The Alphaville Herald

64 Responses to “Rumored Bug Puts SL Scripts in Jeopardy — Should Lindens Close Grid?”

1. 

   Panda
   

   Jun 19th, 2007
   

   >When Copybot was on the lose, where was the widespread copying and copy-shops popping up all over the grid with fake wares?
   “Copybot was more about unscrupulous — nihilist and terrorist would actually be the words I’d use — young programmers with zero ethics not only being heedless, but being maliciously and gleefully destructive.”

   So it’s not about COPYING wares then, at all? Please make your mind up. But then again, it’s Mrs. Prokofy we’re talking about here; whos opinions last only as long as it serves her own self interest. And why are you supporting the “content fascists” all of a sudden now, are they on your good side again?

   “Where are all these closed stores and people who no longer create?”
   “No, they did shut down. People went out of business. They felt burned, and some never bothered to come back in SL.”

   So I ask again, which creators were forced to close their stores because people stopped buying? Which brands shut down because their creations were sold by copyists?

   >There is no point in revising a script that can be re-read just as soon as it’s put inworld. Which is why these holes need to be fixed, and kept fixed.
   “A program on a third-party site is not beholden to the scripting problems of Second Life.”

   But we ARE talking about in-world scripts here, which ARE beholden to scripting problems of Second Life. How do you think, for example, SLX receives your funds when you deposit? How do you think the SLX boxes deliver goods when you buy something? It’s you who are not familiar with how things work. Your point is moot.

   “How am I supposed to tell if someone is male or female? Did you have a marker that you use?”

   Memory, perhaps? I’ll just conveniently forget that you’re a dickless-wonder-woman wanna be, and start calling you ma’am from now on then.

   “There sure as hell are ways to protect textures”

   Again, how? Please put up, or shut up.

   “Obviously World of Warcraft protects its copyrighted items”

   WoW items are not created by users. WoW items are protected by server side security to prevent duping. Which is, by the way, the EXACT SAME issue with SL scripts. WoW gets dupe bugs, they fix them. SL gets permissions bugs, Linden Lab fix them.

   “it does it even in the face of hackers by securing its service with all kinds of defeaters of hacking, whether scrambles or obfuscation or whatever.”

   You have no CLUE to what you are talking about here Prokofy. WoW textures, shapes, objects, are NOT protected, your statement to the contrary is absurdly false. You can even get viwers to browse them from the game files offline. Blizzard doesn’t care. Why? Because those are in the *client*, they *know* they can’t keep them out of peoples hands. What they care about is when people break the permission system and dupe the items *ingame*, which is the equivalent of open-scripts in SL.

   I’ll break it down to make it easier for you to understand:
   WoW ingame items and SL scripts: Server side, protectable, and protected by Blizzard/LL.
   WoW textures and SL textures: Client side, unprotectable.

   “Extreme tekkies always sneer at obfuscation, saying it can’t work 100 percent and is defeated.”

   LL has it’s permissions system, which DOES get fixed pretty sharp when it gets broken too, and if you recall, last time those permissions were broken they DID take the grid down quite a long time while fixing the bug and deleting copied items. They also HAVE encryption, the texture cache is encrypted.

   “So? It’s an automatic enough process that you can run it to defeat at least that 60 percent or whatever. It’s the unwillingness to put in anything that isn’t 100 percent perfect that is the hallmark of the extremist mind.”

   And as I’ve just shown, they have their system in place, which prevents widespread casual copying. They HAVE in place their ‘inperfect system’. What you’re saying is, again, simply false. So I ask *AGAIN*, what more do you want Linden Lab to do to protect textures? The Second Life Community holds it’s breath..

   “People constantly meet with the Lindens and try all kinds of solutions on them — watermarking, date-stamping, obfuscation. They are absolutely ideologically resistant to this, because of their pre-determined religious belief in copyleft, not copyright.”

   You’re so way off the mark here, it’s incredible. Let’s go over your points here. Obfuscation? Already in place. Date-stamping? In progress. I recall a blog post a while ago detailing how they are going to let people check “tags” of clothing, skins, etc. to see who the uploader is. Watermarking? Well, creators are free to do that if they please. What else would LL-watermarking be good for? So let’s count. 2 out of 3 already in place or in progress, and the last one would not do any good. Next?

   “But in true Bolshevik fashion, what this leads to is ultimately merely “freeing” of everybody’s work.”

