A question about channels and my rights to use them

[WingsOfPurity]

I am interested in creating scripts for my personal use that interact with things other people created (such as making a texture changing hud for a dress that I cannot modify.) To do so, I often require knowledge of the channel that other peoples creations use. Would obtaining that channel and using it for my personal use land me in trouble?

[Rolig Loon]

Nope.  I suppose, though, that if you used that information to create some sort of griefer device for sabotaging other people's clothing, you could get in trouble.  In a practical sense, though, any good scripter will make it difficult to spoof a listener.  When I write a HUD script like that, I usually create a channel from something that is specific to the owner, the HUD, or the object being controlled, so that it has limited use. If I'm really concerned, I will hash an important command message so that the system will refuse to do anything even if you discover the right channel.

[Innula Zenovka]

I don't see how using the channel for your own personal texture changers would be an issue (though that's my opinion, which isn't worth a great deal). 

However, I would be very interested to know how you plan to obtain the channel --  unless you have inside information -- you happen to know it's the scipter's birthday or something --  I can't think of a way of doing with existing LSL tools.   

[WingsOfPurity]

1 hour ago, Innula Zenovka said:

I don't see how using the channel for your own personal texture changers would be an issue (though that's my opinion, which isn't worth a great deal). 

However, I would be very interested to know how you plan to obtain the channel --  unless you have inside information -- you happen to know it's the scipter's birthday or something --  I can't think of a way of doing with existing LSL tools.   

There are certain tools that listen to hundreds of thousands of channels simultaneously. The one I have is sadly not available on marketplace, though. I did not create it either, so I don't know how it works other than that it rezzes a buch of prims with listeners inside. When one of the listeners hears a channel, the channel, message sent, and object name are sent to the user. This allows me to scan for thr channel by trial and error, and I have done it for things before.

[Nova Convair]

Some math:

We have 4 billion channels. If you scan 100 per second then you need 500 days to scan all. Problem is: you can only scan something if something is sent. That means you need to click a hud button and then set the scanner prims to open new listens and wait until they are ready. That will increase the scanning time a bit. From 500 Days to maybe 500 years?
Try and error will lead you nowhere. You need a strong hint where to look.

I personally calculate channels so every avatar will have a different one. You'd need to find out the math behind that calculation.

If you think you can make it anyways - have fun and luck.

[Rolig Loon]

Yeah, that's a pretty worthless tool unless you are using it on scripts written by amateurs who use obvious channels ( 1, 2, 3, 4, 12345678, 100, ...).

[WingsOfPurity]

56 minutes ago, Nova Convair said:

Some math:

We have 4 billion channels. If you scan 100 per second then you need 500 days to scan all. Problem is: you can only scan something if something is sent. That means you need to click a hud button and then set the scanner prims to open new listens and wait until they are ready. That will increase the scanning time a bit. From 500 Days to maybe 500 years?
Try and error will lead you nowhere. You need a strong hint where to look.

I personally calculate channels so every avatar will have a different one. You'd need to find out the math behind that calculation.

If you think you can make it anyways - have fun and luck.

I understand. I am still trying to find a workaround for channels I don't find immediately. My question was more about whether or not doing such a thing would be allowed.

[WingsOfPurity]

56 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

Yeah, that's a pretty worthless tool unless you are using it on scripts written by amateurs who use obvious channels ( 1, 2, 3, 4, 12345678, 100, ...).

That seems to be a bit of a trend, actually. Especially on scripts that were written a while ago.

[Rolig Loon]

Yeah, you're right.  You'll still find some scripts written before about 2010 that were written without any thoughts about channel crosstalk or hijacking. Except for beginning scripters these days, though, I doubt that you'll find many people being that naive.

[Innula Zenovka]

For what it's worth, every so often I use the random integer generator at random.org to generate lists of a couple of hundred random integers within a large range,  save them in a text file,and just cut (as opposed to copy) and paste them into my scripts whenever I need a fixed channel.     Then generate another couple of hundred when I've worked through the list.

Saves me having to think up random numbers myself, which probably wouldn't be random anyway.    

[Wulfie Reanimator]

I'm pretty sure that even if you made a commercial product (like an applier) for someone else's product that wasn't intended to support it, you wouldn't get into trouble. All it would take for the creator to break your applier was to update their product. Whatever happens after that is up to you, the original creator, and both of your customers. That's not really the point though, the point is, I'm pretty confident none of this breaks any rules set by LL.

Edited October 28, 2017 by Wulfie Reanimator

[WingsOfPurity]

On 10/28/2017 at 9:50 AM, Wulfie Reanimator said:

I'm pretty sure that even if you made a commercial product (like an applier) for someone else's product that wasn't intended to support it, you wouldn't get into trouble. All it would take for the creator to break your applier was to update their product. Whatever happens after that is up to you, the original creator, and both of your customers. That's not really the point though, the point is, I'm pretty confident none of this breaks any rules set by LL.

Thank you! huggies <3