Rezzable, which recently announced that it was (mostly) departing Second Life for the promise of OpenSim, developed a tool which allowed them to copy content on a sim-wide basis and is now preparing to release the code as a convenience for other builders, content creators and sim owners.
BuilderBot is offered because Rezzable “think this is pretty handy stuff and thought it would make sense to release it for serious content creators” and are inviting comment before they release the source code.
The catch to their tool is that it doesn’t conduct a check to see whether you own the prims that you’re backing up. Rezzable explains that since they own all the prims on their sims anyways, they didn’t need to build this into the tool. And in releasing it, people may misuse it, but they’re misusing other tools anyways, so it’s not like they’re adding anything evil to the world, since the evil already exists (emphasis added):
“Our intention is to make tools for serious builders. So now someone can more easily take a copy of their build off SL and archive, keep it safe. Taking stuff linkset by linkset is really slow and painful. BuilderBot allows for a significantly better way to handle content. You can then save versions of builds to make a sorta library and then use these versions to make new iterations. It is your stuff, so now you can take care of it. The risk is that rippers can also use the tool to take unauthorized copies.
Rippers don’t seem to care much about DRM and already they can use copybot to take (and sell usually) illegal copies of content. In fact there is really no way to stop this technically. It is more about not giving content thieves safe haven to sell and benefit from their theft. I don’t think this is any different that issues with music being copied or dvd films. It is just a reality of creating digital content and virtual content creators need a better way to address rather than just filing DMCA protests.
I suppose their rationale is something along the lines of “look, someone already invented Napster, so inventing another one isn’t going to hurt”.
In any case, they invite comments although I suppose you’d better hurry, since they make it fairly clear that they are “ready to release this now”.
No mentioning the super-cute tagline ‘no prims left behind!’ ? Pfff… .
(But thanks for helping us to get some extra feedback!)
So it’s OK to grab a copy and go make my own copy of the Greenies sim?
I’ll wait and see what is actually released before I pass judgment on how I think this reflects on Rezzable as an organization… but at first blush, it does seem a bit like a tenant vacating a property and intentionally vandalizing the place on the way out.
Thanks for the justification Rezzable. Never before has there been such an urgent justification for LL to post a policy that open source contributions will enter via the Snowglobe project and that any further non LL compiled system is allowed to access the Second Life Grid. This has been needed for a long time and now it is time to close the door and let the rippers go have a ball on their ripper grids ripping one another off.
That is to say:
and that any further non LL compiled system is no longer allowed to access the Second Life Grid.
rationale is more like, why punish the people that need useful tools because a few people will misuse them.
@ Ann — not really sure that LL can be any more successful in blocking content ripping — justified or not — than the music industry has been with stopping music being copied without payment.
I guess I’m not entirely surprised at that kind of thinking and yet I’m always a little puzzled to see it proffered. “Everyone else is doing it!”
Rezzable is asking for donations if they release the source code and will charge for a “pro” version. Would it be a stretch to assume that if someone copies and distributes their “pro” version, that also wouldn’t be adding any evil to the world? Could this tool be used to grab an entire Rezzable sim from Opensim? No additional evil there, right? (I’m not suggesting anyone do that of course.)
I know that copying stuff at both an object and sim-wide level has been technically possible for quite a while now. However, it seems to me as if they’re flipping Linden Lab (and its content creators) the bird on the way out the door.
/me shakes my head.
Whether rezzable intends harm or not, my honest opinion is that if they really cared, they would have done ownership checks in the app. OTOH, with open source, someone could always disable that. So if the tool is being released as open source, there’s really little point in doing the work to code that in.
My honest opinion? They have a beef with LL and want to force LL’s hand on pricing, etc. My further honest opinion? I never saw how they were going to make money with all those pretty sims and no revenue model. You can blame LL for your problems all you want, but not having a realistic plan (at least as far as anyone I know could see) for those pretty builds to make money is no one’s fault but your own.
OTOH, LL has borked permissions so that it’s possible for content creators to package their items in such a way that they have permissions they didn’t intend. A lot of it is content creators not understanding how permissions on objects in avatar or object inventory work, but that’s because LL made it totally non-obvious. People are in an outcry about that, and about copybot, but I wonder how many people will get upset about this, which can give people some of the same capability to hoist the works of others?
Anyone who’s been in OpenLife even a couple times has seen things that they’ve seen in SL, and chances are it wasn’t from the same creators either. The question is, is not giving a damn the wrong attitude, or is thinking anything can or should be done to stop it the right attitude? Obviously an SL economy can’t function if people can’t control the rights and means of distribution and sale of their goods.