   What it leads to is the protection of what can be protected, and TOS/Community enforcing of what simply cannot be protected by technology.

   >Widespread hacking of scripts completely undermines the world of inworld finance, vendors and banking. Are they not important as well?
   “I haven’t said they ARE NOT important. I said that textures and skins and such are IMPORTANT TOO.”
   “I want to extend THE SAME protection and the SAME alacrity of responding to the emergency and threat to the economy.”

   Which explains how you’re on the barricades for textures, but can’t give more than a shrug about script issues.

   “Copybot is in fact being used again, sold again, and there are allegations of prim hair theft again.”

   Except, well, where are all these copy shops at?

   “Can you read? I made a hypothesis that said IF the Lindens had not created a policy and outlawed Copybot AND it was allowed to run free, the economy would collapse. Can you not grasp that? Then you’re the one who needs to get the retarded tag on.”

   Yes, this is a recurring theme with you ma’am. When pushed into a corner and proved wrong, you turn around and start screaming “IF! IF! IF!”. The lindens DID create policy, Copybot is NOT allowed to run free, so this whole discussion is moot then isn’t it, because you just refuted your own point?
2. 

   Panda
   

   Jun 20th, 2007
   

   “I’m happy to match you punch for punch on this one.”

   No reply yet, so, I guess you’re happy to go punch for punch, up to the point where you are proven wrong and have nothing come back with?

   Guess that’s just business as usual for you ma’am.
3. 

   Prokofy Neva
   

   Jun 20th, 2007
   

   Um, gosh, I *do* have more important things to do than answer you, and these replies weren’t visible with all the new comments.

   >So it’s not about COPYING wares then, at all? Please make your mind up.

   Um, I did. I said it is both about copying wares AND about the threat of undermining the economy by knowing that anything can and will be copied. The economy recovered fairly quickly. But some people never came back. Had Copybot not been banned, the economy would have been totally undermined, not the least because there would be this glaring discrepancy between the Lindens’ craven desire to protect what we can now see obviously are even copyable scripts and their supreme indifference to protecting textures. I don’t care that they *can* be copied. The point is the ATTITUDE you take toward it, one of theft and rewarding criminals, or one of making some deterrents.

   You’re obviously not interested in either deterring crime or stopping the rewarding of thieves.

   >But then again, it’s Mrs. Prokofy we’re talking about here; whos opinions last only as long as it serves her own self interest.

   Your use of my RL information to harass me on an SL forums is so noted. Your character is thus revealed.

   My opinions remain exactly the same, and don’t change, unless I see some really persuasive evidence to the contrary. I see none of it here. Copybot was destructive even without in fact spawning loads of knock-off shops. It remains destructive.

   >And why are you supporting the “content fascists” all of a sudden now, are they on your good side again?

   No, content fascists are content fascists — those who seek to do things like Cienna Samiam, and give texture uploading for free to “the elites” and make everybody else pay, that sort of things. Content fascists are reprehensible. Content fascists try to control the economy, the feature sets — everything — for their own benefit.

   Not every content *maker* is a content fascist. That ought to be obvious. I see you are typical of tekkies who can’t understand gradations and nuances. A person making something and opening a store and focusing on selling their wares isn’t automatically a content fascist. Fascism comes in when you try to privilege your sector of the economy, and in fact even completely stamp put other sectors, like land development.

   But we ARE talking about in-world scripts here,

   No, we’re not, the programming of third-party shopping sites is separate, even if connected to, SL.

   >which ARE beholden to scripting problems of Second Life. How do you think, for example, SLX receives your funds when you deposit? How do you think the SLX boxes deliver goods when you buy something? It’s you who are not familiar with how things work. Your point is moot.

   No, I have these people as tenants, and I’m a vendor and buyer myself on SLX DUH DUH DUH. Seeing how it works isn’t rocket science. And seeing that THE MINUTE there is a script-copying scare that the people can shut off the service isn’t rocket science either. They can. And they do. And then they’d have to re-do their scripts with other elements/failsafes/whatever if they were compromised.

   It’s much easy to shut down a third-party site with one flick of the switch than it is for thousands of dress and furniture makers to get the world and protect their product. This isn’t rocket-science either.

   I always marvel and how profoundly dense the tekkie mind is in using just plain common sense. It’s really awful stuff.

