[Opensim-dev] Copyright, IPR and stuff on assets

[dan miller]

> So basically, I don't really think trying to come up with some way of
> stopping people copying assets is even worth much time; at least at the
> moment.

I sort of agree, the trend is definitely towards open formats and less
DRM/copy protection schemes.  However I think there's one thing we in the
OSS community could contribute, which is some universally acknowledged form
of creator identification.  Sure it can be ripped out, spoofed, etc., but my
take is that 95% of the users in the world will eventually be willing to pay
for things if there is convenience, availability, and reasonable pricing. 
Having content tags that specify the provenance of a piece of data (or code
for that matter, which is just a form of data) would go a long way towards
enabling that to come about.  It could also provide a basis for
identification and prosecution of flagrant copyright violators (in spite of
my misgivings about the over-wrought copyright laws in the US and the
unconscionable way the RIAA & MPAA are wielding them, the idea of IP
ownership still has some validity, IMSHO). 

If anyone read Ted Nelson's original Xanadu-era ramblings about hypertext,
he had this idea that you could have a chain of authorship follow text back
to the source.  It morphed into hyperlinks and was put to a different use,
but it's still an interesting thought, and it may be even more relevant with
non-text media.  Turns out in the days of Google, we can search for any
piece of text, so text is its own signature.  Not so for video or 3D assets,
at least not yet.

-danx0r