[Opensim-dev] Thoughts....

[Brian Wolfe]

(warning, written 15 minutes after waking up and before first coffee was
downed.)


Your arguments are spot on. :) I would add that having DRM or attempting
to curtail end users fredom of use is pushing society to being
untrustable. There is an old saying. Say something often enough and it
becomes true. Say people WILL steal content at times, be paranoid about
it and far more people WILL steal your content due to lack of respect ,
which is earned by the creator's lack of trust in others.

However if you as a creator can bring yourself to see the good in
others, most will respect you enough to not steal your work. You will
still have some minor theft happening, but not nearly enough to stop you
from creating and profiting from your creations. This is just life and
society in general and unavoidable.

Here's another parallel to the whole DRM debate. We trust each other to
not run around killing people. We don't walk around wearing 100%
protective body armour because, well, it's impossibly expensive, and no
one will trust you due to your obvious paranoia. ;) Instead, we walk
around with no armour at all, yet the threat of serious bodily harm is
still there, and we manage to survive just fine.

There are bad apples, just don't let one bad apple ruin your
relationship with the rest of the apples. 



On Sun, 2008-03-02 at 23:55 -0800, dan miller wrote:
> > I am not looking for a closed environment, so much as I am concerned about
> > Intellectual Property Rights.  A great many content creators will be just
> > as
> > concerned when the metaverse concept begins to gain momentum in the more
> > mainstream circles.  I love the idea of a multiverse, but how does one
> > ensure their content does not get ripped off by some hack snooping through
> > locally stored assets?  I don't like the idea that content I create could
> > end up being stolen and resold/redistributed without license.
> 
> The issue of IP protection is of course an old one; this is a new medium, so
> the issue comes up yet again.  I'm old enough to have been through several
> rounds of this.  Here's a brief recap:
> 
> 
> Analog tech, 1970's - 80's:
> 
> Threat: cassette recording.  Music industry response: ban the technology;
> arrest perpetrators; etc. & so on.
> 
> Final result: $.10 per blank cassette "copying royalty", helps record execs
> with their Xmas bonuses.  Anyone can copy anything whenever they want;
> records keep selling.
> 
> Threat: VHS/betamax.  Movie industry response: ban the technology, arrest
> perpetrators, yada yada
> 
> Final result: anyone can copy a movie.  Stars still get paid, Hollywood
> doesn't close up shop
> 
> Digital Tech, 1st wave -- 80's - early 90's:
> 
> Threat: digital copying of music CD's using DAT (digital tape). Music
> industry response: ban the technology, arrest perpetrators blah blah
> 
> Final result: DAT tapes have a copy bit thingie which is trivially bypassed,
> but never catch on anyway except for production because it's a silly,
> expensive medium.  Music industry somehow survives.
> 
> Threat: software piracy.  Software industry response: heavy copy protection,
> arrest perpetrators (I was at a meeting where a founder of a software
> company seriously asked if anyone knew how to hire a hitman to 'take out'
> some people who had distributed maybe a dozen copies of his program)
> 
> Final result: copy-protected programs go the way of the dinosaur by
> mid-90's, because they're a pain in the ass, and most people who would pay
> for software do.  Somehow, in spite of the grave threat, Bill Gates
> continues to get richer and richer right up to the present.
> 
> Digitial Tech, Internet age - 90's - present
> 
> Threat: MP3, network distribution of pirated music.  Industry response: ban
> the technology, sue everyone in sight, arrest people, etc.
> 
> Final result: music industry slowly learns that not only is digital
> distribution the way things must go, but that DRM is in fact doomed. 
> Somehow, Britney Spears still makes enough money to spend $200K a month on
> Lattes.
> 
> Threat: Divx, video rips, bittorrent, Tivo.  Industry response: ban the
> technology, sue everyone (this is getting repetitive...)
> 
> Final result (still in progress, but obvious): all media will be digital;
> none of it will be DRM'ed; but most people will end up paying for the
> content anyway.  The movie studios will not go broke.
> 
> I think the point is obvious: copying is a fact of life, and it's something
> that impacts every medium of expression.  Attempting to control it through
> protection and DRM-like schemes is bound to fail, because people want to own
> the information they buy, free and clear.  They don't appreciate being
> treated like criminals.
> 
> There are things we can do to promote healthy, acceptible attitudes towards
> IP.  Authentication, signatures, watermarks, databases of content
> provenance, etc.  We should do those things and get them into opensim.  We
> should also promote a culture of fairness to creators; the history I've
> outlined has too often set up a narrative of content creators (well, really
> the distributors) as faceless evil empires, and the content consumers as
> lawless pirates.  The fact that this new medium is less intermediated so far
> -- you often transact directly with the creator -- should help in this
> regard.  After all the smoke clears, in my mind copying someone's content
> without their permission (with some caveats for fair use) is simply not
> morally defensible.  But the final deterrent cannot be technical -- it has
> to be moral and social.  We need to foster a culture of responsibility,
> transparency, and accountability.  That's where we should focus our efforts.
> 
> Frankly I'm more worried about the metaverse getting stunk up with spam like
> email and usenet, than with the issue of IP rights.  The key is to make it
> possible to see who is doing what -- including unauthorised copying.  It
> should simply be uncool to show up at a party wearing something you stole --
> like going to the Oscars with a fake designer dress.  This is a social
> medium; it should be possible to make what burnman is worried about socially
> unacceptable.  I doubt it's possible in any scalable way to make it
> technically impossible, as history has shown.
> 
> Just my 2c
> -danx0r
> 
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