   >Memory, perhaps? I’ll just conveniently forget that you’re a dickless-wonder-woman wanna be, and start calling you ma’am from now on then.

   I fail to see how I’m supposed to tell the gender of a poster on the Herald, when their name has no marker. What sort of “memory” could one invoke here? Memory of a name that has no gender marker? Of someone I don’t know inworld? And if I don’t call it right (um, you have 50 percent chance of making a mistake), then I’m to be punished by being called “a dickless wonder woman wanna be” merely because a) I didn’t call a stranger with no gender marking in their name by the right gender and b) because I disagree with your technocentric world view?

   I hope this is visible for all to see so that everyone can conclude as I have: YOU are the dickless wonder.

   >Again, how? Please put up, or shut up.

   I’ll answer that one again:
   “Obviously World of Warcraft protects its copyrighted items”

   >WoW items are not created by users. WoW items are protected by server side security to prevent duping. Which is, by the way, the EXACT SAME issue with SL scripts. WoW gets dupe bugs, they fix them. SL gets permissions bugs, Linden Lab fix them.

   I fail to see why not only that technology, but obfuscation and policies to punish copying inworld with more vigour can’t be used in SL. Only ideology hobbles it.

   “it does it even in the face of hackers by securing its service with all kinds of defeaters of hacking, whether scrambles or obfuscation or whatever.”

   >You have no CLUE to what you are talking about here Prokofy. WoW textures, shapes, objects, are NOT protected, your statement to the contrary is absurdly false. You can even get viwers to browse them from the game files offline. Blizzard doesn’t care. Why? Because those are in the *client*, they *know* they can’t keep them out of peoples hands. What they care about is when people break the permission system and dupe the items *ingame*, which is the equivalent of open-scripts in SL.

   So? I’m perfectly capable of SEEING how that works without being some “expert”. I can still ASK THE QUESTION. WoW isn’t interested in seeing all their stuff copied, I’m fairly certain of that. There’s a notion of fans’ fair use in fan sites, but I doubt they want all the artwork and characters inworld copied.

   You’ve failed to answer — as tekkies of the extreme sort like yourself always do! — why obfuscation can’t work. This is what non-extreme tekkies explain can be done *shrugs*. You contradict yourself, too.

   >I’ll break it down to make it easier for you to understand:
   WoW ingame items and SL scripts: Server side, protectable, and protected by Blizzard/LL.
   WoW textures and SL textures: Client side, unprotectable.

   I think you’re making a blanket statement here that isn’t supportable. If another game company copied all WoW textures, i.e. builds, skins, furniture, etc. and popped them into a new game world, you’d be hearing “lawsuit”.

   >”Extreme tekkies always sneer at obfuscation, saying it can’t work 100 percent and is defeated.”

   >LL has it’s permissions system, which DOES get fixed pretty sharp when it gets broken too, and if you recall, last time those permissions were broken they DID take the grid down quite a long time while fixing the bug and deleting copied items. They also HAVE encryption, the texture cache is encrypted.

   You’re still not answering the question, and you contradict yourself.

   “So? It’s an automatic enough process that you can run it to defeat at least that 60 percent or whatever. It’s the unwillingness to put in anything that isn’t 100 percent perfect that is the hallmark of the extremist mind.”

   >And as I’ve just shown, they have their system in place, which prevents widespread casual copying. They HAVE in place their ‘inperfect system’.

   I fail to see that they do. Because they are not taking measures — and didn’t for months while there was a texture-copying exploit in place — due to their ideologies. I know, due to my long arguments with them.

   >What you’re saying is, again, simply false. So I ask *AGAIN*, what more do you want Linden Lab to do to protect textures? The Second Life Community holds it’s breath..

   Talk to the Sellers’ Guild? The textures maker and skinmakers who have lobbied LL for years? Who meet with them inworld? Who protest on the forums? Gosh, I didn’t make up this concept. Hold your breath til you turn blue, for all I care, this isn’t even my issue. Content creators have these concerns, have articulated them, and I merely summarize them here. If you are incapable of grasping them, I guess you missed that empathy window when it was open in your developmental phase.

   >”People constantly meet with the Lindens and try all kinds of solutions on them — watermarking, date-stamping, obfuscation. They are absolutely ideologically resistant to this, because of their pre-determined religious belief in copyleft, not copyright.”

