The Alphaville Herald

Exploit!!! Transfer No-transfer Textures!

by Pixeleen Mistral on 01/11/06 at 10:32 am

How long has this been going on?

by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk

Jesseaitui Petion is begging LL to fix an exploit

“I mean, about an exploit – its against TOS to give details; meanwhile I feel these texture creators need to know- I’d be PISSED if my tats were transferrable suddenly and no one told me”, said Jesseaitui Petion after convincing me that there is an exploit that frees no-transfer textures from the ties of Linden digital rights management. While Jesseaitui first reported this problem last week, the Linden staffer he demonstrated it to could not duplicate the problem – but KiKi Miranda and Jesseaitui Petion were both able to demonstrate the exploit. I am sad to report that I can still duplicate this problem 6 days later.

Metaverse residents who create and sell content depend on LL’s DRM to keep their commercial bits from flowing a little too freely across our world’s e-commerce super-hypeways. After all, why buy in-game objects or textures when you can get them free? Content creator’s concerns about this attitude would seem justified – so one might think that reports of an exploit that allows transfer of content set to no-transfer would mobilize the Lindens to protect the credibility of their “your world, your imagination” marketing theme. The reality according to Jesseaitui Petion is somewhat different.

Jesseaitui Petion: Yes, well the linden I IMd replied back to me right away
Jesseaitui Petion: and came out to try it
Jesseaitui Petion: But like i said they couldn’t repro it
Pixeleen Mistral: the weekend Lindens are at the bottom of the food chain
KiKi Miranda: lolol
Jesseaitui Petion: so it seems as if they don’t care

After getting no Linden Love for his trouble, Mr. Petion posted to the Linden Answers forum on October 29th. On October 30th, Torley Linden asked for details. After e-mailing Torley, the results were not promising. Mr. Petion reports,“Torley said he tried it on his non linden account and could not, Torley claims to be picking up this set of textures to test it- But it is happening with ALL of my no transfer textures, not just these”.

Will content creators turn their backs on LL?

Finally on October 31st, Mr. Petion IMed me with with some good news, “Torley was able to do the transfer [***exploit details deleted***], so he said he was going to get it worked on asap.”. I hope Mr. Petion is feeling better now. When I left him monday, he was disappointed with the combination of island price hikes and sluggish responses to exploits – this has him considering his options. He told me, “I am personally looking for alt ‘games’, they have advertised this as a safe place to run business yet they are not doing anything to protect creators content or seem like they care”.

Whether it is simply over-taxed Linden staff brought to its knees by their PR-induced surge of residents or the apparent Linden policy of running skeleton staff on the weekends, this sort of reaction to a leak in the DRM of Second Life is troubling. For now, we suggest that running a business selling no-transfer textures is unlikely to help you buy a new island – or cover tier.