Rezzable’s model is not based on the sale of goods (they tried that and failed, as far as I can tell). You have conflicting motives on all sides of an issue that really has no good solutions. But people do tend to care more about issues that affect their own bottom line. Rezzable won’t lose with this, because they don’t sell content in SL. Will some people who do sell content in SL lose control of how their creations are ported around to other virtual worlds? Possibly. Even probably. The question is, should Rezzable be the focal point of anger over it, or should this be something that LL and the open source platforms get more serious about working on together?
Cliff notes version for those slow on the uptake: I’m not suggesting above that Rezzable is evil. This is a problem bigger than rezzable and their “move your stuff the lazy way” tool. What I am saying is that they probably don’t really care about the impact to SL or any SL content creators at this point, even if they don’t believe there will be any or much.
Regardless of intent…the perception is Rezzable are indeed *flipping the bird* to other developers, agencies and home grown creators who are working within the restrictions of the Second Life platform and bearing the cost impacts in filing DMCA / proceedings to protect their copyright when missued.
Regardless, I know (for a fact) to add the controls required to check creator is not a major piece of development to add to this and the PR nightmare that is about to start for Rezzable goes away.
Risk/Reward discussion needed internally I suspect.
Continue down the path they way, perception remains not just within world, but with fellow agencies who are agnostic to platform but care about community.
Let’s put it this way we wouldn’t place business Rezzable’s way with this disregard for community (I am sure the twitter wires will be burning too).
Well covered Dusan. Thanks for highlighting it.
I wrote about this before:
http://commonsensible.net/2009/06/17/back-up-and-restore-full-regions-and-their-contentmaxping-saving-second-life-regions-to-a-hard-drive/
At least that guy is somewhat responsible.
I remember the wicked, frantic panic that swept the grid when the original “copybot” was released into the wild. At least that one isn’t so easy to use. And in not being so easy to use it keeps honest people honest.
What this will do is to unleash the “copybot” into the open and it will spread like California wildfires. /me sighs. Well, I suppose it’s a good thing I maintain my creations on a mainland sim. I suspect this thing might not work on Linden-owned and managed regions, but that’s just conjecture on my part.
Personally, I take it all in stride. First, my stuff has to be good enough to even be interesting enough for anyone to want to copy it at all.
Meh.
I find this a total outrage, and I find the cynical and nihilistic position of Rezzable, which we’ve seen many times before, to be an outright crime here.
Indeed they are evil, and indeed they are a disgruntled tenant vandalizing the place, but what’s more, vandalizing other tenants who previously had no beef with them, or even knowledge of them in many cases, whatever their belief in their own popularity and right to set policy by diktat.
It’s the same mentality that goes into terrorism.
Of course, one can provide the quintessential Mom’s answer to the whine that “but maaaaaa, everybody’s doing it” “If your friends told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?” but here, the cynics don’t care if everybody jumps off a bridge.
The reality is that even Adam Zaius, who presided over the reverse-engineering and re-engineering of Second Life into OpenSim, was not so cynical or nihilist. He did not release the code and posted a statement that it would be misused, so he would not.
All this time, we’ve heard a hundred times that Second Inventory would never be a problem because it would never copy prims for which someone didn’t have rights.
I utterly repudiate the idea that “just because you can” and “just because there’s an analog hole” that you are entitled to copyright theft. You aren’t on the Internet, where “print screen” or “right click/save as copy” defeats copyright routinely, and you are not in virtual worlds, either.
Despicable, and amounting to industrial espionage and sabotage.
A few points that needs to be made here:
- Rezzable has NOT released this. They are asking for suggestions on how to release it.
- I WANT the ability to back up my sim. And hey, unless you have been living under a rock, it is already possible to copy just about everything, whether you own the perms or not.
- Dusan, I think the Napster analogy is an interesting one. I recall one Wired mag article back when the whole issue was getting underway talking about how it would be easier to get the toothpaste back in the toothpaste tube than to stop Napster.
So, BuilderBot is a piece of heaven or evil. How can it be made more heavenly?
So now there is the adult grid, the teen grid, and, what is rapidly becoming more apparent, the petulant adolescent grid which is populated neither by teens nor by adults but, rather, by those awful things which manifest the unstable synthesis of adult desire and infantile worldview. Whatdyacallum? Geeks? Because, ya know, if you put a “super cute tagline” on evil then it isn’t evil anymore, it’s a BoingBoing post!
Almost anything of value in the real world can be copied, from a Picasso to a software program, including photographs, music, watches, and so on. Digital stuff is easier to copy than other things, cuz its just a string of ones and zeros. What is evil is not the tool that enables one to copy, but the intent of the copier. i.e. am I copying somebody’s creative work for my own personal enjoyment, or do I intend to sell that work as my own and profit from that, thus doing serious harm to the creator. I, personally, think it would be great to be able to back up my home in SecondLife, even with the objects created by others, so I can restore it in the event of a system failure or port it to another world. But if someone copies my products and starts to sell them in ANY world, I am going to contact my lawyer or the police.