   >You’re so way off the mark here, it’s incredible.

   Um, you’re way off the mark? I guess you haven’t witnessed the nearly 3 years of history I have in SL where I’ve seen these groups do this over and over again? Read the old forums? Call the Sellers’ Guild? I dunno. I can’t break it down further than that, you are wilfully obdurate.

   >Let’s go over your points here. Obfuscation? Already in place.

   No, it’s not. Not to the point of other companies and other settings. The Lindens are absolutely ideologically extreme on this. I have had long arguments with them — as have those with a far greater stake. Ultimately, they aren’t interested. And they don’t attempt to do much.

   >Date-stamping? In progress. I recall a blog post a while ago detailing how they are going to let people check “tags” of clothing, skins, etc. to see who the uploader is.

   “In progress” is merely a shill, a stall, while they fend off critics until they can position themselves into open source. They have no intention of following this through. It’s a simple matter, in a world where land purchased gets a date stamp; where many other things get a date stamp. Every action and reaction in this world has an agent, place, and time. But they fail to put the resources into putting those obvious indicators probably already in the system somewhere into this effort, they don’t want to waste the programming time or the database space, obviously.

   Watermarking? Well, creators are free to do that if they >please. What else would LL-watermarking be good for? So let’s count. 2 out of 3 already in place or in progress, and the last one would not do any good. Next?

   No, we don’t have shit as there is no 2 out of 3. I have no idea about the technology involved in watermarking. I imagine alone, it’s insufficient.

   “But in true Bolshevik fashion, what this leads to is ultimately merely “freeing” of everybody’s work.”

   >What it leads to is the protection of what can be protected, and TOS/Community enforcing of what simply cannot be protected by technology.

   I’d like to think that — but I don’t see it. They reject all DMCA related concerns and tell people to do it on their own. I find that cruel. They incite trouble, then do nothing about it. They shill people to come in here, create content for OTHER people to come in here, collect the money, then tell them whoops, we can’t help you if you have copyright concerns, go to a RL lawyer, pay them a mint, and follow the arduous RL process of protecting your creation. They have no tools in place to accelerate and streamline that the way they should, given the way they accelerate and streamline creation itself, to their advantage. I think that’s socially irresponsible.

   >Widespread hacking of scripts completely undermines the world of inworld finance, vendors and banking. Are they not important as well?
   “I haven’t said they ARE NOT important. I said that textures and skins and such are IMPORTANT TOO.”
   “I want to extend THE SAME protection and the SAME alacrity of responding to the emergency and threat to the economy.”

   >Which explains how you’re on the barricades for textures, but can’t give more than a shrug about script issues.

   Um, I never had to shrug even, because gosh, all the little script kiddies and their more cretinous adult supervisors assured us that scripts could never, ever, ever EVER be copied. In a million years. Go and read the debates. Every time I raised this and said, oh, but what if…I was beaten into a pulp, told that I was retarded for not getting the difference between server and client (something I grasped in RL ages ago) and treated to the same sort of hate-speech and personal attacs I’m getting now, being told that I am a dickless wonder and Mrs. Prokofy and all the rest.

   And…wow! Guess what happened! The scripts became copyable! Could we hear “I told you so!” ring through the land? Could we hear a, “Oh, we were mistaken” from all those fucktards who claimed it could NEVER HAPPEN! Who patiently, as if reading to a 2 year old, spelled out S-E-R-V-E-R AND C-L-I-E-N-T duh???

   So, you know? I’m not terribly worried for people who think something can never happen. I guess…it can never happen…and they don’t need me to worry about it.

   >”Copybot is in fact being used again, sold again, and there are allegations of prim hair theft again.”

   >Except, well, where are all these copy shops at?

   A story is coming out soon on this? Why do you have trouble believing it? The script isn’t deprecated, the bots exist, and the exploit exists.

   “Can you read? I made a hypothesis that said IF the Lindens had not created a policy and outlawed Copybot AND it was allowed to run free, the economy would collapse. Can you not grasp that? Then you’re the one who needs to get the retarded tag on.”

   Yes, this is a recurring theme with you ma’am. When pushed into a corner and proved wrong, you turn around and start screaming “IF! IF! IF!”.

