Among the attributes, which separate Second Life from other virtual worlds, is the fact, that every resident owns the full IP rights of his or her creations. There has been some debate, how "real" this assertion by Linden Lab, creators of Second Life, is. But it is at least real enough that there are many very real businesses based on the creation and sales of digital goods. And - like with all digital goods - there have always been attempts, to "steal" them i.e. circumvent the permissions system, which protects property rights and controls what other users can do with your objects.
Lately a new solution, SecondInventory, came onto the market, which allows Second Life residents to make backups of their own items to the local disk - a functionality sorely missing from the Standard Second Life. And soon this product was accused of being a thief's tool. As the debate raged on, some technically oriented Second Life residents began to argue, that any such permission system is superfluous, because if can't offer real protection, anyway - "no technical solution is bullet proof" ... "and code wants to be free"
I think this is a very simplistic view.
While no technical solution is bullet proof ... and I don't believe, that any technical solution will keep people from stealing other peoples property (physical, digital, virtual, intellectual whatever) in the long run, there is a huge difference, though, between "some sensible protection" and "I don't care/I do nothing". Stealing is not OK.
Let me try to put this product "second inventory" (and the old copybot etc.) into perspective. Because the questions arising here are actually questions, which are important for many developments surrounding virtual worlds technology these days, especially the growing number of "alternative grids". What will happen, when the long awaited "interoperability" arrives and our avatars (and their possessions?) move freely from grid to grid, from world to world?
Read on ...
Technorati Tags: 3d web, metaverse, second life, trust, v-commerce, virtual worlds, web 3.d
As long as the ideas of "ownership" and "value" mean something in a virtual world, some form of IP protection and a permission system is a practical and legal necessity. It helps you, to express what rights others should have with the objects that you own and provides some basic security - imperfect as it might be.
The permission system of SL is - in parts - a way for the creators of items to clearly state:
"when you buy this stuff (or I give it to you), there is a number of things you can do with it - and a number of things you should not do. And by buying/accepting them, you agree to an unwritten contract to use them only in the way I have described"
And that is good. ... IMHO
But there is more. In the physical world it is a long established precedent, that you have to make at least a reasonable effort to protect your property. Otherwise, the thief will get a smaller penalty (or none at all) and/or insurance won't pay. When you leave your car unlocked in the streets and it is stolen, this is very much different from having it stolen from you locked garage. This behavior (leaving it unlocked) would have very unpleasant legal consequences. At least in my Country, I won't get any money from the insurance. The same applies to many kinds of intellectual properties. If I don't make an effort, to protect my properties/rights, I might lose them in court.
The permission system of SL as of today, guarantees, that most residents can not steal my stuff if I apply the right permissions. It also guarantees that people can only use the stuff I sold them in certain ways. It is possible to circumvent it - we all know that. But this needs, what is called in legal circles "a certain amount of criminal energy".
That means, when I use the permission system, I, as the owner of these items have done everything necessary to protect my rights (in a legal sense).
This system is NO WAY perfect. But it works to a certain degree.
Look at the Second Life platform at it is now (I am using Second Life only as an example, because it is the most advanced and most widely used platform with something resembling a real economy; some of the points apply to other platforms, too):
• Second Life has a currency with real value, no matter what the TOS says. If I can exchange a "token" into some US$ or EUR and buy a hamburger with that, this "token" HAS very real value.
• There are (non-physical) items in Second Life, which have real value, and substantial value. Most people you talk with about that theory will laugh at you, but again ... if there is something for which people will regularly pay a certain amount of money (even L$; see above), this "something" has very real value.
• A number of people invest a very substantial part of their time into creating these items - and most of their income is based on the sales of these items.
• If Linden Lab would say "awww f*** with permissions. They don't work anyway", many of these people would lose their SL-based income. I do believe in honesty but ... if stealing is made too easy, the temptation might be to strong, even for some basically honest guys ;)
• If Linden Lab would make their servers interoperable in a way that digital goods are transferred freely between their grid and third party grids, protected items could move between servers. Even some stuff, which is only available on the server right now and can't be accessed with cracking the client, would be come "wide open".
• And if those servers would keep individual money balances for the users accounts, they could simply "mint money" which - after a transfer to the Linden Grid - could easily be exchanged to US$
Actually, I think that these unanswered questions - how to provide interoperability while still protecting "virtual" money and IP rights - pose a much greater road block for all standards/interoperability initiatives than all other technical problems. It is hard for me currently to envision a solution, which would allow easy interoperability between grids and at the same time doesn't destroy the businesses of many hard working individuals, which have contributed greatly to the success of Second Life and the idea of a Metaverse.
There might be solutions available. DRM is one, the most unpleasant one. Using water signs might another one. Not sure if that will work with all kinds of content, though. The mildest form of protection might be a "network of trust" where objects can only be exchanged with other servers/grids which are in a controlled circle of trust.
The currency of the future Metaverse might be based on a central system where I have a strongly protected account and all money exchanges go through that central account (like with PayPal or other micropayment systems today). It doesn't matter much if the currency for this account is US$, EUR or L$. But - to be honest - I probably would not put much money into an account were the security is "guaranteed" by a bunch of enthusiastic developers. In the medium to long term I expect that RL governments will make sure that only institutions with a banking license (or some similar form of regulation) will be allowed to handle such accounts anyway. This is happening on the web already (has happened). Why should it be different in the Metaverse?
