Mesh Upload Requirements

[Ashasekayi Ra]

I was just reading Nalate's blog and saw this post: http://blog.nalates.net/2011/06/08/second-life-mesh-enablement/

Since it contains some information that a lot of us have been asking for, I figured I'd post it. It basically talks about an entry on the mesh wiki that lists some requirements for uploading mesh such as Payment Info on File and reading some form of tutorial. It also goes into some other details about IP and revocation of upload privileges.

 

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh_Upload_Enablement

[Niko Kozower]

Wow this is very clever. It wont stop all but most ( I hope.) As I stated in a previous thread, its unfair for one to spend hours on a single object and then another to rip from a game such as Need for Speed and get the same if not higher profit result as the person who spent hours on someting like a car.

[Gearsawe Stonecutter]

Should have something like this Scripting too...

But really this is great. Wonder how many people will actually be uploading meshes. And will this be only for the Main grid or will beta not have these restriction so people may learn before they can be mesh certified?

[Masami Kuramoto]

Those rules should be applied consistently to all uploads, not only meshes. There is already massive copyright infringement in textures, animations and audio clips on the main grid. Why do these get a free pass while mesh builders are under suspicion by default?

[DanielRavenNest Noe]

Practical business reasons:

- Disney (Marvel Comics) and Blizzard (World of Warcraft) have more lawyers than Dosch Design (textures) and typical SL animation creators. A stolen character model is more obvious and recognizable than a texture among hundreds of other textures in a typical Second Life scene.

- There have been an average of 100,000 uploads per day for the past ~5 years that SL has been large.  Most of those are textures or photos.  That is 180 million uploads.  Policing the past would be utterly impractical.  If you impose the rules on new uploads, that creates an artificial distinction between past uploads and new ones. 

- Many uploads are things like snapshots that are captured to disk, cropped, and then uploaded as a texture, so you would be preventing many users from doing that if you required PIOF.

- Upload fees on 100K uploads a day are a major "sink" for Linden Dollars - they vanish from the economy when you upload.  Sinks are required to balance sources like stipends to keep the L$ value stable.

[Masami Kuramoto]

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DanielRavenNest Noe wrote:

Practical business reasons:

- Disney (Marvel Comics) and Blizzard (World of Warcraft) have more lawyers than Dosch Design (textures) and typical SL animation creators. A stolen character model is more obvious and recognizable than a texture among hundreds of other textures in a typical Second Life scene.

- There have been an average of 100,000 uploads per day for the past ~5 years that SL has been large.  Most of those are textures or photos.  That is 180 million uploads.  Policing the past would be utterly impractical.  If you impose the rules on new uploads, that creates an artificial distinction between past uploads and new ones. 

- Many uploads are things like snapshots that are captured to disk, cropped, and then uploaded as a texture, so you would be preventing many users from doing that if you required PIOF.

- Upload fees on 100K uploads a day are a major "sink" for Linden Dollars - they vanish from the economy when you upload.  Sinks are required to balance sources like stipends to keep the L$ value stable.

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Your arguments make no sense. There are textures in SL which have been ripped from commercial games. People decorate their virtual homes with 2D artwork copied from websites or scanned from catalogs etc. They use commercial songs in gestures. Clothing designers "photosource" their textures from RL clothes. How is this different from grabbing a mesh from a game? How is this less obvious and less recognizable? It's the same thing, and it deserves the same treatment.

The past isn't over until those copyrights expire. Stealing in the past doesn't earn you the privilege to keep on doing so forever. The example of mesh shows that a PIOF requirement and an upload privilege "kill switch" are practical and useful to keep uploads legit. This is not about "policing the past", it's about correcting past mistakes.

[Ashasekayi Ra]

I see your point. My theory is that they saw PIOF as a way to assuage the fears of some people concerned about ripped mesh content. Yet, they aren't prepared to alienate people by applying this requirement to previous upload formats. I suppose they could limit the other uploads in the future. Who knows.

[DanielRavenNest Noe]

Legally and morally you are correct.  However businesses are not required to be moral, and often sidestep legality if it impairs profits.  I listed practical business reasons, which are how a business would view things, and have nothing to do with if it's morally correct, or even legal.

The sole purpose of corporations is to make a profit for it's owners. If you want corporations to behave better, you must add morality into the laws under which they are created, and substantial penalties for lawbreaking.  Many large corporations have been convicted of multiple crimes, but yet are still in business.  If a human being commits the same crimes, they would be locked up for life.  Corporations generally pay fines and then just go on with whatever it is they do.  If you had the equivalent of prison ie we shut you down for up to 5 years if you commit this crime, they would be much more careful about breaking the law.

