SLUniverse Forums

Walker Moore

This caught my eye earlier:

We have scripts, so will sluniverse or onrez turn up now?

I think they mean SLX rather than SLUniverse don't they? The reconstructed forum post is a little difficult to follow.

How would you feel about OnRez and SLX making your stuff available on third-party grids?

Heck, I don't even trust LL with my inventory, let alone somebody I only became aware of last week.

It's ultimately up to content creators whether their products should be made available on third-party grids, isn't it? Not the middle-man.

prinţesă nină

i think it would require a new shopping site.

Michael Bigwig

Hmmm..

I wouldn't mind my Slex and Onrez products crossing grid lines...as long as I still made the money coming to me, as well as my items still retaining their MOD/COPY stats, and lastly, my name as creator.

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prinţesă nină

and some guy will have root access to his server thats attached to the grid and he can read all your scripts and whatnot.

Walker Moore

Exactly what I was thinking.

Walker Moore

You have to bear in mind that the simulators are reverse engineered, so there are lots of glitches. Given the permissions glitches LL have introduced over the years -- effectively turning many products into freebies -- and the fact that permissions are very buggy right now on open simulator (it's trivial to disable all permissions and lose access to your own items for example), it's a tall order to expect SLX/OnRez intervention at this stage... in my humble opinion.

Michael Bigwig

Well, if there's no protecting anyones' products on an open source grid...what's the use of stressing about theft?

What's the use with worrying about permissions at all? If someone can just take the product you sell, and resell it as their own...how can OL expect to create a thriving business and consumer base?

That's certainly not what I'm looking for.

Walker Moore

I haven't been able to mess with the permissions on anybody else's prims by the way. I'm just reluctant to trust the permissions system, given how unticking a few checkboxes made my own prims unavailable to me.

Even if these third-party grids become as reliable (finah) as LL's, their operators will need to gain a lot of trust before they'll be able to stimulate commerce.

Joshua Nightshade

This brings up an interesting subject.

As I understand it talking to other Lindens and the OpenSim(s) developers the eventual path is likely to add another sort of permission, in the hypothetical ubercloud that is the OMNIGRID, that handles whether or not something can be taken "off-grid." If I make an avatar in SL and set it such, it can be exported, either out from the SL viewer into a backup or out from the SL grid onto a third party one. At either point it really is up for grabs and permissions as we understand them cease to be.

This is, however, a lesson that any content creator in SL really needs to come to terms with, because at no point ever have the permissions systems in SL-proper ever been that failsafe. For data to be rendered on your system it has to be sent to your system. Be it graphics (textures) or prim information eventually someone will (and has at various points) figure out a way to intercept it and steal. The single exception to this so far has been scripts, because there's no need for them to be sent to the viewer in order to run them as everything is server-side and the viewer simply gets periodic notices from the server to change what it's seeing.

Anyway our content is not safe under the current SL permission system and never has been, it's just taken time for people to reverse engineer ways around getting what content they want. This has been an issue before, stealing graphics from websites has been going on since 1994 or 95 with all manner of attempted technical methods imposed to prevent it that only ever affect legitimate users.

Ultimately content creators will have to give up what is really an archaic sense of "OMG MY CONTENT MUST BE PROTECTED AT ALL COSTS," because this is the same sort of issue that on a larger scale affects the RIAA and the MPAA. DRM is failed, technological attempts to prevent human behavior don't work.

I can't say I understand fully the solution that works best in the hypothetical new grid, but I think instead of trying to hold onto your content with an iron grip and piss off customers with more and more restrictive methods of protecting it, it's probably better to build yourself a brand image around your content that is ultimately more valuable than the content itself.

Adam Zaius

Josh has it in one.

Cocoanut Koala

There is no way I could ever build myself a brand image around my content that could possibly be more valuable than the cottage or the mouse or the whatever itself.

As to the original question, I'd take my things off of SLExchange and OnRez, rather than having them sold on this and that grid which I might not be in, wouldn't have time to deal with, and would have no particular reason to trust.

coco

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Malachi

Having read that confusing post you reference, I find my self wondering if you are asking "Since I have put my SL items for sale within SL using OnRez/SLX, can the brokers sell my stuff on some other grid?"

If I am reading you correctly, of course they can not. The brokers don't have your stuff, it all lives within the SL grid and the broker can't sell it anywhere but SL no matter how much they want to.

If I'm mistaken about what question you are asking, sorry.

Joshua Nightshade

It occurred to me after I posted that maybe that was the question as well, which is "No, not possible."

Well it's not a question of if but when. This is the way things will move, and as third party grids pop up more and more this will be the future of it. For those who expect or survive on income generated from digital content it will be necessary to evolve business strategies.

And it simply won't be enough to say, "Well fine then, I'm never leaving the SL grid."

WarKirby Magojiro

It won't be possible for the items to be on other grids in any case, at least not currently, as they don't have acess to LL's asset servers.

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Walker Moore

No. You're right. I'm on another planet this week. Of course third-parties like OnRez or SLX can't make our stuff available on other grids, because that stuff doesn't exist on those grids.

Psyke Phaeton

I am still trying to grasp the ultimate plan/goal here. Are we saying all digital content will be stolen on the "OMNIGRID" and we need to sell intangibles. Or are we saying that at some stage there will be trusted grids and untrusted grids?

I am asking from a script perspective as I realise all content sent to a users PC is compromised.

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Joshua Nightshade

I imagine there will be "trusted" and "untrusted" grids. I imagine there will be a system of grids that probably aren't operated by individuals but companies, who agree that content that passes through their sims won't be pulled off by the owners of the sims. I suppose this will likely work through some membership fee to an organization or whatever that proclaims to moderate it or at least police it. Otherwise I assume the assumption will be that if you connect to an unsecured sim on your avatar and begin pulling stuff out of your inventory, it's up for grabs.

At any point in this though your content isn't technically safe. Even on a "trusted" grid, it's only trusted as far as you believe the sim/grid operators won't take your shit.