All of these challenges taken together make me believe, that a truly "open grid of grids" is not right around the corner yet. There is still some work to do to adress the issues, I mentioned above - and more. Questions of data exchange and the willingness of Linden Lab to open their platform, are the smaller issues, actually. I believe, that these issues WILL be adressed and we will have an open Metaverse - some time in the future and with "some" protection for the citizens property, though.
These are also actually the most discussed issues around the interoperability working group. What seems to be the way is probably a network of trust. DRM will not work anyway, water signs have been discussed but some say that they are also unlikely to work. But of course they might open some opportunities for new businesses handling such watermark (if you trust them).
It's also interesting that SL offers so many more problems when it comes to Data Portability than the web. On the web people seem to be mostly ok with the fact that their content might be copied although of course they are also very careful when it comes to changes (I remember some lively debate on flickr when they moved from a Flash based photo display to an AJAX one, allowing to save photos by right-clicking).
I agree that these are very complicated issues and might be part of the bigger show stoppers. Unfortunately I don't see any good working technological solution either except maybe the network of trust (which of course can be broken but so can DRM and probably watermarking aswell. Besides watermarking will probably only work as some sort of proof after the stolen content is detected).
Not working on interoperability would be wrong for LL (or others) though because someday some solution will arise which has this builtin automatically (like OpenSim) and new people will start to use it. Then others might be out of business more or less fast.
Posted by: Christian Scholz | February 13, 2008 at 07:56 AM
Christian, while I understand your attitude that "DRM will not work anyway" ... I am not sure if this should be accepted as a fact - given the people who are involved in the interoperability working group ;)
I don't like it either, though.
Regarding your comparison with the situation on the web - I don't think that can be compared this easily. There is a lot of free stuff on the web - and in Second Life. There is some stuff on the web, which costs money (music for example) - and this stuff is NOT available without any kind of protection. That's were the ideas of DRM and water marks stem from.
No one is forced to protect his products. You CAN give away music on the web (some do). And you can give away nice gadgets in SL (some do). But no one should be FORCED to give away his stuff, neither!
When someone decides to base his work-life on a job within a virtual world. When this business is about creating and selling digital goods I completely understand that this someone does not want to have his revenue stream throttled.
And as long as those people - some of the best content creators of Second Life - do not believe that the alternative (interoperable) platforms will protect their property they will not offer their stuff on these platforms - plain and simple. :)
Posted by: Markus Breuer (Pham Neutra) | February 13, 2008 at 08:36 AM
I think I actually agree here. What I meant regarding the web was probably more what the Data Portability Group is tackling right now and this is profiles and social graph.
But you can also see regarding content such as music that protecting it is not really working. To make this work with DRM you probably need to have certified systems implementing some form of protection. But this would mean that an open network like the web is not the outcome then.
I also agree that those creators will not offer their products on other grids and this is why I think it should be possible to control where it goes in terms of "this grid, all grids up to trust level x, everywhere" or something like that.
But it should also be clear to everybody that all of this can be broken and your content stolen. This is due to the nature of the system and unfortunately as a business you also have to deal with that (and have that in the risks section of your business plan).
Posted by: Christian Scholz | February 16, 2008 at 08:30 AM
Christian, please forgive me mentioning it, but ...
regarding "all of this can be broken and your content stolen" was something I mentioned in the initial post already. It is not my intention to propose a hard DRM system which tries to be unbreakable.
I don't like hard DRM systems myself. I have a few old eBooks from Microsoft which I can't open anymore because of their crazy DRM models. You can imagine, that this doesn't make me too happy with the whole DRM idea. :=)
My line of arguing is, that a permission system like the one implemented in the current SL, which allows the content creator to clearly state his intentions, is not a bad idea at all. I don't want to forbid anyone giving away his stuff for free. I am just arguing, that a platform should not FORCE content creators to give away their stuff for free. :) Freedom of choice is always a nice idea. Let those who believe in free content compete with those who want to sell their stuff and in a few years, we will see, which business models work best. Evolution in action.
A network of trust, like the one outlined by you, might be a good idea - if it is done right and VERY restrictively. And I still would like to combine such a network of trust with a watermarking system (actually such a system might be a necessity to easily detect bad apples in the network).
But where I definitely would like to argue against your opinion is
>> you can also see regarding content such
>> as music that protecting it is not
>> really working
At least as far as I know, the largest music shops on the web are selling DRM protected music. They are doing this for quite a while now. No, I don't predict, that this will go on forever. But iTunes hasn't been a commercial failure exactly, so far. :)
Other stores, which have moved towards DRM-free MP3s are using water marks. And the DRM-free music on iTunes is watermarked too (if I am not mistaken).
None of these systems might work perfectly. But this is unnecessary for successful business models based on them. I am not a believer in systems who are trying to achieve 100% perfection anyway - probably atypical for a German. ;)
Posted by: Markus Breuer (Pham Neutra) | February 16, 2008 at 09:34 AM