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

[Melanie]

Hi,

On 18/11/2012 17:14, Snowcrash Short wrote:
> I fail completely to see how this tool can be a threat, let alone to a
> hobbyist running a small grid. If content creators labor under the wrong
> impression that this tool is like copy-bot, then I could see why some
> content creators might see this as a problem.
> 

This tool is PRECISELY like Copybot. It allows by default to export
items that the creator has not permitted export for and has not
expected that export would be easily possible.

This tool does indeed permit users to commit illegal acts by
default. Depending on the jurisdiction, download and/or upload are
limited by law unless explicitly permitted. Where limited by a TOS,
it is illegal practically everywhere.

I do see the fundamental disagreement between the community and
yourself - the community stands firmly behind the concept of
intellectual property and itemwise sale while you appear to believe
that digital items are mostly unowned and available to everyone to
be used as they see fit.

Please take a moment to consider - digital items _are_ property.
They belong to someone and that someone is not the owner of the
inventory. It's the creator. A tool like this has the potential to
cause commercial creators to shun OpenSim completely and withdraw
into SL, leaving the OpenSim based worlds at the quality level of
freebies. For many of us, that quality level is not sufficient. This
is why closed grids and content protection exist.

Bringing inventory only while logged in doesn't work on a technical
basis either. Assets must be present on the grid for viewing even
after the user leaves. The only thing that would be feasible to
transport with the avatar is clothing items and that concept has
been discussed by Diva and myself years ago. The issue then was that
the viewer was still GPL and off limits, so the viewer changes for
that feature were considered out of reach. However, that would still
not allow purchased items to travel with the user.

Creators have the expectation that the grid they upload their items
to protects their IP rights. They don't expect the user to be aware
of the law or follow it - they expect the grids to do that with
their TOS and their legal teams.

SecondInventory has respected this by disallowing the download of
items the user has not created. They made that impossible to change
by keeping their tool closed source. Their tool has become the
accepted means of moving creations between worlds.

As open source, your tool can be trivially modified by the less
morally inclined. I would expect the community to shun your too like
copybot is shunned. I would expect the reputation of copies of your
tool that have been illegally modified to reflect on the original,
unmodified tool and thereby cause grids, over time, to detect and
ban the use of any tool descended from it, ban the users using it
and confiscate inventories from these users. Is it really your
desire to become the author of super copybot?

Your standard response of "closed source is security by obscurity"
doesn't wash either. If there were a tool out there that is easy to
use and allows trivially copying complete items on a large scale and
that tool were just hard to find, I'd have to agree. However, there
is no such tool. All existing tools are complex or broken, often
both. Releasing your tool as open source can be extremely harmful to
the continuum of grids commonly known as the "metaverse".

A significant portion of the metaverse relies on commerce and
commerce cannot be sustained in the presence of wholesale theft.

- Melanie