if you buy it, is it yours? at i live in science land

great post by Botgirl on virtual property rights and then expanded upon by Dusan Writer

it boils down to the stuff you buy in Second Life. say you buy a non-copy, no-transfer something. many of you have. in fact, you have spent a lot of money buying things

the sl economy sees almost USD$2 million change hands every day!

that’s a lot of blingie shoes and flexi hair. i start thinking of all the stuff i have bought and holy crap! it’s a lot!

think about all the stuff you have bought since you have been isl. is it a lot? would it be nice to have that money in your pocket for Christmas?

omg, that's Ener!

so there are good points, if the creator made you a product and you bought it, is it yours? but only yours in Second Life?

at first, i would say “YES”. just like if i buy a Lady GaGa CD, i want to be able to play it in my car, in my house, at my friends all nite rave -a-thon (pfft, as if! i have cheap friends). anyway, it’s not that easy in virtual worlds to talk about this stuff

now that we are messing with Reaction Grid, we are seeing things that are not just like sl. for example, say somehow i have that Lady GaGa CD isl and you have a CD player, i can place my CD in your player and we can listen to her. but when i go, i grab my CD

BUT, in opensim grids, when i visit your own grid (we have our own server, so it’s our grid), as soon as we hypergrid TP onto your grid, a copy of our inventory is on your machine now (in a SQL database – i sound pretty smart eh?)

so all of a sudden you have a copy of my Lady GaGa CD (please correct me any OpenSim peeps if i have this wrong)

so now the copy of the CD i bought is out there for anyone to copy. it’s not quite the same analogy to rl after all =(

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Ener Hax, Ener Hax. Ener Hax said: w00t! new post, if you buy it, is it yours? – http://blog.iliveisl.com/pb [...]

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21 Dec 09 at 12:52 am

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Prompted by Tateru Nino’s comments in both Botgirl’s and Dusan’s blogs, I added my voice to this shouting match discussion…. and the answer I came up with is: “Not only is nothing in Second Life yours, you haven’t made a purchase.”

Meanwhile, I’m paying close attention to OpenSim pioneers like you, to learn how inventory works there… and I have a question: In the example above, when you visit someone else’s OS grid, does their server keep that SQL file? Or does it delete it when you leave, and upload it again next time you visit? If the latter, that would prevent the grid owner from exploiting the contents of your inventory in your absence.

Lalo Teling

21 Dec 09 at 8:49 am

as soon as you TP into another grid, all of you – your shape, skin, and inventory is all loaded into the server’s database. and it stays so that it is available when you come back (well, it gets updated when you return)

it is recommended that you travel with a “light” avatar for hypergrid TPs. and i think a light avatar has less than 1000 inventory items

with OpenSim (and Second Life) you can save the OAR file which has all sim info on it (but not avatar info), that’s important to know because if i buy a house and trees from you and place them on my sim, then when i make a backup of the OAR file, it contains your house. i can then load that OAR file onto any siim and get a full copy of the sim, including your house

that’s good and bad – good in that people like me and subQuark, build sims out that we then plan to sell. so a new person, say a company, can load this OAR file and presto, they have a sim with landscaping, terraforming, buildings, etc

that’s standard practice – but that also means anything you buy for that purpose needs to be disclosed to it’s creator (ethically speaking) – that’s why i am building all our own furniture and now need to learn how to make sculptie trees (ugh, that scares me)

thanks for the link to your post, i am heading over now to read it =)

Ener Hax

21 Dec 09 at 2:03 pm

[...] ramblings of Ener hax about the iliveisl Second Life estate great post by Botgirl on virtual propert… [...]

if you buy it, is it yours? « | Portal site of Second Life and metaverse"MetaLog-meta log"

21 Dec 09 at 4:37 pm

if you buy it, is it yours? Â« | Portal site of Second Life and metaverse"MetaLog-meta log"

If you are a creator, and have items that you created in your inventory, then go to another grid and rezz those items — yes, the owner of that destination grid (or even region) can then save that OAR file and have a copy of those items for their own purposes.

If you go to an evil grid, run by an evil genius, they might be able to do even more — like sending commands to your home grid to fetch more inventory, or even delete it. This is kind of like going to a bad website, and it downloading a virus that erases your harddrive.

So far, there have been no reports of such “evil” grids in the metaverse, and if one were to show up, there would be a lot of pressure on its owners to shut it down.

And certainly no reputable grid would put up links to such a destination, and no directories would keep it listed.

Probably the only way for a disreputable grid owners to attract people to their evil grids would be to send out massive amounts of spam, hoping to trick people into visiting their evil empire.

Until then, my avatar’s inventory (5000-items-plus) is mostly freebies, and a bunch of stuff that I made myself that I really don’t care if someone copies.

And the really really good stuff — my company buildings, for example — I’ve saved to my harddrive using Meerkat, so I have permanent backups of them. So even in the worst case scenario, I’m covered.

I’ve had no problems teleporting with the “heavy” avatar — besides the usual teleportation issues that we all see all the time (region is down, region’s OpenSim version is incompatible with the version of the region you’re on, region disabled its hypergrid, etc…)

Eventually, we’ll probably see third-party security programs like Norton Antivirus and McAfee expand their security checks to make sure that rogue grids aren’t stealing out stuff.

– Maria Korolov
Editor, Hypergrid Business
http://www.hypergridbusiness.com