Jesse Barnett

https://blogs.secondlife.com/communi...-viewer-policy

"
Resident Responsibilities
There are currently many third parties who create and distribute viewers. Most of these viewers are useful because they are innovative and many enable a more customized Second Life experience for those who use them; however, it appears that some of those third party viewers also contain functionality that is being used to copy content without the right to do so, facilitate griefing, enable phishing, collect user data without clear disclosure of such practices, and distribute software that contains harmful elements. When our revised policy goes into effect, any viewer containing functionality that can be used to impede our efforts to manage Second Life will not be tolerated. We will collaborate with developers to work towards a clear set of expectations and guidelines; however, we will also, if necessary, take action against those who actively seek to disrupt our service or violate out Terms of Service.
Residents who use third party viewers with the functionality described above to violate out Terms of Service or Community Standards, will be warned and then suspended from the service.
What will Linden Lab do?
We will create new guidelines and policies outlining the standards that third party viewers must meet in order to connect to our platform, as well as tools and programs to help the developers of third party viewers and the wider community learn about and comply with those guideline. One of the tools will be a "viewer registry" that will allow developers to list their viewer in a third party viewer directory maintained by Linden Lab, identify the features of their viewer, and represent to the Second Life community that it complies with Linden Lab's guidelines for third party viewers. Over the next few weeks we will be holding a series of 'brown bag' meetings designed as working groups to help us with these challenging issues. In addition we will have a forum for feedback to help all of us make good choices going forward."


Am at work and do not have a chance to comment yet.

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Tess Whitcroft

I wonder how much of the lab's recent activity has it's origins in the lawsuit filed by Stroker and co...

Tess

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Lewis Luminos

Quite a lot, possibly, if dodgy clients are one of the reasons that content theft is so rife.

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Gigs

It's not. At all.

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Jesse Barnett

I think it was a combination of the lawsuit plus the heightened outrage.

Interestingly neillife took the copybot portions out of his latest release. He complained that the lab was banning too many of his friends. WOOHOO!!!! He says he is going to add it back in this weekend, but evidently the message and the repercussions are spreading.

Ann Launay

Why do you all ignore poor Blog Bot so?

http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/new...ird-party.html

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Camille Serpentine

It's bot discrimination!

Desmond Shang

Holy crap.

This smells like the first steps toward closing the source, to me.

"Open but verified" is a huuuuge step in that direction.

But how is the service provider going to know what you are signing on with, without diddling the current protocols a bit? It's just waaaaay too easy to spoof. I smell further changes on the way.

Incidentally, this is one of those rare times where I agree with Gigs. Unless they start changing up things with the protocol, and a whole lot more, this one particular move won't change much.

It would have to come with a whole bunch of other steps, and be an ongoing effort. The fact that they would consider registering the viewers at all, which won't be terribly effective in and of itself, makes it seem like a "tip of the iceberg to come" sort of thing to me.

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Gigs

Ongoing effort... in other words an arms race.

Desmond Shang

Yes.

Hypatia Callisto

I don't see that happening, they are trying to get it accepted as an internet standard through the IETF.

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Desmond Shang

If that's the case, it's going to be ridiculously hard to stop illicit copying.

Circle Widdershins

What is a 'brown bag' meeting?

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Argent Stonecutter

Giving this policy real teeth would probably involve sufficient restrictions on viewer development to have a chilling effect on legitimate 3rd party developers. And it still wouldn't do much to prevent illicit copying. Philip Linden said that they weren't going to get into that kind of arms race, but now he's off doing other stuff I guess they can jump on the treadmill and take a hit for the sex beds.

Gigs

Everyone dumps on a Linden. It's popular in Germany more than here I think.

Cristiano

Corporate speak for a meeting you bring your lunch to.

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* slu stuff *

eku Zhong

while yes its an almost impossible task.. there is one bright point (if they actually act on it and not just do their usual nothing on their words)

Quote:

Residents who use third party viewers with the functionality described above to violate out Terms of Service or Community Standards, will be warned and then suspended from the service.

having consequences is a big step in the right direction for discouraging casual copiers...

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Gigs

Ann the Tool is already cheering:

"Anyone that refuses to register a client and abide by the policy is suspect plain and simple."

Desmond Shang

It's going to be very hard to tell if anyone's being naughty, though.

All of us download things just by virtue of moving around the world.

Sure, there's probably some inherent signature to some illicit copying, such as: who could build up X thousand prims in Y seconds, with a 99.99% incidence of someone else's UUID's each and every time... or who would re~upload a poison pill texture, or something... but still.

Galen McGinnis

Ok this saves a bunch of capitals screaming for my sanity.

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Ann Launay

Ow.

Stephanie Misfit

What about compiling source code yourself from say, Emerald? Or even the official viewer? There's any number of modifications an individual could easily make to a legitimate, "registered" viewer so that it no longer complies (like adding in the copybot patch that LL let sit on the JIRA for so long, or even making a few simple changes to the xml files that sit in your SL directory).

Will this force a move to closed source for viewers that have been assessed as complying with the new policy?

Argent Stonecutter

No, more likely it would require you personally registering your version with them before it's allowed to connect to the grid.

Gigs

Even blessed binaries aren't technically feasible.

You can use something like punkbuster, but it's reliant on a constant treadmill of updates because it relies on security through obscurity, and once each version is is cracked (which will always happen), you need to upgrade again.

Good luck finding a punkbuster type thing for 3 platforms either.

Wildefire Walcott

Actually this looks to be a little less effective than wait periods on gun purchases in terms of limiting crime. Their 'registration' policy doesn't sound like anything other than a cursory review or survey, and the end result is they put 'approved' viewers on a web page. (It doesn't have anything to do with blocking viewers that aren't reviewed.) But people like PN and Neil don't give a shit about being on LL's web page... they just care that they can cause havoc in-world, and they will continue to do so regardless of this silliness. LL may not be much of a game company but they're developing into quite skilled politicians.

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