Bettina, if you want to be sure it’s used responsibly, don’t release it. Offer it as a service, not a product. Then you can be sure that you aren’t offering to back up prims that are not either created by or owned (with appropriate permissions) by the requestor.
The code to that is negligible. And the ability is something people want. So act like an upstanding member of the community rather than releasing software that you admit yourselves will likely be abused.
@Charles – And therein lies the problem. So many of the creators I know are exhausted from devoting hours of every week to chasing down copies of their work and filing DMCAs. Is there any end to this? It doesn’t seem technically possible. Will it get easier and easier to copy other people’s work? We all know the answer to that question. So how to release something like BuilderBot?
I posted this on ArminasX’s blog, so apologies to those who follow comments for both his and this blog… but here goes:
$100USD for the pro version of the program is not going to deter any casual thief.. and much like Rezzable’s other ‘business model’ for creating revenue in SL, not going to be profitable at all. How much you wanna bet the program gets cracked and passed around on torrent sites within the week of release?
Also, do not underestimate the lengths to which ‘casual thieves’ will go to make a buck. Last month a bunch of ‘casual thieves’ copybotted my entire store, rented half sims in not one but two estates, and attempted to pass off my work as well as lots of work from many other creators as their own. And when their stuff was returned by LL, they simply appeared again the next day and rebuilt.
As someone who does full sim work myself, yes, it could be useful to replicate my own work in a full sim environment to take elsewhere… however NOT at the expense of adding another completely unfettered tool to thieves.
I would really like to see LL impliment some sort of API for registered third party clients and bots only. I recognize there are many that are legitimately useful and not harmful to the SL community.
What Rezzable is proposing to release however? I certainly feel has the potential to be harmful. And Rezzable should be prepared to face legal trouble should they knowingly release something that ignores SL terms of service and creator intellectual property rights.
And all for $100 a pop? I’m pretty sure Rezzable will find the costs exceed the benefits again… but then when did that ever stop them from trying (and failing) to make ends meet when they were still in SL?
@Feline We must have been posting comments at the same time because I just saw your latest now. I LIKE your suggestion of providing it as a service. A lot.
I’ve often lamented that LL does not provide a means for us to archive our creations in SL; that is, take a copy of our sculptures, builds, land, etc. en masse to our hard drive for safe keeping. Over the years, I’ve seen many great sim spaces and their contents disappear forever when their creators/owners have had to downgrade or change their SL status. Wouldn’t it be nice to legitimately store a copy of these creations offline for future resurrection at a different time or place? To me, this is what legitimate archiving should be, and a tool like BuilderBot could serve that purpose.
I can’t fault someone like Rezzable for pursuing a means to mass archive their hard work. Taking items into inventory piece-by-piece, bit-by-bit is a pain–it’s like packing up a moving van. But I can’t help but think that BuilderBot’s potential for good will be corrupted as a means for wholesale stealing, particularly from SL to Open worlds. The onus is on Rezzable to ensure that their brainchild is marketed, distributed, and/or sold as a means for legitimate archival purposes only. It is disingenuous to front an attitude of “we can’t control what others do with our powerful, god-like, copying device” as preemptive absolution from its near-certain abuse.
It’s too bad Linden Lab hasn’t prevented this potential Pandora’s box from being opened in the first place. We have the (albeit imperfect) permission controls Modify, Copy, and Transfer. Why not develop a permission called “Archive” that allows creators/owners to decide whether or not they wish to allow their possessions to be archivable in the first place, and then provide them with a tool/function to legitimately archive? Leaving this choice unaddressed only forces others to take matters into their own hands, as Rezzable seems to be doing now. Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, there is no simple way to put it back without making a huge mess…
“am I copying somebody’s creative work for my own personal enjoyment, or do I intend to sell that work as my own and profit from that, thus doing serious harm to the creator.”
“But if someone copies my products and starts to sell them in ANY world, I am going to contact my lawyer or the police.”
I am not an especially good doublethinker so it’s taken me a long time to finally *get* why the copyleftist geek is all for giving away freebies yet screams blue murder if someone turns around and sells their freebie copy. The geeks keep telling us that digital goods have zero dollar value – it’s what powers their moral self-assuredness when they pinch other people’s work off the net (for their “own personal enjoyment”). Yet, if someone is able to sell a freebie good, this demonstrates rather irrefutably that a market for said good exists and, as corollary, that the freebie, in fact, *does* have monetary value via the mechanism of market exchange. Of course, this reality undermines the certainty of the geek that digital goods aren’t worth anything (and, therefore, that no harm accrues when you copy them) and, like a thief in the night, threatens to rob the geek of his fundamental worldview. As such, the geek is forced to suppress the contradiction immanent in said worldview (such things are always uncomfortable) by suppressing the free economic activity that those, you know, less hung up on ideological abstractions engage in to pay the bills.
interesting, i’ll have to think about it… not sure what i think. but YES i’d LOVE to back up my sim. and i’d love to take a copy of black swan too before it goes
am i allowed to if i don’t sell it?
ok, i’d think not but i wonder if people would be allowed to do that, if so, i’d be against it cuz it would keep ppl from going to the other sims. ok gonna think more.
