Content theft, a lock, and a butter knife

My grandfather used to say “locks are to keep honest people honest.” I’m starting to think that maybe the current SL content permissions system is, too.

There’s a lot of discussion right now about the new up-and-coming copy-enabling viewer soon to be released onto the grid. A firsthand review of it sounds like it’s going to make content theft much easier than ever before. According to a SLUniverse forum post by Stroker Serpentine, “The interesting aspect is that you can change anything to full perms inside your inventory, but once rezzed the “slam bit” from the server reverts to original owner perms.”

Sounds like a nasty critter to me. On the heels of everything else the gridwide economy has dealt with recently, this kinda sucks. But I guess it would suck any time. And it sucks for everyone. I’m a hobbyist, not what I consider a “real” content creator, but if the content creators whose stores I purchase from shut down, it impacts me even if it isn’t my content that is being stolen.

One really encouraging thing is seeing people pulling together ideas about how to raise intellectual property rights awareness. There’s a proposal on the table for  November 5th as Step Up! Day. A day for no uploading of textures and wearing ribbons show support for content creators. And of course for parties, because you can’t have a designated day in SL without a party to go with it.

I think that this is a wonderful, community-driven way to raise awareness among the people inworld. Those “honest people” who the locks would keep honest, so to speak. But I remain a bit skeptical about whether the Linden Lab is going to take much notice. To be blunt, the Lab does things that further their ends. There’s a cost to beef up content protection tools and/or enforcement. Is the cost higher than the perceived benefit to the Lab right now?

Right now, the need for additional intellectual property protection is a tempest in a teapot. As long as the tempest stays in the teapot — in online forums, in virtual world focused blogs like this one — the Lab has no incentive to act. They’re carrying on like everything is great, putting out rosy press releases and sending executives to talk about virtual goods. M seems to have been on a campaign to rehabilitate the public image of Second Life, and a lot of actions have been taken that benefit corporate image rather than current customers.

So until the tempest escapes the teapot, the Lab doesn’t have any real incentive to do anything in a hurry. Once it becomes a public relations issue, the notoriously slow-moving decisionmakers will suddenly do something to address the threat at hand. A little public prodding seems to be in order. So, when it comes down to it, I think that Stroker Serpentine’s lawsuit against Linden Lab may be the kind of action that is needed right now.

Stroker said something in a SLUniverse post today that really impressed me as distilling the whole issue facing content creators:

I think the critical element is to continue to discuss ways to identify pirated content from the original, provide more streamlined notification, effective takedown practices and a tightening of the capablities that allow for viral distribution.

I don’t believe anyone expects LL to become the “Grid Police”. But we sure as hell could use more granular tools to aggregate, disseminate and distinguish content. We can take it from there.

I am acutely aware of the fine line between security and fascism.

Linden Lab may not want to participate in the “Arms Race”, but don’t surrender on my behalf. At least give me some bullets, not a butter knife.

I am wholeheartedly behind that. I hope that his prodding the Lab publicly and the folks planning ways to get attention inworld turns out to be an effective way of wielding butter knives to  get the Lab’s attention. Content creators are what makes Second Life vibrant and unique, and they deserve to have the lab make some effort to protect their hard work.