[Opensim-users] Announcement of inventory tool (MyInventory), mostly of interest to grid operators/grid nauts

Thu Nov 15 15:26:54 UTC 2012

A few things spring to mind as I'm reading the discussion and thinking
about the proposed tool.  Like Marcus, I'm basing the following on a
preliminary understanding of what the tool does, but can't have a truly
informed opinion until we've seen how it actually functions.  Also, I am
not a lawyer either, so insert all appropriate disclaimers here.

First, I'm a freebie content creator who distributes all of my content with
a CC license, and usually in IAR format since that is the only available
format that reliably preserves textures, item contents, and scripting
(Imprudence's xml export doesn't preserve item contents and texture
corruption is more frequent than I'd like).  I've long wished for an option
for non-grid operators to be able to upload IAR files, since right now,
most of my content available from the web can't be used by anyone who
doesn't have console access - which is a bummer for someone who wants to
share her own content widely (and legally).

While I absolutely 100% support content creators' need to preserve legal
rights to their work, and do my very best to ensure that grids I manage
have policies and permissions set to help enforce them, at the same time,
it has been extremely frustrating to me that there are so many roadblocks
in place for _legitimate_ asset distribution.  I make stuff to share, and I
want people to be able to use it.  My legal right to share and distribute
my work should be as important and high priority as the content creator who
wishes to control access to her work, but the current combination of server
and viewer architecture/permissions/policies seems to place a higher
priority on the content creator who wishes to control access to assets.

I understand why things have ended up this way; the legal issues are thorny
and complex, and grid operators must always consider their legal liability,
but I'm certainly interested in and would tentatively support tools that
offer more options for the distribution of legitimate and legally licensed
assets.  Right now it often feels like content creators who want to share
their work freely are to some degree held hostage by content creators who
don't, since grid operators and viewer developers alike are worried about
legal liability and that trumps everything, unfortunately.

Second, am I reading the proposal correctly that this would be an "opt in"
service for grid operators?  I've re-read the initial email a couple of
times and I'm not clear on that.  If yes, ie if grid operators need to
explicitly include something in their configuration that would allow
MyInventory to work, then I tentatively like the idea.  This would allow
each grid to determine whether or not to participate and would presumably
respect existing policies and permissions already in place. (Side question,
have you been following Diva's work with the Hypergrid protocols around
movement of objects between grids?  See http://metaverseink.com/blog/?p=459and
http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2012/09/hypergrid-2-0-coming-soon-no-export-permissions/for
more information.)

If, however, this tool would work unless a grid operator has contacted you
to _opt out_, or opt for a more restrictive policy, then not only could I
not support it, but I think you would be opening yourself up to a world of
legal troubles that I hope you fully and deeply understand before you set
this thing loose.  Like, seriously, if you are placing the onus on every
grid operator out there to contact you if they want to opt out, then I hope
you have a very good attorney and a lot of money to pay him or her, because
you are going to need it.

Third, I manage both a personal research grid and a grid for my university,
and my initial reaction is that even if the tool is "opt in" I'd maybe
enable access on FleepGrid, but I would be extremely wary of doing so on
the university grid.  As I said, I'm not an attorney either, but it
certainly seems that liability for grid operators includes not just the
license of the content being exported, but also what's being imported.
 Without having any way to ensure that users on the university grid are
only importing legally licensed content, I think that would be an
unacceptable risk for an institutional grid - even if I'd be willing to
take the risk on my personal grid, and despite my personal desire to
support legally licensed content portability.  I think many grids would
find themselves in this position.

Ideally, your tool would provide enough granular control that a grid
operator could "opt in" to allow export or allow import or both or neither.
 I might be 100% comfortable allowing content from my grid to be exported
but not willing to allow imports because of the murky provenance of outside
content.

Those are my first thoughts, anyway.  I agree it's a brave thing to
consider offering a service like this and I'd hate to see someone scared
away by the intensity and complexity of the IP debate, but at the same
time, there's a reason why these services don't already exist - because
most people with even a shallow understanding of the legal issues _are_
scared away, and with good reason.  The legal landscape around these issues
is so darned muddy, most sane people don't want to get mired in it even if
they personally hold a philosophically permissive position, as I do.

Look forward to hearing others' thoughts as well.

Sincerely,

- Chris/Fleep

On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 4:44 AM, Snowcrash Short
<snowcrash.short at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi
>
> I've been working on a client side tool for decentralizing user
> inventories, which I will release as an open source tool in two weeks, some
> of the features may be relevant to grid operators.
>
> The basic premise of the tool is that the inventory and the backing assets
> of the inventory items really should be controlled by the user. The tool is
> born out of a frustration of having visited a number of grids. Each visit
> to a new grid presents me with an empty inventory, and I can then spend
> time searching for suitable item, clothing, attachments and
> other accessories.
>
> For this purpose I have created a tool which will allow me to backup my
> inventory to a local cache and then upload the contents to another grid.
>
> If my tool becomes popular, both the upload and download mechanisms may
> have some impact on the grid-operators, hence this email to serve as a
> notice.
>
> The basic architecture is pretty simple, consisting of a number of import
> agents, which can import the users inventory and backing assets to a local
> database, and a number of upload agents which can upload inventory content
> to a specific account.
>
> Backup/Import
> There are two import agents, one which will import .iar files and one
> which works very much like I believe "Stored Inventory" works, which can
> backup the inventory of an avatars inventory. Avatar backup/Import is
> governed by a policy. Currently there are two policies, one complying with
> a very restrictive interpretation of the Linden Labs policy on backups, and
> a completely unrestricted policy, where anything that can be downloaded
> will be downloaded.
>
> When a new account is registered in MyInventory it checks if the account
> is for a Linden Lab grid and limits the choices of policies to policies
> suitable for LL's TOS, I cannot and do not know if other grids have similar
> policies, I can well imagine that Avination has a similar restrictions, and
> would like similar logic implemented to restrict the download. Any grid
> operator which would like to have backup governed by a more restrictive
> policy are invited to notify me and I will attempt to implement the policy
> prior to the first release of the source code. or supply patches at a later
> time.
>
> Upload/Export
> MyInventory supports two mechanisms for uploading inventory
> content, traditional upload using UDP/CAPS and direct access to the
> inventory and asset web-services.
> Due to limitations in the UDP/CAPS protocol each upload will create new
> assets, and as of my latest read of the Open Simulator code the asset store
> does not support "single instance assets", i.e. it does not use a checksum
> to verify if the asset already exists, for this reason MyInventory prefers
> to upload using direct access to asset and inventory web-services.
>
> I would propose that the grids which chooses to support MyInventory
> augment their "GridInfoService" entries with the url's for the asset and
> inventory web-services, e.g.
>
> [GridInfoService]
>     assets = http://assets.osgrid.org
>     inventory = http://inventory.osgrid.org
>
> Best regards
> Snowcrash
>
> _______________________________________________
> Opensim-users mailing list
> Opensim-users at lists.berlios.de
> https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-users
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://opensimulator.org/pipermail/opensim-users/attachments/20121115/452c31cf/attachment.html>