As a designer/builder I expect to be the one to make the decision how and when my products become available on any OS. And once they are available, I reserve the right to distribute/charge/earn from them. How dare you take that away from me?
The fact that people already rob banks does not mean that creating new and better ways to rob banks is fair game.
fuck you, rezzable.
Nice manipulation ploy as a swan song.
“This will help big time creators back up their stuffs!”
No. It will devalue their work. What good is “big name creator’s” sim if there are 10 different copybot versions of it across the black market grids?
At least the big timer’s work is known, they have recognizable product. They have customers looking out for them. They will have an easier time filing those copyright violation complaints.
No, this will really hurt the mom and pop stores across the grid. The little startups that do wonderful work but haven’t made a name for themselves. No one will be able to identify their work and stand up for them.
What LL should do is nip this “backup ploy” in the heart and offer those services themselves. They have the means to do it. And Ann O’Toole is right, they should slam the door on third party browsers for SL. That time is over as it is now proof positive the intent for them is to outright steal or sabotage the legitimate SL grid.
— @ Ann — not really sure that LL can be any more successful in blocking content ripping — justified or not — than the music industry has been with stopping music being copied without payment. —
Short of fielding a maintaining an army of copyright/IP lawyers to chase down pirates with a budget like those of the recording industry giants, I don’t see it happening.
Though it would likely be cracked in days, if not hours after release, the responsible thing to have done would have been to have implemented a permissions check function.
It might be a futile effort, but it would have been received as a token of respect for the builder community that is more sensitive to the possibility of copyright violation.
And as far as “evil” goes… true evil would be to have included perms checking, and then create separate organizations that feed the CopyBot paranoia by providing tools which create the “higher wall, taller ladder” scenario where programs are released to ostensibly enable and block functionality. *grin*
“— What LL should do is nip this “backup ploy” in the heart and offer those services themselves. They have the means to do it. And Ann O’Toole is right, they should slam the door on third party browsers for SL. That time is over as it is now proof positive the intent for them is to outright steal or sabotage the legitimate SL grid. —”
Perhaps so, but the genie – or toothpaste – is out of the bottle when LL GPL’ed the viewer code, as well as the server libraries that made OpenLife/OpenSim possible.
I would however, hesitate at saying that there are so many “black market grids” out there. I keep avs on OLG and OpenSim Grid (OSG), and while there are numerous BIAB and freebie plazas in those grids, there simply isn’t the viewership that SL has to really compare in terms of lost economy.
In fact, OSG, which I believe to be one of the largest alt grids… is lucky to have more than 50 people logged in at any given time. That, and the OSG isn’t really monetized the way the Linden Grid is.
Rezzable management has always been a fucking joke but if you are going to release this we will make sure every rezzable venue on the web will go down and stay down and i’m not talking rezzing lulzcubes in your pathetic sims.
Ryoma
I was told by another that there is an economy on the black market grids, and it is exactly that… black market. The sales are person to person off the grids because there is no means to sell items easily in the grids themselves.
And in my travels, I’ve seen plenty of stolen content.
Just because the “Genie” has left the bottle is no excuse to keep going ahead full steam. LL could very easily take care of the grids by stopping the pipe flow of stolen items by stopping the third party browsers. And what hurts SL creators hurts LL. The destruction of the SL economy is industrial sabotage because the economy is what keeps LL afloat. Whether they like it or not.
Disfunctional Parents- Linden labs create spoiled self entitled children- RightRezzable. and others;)
so obviously self serving and morally bankrupt. all of it.
You Destroy all because you cant Build what you want your way… Childish , all of it.
I posted here before that Rezzable and others the loudest to proclaim “leadership” learned and pioneered nothing in terms of 3d digital media online. Sadly this is all proven true in the most destructive of ways to many others.
Linden lab, as disfuntional a parent it is, HAS the ability to remove this spoiled child from the sandbox. Either legally or via programming work, many peoples investments and property must be protected by those who benefit from its usage.
Actual product announcement? product feature request? attempt at marketing? consumer awareness? developer self awareness act?
all of it selfish and childish. time to grow up folks.