[Masami Kuramoto]

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DanielRavenNest Noe wrote:

I listed practical business reasons

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No, you didn't. You said applying the above rules to all asset types is impractical but failed to explain why that impracticality is not a concern for mesh uploads. And you said that texture and audio clip theft is less obvious and recognizable, which is plain wrong. You said Disney has more lawyers. Rest assured, Sony Music and Valve Corporation have plenty of lawyers, too, and their IP can be found on the main grid right now -- in the form of textures and songs.

I think the reason why you don't want to see these rules applied to textures, animations and audio is because you don't sell these types of assets, so when someone uploads stolen or freebie content of that kind and gives it away for free, it doesn't hurt your business the way freebie mesh content would. The business point of view you are talking about is in fact yours, not Linden Lab's. However, you're not alone on the grid, and your vested interests don't matter to the rest of us -- and certainly not to the Lab.

[Luc Starsider]

Thank you for the link. As Niko said, it will help with ip infringement, but it will probably not stop all of it.

Big thanks to Nalates for finding, and posting, the info on her blog! Kudos!

- Luc -

[DanielRavenNest Noe]

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Masami Kuramoto wrote:

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DanielRavenNest Noe wrote:

I listed practical business reasons

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No, you didn't. You said applying the above rules to all asset types is impractical but failed to explain why that impracticality is not a concern for mesh uploads. And you said that texture and audio clip theft is less obvious and recognizable, which is plain wrong. You said Disney has more lawyers. Rest assured, Sony Music and Valve Corporation have plenty of lawyers, too, and their IP can be found on the main grid right now -- in the form of textures and songs.

I think the reason why you don't want to see these rules applied to textures, animations and audio is because you don't sell these types of assets, so when someone uploads stolen or freebie content of that kind and gives it away for free, it doesn't hurt your business the way freebie mesh content would. The business point of view you are talking about is in fact yours, not Linden Lab's. However, you're not alone on the grid, and your vested interests don't matter to the rest of us -- and certainly not to the Lab.

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Mesh uploads are new, thus they can institute the restriction.  Going through millions of past uploads is impractical because of how many there have been.  I used Disney as an example of a large corporation with a legal department.  Just because I listed one, did not mean I excluded others like Sony.  The point is their legal department is much larger than those of commercial texture vendors or SL animators.  Do you dispute that point?

Audio clips are less visible as infringing *to the lawyers* because you don't generally see them posted like photos are to the web.  You hear them in-world, and I don't think legal departments hang around in SL listening for stolen songs.  They do however scan the web vor words associated with their trademarks, and if a photo caption says "Iron Man Avatar", bingo.  (Iron Man is a Marvel character, and Disney owns Marvel, in case anyone didn't know).

As far as vested interests, you fail at reading my mind. My main business in SL has nothing to do with selling content (and it barely covers tier).  I have a vested interest in SL continuing as a viable world, which adding new features like mesh contributes to. Restricting texture uploads, on the other hand, I would consider a bad thing.  Many SL residents take snapshots to disk, possibly crop or edit them, or merely discard the bad ones, and then upload them.  There is no way to distinguish this type of photo from textures for building.  So if you restrict texture uploads, you diminish the fun for casual users too.

[Masami Kuramoto]

Daniel, which part of "stolen content hurts content sales in SL" don't you understand? Stolen textures uploaded and distributed for free, even if the original creators never take note of them, make it impossible for texture makers to make money in SL. It's hard enough to compete with freebies, but if those freebies are professional content ripped from commercial games, it is almost impossible. These things hurt the SL economy, regardless of the legal issues.

You demand special treatment for meshes because you are a mesh builder. It doesn't make a difference whether you sell them under this account or an alt. You say you want SL to continue as a viable world. In that case you better make sure that all content creators are protected equally. Why is it wrong to ask uploaders for their RL ID to prevent copyright infringement? Those people you mentioned who upload their own photos won't be affected at all. Residents without payment info on file need L$$ for uploads anyway. They may get them from a friend, so why not ask that friend to upload the photo in the first place? If the friend refuses to do so because the image is in fact a stolen texture, great! Isn't that exactly what we want?

All I'm asking for is consistency. I don't see why anyone would have a problem with that, except those who wish to be treated better than others.

[Ciaran Laval]

 

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Masami Kuramoto wrote:

Why is it wrong to ask uploaders for their RL ID to prevent copyright infringement? Those people you mentioned who upload their own photos won't be affected at all. Residents without payment info on file need L$$ for uploads anyway. They may get them from a friend, so why not ask that friend to upload the photo in the first place? If the friend refuses to do so because the image is in fact a stolen texture, great! Isn't that exactly what we want?

