The CryoLife Papers – Fear and Loathing
by Alphaville Herald on 02/08/09 at 5:00 pm
Copybot code published on Second Life Jira — con artists peddle snake oil
by Junius
Is the sky falling? The copybot code to make CryoLife and similar clients was published on the Second Life JIRA in mid-June. Anybody can compile a client and add copybot features to their Second Life viewer. It isn’t difficult to learn to compile a client.
The CryoLife papers show how easy it is to export and pirate avatars, and how pirates try to hide importing stolen content. Piracy is likely to proliferate. What can be done?
I know of no challenge-response setup that will detect Cryo. If somebody claims that they are detecting Cryo with a challenge-response they are a con artist. Cryodoes not communicate with objects or avatars when it pirates them. Theinformation is already in the client when it rips the clothing or theobject, so no further interaction with the target object is necessary.
Anybody who tells you they can detect when Cryo is being used with a script that detects changes in a prim targeted by a pirate is a con artist.
Thereis a popular rumor out there that the creator shows up as “unknown” oncopied items. That is a lie. If an item is pirated using Cryo thecreator field contains the name of the pirate.
The pirate canchange the name and the description of the item to whatever he wants. If they paid attention while copying the item they can find out thename and the description on it. Most of the time the thief can trackdown the store where the item was originally purchased by looking atthe original creators profile, since most creators advertise theirstores in their profile. All they have to do then is to make a carefulnote of the name and description the original content creator used andthen manually copy that into the pirated object, along with the sameperms.
The only difference between the original and thepirated version is that the pirated version has a different creator anda different created on date in the object inspector window. If thereare scripts in the original they won’t be copied, but the pirate cancreate blank scripts to put in the object that have the same names andpermissions as the original if they so choose. This would take sometime and effort but a determined pirate can take anything and make itlook like an original to anybody who isn’t intimately familiar with theoriginal.
Next time you see an amazingly good looking avatarinspect their attachments. If they look amazing and their attachmentsare full perms and all created either by them or by the same avatar(who could be their alt) then there is a chance that they used Cryo topirate the attachments.
Then again, they might be a gifted contentcreator who only wears their own stuff. Does their profile reflectthis? They could just be a huge fan of a particular designer who givestheir stuff out full perms, so there is no way to know conclusively. Just check their profile and use some common sense. If two people are wearing the exact same attachment check both of them. If the creatoris different on one of them then somebody is a pirate, or at the veryleast bought something from a pirate.
Knowledge is Power
It is not very hard to compile your own CryoLife client – if you are willing to indulge in a bit of piracy. Thehardest part is finding a seededtorrent of Visual Studio 2005, because you cannot legally purchaseVisual Studio 2005 anymore. Microsoft sells Visual Studio 2008 butthat won’t compile SL.Ok, a few people might have had some limited success with 2008, but ifyou really want to code you need 2005.
This means that to even beginto seriously work on the software, new coders will have to eitherlegally own Visual Studio 2005 already, or they will have to becomepirates. That fact alone makes any anti-piracy movement among the SLopen source community incredibly unlikely.
"pathetic permissions check" removed — Second Life Jira drama follows
CryoLife can bestealthed from client radars like the ones you find in Emerald, but youcan detect its presence by using a listener on channel 8281825. Youcan use alpha textured prim puke to make it almost impossible forpeople to pirate your attachments. If an avatar is turning into youthen they are pirating you. If default wood grain cubes startappearing over an avatars head and configuring themselves intocomplicated link sets rapidly, then that avatar is a pirate.
Fear and Loathing
"How reluctantly the mind consents to reality!"
~Norman Douglas
Iunderstand that this information will be upsetting to some people,especially to the con artists who sell fake anti-copybot devices. Ifully expect that these con artists will flock to these papers and tellme off for exposing their lies and treachery.
The fact of thematter is this: If you are going to operate a business in Second Life,and you are going to make things worth stealing, then you need tofactor piracy into your business decisions. Denying it and suppressinginformation about copybot clients will only make the problem worse.
The situation reminds me of World War Z. In it, the world is overrun by zombies. Max Brooks spends a great dealof time describing how the zombie outbreak happened. The problem couldhave been easy to solve early on, but most people ignored or denied theproblem. Some even took advantage of the fear of zombies to sell fakevaccines against the zombie plague.
Today we are in a similarsituation in Second Life. You can adjust your business decisioncalculations based on the threat posed by piracy or you can ignore it,waste energy by blaming Linden Labs for something they cannot controland stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the threat.
Virtual businessmodels that ignore piracy will collapse as piracy continues to grow. Even small time tinkerers like me who don’t use Second Life as a sourceof income will feel it when sims have to close because, for example,the owners business model might have included using unprotected modelsin their shops to show off their clothing.
We need business people who don’t wear blinders – those wearing blinders are not long for this world.
LordGregGreg Back
Aug 2nd, 2009
Good stuff, i really hope no one actualy falls for that scam stuff. But I understand how they might. I think the bigest mental mistake people make is when they think this is LL’s fault, or that it can be fixed if only someone smarter cared more. That type of thinking leads people to belive these con artists because they tell them what they want to hear.
The truth of the matter is that you just got to harden up, accept that its going to happen, and be ready action, dmca, or w/e when it does.
Chalice
Aug 2nd, 2009
Now people just have to stop falling for the no-inspect shield scams. I loved the ‘Puke prims’ name for them, by the way. There are several ways around those toys.