Three postings I have made on the rez blog that you may like to take up with them Dusan…The last two containing urls that I urge you to click on and read.
<>
<>
<>
Posts read below – sorry
Sell this to the Lindens – your disdain for them is well known, and then you can leave with a feeling that you have one upped them in the manner to which you most feel you need. Then the Lindens can fix what you couldn’t and make it into a viable piece of software that can be used responsibly. Not that I am saying LL is necessarily the the best place for it, but better than some of the villains that are currently plaguing the grid with bots already.
—-
Mon, 07/20/2009 – 21:01 — ToxicMenges (not verified)
There is a phrase here in the UK: “They don’t like it up’em” meaning the type of person that can hand it out but doesn’t like to get it back – in other words hypocritical. If I may draw your attention to this posting: http://rezzable.com/blog/vint-falken/copyright-the-garden
Vint, care to comment?
———
Mon, 07/20/2009 – 21:34 — ToxicMenges (not verified)
if I may quote you Vint .. upon the occasion of being a victim of content theft “Shame on you” http://www.vintfalken.com/imvu-avatars-stole-my-eyes-textures/
Again I say, care to comment?
Yes feed your need to beat LL – anyone who reads SL related blogs are aware of your feelings on that level, but please respect those who have laboured and are staying in SL.
Given your previous few posts regarding leaving SL to move to other grids, this smacks of tossing a grenade into the building just before you leave.
“It’s the same mentality that goes into terrorism”
Frankly it is.
Bettina- since you want to invoke heaven and hell;)I suggest more pragmatism.
if you want to find a non diety “purpose” to “our” group. Then call for a voteable “sanction” or “tossing” of Rezzable within our group, Their website posted “argument” for a “release” 2 is offensive and if released as is – destructive to many who create IP as a profession and whom participate in an economy of the c/m/t managnemt system of IP online.
IP expressed in SL DRM is the(a) core of the NPIRL group, is it not?.;)
Ill assume after all this, Rezable will copy the DRM system of SecondInventory or decide NOT to release as zais has in the current described product form. Then at best this will appear as a failed “promotion” for a “new” 100$ product that has some needs for some. but also has competing products with the same proper backup capabilities.
Either way. FEAR and the threat of Extortion should not be permitted to be “proper” PR for any ethical creative group member. should it?
your group. my suggestion.:)
others in the group should voice their opions as well…if the attitudes voiced by RAR are dominant, please remove my name from the group.
back to the show
c3
I am getting sick of this. I’ve created a jira.
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-14778
well isn’t this special…
I know where I won’t be going, and that’s to Rezzable’s sims. I’m glad I’ve been working harder with Blue Mars and other Cryengine games lately, as well as RealXtend.
This is just pure malice on Rezzable’s part, and it’s going to hurt a lot of talented people. Of course this is so they can tout their own grid.
Screw you, Rezzable.
I have no idea about coding behind the copybot or Second Life, but it seems to me, we can scream at Rezzable all we want, but Linden Labs needs to be the ones to fix the problem. Maybe they can hire someone with that 100 mil in revenue to fix the permission system and prevent this from happening.
Thats my three cents.
It doesnt really matter if its an LL issue originally @Metcam, there will always be an analogue hole with everything, unless it gets rendered on the server.
But to aid and abet copybotting for profit and to burn down as many content creators in Second Life as possible, to promote their own grid haven (which suffers from the same problem, ironically), well… it is a new level of low. It’s about what Rezzable did, not about what LL can’t do much about.
You can drag me around with wild horses, that won’t get me to visit a Rezzable sim, ever again, no matter where it is.
“rationale is more like, why punish the people that need useful tools because a few people will misuse them.”
RightAsRain, it’s more like “Why barely benefit the very few that will use these tools properly, when legions of script kiddies will misuse them?”
I am absolutely stunned that you can callously take this standpoint. The timing is telling, too.
If you truly believed that this tool was *so useful* above and beyond the damage it would cause, why didn’t you come out with it when you still planned to sell significant volumes of content on the main grid?
You seem quite willing to casually play out this experiment on society, but only *after* the potential financial consequences to yourself have largely been mitigated.
The very nature of the tool ~ rip *everything* with ease ~ ratches the copybot problem up several notches. This is a script kiddie dream come true.
The price of releasing it will include:
~ stolen content problems for grid operators,
~ some fraction of content creator incomes,
~ increased need for DMCA notices,
~ Rezzable’s reputation,
~ Your reputation.
Worst of all, even if you *don’t* release it, some geektard (or several) is going to copycat the idea now that you’ve brought it to the forefront. And release their own version just for the lulz and bragging rights. Thus leaving your hands ‘clean’ but creating dangerously similar effect.
But of course, no doubt you’ve been thinking about all this through.
Do the right thing, and quickly.