   Um, I don’t “end” by saying “if” nor am I pushed in a corner. I *started by* saying “if”. Here it is again, for the retarded, what I said in my original comment about this:

   “1. A massive copying device enters the world and it’s malicious makers put it up for sale — it can copy any outfit, any look, any textures, any skins. And this in a world which has a huge percentage of the economy tied up in retail precisely of people’s original creations in textures and skins. That device not only forces people to close their stores, it actually — let’s hypothesize — begins to copy and give away or resell everything so that creativity is utterly undermined.”

   LET’S HYPOTHESIZE.

   >The lindens DID create policy, Copybot is NOT allowed to run free, so this whole discussion is moot then isn’t it, because you just refuted your own point?

   Sure, they created a half-assed policy as a temporary strategem that they themselves weren’t happy about making as merely a temporary revolutionary expedient. But they continue to argue strenuously against those who bring them exploits of texture copying. They are profoundly indifferent to the problem and think the only issue remaining is “user education”.
4. 

   csven
   

   Jun 20th, 2007
   

   http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/commentary/alttext/2007/06/alttext_0620
5. 

   Mako Mabellon
   

   Jun 20th, 2007
   

   >No, I have these people as tenants, and I’m a vendor and buyer myself on SLX DUH DUH DUH. Seeing how it works isn’t rocket science. And seeing that THE MINUTE there is a script-copying scare that the people can shut off the service isn’t rocket science either. They can. And they do. And then they’d have to re-do their scripts with other elements/failsafes/whatever if they were compromised.
   It’s much easy to shut down a third-party site with one flick of the switch than it is for thousands of dress and furniture makers to get the world and protect their product. This isn’t rocket-science either.

   Aside from the fact that not all scripts can be shut down centrally, would you want to have to get new copies of a script out to every user of that script after it’d been compromised *and* explain why their business had been disrupted in the meantime?

   >So? I’m perfectly capable of SEEING how that works without being some “expert”. I can still ASK THE QUESTION. WoW isn’t interested in seeing all their stuff copied, I’m fairly certain of that. There’s a notion of fans’ fair use in fan sites, but I doubt they want all the artwork and characters inworld copied.
   You’ve failed to answer — as tekkies of the extreme sort like yourself always do! — why obfuscation can’t work. This is what non-extreme tekkies explain can be done *shrugs*. You contradict yourself, too.

   It can’t work because it is just obfuscation – if anyone cares, they’ll just figure out the obfuscation and pull out the data. After all, they have both the data and the code to decode it. I’m not aware of any game – including WoW – that has managed to stop users extracting the game data (models, textures, etc), and I don’t think they generally try that hard. (Even the movie industry has failed in their attempts to stop the decryption and copying of protected data, despite vast amounts of money and the ability to threaten lawsuits against anyone involved.)

   (Also, Second Life was obfuscated to a point – the file defining the client-server protocol was encrypted, the protocol was confusing and difficult to understand, and the on-disk cache was also encrypted. Much of it still got reverse-engineered, and LL decided to co-operate with libsecondlife. I think this had something to do with the fact that they’d rather have libsecondlife find the security holes than people who’d exploit them for more nefarious means.)

   >I think you’re making a blanket statement here that isn’t supportable. If another game company copied all WoW textures, i.e. builds, skins, furniture, etc. and popped them into a new game world, you’d be hearing “lawsuit”.

   Yeah, but there’s no reason why in-world designers couldn’t launch a lawsuit against people copying their items either. (Aside, of course, from the fact that it’s probably not financially worthwhile.) This has nothing to do with the difficulty of copying textures.

   >And…wow! Guess what happened! The scripts became copyable! Could we hear “I told you so!” ring through the land? Could we hear a, “Oh, we were mistaken” from all those fucktards who claimed it could NEVER HAPPEN! Who patiently, as if reading to a 2 year old, spelled out S-E-R-V-E-R AND C-L-I-E-N-T duh???

   I shouldn’t really reply to trolls, but as I think I pointed out at the time, it’s not a case of “it could never happen”, and no-one with experience of SL should’ve said that. It is, however, true that it shouldn’t happen unless LL screw up. And guess what, they screwed up and broke the permissions system again, big surprise. (Copying textures and prims, on the other hand, just requires understanding the client – oh look, they’re giving out copies of it free on the website and have been since long before CopyBot.)

   Oh, and yes, you were “retarded for not getting the difference between server and client”, if you really want to put it that way – or at least, for completely failing to even try and understand why it was important.
6. 

