[Opensim-users] Speaking of Content Theft, How About Our Own Backyard?

[Karen Palen]

Sadly theory does define what is doable and what is not - for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem

This is one of the classics in computer system design. The problem grows so fast that no amount of computing will solve the problem. 

These thing show up in strange places, a few years ago there was a paper claiming that the US air fare structure was similar - there simply is no way to find the lowest air fare between any two points in the US!

--- On Thu, 2/25/10, Master_Mirage <mirage123 at verizon.net> wrote:

> From: Master_Mirage <mirage123 at verizon.net>
> Subject: Re: [Opensim-users] Speaking of Content Theft, How About Our Own  Backyard?
> To: opensim-users at lists.berlios.de
> Date: Thursday, February 25, 2010, 9:18 AM
> 
> 
> About the only way to make stolen stuff unattractive is to
> police the
> sellers looking for (real) watermarks!
>        
>      + We dont have to, users can
> police them selphs and the orginal maker
> can be knowen rather than guessing on there part.

This requires that the true maker be known and not easily forged. 

> Remember though that every protection scheme has its price
> (as we see in the
> SL fuss right now!).
> 
>      + The price here would be on the
> server side not the user as the system
> sets it each time auto.

The "price" is a lot more than CPU cycles! Loss of customers being the example I cited.


> Trouble is it is very hard to track just how many customers
> are lost through
> extra hassle so they tend to be disregarded until the whole
> system
> collapses.
> 
>        + I Dont think like that, its too fatalistic

No one likes to think like that, but business simply does not exist without customers to buy things!

The reason this is such an issue right now is that Second Life even though it is the largest player in the MetaWorld game is a tiny market compared to that for say Poser, 3DS Max etc.

My suspicion is that the SL market is pretty much "saturated" too - everyone already has pretty much what they want.

I have to wonder how many "real people" are using Second Life right now, almost every sim I have visited in the past year or so has been almost entirely "bots" of one sort or another ("models", "sales assistants", "anti-bot police" etc.)

Combine that with am economic downturn (avoiding the deadly "DEPXXXXXX" word!) and it is easy to see why vendors are worried about every potential lost sale.

One of the unanswered questions about piracy is just how much it really costs in lost sales. There are endless lawsuits and debates about this in the music and video arenas, Obviously not everyone who buys/steals a pirated copy would buy the full priced version, but some certainly would. 

No one has come up with even a believable estimate for the true cost of these lost sales.

I have a lot of software on my Linux systems just because it is free and easy to install. I have very few apps. on Windows (even before I switched to Linux), at least in part due to the cost and hassle of installing them. Is this typical - who knows for sure?

I don't dispute that we need to put protections in place, but I have always railed against "feel good" security which makes management happy while essentially being laughed at by the thieves.

Somewhat like having a security guard on duty from 9 to 5, but leaving the entire plant open and unguarded during the night shift. I actually worked at an aerospace company that did this!

Karen