Sincerely,
Desmond Shang, Guvnah
Independent State of Caledon.
This is fucking disgusting. I hope Rezzable gets badly burned over this kind of shit, fucking thieves.
On 07.20.09 Bettina Tizzy said:
A few points that needs to be made here:
- Rezzable has NOT released this. They are asking for suggestions on how to release it.
- I WANT the ability to back up my sim. And hey, unless you have been living under a rock, it is already possible to copy just about everything, whether you own the perms or not.
Bettina, that’s what LL do for you. It’s called a rollback you put in a ticket if you have an issue. And if it was non copy stuff a quick IM to the creator to authorise it is all you need for the rollback.
What gives YOU the right to bypass creator permissions, licences simply because you *want to back up*? How many commercial creators pay the tier that keep Linden in profit leaving the platform running so those who use it for free and creativity have that opportunity. Without the creators who effectively retain the users, and maintain Linden in the USD they need for profit – SL will not have a future.
@ Callie Cline. Good point, should Rezzable release this tool perhaps I can pop over to their grid copy all their work and recreate in SL to an invite only sim. Hey, I can even host my own open sim and replicate it and call myself Ressellable.
Appalling lack of commercial foresight and governance.
Bettina, stop it with the technocommunism, already. It’s unseemly — and stupid.
Just because YOU need a convenience doesn’t mean you get to destroy the entire world and everyone’s IP over it. Stop being so goddamn *infantile*.
The code not being released means nothing; it is out, it is around, it has already accomplished the doomsday effect and will keep spiralling.
This cynical notion that just because you *can* steal everything therefore you *should* belongs to thugs’ world, not civilization and not the Second Life community.
I’m really vehemently sick of hearing this snotty and arrogant explanation every time the issue emerges, replete with a snotty and vicious reference to the music industry.
Like…it’s ok to destroy the newspaper industry, the music industry, the book industry with rampant and criminal copying? Destruction hasn’t led to anything but profits for a tiny handful of cynical assholes who dine out having books and lectures about Free. These are not business models.
What’s most retarded about this infantile and cynical approach is that it relies on the idea that “somewhere” there will still be people who value content — oh, people who need to buy a jingle for an ad, or people who need a soundtrack for a movie, or people who like a t-shirt, or people who want a custom build in another colour. And…those people are expected not to race to the bottom and pay $0, too? Those people are supposed to keep paying top dollar to keep the cynical tecnocommies in business? Why? Who says?
There is no reason that creators cannot have some kind of permissions regime on their products and be paid for them. It need not be deliberately defeated so as to incite crime, any more than you give up on passwords and door locks just because of hackers and thiefs.
Anyone who creates an item like that, not considering how it will be abused, deserves to get hacked/money stolen from or any other bad scenario. I really have zero respect for people that come up with lousy excuses like ‘ Oh there will be bad people doing bad things anyway, so yeah the fact that I’m handing out guns to criminals, does not make me in any way a bad person, since I so much consider the actual impact that will have.
at least build in a checker that the prims you’re copying are your own created prims
You can’t stop this.
LL either change the business model and re-structure the whole SL making it a kind of MMO where you have a freedom unlike in any other ones (just hire better builders than the $10/hour moles)
or
make the copying harder. Currently with alternative viewers it’s really not much effort to re-compile them without removing the few ‘if x has y permissions on this prim then’ and you can grab whole sims and import them into the various OpenSims.
Of course when the real good builds are ripped and made available grid-wide, the motivation for newbies to actually search for the original and buy it, will be around zero.
cont. on my blog, sorry this is getting too long here…
Btw copyleft is still way much nicer than copyright.
Let’s go right to the end-game, shall we? It’s only a matter of processor power and patience to let a few spare machines plow through the grid now… set the sim copybot after the grid, copy everything, sim by sim, and auction the builds to anyone for the highest bid, for use on any grid. Counting down the clock until someone announces this for real.
[...] Rezzable Readies Release of Full Sim Copybot [...]
Prokbluster aside, I contend that this may be an attempt on the part of Rezzable to get into LL’s seemingly deep pockets (deep enough to buy the two largest third-party SL-shopping sites on the web), selling LL the rights to the software so that it *doesn’t* get distributed.
Doesn’t mean that someone else can’t create it, but if LL owns the rights, LL can sue anyone who creates a similar sim copier.
Follow the money, children.
Asking the viewer devs to sign a license restricting them from making copying tools won’t actually help. Firstly, the code is already out there, and LL are in no position to do an epic re-write of their protocols on a whim (although over time they would change, I suppose). Secondly, breaking a clear text protocol isn’t all that hard, or we wouldn’t have WoW-bots. Even if they encrypted all grid communication, it would just slow things down (the grid, mostly) as fundamentally the client needs to have the key to do the decryption.
