Archive for the ‘DRM’ Category
The Virtual Grocery Store
Friday, July 18th, 2008
“It won’t be any permissions scheme, but rather fear, that will keep the grid masters lawful and in line. - Desmond Shang”
Not just fear, but the fact that the majority of people are honest.
A grocery store has no “technical protections” to prevent you from walking out without paying.
Sure, they could lock you in an airlock while they scan every item in your cart… but they don’t, because people are honest on the whole, and will pay for what they take off the shelves.
The old way was to have a clerk fetch everything from behind the counter. Sure it worked, but it didn’t scale.
Now that we are moving to an “open store” paradigm, we just have to get over the fact that people will shoplift a little, and that our remedy is going to be pretty much limited to bring legal action against the most egregious offenders.
The Criminalization of Open Source - 6 Months Later
Thursday, June 26th, 2008I wrote this message to SLDEV on Monday, December 17. I caught a lot of flak for it, at the time:
I was very disappointed with the Linden Lab response to VWR-1919. For background, James has committed code to remove the ability to get texture UUIDs from the client UI.
Replies to the Discussion at Zero’s about Content Permissions.
Tuesday, June 17th, 2008Some interesting stuff:
[13:18] Zero Linden: If the goal is one of signaling some preservation the current permissions - let me make it clear: the open grid protocol will not invalidate or override content permissions
Sorry Zero, Linden Lab really doesn’t get to decide this. If you cripple the protocol with DRM bullshit, the Internet will route around the failure, and ignore your protocol. The current permissions are meaningless, except for scripts. Once you start talking about moving assets between grids, all bets are off, even for scripts.
[13:19] Zero Linden: If the goal is signaling - there are far better ways than adding this checkbox, functional or not
This is more like it. The failure was when Linden Lab decided to imply to users that DRM was ever possible. It should have always been an attachment of copyright license, not some fields that pretend to look like Unix permissions that don’t actually accomplish anything on most of the asset types.
(more…)
My reply to her:
One may wonder why this would make all open source devs felons, even if they don’t infringe on anyone’s copyright. It has to do with the way the DMCA is written. Distributing a “device” that “primarily exists” to bypass the “effective copy protection” is a felony. This goes beyond merely using the device to actually infringe, distributing the tool is also a crime.
(Image: Klaus with K, from wikicommons)