All I'm asking for is consistency. I don't see why anyone would have a problem with that, except those who wish to be treated better than others.

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There are people who buy Linden dollars from third party exchanges, often because they can't buy them from Linden Lab, the PIOF plan leaves them out in the cold.

If one of my alts goes and buys a texture pack, I am often forbidden by the TOS of the texture seller of transferring them to my PIOF account, so I can't download them, edit them and get them back to my NPIOF alt without breaching that TOS, and there is no way I am putting the redundant info of my rl details on my alts that Linden Lab already know about as they've flagged them as being able to access adult despite being NPIOF and not age verified.

If you start taking such basic features as texture uploads away from those who are NPIOF then you're causing more problems than you'll cure.

[Ashasekayi Ra]

Welcome Luc.

That is true. It won't stop it from happening. Nothing will do that. But at least, they will have some real life information on file if they need to deal with a possible infringer. 

[PeterCanessa Oh]

Hello two-tier SL.  So much for anyone being able to create anything.  There are some of us who either do not have a means to pay LL anything or do not trust them with the information.

Apart from renting mainland from LL this will be the only thing you need PIOF for.  Thin end of the wedge ...

[DanielRavenNest Noe]

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Masami Kuramoto wrote:

You demand special treatment for meshes because you are a mesh builder.

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Your debate tactics are shoddy.  Where have I demanded anything, except asking import from Sketchup 8 get fixed?  You asked why is mesh being treated different from other uploads by Linden Lab, and I answered you from an amoral business perspective.  That does not mean those are *my* opinions, they are my analysis of *their* possible reasons.  If you cannot tell the difference, I feel sorry for you.

[Feynt Mistral]

Regardless of payment info being required, the simple inclusion of mesh into SL makes it "two tiered" in this case.  There are the people out there now with building knowledge who will likely pick up on mesh in short order, and then there are people who couldn't build a sphere to save their lives.  And try as you might, even though they may understand the build tools for the day you teach them, their sieve like brain (for building) will forget all that you taught them by tomorrow.  These are the people to whom the very notion of downloading Blender would make them exclaim "LOL!" at you, followed by some excuse.

[DanielRavenNest Noe]

That's nothing new, Feynt.  Many people learned a 3D program to create sculpts, and others have learned how to bake textures to simulate shadows, (something I don't know yet myself), or learned how to do layer adjustments in Photoshop to do skins, or learned Blender to create animations.  All of that required learning some outside program.  And on the other hand I know people with years in SL who cannot adjust prim clothing to fit, or find an earring they "dropped" on a parcel.  Skill levels vary widely, they always have, and always will.

Mesh is not a new, higher plateau of learning that has to be reached.  It is sculpt making without the sculpt map conversion and it's limitations.  And at a starter level, SketchUp 7.0 is no harder to learn than basic prim mangling in SL.  I wrote basic instructions on a single page: Sketchup export to SL: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh/Exporting_a_mesh_from_SketchUp

[Feynt Mistral]

That is basically the only limitation though.  There are multiple ways around the world to get payment info on file, so it's not like it's a major limitation.  The only real limitation is knowledge; learning to model, unwrap, and possibly rig your meshes.

[Masami Kuramoto]

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Ciaran Laval wrote:

If you start taking such basic features as texture uploads away from those who are NPIOF then you're causing more problems than you'll cure.

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What makes texture, animation and audio uploads more "basic" than mesh uploads? Care to explain why you think it's ok to treat different what is essentially the same?

[Masami Kuramoto]

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DanielRavenNest Noe wrote:

That does not mean those are *my* opinions, they are my analysis of *their* possible reasons.  If you cannot tell the difference, I feel sorry for you.

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This solution was requested by residents. It wasn't LL's idea. You declared your support by saying "I want SL to continue as a viable world". So don't tell me you don't have an opinion on this.

[DanielRavenNest Noe]

I do have an opinion.  Insistence that different asset types should all be treated the same is simplistic.

- Texture uploads for object building are indistinguishable from snapshots taken by casual users as far as the uploader part of the software.  The latter are much more common.  Requiring PIOF to upload a snapshot will damage the fun of SL for a large segment of the population. Therefore I am against it as someone who cares about the resident experience, especially newer people, who tend to be PIOF less often.  I recognize that unrestricted texture uploads makes it easier to use stuff without permission, but there are other ways to address that problem:

A "hash" is a short signature (about 20 bytes) calculated from a larger digital file, such as a texture, and are designed so that two different files are very unlikely to generate the same hash value.  Second Life could store hash values for textures, and compare new uploads to existing ones looking for exact copies.  If a DMCA is filed against a texture, a search could be made for other UUIDs with matching hashes i.e. other instances of the same texture.