The movie industry with its giant buckets of cash, careful licensing and trusted hardware didn’t manage to stop DVDs bring broken (and even Blu-Rays are fairly much broken apart from some sporadic fighting over BD+). You cannot solve this technologically.
Rezzable have announced that BuilderBot will not be released under a BSD licence, interesting development really. They also sound a lot more content creator friendly with this update:
http://rezzable.com/blog/rightasrain-rimbaud/reviewing-builderbot-release
We’re dealing with “Unavoidable Evolution”.
Consider the number of arts that have fallen prey to the adoption of more modern offerings that typically require far less time, mastery and talent to utilize:
Oils and Canvas vs. Photography
Horse and buggy vs. common automobiles
written correspondence vs. email
cellulid film vs. digital video
live performance vs. vinyl recordings vs. mp3s
Magazines and Newspapers vs. blogs and video
As technology advances, so to does our ability to duplicate. Draconian policies can’t stop this, and aren’t typically effective at slowing the rate of change.
With the channels of distribution growing wider all the time, it’s nearly futile to attempt detecting and prosecuting someone for unauthorized duplication. (and certainly not cost effective in most cases.)
So what’s the point? We can yell and scream until we’re blue in the face that “new fangled technology is stealing from and harming artists that create quality content”… and it won’t even create much of a speedbump to slow this down.
It is unfortunate that jaded creators may throw in the towel rather than watch their efforts reap profits for rippers. They do themselves and their fans a disservice when they cease to create.
To wax crazy and metaphorical… rippers are like moonlight. They lack the ability to warm or shine on their own… they merely create a pale imitation of that which they wish could have created themselves. It is time we should fear not rippers. So what someone copies something we did in the past.
It’s what we create next that matters most.
ugh, I proofread twice and still junk slips through.
… “they merely create a pale imitation of that which they wish [they] could have created themselves. It is ‘time’ we should fear, not rippers. So what if someone copies something we did in the past… it’s what we create NEXT that matters most.”
On Black Swan sim there is a tower build I created for Rezzable. They have full mod rights to the tower yet at a later time I placed some of my own works in the build which was not part of the sale, but placed because it improved the build. I didn’t mind just leaving it there as its ownership would remain mine allowing me to remove it should I ever wish to. It sounds like Black Swan sim has now been copied including those builds that were not sold to Rezzable. It could be argued that this is the first theft to be done with that script.
It is “amazing” how the “tech” attacks made on IP are targeted mostly toward “copyright”, while software “process patents” pay for it all.:)
Jopsy, here we go again with the fake march of fake vintage media analogies, courtesty of Internet memes and Clay Shirky.
Each one of those forms of media didn’t “disappear” but remained, and was built upon.
Each next form of media began exactly following the format of the previous one and not realizing the full capacity. Why does Walter Conkrite sound so sonorous? Because he’s reading for radio, he doesn’t yet realize he’s on TV (in the early days) and it sticks.
Each one of these media formats copies earlier formats, but the idea that one puts the other out of business belongs only to our age. The person who drove the horse and buggy moved over to driving the car — he merely had less horseshit to clean up now. The horses were ridden more for pleasure or sent to the glue factory but no one was put out of business. The saddle maker could make bucket seats.
No artist lost his job because photography came on the scene; portrait arists and painters remain to this day.
Nothing that you say is in fact true. Media does not displace other media, and even when it does, it doesn’t put people out of work UNLESS you are Clay Shirky and say it should, or unless you are 101 other geek bolsheviks claiming that everything except their consulting fees and government grants should be liberated.
Nobody “yells and screams” when technology changes because it doesn’t move as fast as you came. The newspapers are still in their newstands. I still pick up letters at the mail box, and there are still people taking buggy rides in the city where I live.
When people want to portray technology as “accelerating” or “putting somebody out of business” it’s usually because they want more power for their own class of people and want to egg on something that isn’t in fact accelerating as they’d like.
Yes, journalists have been thrown out of work. They found jobs in government, PR, and education where maybe they belonged all along.
The idea that we’re supposed to create, and just let creations be ripped and then just make new stuff is some gerbil-on-a-wheel idea that some corporation has saddled you with. We need do nothing of the kind. There are tools to stop theft. There are policies that can be put in place. Man up, and stop demanding that other people be put out of business so that you can gloat about your techocommunist theories.
