[Opensim-users] Correcting some errors

[Karen Palen]

OK it looks like the remailer seems to be working again, so I will respond
yet again to this.
I apologize if anyone has already received my earlier responses to this, but
they seem to have ended up in the bit-bucket!

Master_Mirage,

There are three flaws in your logic:

1) Ownership of data. I cited the example of a bank's data concerning your
account. An even better example is the work done on your behalf by an
attorney. The data ("work product") is actually owned by the client even
though it is stored on the attorney's computer in the attorney's office!
There are cases where attorney's have been disbarred for willfully failing
to promptly deliver this data to the client when asked. There is also quite
a large body of case law which reinforce this notion that the data is owned
ONLY by the client! The attorney cannot even retain a copy without the
client's permission!

2) Linden Labs TOS
I am not aware of any specific TOS condition which would forbid my doing
whatever I want with data that I have created and/or have "full rights" to!
To the contrary, Linden Labs has worked with many groups to help make this
happen in an acceptable way.
For example, both the Hypergrid effort and the Second Inventory software
have ongoing dialogs with Linden Labs about how best to accomplish their
goals. Obviously Linden Labs has many concerns about proprietary or
copyrighted material and much of the dialogues has gone towards making sure
that these concerns are addressed.

3) The real location of the data
Both the ethical/legal backups (e.g Second Inventory) and the blatant piracy
tools (e.g. copybot, cryogen) work from data that is already sent to your
computer in order to make the viewer work!
In other words they simply save information (data) that is already on your
computer!
I am aware of very few actual attempts to "hack" the Second Life databases
themselves.
The most recent "exploit" of this sort was a couple of weeks ago where
someone had figured out a way to obtain "in world" purchases without a
payment coming from their account!
I need hardly expand on the consequences of such a "hack"!
This one caused an "emergency rollout" of a fix with the entire grid being
restarted.
If you are "in world" very much I am sure you remember it, if not it is well
documented in the Linden Labs Maintenance blog.



In a related item, I have just been reading the Second Life blogs about
There.com shutting down next week (March 9).

It appears that all products uploaded or sold on There.com had to be
approved by their management. They had strict controls over content theft
and PG13 only content.
The problem was that this required a large staff to manually inspect
everything uploaded or offered for sale! They charged a total of
US$4/item/transaction for this, and that seems to not have been enough!
In other words this kind of strict enforcement is possible, but it will cost
a lot of money. I seriously doubt if the Second Life (or any other) virtual
economy could generate enough revenue to support a US$4/item/transaction
overhead no matter how desirable this might seem!
Clearly There.com could not make that work at least!

Karen

On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 12:07 PM, Master_Mirage <mirage123 at verizon.net>wrote:

>
> If my thinking is correct, its not evan about what the data contains. If
> someone has copyed the data from another computer with out permision of the
> systems owner to do so, Thats just stealing no matter how yah slice it.
> A user would have abused the system in someway to do it. requiring for
> thought on there part.
> The system owner has responcabuiltys to the user is someways as a matter of
> trust and its in there best intrest to take all resionable efforts to
> protect it. A user the sec thay make something in away has given that data
> to the owner of the system. The system owner has the actual product and is
> the only one that can truly prove if data has been taken with out permision
> and can show what the data was. Thay have possion of it.
> So really 'who made the toilet' dosent really matter in this context. If sl
> (system owner) has not given you permision to xport its data, and do it
> anyway. You have just stolen it! Hacked there computers and copyed data
> reguardlless of the datas content. The words theft by wire come to mind.
> Im shure theres alot of laws SL could use agaisnt someone along thoughs
> lines i feel thay are well with in there rights to do so.
> I know nothing of law and dont claim to but to me it stands to reasion.
>
> --
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