The Alphaville Herald

LL’s Fatigue Factor in Grey Goo Grid War

by Pixeleen Mistral on 10/10/06 at 10:04 am

Buggy fence fix liberates user-created content

by Pixeleen Mistral, Herald National Affairs desk

Fighting goo is hard work

Sunday and monday, an apparently faulty update to Second Life caused users’ works to be sold without copy/transfer/modification controls, accidentally freeing user-created content from restrictions on use or resale. Residents report that the content exploit free-for-all ran for about 12 hours starting sunday evening – although the grid was down for part of this time. Apparently, metaverse citizens who purchased other avatar’s wares at the time could do anything they liked with their new purchases – a dangerous state of affairs for content creators dependent on digital rights management-protected sales for in-game wealth creation.

The unexpected removal of creator DRM controls of came as a result of a set of emergency fixes to combat the escalating grid crashes caused by self replicating objects. Linden staff grey goo battle fatigue may have been a factor given the nearly continuous attacks on the grid. Troubling questions about the scope of the collateral damage remain largely un-answered by Linden Lab at press time.

Once the Lab learned of the DRM-liberating changes to the world, the Lindens moved to address the latest crisis early monday morning. After booting residents off the grid, Linden staffers took a cue from the griefers and ignored threats of abuse reports to go on a cage gun shooting spree. Through the wee hours of the morning, Lindens repeatedly fired special cage guns at the asset servers to catch and then discipline the formerly free content. Asked if the liberated objects had been caged successfully, Jeska Linden said, “It is hard for us to determine if everything was transformed or not” which suggests that the true scope of the problem may never be known. This is surprising, given Philip Linden’s tendency to comment with great precision on numbers of object created and counts of avatar partnerships in his public appearances. The most detail from the Lab came when Jeska mentioned that the Linden content cagers, “should have captured most of the affected objects”. For those who depend on selling rights protected goods, fixing MOST of affected objects may be cold comfort.

And so the war between Lindens and the resident grid crashers keeps dragging on with yet another grid attack monday after the DRM cleanup – resident pictures of the attack here. One can safely assume that battle fatigue becomes a more significant factor with each grey goo grid bombing, customer database leak, and emergency rolling update. While residents suffer from Grid Crash Fatigue Syndrome, one has to wonder what things are like in the Lab right now. Someone might want to set up an all-night espresso bar for the Lindens – there are sure to be plenty of customers.