Re: [vwrap] [wvrap] Simulation consistency

[Morgaine <[e-mail]>]

On Sat, Apr 2, 2011 at 6:01 PM, Meadhbh Hamrick <[e-mail]> wrote:

>
> if you're a *company* like Linden that needs to respond to DMCA takedown
> requests, you're likely to require the client trust knob turned up a
> bit. if you're an *enterprise*, you're going to want that trust knob
> turned all the way up. if you're the *pirate bay*, you're going to
> intentionally want that trust knob turned all the way down.
>
>
To avoid the possibility that new readers might get the wrong impression,
I'll point out that there aren't just two types of player in the virtual
worlds scene, honest enterprise people and evil pirates.  I wouldn't want
anyone new to think that such an impression was being conveyed or endorsed
by anyone here, and of course I'm positive it was not the intention in
Meadhbh's comment.

Education, research, Free/Open Source Software and Creative Commons
communities and a plethora of other groups deal either largely or
exclusively in free/libre content, sharing their work with each other
totally legally and honestly, and very frequently using content licenses
that permit unlimited distribution and require neither DRM nor any machinery
of trust when this content is conveyed.

Groups such as these make up what is sometimes called the "open community"
segment of Internet users, and it is a huge, vibrant, and very forward
looking community.

Many of us here share a mindset with that open community as users or
developers and consider ourselves part of it, and we are working towards VW
interop protocols that will allow our worlds to bloom and flourish as a
result of freely sharing open-licensed content and creating enormous synergy
by combining people's efforts without inappropriate barriers.

It is this open community which has important requirements that differ in
some ways from corporate ones, not some pirates, and I would strongly
encourage that the security aspects of VWRAP be addressed in this light,
before someone accuses us of fear-mongering.

As Carlo pointed out very well, the needs of the open community are not
being met *at all* by current VW services, and this is a major shortcoming
which we will need to remedy in VWRAP.  I am looking forward eagerly to that
aspect of our protocol design effort.


Morgaine.



=========================

On Sat, Apr 2, 2011 at 6:01 PM, Meadhbh Hamrick <[e-mail]> wrote:

> yes. there is something missing in the protocol. it's trust. you don't
> put "trust" in a protocol, you put "security" in a protocol. at the
> end of the day, the people using this protocol will need to decide
> whom they trust. this is why there was a security model and the
> ability of the protocol to "securely carry trust."
>
> the idea is that the protocol would carry cryptographically
> unforgeable attestations of an endpoint's identity. this identity
> would then be evaluated by protocol participants to see if it is
> "trusted."
>
> there's no place in the protocol that says "you must trust a specific
> entity," but rather a mechanism deployers can use to carry the
> identity of people wishing to be trusted.
>
> at the end of the day, an asset service should only barf up assets to
> trusted simulation services. simulators SHOULD only allow people on
> the grid they trust (for some definition of the word "trust.")
>
> if you're a company like Linden that needs to respond to DMCA takedown
> requests, you're likely to require the client trust knob turned up a
> bit. if you're an enterprise, you're going to want that trust knob
> turned all the way up. if you're the pirate bay, you're going to
> intentionally want that trust knob turned all the way down.
>
> as protocol developers, it's our duty to create a protocol that meets
> everyone's use cases. so... i mean... feel free to try to define a
> protocol that mandates the use of DRM or blesses a particular trust
> point, but the likelihood of it being widely supported is..
> approximately nil.
>
> my recommendation has always been... "define mechanism, not policy."
>
> -cheers
> -meadhbh
> --
> meadhbh hamrick * it's pronounced "maeve"
> @OhMeadhbh * http://meadhbh.org/ * [e-mail]
>
>
>
> On Sat, Apr 2, 2011 at 8:19 AM, Carlo Wood <[e-mail]> wrote:
> > On Sat, 2 Apr 2011 14:12:59 GMT
> > "[e-mail]" <[e-mail]> wrote:
> >
> >> BTW, the Red Zone statistics of 9 million  scans with only 78,000
> >> rogue viewers captured lets us know that this  problem is exaggerated
> >> -- and usually by engineers who claim there is no  technical solution.
> >
> > Just for the record, from a hacker/engineer: there is no technical
> > solution. It is possible to copy everything (and without being detected
> > by a "Red Zone" which can only detect rogue viewers that were released
> > to the public and explicitly make a point of being detectable
> > in the first place (call that bragging: no fun in releasing a "k3wl"
> > viewer if others (or even the coder himself) can't see that it is being
> > used.) So, there is a psychological advantage for the detectors, but
> > not really a technical one.
> >
> > Lets concentrate on textures for the moment to explain this.
> >
> > In order to see an object, or clothing, with the appropriate textures,
> > those textures have to be downloadable for the viewer. There is nothing
> > you can do about that short of running the whole viewer server-side
> > and providing a video. But even in that case it would technically be
> > possible to rip the textures: they are still visible (ie, you could
> > make a screenshot of the surface of a wall). I don't consider the
> > video-broadcast to even be remotely interesting, certainly not from the
> > viewpoint of VWRAP so lets forget that for the moment and just accept
> > that it is possible for anyone to store whatever they SEE to their
> harddisk.
> >
> > Secondly, if the first creator could upload this texture then so can
> > the ripper. And don't tell me software exists that can detect if
> > an uploaded texture "looks like" one of the already existing billion
> > textures that were uploaded before. If the texture is converted twice,
> > ie from jpeg2000 to jpg to tga and then uploaded, then you'd need a
> > human to look at the original and the newly uploaded texture at the
> > same time to judge that it is MAYBE a copy - which then can only be
> > proved in court if the original creator can prove that his original
> > textures are 100% his own and not, for example, downloaded from the
> > internet somewhere (because in that case the other uploader could
> > have used the same source).
> >
> > A real problem, currently in SL, is imho the complete lack of
> > support for FREE things. The amount of restriction (for people with
> > honest viewers) is tremendous: if you're not an expert or do not pay
> > attention for a second, then your creation is not truely free anymore.
> > Everything defaults to very copyleft unfriendly settings. I'm trying to
> > get my friends, who are very willing in that regard, to only create
> > full permission stuff, but it's simply near impossible to keep
> > something full permission and often we're stuck with something nobody
> > else can change or edit because the creator forgot to set the bit of
> > the contents of an object after changing the group etc blah blah...
> >
> > For example, last a good friend of me wanted my help with making a
> > large amount of changes on his sim: hunderds of objects had to be
> > adjusted... He was willing to:
> > 1) Add me to any group necessary.
> > 2) Give me his build rights
> > 3) Transfer any object to me (temporary ownership transfer)
> > 4) Make any adjustments to the objects and the objects contents
> >   needed to allow me to access what I needed to access.
> > etc etc
> >
> > The end result: He had to do it all by himself. It was impossible to
> > give me enough access to help him (for those who don't believe that,
> > one of things involved changing the "anyone can move" bit of an
> > object in the contents of objects: it is not possible to take anything
> > out of the contents (ie copy it to your inventory) when it's no
> > transfer, and therefore you can't edit it, even though it's modify
> > and you get all the rights that the owner can give you).
> >
> > Sorry, but that is unacceptable; and it CLEARLY shows that something is
> > missing from the protocol.
> >
> > Now the above example doesn't show that a free object is not supported,
> > it only make clear that non-free objects can be very annoying even in
> > situations where the owner has all the rights to do what he wants to
> > do. There are many other such examples. Hence, it shows that it is very
> > annoying that an object is non-free by default at so many levels that
> > you need an IQ of over 140 to create one and those permissions erode
> > quickly to non-free. Even the so called "freebies" are non-free by the
> > way: they are almost always no transfer. Hell, even the default shape
> > that you can when you create a new account is no transfer, what kind of
> > insanity is that?!
> >
> > I think you might find a lot of people, like myself, a lot more willing
> > to help out with thinking of ways on how to protect property in virtual
> > worlds when first it is assured that those who want to create things
> > that are FREE are equally supported as the commercial guys out there.
> >
> > --
> > Carlo Wood <[e-mail]>
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
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