1. Move the cam properly inside
2. Have a client that is able to derender objects of your choosing
3. Just use advanced -> render -> hide selected
Voila. Inspecting galore. That didn’t take long, now did it? I won’t even start on how stupid it is to make the creators you buy stuff from miss out on sales with shields like that.
Just another silly Xstreet craze that one person started, and others are riding on.
Jumpman Lane
Aug 2nd, 2009
all these crappy flash widgets makes this site run slow! way togo uri! were gettin to the point where we REALLY dont read the herals lmao
Junius
Aug 2nd, 2009
Chalice: Thanks! I hadn’t thought of that… ok, prim puke is not a good defense against cryo.
Don't Know
Aug 3rd, 2009
Just seems to me that you are the cracker. Why is it your last three articles are about cracking, then you go out of your way to download the code and use it. You cannot call “being on the other side” journalism. If you believe that this type of software is wrong, and it’s certainly against the linden tos, then why would you go out of your way to download it, use it, and then write an article about it? This is sofware is no more than banned copybot, so why then are you using it?
“Puke Prims”? ugh no, more like pukey journalism. “Fear and loathing?” ugh no, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do what you are doing there and certainly doesn’t require that particular client.
Gareth Nelson
Aug 3rd, 2009
“It is not very hard to compile your own CryoLife client – if you are willing to indulge in a bit of piracy. The hardest part is finding a seeded torrent of Visual Studio 2005, because you cannot legally purchase Visual Studio 2005 anymore. ”
This is laughable, for multiple reasons:
Not everyone is running windows
Even on windows, there are other compilers available (such as mingw32 for example)
gcc is 100% free and included by default on most linux distros
Not to mention that visual studio 2005 express (and 2008) are both freely available for download from microsoft themselves.
Junius
Aug 3rd, 2009
Don’t Know: Are you asserting that I taste delicious with cheese? Copybot isn’t banned, and neither is CryoLife. Piracy is banned, but I did not engage in piracy. You confuse me. Please, be more clear: What am I doing that doesn’t require CryoLife?
Gareth: The manuals on the wiki are all written for Visual Studio 2005. 2005 express is not available anymore from Microsoft at all. Not all compilers are the same. I have never seen documentation about what would happen if you tried to compile SL in mingw32, but I bet it would be complicated. What I’m talking about are people who are new to this and want to get started with compiling the client. They go to the wiki to learn and when they get to this page they have to make a decision: Will I pirate Visual Studio 2005 or will I give up?
Junius
Aug 3rd, 2009
um… the words “this page” in my response to Gareth should have linked to here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Microsoft_Windows_Builds
xiomara
Aug 3rd, 2009
hi
I have the SL for cryo does many things but I think it is not complete .. can you give me the version you have?
thank you and excuse my bad English. Use an online translator.
I speak Spanish
XPPL17@hotmail.com
Gareth Nelson
Aug 3rd, 2009
“What I’m talking about are people who are new to this and want to get started with compiling the client. They go to the wiki to learn and when they get to this page they have to make a decision: Will I pirate Visual Studio 2005 or will I give up?”
Or will they try and get another compiler working?
To be honest, I have not tried mingw32 myself, but I imagine that it would not be too difficult to hack the build system to run under it just like it would on a linux box.
I know personally that I casually patch the viewer all the time on linux, which one would expect is the OS of choice for open source and free software fanatics.
Gareth Nelson
Aug 3rd, 2009
Also, read the JIRA entry:
> Included boost libraries prevent VC90 from compiling and linking the second life source correctly
But you can compile boost 1.36 once and using it for build viewer.
Replace include/boost, i686-win32, check newview Linker > Additional Dependencies and… voila.
[ Show » ]
SOb Zemlja added a comment – 28/Oct/08 10:48 PM > Included boost libraries prevent VC90 from compiling and linking the second life source correctly But you can compile boost 1.36 once and using it for build viewer. Replace include/boost, i686-win32, check newview Linker > Additional Dependencies and… voila.
IntLibber Brautigan
Aug 4th, 2009
We are seeing copybotted content being imported using prims created by Torley Linden.
LOL
Aug 4th, 2009
Great Program, now we can all claim to be the Original creator of the QUEEN ALIEN movie monster
OMGWTFBBQ
Aug 12th, 2009
/me rubs the snake oil on his skin….
mmmm smells like Linden
Nicholas Famiglia
Aug 14th, 2009
Cryolife is shit. Vlife is way better. Everyone is panicing. Just get a client.
187
Aug 14th, 2009
ur a has been nickfag
187 rulez
no1 listens to ur bs anymore
go play barbies, stfu and leave this post to the adults
Johnny Drama
Aug 15th, 2009
Wouldnt you know it. The Nicholas pukes are in on this. Shows they have no class.
anonimous
Sep 13th, 2009
CryoLife can see the notecard inside the prims?
AntiCopybot
Sep 16th, 2009
I have played with copybot, and the best way around it is to ungroup items and give them the same name , pref, Object.
This can work while displayed, but is unpractical for sale.
And i know that anti copybot scripts do suck, it only lags the sim. Those pukeprims give lag to.
Its the way SL works, we have to live with it, If someone copys my stuff i feel honoured, Im in sl for the fun and not to make money.
There so many ways now to copy contents, totaly stelth, i gave up.