[Opensim-users] Banning "bad" viewers was Re: Can this be done?

[Toni Alatalo]

Imago kirjoitti:
> I don't think anyone is understanding. :D It's not just Cryo. I want only 
> Linden Lab viewers to be able to login. I've seen it done on other 
> opensim's. I know people can get around that. But the point is... Not 
>   

If this is common practice, I'm afraid other viewers have to add an easy 
option to masquerade as the LL viewer even when they are technically not 
related.

Similar to how Mozilla (before Firefox) early on had an option, "say 
that i'm Microsoft Internet Explorer", 'cause at that time (late '90s or 
what?) there were several (mostly corporate) websites that refused to 
work if your browser said it was anything else (because the devs of the 
website didn't want to promise the customers it would work on anything 
else, even when it actually did). So ppl had their browsers masquerading 
as MSIE so that they were able do shopping or banking or whatever.

One reason for people to use a non-Linden viewer is that slviewer may 
simply not work for them, where some alternative does. Also if some 
other viewer gets popular, some people don't want to need to use 
multiple viewers .. the current situation is probably acceptable to them 
due to the Linden derivative viewers having an unchanged version string 
so many viewers actually work.

~Toni

> everyone is a coder. So, while they could compile and make it look like a 
> Linden Lab viewer then so be it. I just want to know if there's a mod or 
> string that I can put in to opensim to see what channel the viewer is 
> sending, and if it's not the right one than to display an error message that 
> would tell them to download an official release in order to login.
>
> Maybe I should have chosen my words better. Mentioning Cryo is like 
> mentioning copybot, and responses only seem to be based on theft and copy 
> protection. I just want to know if there's a string to block a viewer. I 
> know people have done it I just can't remember what opensim I saw it done 
> on. I also know that if I had Cryo source code I could compile and make it 
> look like a Second Life release viewer. But not everyone is a hacker or a 
> coder or both. Most people don't know how or can't compile a viewer or are 
> too lazy to. So, they go look for one, and that's the basis for my thinking 
> most theives are too lazy to try to figure out a way and will move on to the 
> next target.
>
>
> So, the question I'm asking is:
> Is there a way for OpenSim to check a viewer string and allow or disallow 
> based on that, and if so please let me know where that code is, and if 
> not... Then I'll be burning the midnight oil again coding one up.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Karen Palen" <karen_palen at yahoo.com>
> To: <opensim-users at lists.berlios.de>
> Sent: Monday, January 11, 2010 10:44 PM
> Subject: [Opensim-users] Banning "bad" viewers was Re: Can this be done?
>
>
>   
>> The short answer is no.
>>
>> The more complete answer is that you while can easily detect some 
>> characteristic of a viewer (or other software) which identifies that 
>> viewer and use that to ban it, nothing can stop the authors of that viewer 
>> from changing whatever characteristic you use.
>>
>> Worse yet, whatever characteristic you select to identify the "bad" 
>> software will inevitably turn up in some other (innocent) viewer sooner or 
>> later and will cause them to be banned for no reason.
>>
>> The best you could hope to achieve is some sort of "arms race" between 
>> "bad" viewer creators and sim operators.
>>
>> In addition any viewer could be adapted for piracy. The original 
>> experiments that resulted in libsecondlife/openMetaverse were based on 
>> analysing the data stream between the Second Life Servers and the viewer 
>> software (at the time ONLY the Linden Labs viewer) and had access to all 
>> of that information. This was all done without modifying the viewer in any 
>> way - it was proprietary at the time.
>>
>> Sadly the lesson of the endless failures of DRM schemes elsewhere shows 
>> that the real losers are the honest/innocent users who are unable to do 
>> the things that they really should expect to do with the content that they 
>> have purchased.
>>
>> For example, I have completely stopped buying anything in Second Life 
>> since I want to use the inventory I buy in my private sims as well. Sure I 
>> can use pirate tools to do this, but if I have to do that to use my 
>> purchases where I want to use them then why not just steal the stuff in 
>> the first place?
>>
>> This is very similar to the situation with music CDs and DVDs, why build 
>> an expensive collection if you will just have to re-purchase it in a few 
>> years for the next technology and some DRM scheme tries to keep me from 
>> playing my collection on the new equipment?
>>
>> There are several efforts being directed at come sort of "portable" 
>> content. I hope that one or more actually proves to work, but I have no 
>> illusions about that actually happening any time soon.
>>
>> My opinion is that the best we can do at present is similar to the real 
>> life piracy situation: stop the commercial marketing of pirated 
>> merchandise as it is detected and reported. Ban anyone who engages in such 
>> activities and if they persist bring real world law enforcement to bear.
>>
>> For once Linden Labs seems to be using a reasonable version of this when 
>> they state that the viewer is not the problem, it is the use of the 
>> viewer. They have promised to act promptly to ban anyone using any viewer 
>> for piracy.
>>
>> Karen
>>
>> --- On Mon, 1/11/10, Imago <imagorabbit at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> Is it possible to stop
>>> certain viewers from logging
>>> in to your opensim? Like Cryo?
>>>       
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Opensim-users mailing list
>> Opensim-users at lists.berlios.de
>> https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-users 
>>     
>
> _______________________________________________
> Opensim-users mailing list
> Opensim-users at lists.berlios.de
> https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-users
>