   Panda
   

   Jun 20th, 2007
   

   “The point is the ATTITUDE you take toward it, one of theft and rewarding criminals, or one of making some deterrents.”

   The attitude LL has taken towards it is obfuscation, encryption, making it a TOS violation, and opened DMCA process. That’s hardly saying “please copy their stuff”, now is it?

   “Your use of my RL information to harass me on an SL forums is so noted. Your character is thus revealed.”

   Harassment? Is it because, OH MY GOSH, http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeskalinden/51713334/ I decide to address you on an out-world blog according to out-world practices based on publically available out-world information given by your out-world self?

   >But we ARE talking about in-world scripts here,
   “No, we’re not, the programming of third-party shopping sites is separate, even if connected to, SL.”
   Except in this case it’s the Second Life part that is the issue. DUH.

   “I fail to see how I’m supposed to tell the gender of a poster on the Herald, when their name has no marker. What sort of “memory” could one invoke here?”
   No ma’am. You just conveniently failed to absorb the information last time it was given to you.

   >Again, how? Please put up, or shut up.
   “I’ll answer that one again: “Obviously World of Warcraft protects its copyrighted items”"
   And the response is still the same, they don’t, any more than LL does. So you have no case pointing to WoW as a better example.

   “I fail to see why not only that technology, but obfuscation and policies to punish copying inworld with more vigour can’t be used in SL. Only ideology hobbles it.”

   The key word here is “I fail”, and what you fail at is seeing that obfuscation and policies are ALREADY in place to prevent copying. Idology is not some magic switch that can make something possible or impossible, it still has to pass the reality check.

   >You have no CLUE to what you are talking about here Prokofy. WoW textures, shapes, objects, are NOT protected, your statement to the contrary is absurdly false.
   “So? I’m perfectly capable of SEEING how that works without being some “expert”. I can still ASK THE QUESTION.”

   You may ask the question, but you might want to back it up with facts and not outright false claims if you want to be taken seriously. You claim WoW does *more* to protect it’s textures, when in fact, they do NOT, or perhaps even less!

   “WoW isn’t interested in seeing all their stuff copied, I’m fairly certain of that. There’s a notion of fans’ fair use in fan sites, but I doubt they want all the artwork and characters inworld copied.”

   This is not in dispute. And based on the obfuscation, encryption and DMCA process LL has in place, LL doesn’t *want* their stuff copied either. The whole point of this is that dragging Blizzard into this as some sort of better example falls flat on it’s face.

   “You’ve failed to answer — as tekkies of the extreme sort like yourself always do! — why obfuscation can’t work. This is what non-extreme tekkies explain can be done *shrugs*. You contradict yourself, too.”

   Extreme? I suppose in your world anyone who disagrees with you is an extremist. It’s already been explained to you countless times.. Textures HAVE to be sent to the client to be seen. The client HAS to pass the un-obfuscated texture on to the graphics card in order for it to, gosh, display unobfuscated on your screen. Care to tell what part of this you don’t yet understand? I suppose if LL created and sold their own graphics cards, they could try to obfuscate it all the way to your screen and it would take a while longer before people figured it out how to break it, but that’s not realistic now is it?

   “I think you’re making a blanket statement here that isn’t supportable. If another game company copied all WoW textures, i.e. builds, skins, furniture, etc. and popped them into a new game world, you’d be hearing “lawsuit”.”

   Which is exactly what would happen if Blizzard ripped off all of Linden Labs textures and stuck them in WoW as well.

   The fact of the matter is that SL and WoW are very similar here. WoW items are protected by permissions so they can’t be duplicated. Second Life items are ALSO protected, and both companies jump on it when that permission system is broken.

   And here’s the crux of the matter: Both WoW and SL require OUTSIDE PROGRAMS to pull out textures and shapes. NEITHER LL nor Blizzard has found a way to prevent that. Your claim to the contrary does not hold water.

   >LL has it’s permissions system, which DOES get fixed pretty sharp when it gets broken too, and if you recall, last time those permissions were broken they DID take the grid down quite a long time while fixing the bug and deleting copied items. They also HAVE encryption, the texture cache is encrypted.
   “You’re still not answering the question, and you contradict yourself.”

   I just answered it (again), and I invite you to point out where I’ve contradicted myself.

