) being offered for sale in a rather large, previously well-respected texture store in SL. I am hurt, angered, irritated, and most of all, financially impacted by this loss. I am angry that people are people and that people will lie and steal.

This particular store owner has been in SL significantly longer than myself, and the concept of LL taking a stance of "first use" is disgusting to me. My company has been existence on the internet, in two forms, as of 1999. The works I found in this offending texture store are works of mine that are up to 7 years old. If Linden Labs were to determine that just because this or any other store owner uploaded my textures before I was a resident, and therefore they have first rights to it, I do believe I am not the only one who would be tempted to challenge Linden Labs. My membership-based site has tempted several people to re-peddle my works in SL, and it clearly violates my EULA. I will not let LL protect these thieves by saying that since they uploaded my images first that it is deemed to be the thieves' work. That concept is simply unconscionable to me, and presumably to others.

Instead, I propose a different type of watermarking system. Perhaps it could accompany the alogrithmic watermarking system previously proposed by Zonax Delorean. In my proposal, the texture previewer window would automatically watermark every image with a faint SL logo, which expands or tiles as an image is stretched within the preview window. The watermark would go away as it is transferred onto an object. This would at least prohibit the less technically inclined residents from screen-shotting the open texture, even if it has full permissions. You know, the concept of "keeping the honest people honest." Those more technically inclined folks will still find a way to circumvent any protections put into place, but thankfully those people are likely less prevalent than the less technically inclined.

Texture theft will happen. It is infuriating for all of us who have experienced this. It is certainly something which needs to be seriously addressed by Linden Labs!

ty for bringing thos post of robin's forward. It will be great when people can protect their textures from misuse and theft (or at least, have means for proving the theft).