By the way Jopsy, if you think it’s ok that everything you made in the past can be copied, please put your entire inventory out on your lawn set permless for me to pick up, kthxbye
Xugu Madison follows all the opensouce extremist candards on this discussion:
o your goal is not 100 percent deterrence, but better deterrence than we have now, so you do what you can and don’t give up due to lack of 100 percent closeability
o no one has demonstrated that such authenticating makes servers load slower or slows down the entire grid — this is one of those urban legends that code kiddies tell without any scientific proof “just because”. WoW does this and WoW doesn’t lag lol
o er, WoW does this, and it doesn’t have to hire thousands of coders, or somehow cripple itself to get the job done. It collects $15.95 from every player per month, it has 18 million users, it gets the job down. We need to stop hearing incessantly from whiney kids about how this can’t be done and is technologically impossible, and start assembling the data to make it possible and convince the Lindens
o they are hobbled by the Stallmanites in their own ranks and are split themselves — and Rob Linden tiresomely making long arguments on the wiki as to why you can’t do this, driven by his opensource ideology, has to be overridded so that other voices with alternatives can not only be heard, but try these things out
o Dale Innis and Zha Ewry need to be muted, as they continue to interrupt this conversation from the hugely powerful position of the hugely self-interested IBM, and that needs to be stopped – -get their pressure out of this discussion so it can be had free of ideology, greed, and politics, to the extent possible to verify its technical points
o there is nothing wrong with experimenting and trying different things.
o I find it the height of hypocrisy for Rezzable and their groupies to claim that it’s ok to let ripping code into the wilds like this because nobody will be smart enough to use it much as it’s too technical, and yet not apply the very same principle of technical obfuscation to make it possible so fewer people DO steal. It’s the biggest hold in their argument and I would keep accentuating it
o stop looking to the music industry for justification of Stallmanism, as it isn’t even being portrayed correctly. Last time I looked you still have to pay for i-tunes that you can’t just download for free. It may have been reasonable to remove DRM from the equations these companies had to deal with, where they had captive audiences with their i-pods dominating the market anyway, and where the issue was enabling the user to make multiple copies to different devices
WE DON’T HAVE THAT PROBLEM IN SECOND LIFE BECAUSE YOU CAN ENDLESSLY COPY BUT STILL KEEP DRM NOT TO TRANSFER DUH.
I had that epiphany myself literally in the last week as I reflected on it, and it shows that once you start thinking about this problem freely, without the cant of the opensource shill, you begin to find your way.
I received a inworld SL notecard and a transcript from a “group that cannot be named;)”
It seems the below comments made, that clearly are my professional and personal point of view toward the actions of others has caused the need for more clarifications from those who decide to create other “suggested” but “non authoritative or sanctioned” positions over others.
As the below repost clearly shows, I asked for no unilateral actions to be taken toward ANY PARTY, except POSSIBLY MYSELF in terms of a public listing.
IF only ASKING for Feedback and SUGGESTING actions is good for the Rezzable Goose, then I assume I’m fine and Gander.
c3
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“It’s the same mentality that goes into terrorism”
Frankly it is.
Bettina- since you want to invoke heaven and hell;)I suggest more pragmatism.
if you want to find a non diety “purpose” to “our” group. Then call for a voteable “sanction” or “tossing” of Rezzable within our group, Their website posted “argument” for a “release” 2 is offensive and if released as is – destructive to many who create IP as a profession and whom participate in an economy of the c/m/t managnemt system of IP online.
IP expressed in SL DRM is the(a) core of the NPIRL group, is it not?.;)
Ill assume after all this, Rezable will copy the DRM system of SecondInventory or decide NOT to release as zais has in the current described product form. Then at best this will appear as a failed “promotion” for a “new” 100$ product that has some needs for some. but also has competing products with the same proper backup capabilities.
Either way. FEAR and the threat of Extortion should not be permitted to be “proper” PR for any ethical creative group member. should it?
your group. my suggestion.:)
others in the group should voice their opions as well…if the attitudes voiced by RAR are dominant, please remove my name from the group.
back to the show
c3
@ Bryn — thanks. Nice to speculate and call us thieves. I don’t understand why if you have a concern you wouldn’t contact us and discuss. Is piling onto a mob really what you are about? I don’t think so. You are one of the most talented people working in SL and while I expect spew from many I would have hope for a lot more from you. Don’t get sucked into the darkness.
It seem that those who keep coding/ and evangelizing such “neutral tools” for “experimental economic” social release on the global web should check their math.
It does seem today that 3 wrongs DO equal 1 Right.
If this is not desired. Fix it.
RAR my point is that if the Black Swan sim was copied it means you unwittingly copied work I had there which was not purchased by Rezzable. I don’t think you intentionally took them, I imagine you expected everything on the sim to belong to you and that is quite reasonable. But legally I don’t imagine that saying you didn’t know would hold up. Then again perhaps it would I really don’t know. But giving this tool out would likely cause a rash of LindenLab freezing of accounts and worse as people copied whole sims which belonged to them, yet contained objects which were purchased “no copy” thus breaking the original agreement upon sale.