   >What you’re saying is, again, simply false. So I ask *AGAIN*, what more do you want Linden Lab to do to protect textures? The Second Life Community holds it’s breath..
   “Talk to the Sellers’ Guild? The textures maker and skinmakers who have lobbied LL for years? Who meet with them inworld? Who protest on the forums? Gosh, I didn’t make up this concept. Hold your breath til you turn blue, for all I care, this isn’t even my issue. Content creators have these concerns, have articulated them, and I merely summarize them here. If you are incapable of grasping them, I guess you missed that empathy window when it was open in your developmental phase.”

   You’re still not answering the question. “Talk to the Sellers’ Guild?” is not going to automagically prevent texture copying, and is just a cheapshot attempt to avoid answering the question. What SHOULD LL do to prevent texture copying? As I’ve already explained, pointing to WoW as some superior model is a non-starter, so what other suggestions do you have? If you claim that LL could so easily prevent copying, you should have some facts to back it up, not just say “uhh, go talk to those other people, they probably know..”

   “Um, you’re way off the mark? I guess you haven’t witnessed the nearly 3 years of history I have in SL where I’ve seen these groups do this over and over again? Read the old forums? Call the Sellers’ Guild? I dunno. I can’t break it down further than that, you are wilfully obdurate.”

   lol, you’re even off the mark in your response. There’s no claim that these groups have not tried to talk to LL. What you’re off the mark with is that more “watermarking, date-stamping, obfuscation” is going to help the issue.

   >Let’s go over your points here. Obfuscation? Already in place.
   “No, it’s not. Not to the point of other companies and other settings. The Lindens are absolutely ideologically extreme on this. I have had long arguments with them — as have those with a far greater stake. Ultimately, they aren’t interested. And they don’t attempt to do much.”

   Ok, this should be easy. They ARE obfuscating the textures for as long as they can, up to the point where it has to be sent to the graphics card. The texture cache is encrypted. What other companies manage to keep it more obfuscated? As I said, this should be easy for you to answer if what you say is correct.

   “”In progress” is merely a shill, a stall, while they fend off critics until they can position themselves into open source. They have no intention of following this through. It’s a simple matter, in a world where land purchased gets a date stamp; where many other things get a date stamp. Every action and reaction in this world has an agent, place, and time. But they fail to put the resources into putting those obvious indicators probably already in the system somewhere into this effort, they don’t want to waste the programming time or the database space, obviously.”

   Then get on the barricades and ask why this isn’t yet put into place. This would however NOT stop texture copying, it would merely make it easier to find who made copy and hound them til they stop, like I mentioned a few posts above.

   “I have no idea about the technology involved in watermarking. I imagine alone, it’s insufficient.”

   You answered your own question on this one, so I don’t have to. (hint: it involves “no idea about”)

   >What it leads to is the protection of what can be protected, and TOS/Community enforcing of what simply cannot be protected by technology.
   “I’d like to think that — but I don’t see it. They reject all DMCA related concerns and tell people to do it on their own. I find that cruel. They incite trouble, then do nothing about it. They shill people to come in here, create content for OTHER people to come in here, collect the money, then tell them whoops, we can’t help you if you have copyright concerns, go to a RL lawyer, pay them a mint, and follow the arduous RL process of protecting your creation. They have no tools in place to accelerate and streamline that the way they should, given the way they accelerate and streamline creation itself, to their advantage. I think that’s socially irresponsible.”

   Granted. This does however not prevent copying, and, again, does not have anything to do with how you claim scripts are some holy grail and textures are not cared for. Let’s try another hypothesis. If some creator, a scripter, complains to LL and says someone else copied his scripts, would LL tell him to file a DMCA just like they would a texture copier? If so, then they are treated equally as far as possible.

   “Um, I never had to shrug even, because gosh, all the little script kiddies and their more cretinous adult supervisors assured us that scripts could never, ever, ever EVER be copied.”

   I think you missed the qualifier here. Will never be copied unless the permissions system gets broken. And when the permissions system gets broken, LL fix it, no matter if it’s textures, scripts or objects that get copied.

   “And…wow! Guess what happened! The scripts became copyable! Could we hear “I told you so!” ring through the land? Could we hear a, “Oh, we were mistaken” from all those fucktards who claimed it could NEVER HAPPEN! Who patiently, as if reading to a 2 year old, spelled out S-E-R-V-E-R AND C-L-I-E-N-T duh??? So, you know? I’m not terribly worried for people who think something can never happen. I guess…it can never happen…and they don’t need me to worry about it.”

