The client and server have to agree on the protocol between them. If you have the client sources you have the ability to create a server.

this doesn’t mean it will or won’t happen

in theory, after all, anyone could have written their own prootcol, client, ans derver, and set up an OS version of SL at any time. Buuuut…. that’s a lot of work for something that won’t be compatible with the standard, which is SL.
sooo….
knowing the protocol is important of it’s own.

Justa, when will you come out of your mom’s basement and blink in the bright light of the real world instead of the artificial tribal conformism of your Internet social software networks?

It’s more than fine to come with a sign to a townhall. I didn’t disrupt shit. A giant dragon with huge numbers of prims comes and knocks people over and lags the sim to a halt — in fact TWO of such creatures come, knowing full well that it is good practice not to come wearing huge amounts of prims attached like that. Yet no one tells him to leave.

Dozens of people are calling out shit and Squeebee is calling out stupid shit about Cory being hot and her being available blah blah blah — and that’s ok? Why aren’t they ordered to shut up?

Some idiot spoofing my name shouts nonsense about “My tenants” — he isn’t removed?

Many people shouting, pushing, cat-calling, and cross-talking are left alone.

I, alone among avatars, standing at the back of the room, not shouting, not pushing, just responding with a line or two of very pointed and true cross talk — like the fact that the Lidnens need to sell scarce servers for $1695, not $0 as a money sink for first land, and I am booted for telling the truth. That’s what it’s about. That’s what it is always about. Meanwhile a thousand fucktards stay on the server.

What is uber annoying is that through this entire debate, each time we try to get at the social and political implications, we have to endure one of these tiresome harangues about the technical means in which the copying is seen and done, as if this fait accompli of the physical capabilities of the system must rule us.

But it need not rule us. I only have one word for you: Napster. Did people get sued and harassed by companies over downloads? Yes they did. Did Napster morph into a for-pay system today? Yes it did. Did everyone think the Napster Golden Era of Unlimited Downloading would last forever? Yes, they did.

Obfuscation is indeed one way to prevent it — and there is a case that even tekkies make for obfuscation in the small population setting of SL.

The analogy I like to use about this is the door lock. Door locks are utterly pointless in SL. Tekkies can sneer that they are hacked and that people are stupid to even try to use them. Some landlords never explain to tenants that they are hackable with the cubes and sitpos and offer in their ads “secure this and that” and “user driven security systems” as if these notecards with somebody’s name in them can prevents camera zooms and prims being sat on. They can’t.

But…so what? It’s not just that “obfuscation” works because each new generation of newbies flying around and griefing won’t discover it right away. It’s that it works *good enough* for many people. Their friends push on the door, find it locked, don’t bother them. A newbie looking for a rental sees it is locked and moves on.

Any of these people could cynically use sit-pos — they don’t. So while it is patently stupid to go on using locks, people ask for them, use them, and enforce them as a kind of signal of peer pressure.

The noir, narf-narfing nihilists natter on about how people are retarded for trying to hide behind a bit of script that doesn’t protect them (only security orbs, banning, or possibly turning off the move-objects will work). They think that if something doesn’t work ONE HUNDERD PERCENT and has that 30
percent flaw in it, that it’s pointless to use the device. This is stupid and dense thinking on the tekkies’ part which I always try to get them to see is illogical. Just because you can’t do EVERYTHING doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do SOMETHING.

Indeed, armed with at least a symbol generator that says “leave me alone,” people get something done. So if it works in 70 percent of the time or even 30 percent, it’s good ENOUGH.

In the same way, people expect that more moderate, rational approach to the security problem of textures. Forcing people to master complex copyright law and actions and precedents is cruel, when you first lured them into an enabling environment where they were led to expect that code-as-law was already present in the permissions toggles (good example of how code-as-law is never enough).

What’s AMAZING to me about all this is that Cory Linden, who believes along with libsecondlife that we have no security for our textures or copyright and we should be stoic and resigned to this reality and there is no technical relief then turns around and urges everybody to use social pressure. We’re to count on a prim diva to peck out a thief’s eyes for us if our dress is taken. Great concept.

I’m not trying to say I’m on every side of the issue. I’m trying to get you to drop this droning about the literal means by which CopyBot works to rise your head up above to a higher level to examine the social and political ramifications.

Heaven forfend if anyone invoke obfuscation, even a tekkie, because they will have committed a great sacrilege, but it is arguable, and is argued. As are other interesting aspects to this problem –

Prok, try actually reading my damn comment. All I’ve said is that there is no technical way to limit things like content theft. Meanwhile you’ve hopped all over the place and without knowing you better I’d swear you were trying to claim you were on every side of the issue.

Quit it with the ad hominen. I wish I could say I was young, and even more that I was half educated, but alas I can claim neither.

But I do believe in debating the topic rather than the debator.

And on some research you seem to make this “marxist” accusation repeatedly. It answers a question thats puzzled me since my university days in the eighties as to where the marxists all went. They now live in the metaverse it seems!

Right on comrade.

There is NO “community”. The avatars are NOT people, any notion of Second Life or a similar program being a “world” in the traditional sense is absurd.

Welcome to the truth Prokofy – there is no such thing as a free world – period. You want a free world? Go take down a government somewhere and begin to slowly destroy any and everything that protects you from those you see fit to criticize.

Until you are able to see the basest and purest facts regarding computers, the dangers of allowing yourself to lose that barrier between what is REAL (IE: The person sitting there, reading these words on the screen) and what is FANTASY (IE: Your Second Life Avatar, a character in a game, your online personage, and all other forms of data, ideas, et cetera that the term “living Being” cannot apply to) then quite frankly you don’t deserve to have access to such a dangerous medium.

I do find it interesting that you skipped right over the fact that suicides and far worse have been committed over simple text on something as base as a message board or chat room. But what should I have expected? If it doesn’t fit in with the way you see the person you are responding to, you ignore it.

As to your banning – you were banned for knowingly bringing an object in that could start a riot or worse. It is that simple. If you are unable to grasp a concept, do not post on it, do not attempt to criticize others who have posted on it. In fact, until you know what is going on or what you are talking about – don’t bother attempting to read it.

Telling someone to go study international law …. Hmm, last I checked that has nothing at all to do with the client becoming Open Source. Now someone suggesting that you go out and learn the coding scheme being used in the Second Life client is perfectly relevant – they are telling you that instead of complaining you can actually DO something. That is the way it works.

In the future, please refrain from putting some socio-political spin on a simple opinion and do not place words or ulterior motive where there is none. It tends to backfire – case in point, my OPINION on the way the internet should be run.

See what I mean about things backfiring? The next time you’d like to quite me out of context or assume there is some dark and evil motive – refrain from posting. It’s been made clear in this response that you’ve taken an opinion and blown it out of proportion.