So, is copybot still an issue?

[Megan Dyrssen]

Forgive me if this comes across as a silly question, but I haven't been around for quite a while and seriously need to brush up on what's happening in SL these days.

I saw some posts and warnings about copybot and that confused me - wasn't the whole idea of letting only LL-approved viewers log into the grid to weed out the copybot-capable viewers? Or are there still modded viewers around who allow that? (Not that I'd want one of those, goodness, no. Just trying to gauge what challenges a content creator is facing these days.)

[Rolig Loon]

Yeah, there's always someone clever enough to find a way around the system.

[Megan Dyrssen]

*sigh* Too bad, it sounded like a nice idea by LL...

Thank you.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

Not sure where you got the idea that only SL viewers could log into SL.  There are plenty of third party viewers that people use.  In fact the number one viewer is not the SL viewer, but Firestorm.

There are certified viewers that meet certain requirements established by LL, how you can still use one not certified.  LL has banned a few viewers so they can't be used to log in, but the viewer code is open source so anyone with the right knowledge can custom make their own viewer.

[Sassy Romano]

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Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

There are certified viewers that meet certain requirements established by LL, how you can still use one not certified.  LL has banned a few viewers so they can't be used to log in, but the viewer code is open source so anyone with the right knowledge can custom make their own viewer.

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Not meaning to nitpick but just so that those who may not be aware, the viewers on the SL Third Party Viewer list are SELF certified as being compliant.  There is no test or assessment performed by LL.

Many of us will remember the issue with the Phoenix viewer which was a member of that list.

[Innula Zenovka]

Nothing has really changed.  It's trivially simple to make a viewer misreport itself on log-in, and, as far as I know, all the ripper viewers do that (their makers take a legitimate OS viewer, like Firestorm or Singularity, and then tamper with the code to add the malicious capabilities, so they end up with something that looks like a legitimate viewer when you sign in.

It's often forgotten that "copybot viewers" are a comparatively recent problem.   Before they came on the scene, people had to install a separate piece of software, which was originally written for completely legitimate debugging purposes, on their PCs, then log in with the official viewer and let the viewer and the separate software work together.   All the ripper viewers did was make life a lot simpler for content thieves.