   This has nothing to do with our discussion, and I’ve never claimed any of the above.

   >”Copybot is in fact being used again, sold again, and there are allegations of prim hair theft again.”
   >Except, well, where are all these copy shops at?
   “A story is coming out soon on this? Why do you have trouble believing it? The script isn’t deprecated, the bots exist, and the exploit exists.”
   I have no doubt there is a copybot out in the wild. What I’m asking is, where are these copy shops? I guess we’ll have to wait for your story.
7. 

   Reality
   

   Jun 21st, 2007
   

   1. There will be no story – not one with any factual events within it. if there is one you can bet it’ll be overblown and all about putting fear into people.

   2. It is apparent that Prokofy does not listen to nor wish to listen to those who actually know what they are talking about.

   3. It is apparent that Prokofy actually thinks that each and every Second Life third party site is actually a part of second Life. Run a Blog? It is not your Avatar typing the words that get put up onto the screen.

   4. Prokofy actually believes that the use of readily available information – even if it is pulled out of an article! – is somehow a high crime. it is not. from the moment that information is placed where anyone can read it …. it is no longer ‘private’. Time some faced that fact.

   5. to place it in terms anyone can understand: to view some content it has to be sent to your computer. Your computer is run by hardware which is not manufactured by Linden Lab. The data is encrypted and obfuscated server side as well as in your disc cache. Your graphics card however cannot read data like that – it must be in a format that is notprotected by such things. do we know what this means? Correct children! It means that unless you want to buy an official Linden Lab graphics card, you’ll have to deal with the data being sent to your graphics card without the protections it has elsewhere. Deal with it like the rest of us, m’kay?

   6. No amount of blathering, back tracking or any other sort of nonsense will change the above.
8. 

   Anonymous "Tekkie"
   

   Jun 21st, 2008
   

   Im really surprised at how much the phrase “common sense” shows up on this blog…
   to quote “Robert A Heinlein”‘s character Lazarus Long
   - “By the date to date, there is only one animal in the galaxy dangerous to man – man himself. So he must supply his own indespensible competition. He has no enemy to help him.”
   - “Certainly the game is rigged. Don’t let that stop you; if you don’t bet you can’t win.”
   - “Your enemy is never a villian in his own eyes. Keep this in mind; it may offer a wqay to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate – and quickly.”
   - “One man’s theology is another mans belly laugh”
   - “You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don’t ever count on having both at once.”
   - “Any government will work if authority and responsibility are equal and coordinate. This does not ensure ‘good’ government; it simply ensures that it will work. But such governments are rare – most people want to run things but want no part of the blame. This used to be called the ‘backseat-driver syndrome’.”
   - “Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.”
   - “Never underestimate the power of human stupidity”

   sorry if the above seems a bit off-topic but there IS a point…
   go read “Time enough for love” if you can find a copy (mine is 3y aged more than myself)
9. 

   Lord Kamina
   

   Jun 22nd, 2008
   

   JESUS CHRIST, SO MUCH TL;DR

   And anyway, Hazim is right, there are much better alternatives to this one bug that LL hasn’t fixed for years.

   We have our ways of figuring these things out.
10. 

    Witness X
    

    Jun 23rd, 2008
    

    Wooo.

    “We have our ways of figuring things out.”

    It’s called “Mommy, can you tie my shoe?”

    The PN can’t code their way out of a cup of plain yogurt, having thrown out all their genuine talent for being “spais”. Leaving all the spies still in the group. And with N3X15 gone, they’ve lost that too.
11. 

    Darling Brody
    

    Oct 24th, 2008
    

    You are a F’ing idiot to have posted this BEFORE the bug is fixed.

    Every scripter in SL should hold you responsible for any lost products.

12. Hydrocodone.
    

    Nov 30th, 2009
    

    Hydrocodone consultations.

    Buy hydrocodone without a prescription.

13. Adderall erowid.
    

    Dec 8th, 2009
    

    Adderall.

    Adderall make knees numb. Buy wholesale adderall. Adderall abuse. Adderall.

14. Overseas brand hydrocodone.
    

    Dec 8th, 2009
    

    Hydrocodone for sale.

    Hydrocodone.

Leave a Reply