This would improve the detection and removal of unpermitted textures over what we have now, which is none at upload, and only removing one instance via DMCA.  An argument that this is not perfect protection is invalid for the same reason that pickable door locks by skilled burglars does not invalidate the usefulness of having locks.  Partial prevention and detection is better than none.

- In the case of animation uploads, I would tend to agree they fall in the same category as 3D models.  They tend not to be done by casual newbies, and use similar software to create as 3D models.  So in that case I would not have a problem with requiring payment info.

- Note that anyone who sells things and converts to US$ via the Lindex already has to provide payment information.  So that segment of the population will be unaffected.

[Masami Kuramoto]

 

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DanielRavenNest Noe wrote:

I do have an opinion.  Insistence that different asset types should all be treated the same is simplistic.

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No, it is fair. It is a statement that the Lab considers the work of a texture artist no less valuable than a mesh modeler's creations. The hash method does not work; you know that as well as I do. Depending on the fingerprinting method you'll either get a new hash every time a pixel is changed or you'll get false duplicates for similar skins.

[DanielRavenNest Noe]

Taxing everyone in the real world the same amount would be "fair" too from some viewpoints, that doesn't happen.  Preventing some people from uploading casual snapshots taken in-world would be seen as "unfair" from other viewpoints.  It's just your opinion of what's fair you are using.

I said before that a partly effective hash check is better than none at all.  It will catch people too lazy or too unskilled in image editing to change a texture.  You apparently don't understand how hash algorithms work.  There are 2^160 hash values for a 20 byte hash (in decimal, 1 followed by 48 zeroes).  The algorithm is designed so similar source files do not generate nearby hash values.  They generate values evenly distributed among the possible range.  Since the number of uploaded textures is smaller by 40 orders of magnitude than the possible range, it is highly unlikely to get a duplicate by accident.

The Second Life UUID used to identify assets operates on the same principle using a 16 byte value, so it has a somewhat smaller, but still enormous range of values (3 followed by 38 zeroes).

[WolfookamI Foxclaw]

     At first I didn't even understand why this was required. After I learned it was to prevent content "thieves" which in many cases people aren't actually "thieves" it is just a term used to keep the pockets of corperatiosn full.  Allthough I know a little bit about computers.  I never even considered the posibility of uploading mesh from other files.  Actually, I wouldn't know the first thing of going about it.  I assume that if someone were to do something ike this, they would have to know quite technologically compitant.

Almost everyone argues that this prevents stolen content.  Do you know what would prevent crimes? Giving the police to right to break into any house at their discretion, search everything, and even take people to cuort based on what they find. Drug dealers, users, criminals of all sorts would be brought to justice.  Still, this would seriously vex people who don't commit crimes. 

This is exactly the same means to an end tactic that requiring payment info on file is using.  I myself, have been "playing"/"using" SL for about 3 years on my account.  I have never once had any issues w/ Linden Labs.  Secondlife actually gets quite boring, so mainly if I log in, it is most likley to build, make things and whatnot,  It is what I prefer to do. As for uploads,  I have uploaded a straw image I found online.  I suppose God might want to sue me..  In any case, I have also uploaded original animations as well, that I have made using avimator.   I learned of mesh early on, so I began editing mesh in blender around the middle of July. I have spent dozens upon dozens of hours working on my model, literally.  I am making an avatar, as well as other things.  I have also spent dozens of hours filing through useless videos to actually find a few to learn how to use blender and whatnot.  I soon find out that I need payment information on my file in order to upload.   Extreamely depressing.  All of my work might be wasted, yet I still pour hours into mesh creation in blender to the hope that someday I might obtain payment information...

.Rather, I have payment information, yet I've never had to verify my paypal account before.  No, not everyone in the world has, or needs a banking account....And not everyone in the world belives that it is a wise endeavor to invest in a credit card...As a matter of fact, credit cards are quite controvorsial..  I know many people, who don't trust providing their information online, especially because it can get stolen.  Ever heard of lulzsec, anonymous, antisec? 

  I am a textbook example of how in order to solve a problem, one would use a nuke.  Sure, "we're going to get the guys that we want to get"  but, "screw everyone else".  A means to an end mentality at its finest. Allow me to provide a scenario. "Hey, we need to get Osama bin Laden, he's a real pain"   "No problem! Lets launch a nuke", "What about the civilians?" "Screw them! We'll get the guy we want!"  Many people don't care, because they allready have payment information on file.  They are the people who don't live in Iraq, they sleep calmly in the safety of their homes... They couldn't care less how much a manuever would screw unintended targets over, it doesn't affect them..