Rezzable’s Risible Rationalisation

IP protection has always been a matter of concern to content creators across Second life. While LL are apparently finally getting around to taking serious steps in the matter – albeit more to reassure potential major players: corporations, NGOs, educational organisations – than to help “everyday” creators, they face a very uphill battle when even the more “respectable” members of the community seem to be bent on undermining matters.

Take Rezzable for example: recently they caused a stir with the creation of BuilderBot, a tool that allows entire sims to be copied and saved on a local computer, and then uploaded elsewhere either within Second Life or on another grid entirely.

Now, let me state straight off, that there is actually wrong per se with Rezzable making this tool – it was designed to fulfil a unique situation Rezzable have. As many know, Rezzable have had a large presence in SL and have worked hard with content creators to develop unique sims – sims and builds that they not only own but to which they also own the IP rights. More recently, Rezzable have been investing in developing their own OpenSim presence. As such, they wanted a means by which they could move all the content they own and to which they have IP rights to from SL to their OpenSim environment. Building a tool that would copy and save an entire sim, rather than invdividual items (as with most copybots and Second Inventory) was the most expedient way of doing this.

So far, so good. Rezzable are acting totally within the SL ToS – which grants, remember, full IP rights to content creators – who therefore have the right to protect their work beyond relying simply on LL’s altruism and asset cluster.

However, where Rezzable fail is in the fact that – acknowledging that their BuilderBot can ignore all rights of ownership and creation on objects (thus potentially allowing it to be used for content theft), they nevertheless announced that they’d be making the code available as open source.

This was nothing short of utterly irresponsible, and despite more recent assurances on the matter, it still seems Rezzable believe themselves justified in potentially releasing the tool as open source going on the comments made by RightAsRain Rimbaud in a  recent interview hosted by the folks over at Designing Worlds.

In the interview, Rimbaud used what can only be described as a the most risible of rationalisations to justify Rezzable’s initial descision (which is merely “on hold” right now, rather than having been scrapped altogether) to make the BuilderBot code freely available to all. Rationalisations that include:

• Inventory copying software already exists in the form of illegal copybots and inventory recording software such as Second Inventory
• Because content is already effectively cached on local PCs, then BuilderBot isn’t really doing anything different to how Second Life “works”
• BuilderBot uses the lib0inv library – which is “already out there”

So, in other words, because dubious software (in the case of copybots) is already out there, it is OK for Rezzable to put software that potentially offers the means to rip entire sims up on the “open market”, and that furthermore, as SL does record information on content on local drives, it is OK to exploit the Second Life software.

Shaky ground indeed. It’s the equivalent to saying that because Copybot A already exists on the grid, it is OK to develop and release Copybot B….

His inclusion of Second Inventory is also misleading – Second Inventory scans an avatar’s inventory within the SL Asset Cluster not anything cached on the local drive, and also respects permissioning.

Rimbaud digs a deeper hole in that he states that a) Rezzable don’t know how big the potential market for such a tool might be and b) that really, there are few individuals or organisations in SL who share Rezzable’s unique situation which lead to the creation of the tool.

Well, if both (a) and (b) are true – why even consider releasing the tool before investigating the matter first – taking the time to contact other organisations and content creators? Instead, Rezzable simply posted a notice of their intent to release the code and only paused when the (inevitable) backlash struck.

In this regard, all of Rimbaud’s justifications for the intial “release first, assess later” approach to BuilderBot ring hollow. As does his comment that “it was never our intent to damage the Second Life community”.

To suggest one never really considered how making such a powerful tool, based, no less on the same technology as existing copybots, available as open source code, readily available for tweaking, modifying and altering into something far more nefarious than it’s original intent is at best frankly breathtaking in its naivety.

The very fact that BuilderBot does make the wholesale copying of sims  – prims, textures, and even scripts – so easy and the admitted fact that it is based on Copybot software (thus potentially making it very familiar to content rippers and thus even easier to tweak and play with)  – should have given a responsible organisation such as Rezzable pause to consider the validity of releasing the tool long before they considered making any announcement on the matter. Doubly so when Rimbaud admits the legal “market” for the tool is probably small to non-existent.

A further rationalisation Rimbaud uses to justify Rezzable’s position is that no-one elsewhere would take an illegally copied sim – IBM, for example, wouldn’t simply access copies of sims from a “creator” (ripper)  without solid proof of ownership / IP rights ownership, ergo, there is little to fear from BuilderBot.

But this is again a risible argument – as Angela Talamasca herself points out in the same interview. The problem with BuilderBot is not that it can “simply” copy an entire sim for distribution elsewhere – it is in the fact that it potentially allows a content ripper to obtain the contents of a sim: the malls, the shops, the contents of said shops, the contents of houses, the house designs, etc., and then comb through them at leisure and select individual items and textures they wish to rip and illegally resell either in SL or elsewhere. Sure beats the risk of wandering around a store and risking interception when using a Copybot….

It’s also ironic that Rimbaud belittles the idea of entire sims being potentially ripped, when Gospel Voom is sitting beside him in the interview. Voom himself is the victim of “sim ripping”, having seen a sim he built (and to which he retained the IP rights to the builds) in Second Life copied, taken down and then reappear on another grid. Quite what was used to copy Voom’s work is unclear….but the fact remains the work would have been considerably easier with a tool like builderBot being readily available in the manner Rezzable originally announced.

While Rimbaud does give some assurances in the interview that Rezzable are considering introducing a means of protecting permissions on objects copied using the tool (a step in the right direction), he still tends to naysay the need by stating in the same breath that such controls could be “bypassed” (the implication being “so why bother?”). Again, this misses the point.

There may well be cases where a tool such as BuilderBot does have an appropriate use; I’d be a fool not to deny that – and the problem of IP right protection is not one for the likes of Rezzable to solve; that’s a matter for Linden Lab to finally and properly work out.

However, where Rezzable do have a responsibility it is in ensuring the tool they have built doesn’t become the means by which content rippers can expand their activities. This in turn means Rezzable need to take steps to ensure their tool is probaly safeguarded – up to and including not making it available as open source, period.

This is where Rimbaud’s other argument of “why punish those people who want to do the right thing because some people will always find a way to do the wrong thing?” falls down.

By his own admission, the potential legal use of such a tool is limited. He himself makes the strong differentiation between ownership “rights” on objects and the actual Intellectual Rights (simply put: you may own a copy of one of my houses, but you don’t own the IP to the design of the house – *I* do) – so to suggest that dumping a tool into open source that is so clearly capable of misuse as is for those who “will always find a way to do the wrong thing” is somehow “helping” those people “who want to do the right thing” is …. well, nonsensical.

Surely, a preferrable way of providing the tool to those “who want to do the right thing”  would be to formalise the software, licence it and sell it as a bracketed, out-of-the-box tool? True, this doesn’t prevent it being hacked, but it does reduce the overall risk of hacking / misuse occurring compared to dumping it into an open source library – and it certainly demonstrates Rezzable are sincere in their desire not (to again quote RightAsRain Rimbaud) “to toss a grenade into the room” as they are leaving….