[Opensim-dev] Thoughts....

[Teravus Ovares]

+1 Diva

On 3/3/08, Brian Wolfe <brianw at terrabox.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, 2008-03-03 at 12:41 -0500, The Burnman wrote:
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Mar 3, 2008 at 12:10 PM, Brian Wolfe <brianw at terrabox.com>
> > wrote:
> >         (warning, written 15 minutes after waking up and before first
> >         coffee was
> >         downed.)
> >
> > Noted.  ;)
>
> Thanks. :)
>
> >
> >         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.
> >
> > There is no paranoia in the valid concern that people will attempt to
> > rip you off.  It happens all the time.  It will never cease to amaze
> > me how entitled people feel to other people's Intellectual Property.
> > THAT is where the lack of respect and trust comes into play.  An
> > artist or author who wishes to protect their work from those who are
> > low enough to steal from them should not be looked on as paranoid,
> > they are simply trying to enforce their rights under law.  Theft is
> > where the lack of respect and trust come from.
>
> People feel entitled because there is a cultural shift being forced from
> works of art belonging to society in the past to works of art belonging
> to a single person in modern society. I believe that this shift is
> completely artificial in nature and is being forced upon us by the few.
> If you look back to tribal times  music and literature was never owned
> by a single artist. It was the fabric of the tribe and belonged to
> everyone in the tribe. Granted that there was a preferred storyteller or
> musician, but that was decided by skill of reenacting and presentation
> than through ownership.
>
> I also believe that an artists creativity is a direct result of their
> social environment, never somethign that was a pure invention. Anyone
> that pretends that music, literature, art etc comes from 100% within is
> blind to the fact that what is within was generated by the culture
> around them. I personally do not see how can one claim ownership of such
> a circular flow.
>
> Keep in mind that I do heartilly agree that artists must be supported
> due to their gifts of interpretation. In the past the artists were paid
> not for their music but for their performance. In tribes the artists
> were supported by their tribe so that they were free to pursue art.
>
> >
> >         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.
> >
> > By your argument, we should do away with police and trust people to
> > behave themselves.  Simply because it is impossible to prevent all
> > theft, does not mean we should just give up in our attempts to make it
> > difficult.
>
> No, my argument is that we stop trying to add bodyguards, and big
> brother 24x7 monitoring and instead return to enforcing consequences. I
> think you misunderstood what I was saying. I could have worded this much
> better. ;-P
>
> >
> >         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.
> >
> > Tell that to the two teenagers who were shot to death across town here
> > last week.  They were in their driveway playing basketball.  Or the
> > elderly man who was gunned down in his driveway a few towns away the
> > week before that.  The danger is there, and it would certainly be far
> > worse if there were no police to keep it relatively in check.  While
> > there is no such thing as 100% safe, we are more safe due to the
> > protections in place.  This analogy works just as well for asset
> > protection in a metaverse environment.
>
> I think you missed my point here. Were they paranoid about it enough to
> be wearing full battle armour just because they were exposed to the
> outside world? No. They were not. Instead they trusted the outside world
> and something bad happened to them. That is life. To believe that there
> is such a thing as perfect safety is willfull ignorance of reality.
>
> Our protection exists NOT from a DRM like response to the dangers, but
> through the enforcement of consequences of actions.  Artists keep saying
> "there's no way to protect other than DRM" is akin to saying "there's no
> way to protect against murder other than everyone wearing full body
> armour and being watched 24x7".  Instead, artists need to realize that
> the only way to protect themselves is through repairing the chain of
> trust that used to exist. I believe that in order to repair that trust,
> artists must abandon this "modern" idea of ownership and go back to the
> symbiotic relationship of the old ways.
>
> We are already seeing the first results of some artists that are going
> back to symbiosis of trust. So far I see good results that warrant an
> even stronger push to go back to the old ways. I would love to go into a
> detailed analysis, but others have already done so many times over.
>
>
> >
> >         There are bad apples, just don't let one bad apple ruin your
> >         relationship with the rest of the apples.
> >
> > There are bad apples, that we agree on.  The question is what to do
> > about it.  Do we attempt to curb the bulk of content theft, or do we
> > simply force content creators to deal with a lack of protection for
> > their work?  If you were to poll the vast majority of content creators
> > in Second Life what they would prefer...  no protection for their
> > work, or some protection... what do you think their response would be?
> > And let's face it...  as it stands... the majority of people who will
> > be designing content for a metaverse based on OpenSim will come from
> > Second Life.
>
> There's an interesting phenomenon in society. The more physical and
> legal restriction you place on somethign the more people justify
> breakign those restrictions.  We can look back at the Prohibition era
> for a good example of this in action. More people drank under
> Prohibition than before or after. Prohibition spurred heavy increases of
> 40% to 60% in crimes that were already criminal before prohibition (and
> after). When prohibition was lifted, these related crimes dropped back
> to their pre-prohibition levels.
>
> As a side note, to me, law serves as a guide of the collective belief in
> what is right and wrong, not the other way around. You can't enact law
> to change society. The creation and enforcement of DRM has had the exact
> same result that Prohibition did. Both were enactments of law in order
> to change social beliefs. Neither has suceeded because of the natural
> order of law vs societal belief.
>
> >
> > I can understand that from a developers perspective, Intellectual
> > Property Rights protection is a nasty bear to wrestle in the
> > development of the metaverse, but I do not see how the metaverse
> > project benefits from alienating the people who will make the
> > metaverse interesting.  Think about it...  what would you have without
> > content?  Lots of empty space.
>
> Content can't come into being without a society. A society can't grow
> and evolve without content. It's a symbiotic relationship that will
> never cease to exist no matter how much restriction you place on art.
>
> DRM and rights management pre-enforcement through fences does nothing
> but destroy that symbiotic circle in my mind. You might get a brief
> (brief in relation to all of history) surge of income and reward,
> however this surge quickly reverts into loss of the fedback and becomes
> self destructive. This is why I refer to DRM as the ultimate weapon of
> mass destruction.
>
> >
> > I believe that the first metaverse platform to successfully solve the
> > IP Rights issue will end up on the top of the pile.  And with the
> > concept that Charles and I were discussing here last night, I think
> > OpenSim could well be that platform.
>
> *nod* The flexibility does allow us to try the different tactics to get
> a comparable situation result. :) I have no problem at all with people
> building DRM in so long as it is optional, and disabled by default. It's
> up to each operator and content creator to choose how they interact with
> the world. I just firmly believe that putting up electronic fences is a
> self destructive act. I believe enough in self will that I detest these
> anti-darwinism laws that prevent us as a society from choosing for
> ourselves the level of protection vs fredom.
>
> I think that eventually DRM and this whole idea of "intellectual
> ownership" will fade away just as Prohibition has. Most places will go
> for the open model because that is what society thrives on.
>
> A few will retain the DRM model and will stay small isolated islands of
> like minded individuals. They are most welcome to have this mini
> society. I however will not be amongst them because I value the
> creativity that art sparks in everyone when it is allowed to flow
> freely.
>
> >
> >
>
> Hopefully I have done much better this go around than with my first in
> clairity of ideas. ;-P I really should learn to speak after my brain is
> more awake rather than right away.
>
> Aside from that, this has been a most enjoyable debate. :)
>
>
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