i was just reading Mo Hax’s post “caveat creatores: second inventory?” and got tickled enough by what he wrote to start a reply — which got a bit long in the end, so i’m posting my thoughts here…

what got me tickled were the following sentences:

Full permissions or not, moving any content from SL outside of SL seems unethical and probably illegal. I was sure I would find a legal statement expressly forbidding the copying of content from SL into other systems, like OpenLife or any OpenSim grid. But after rereading the entire TOS and all the SI FAQ I could not find it.

[...]

Using Second Inventory might actually be hurting OpenSim development. SI is becoming something of a defacto content migration tool for use in OpenSim grids. There is no real system for content around OpenSim grids and when pressed SI consumers usually respond, “Well I don’t think there is anything wrong with it.”

There is something wrong with it. Second Inventory combines open source libraries (that do most of the heavy lifting) with its closed code and security encryption asking buyers to just trust its copyright policies, which, according to the FAQ are ‘coming soon’ and have already made LL leery. So while Second Inventory makes money for its closed and ethically questionable product, OpenSim misses the support, even pressure, to improve.

i think we have to distinguish two cases here:

1. i create something entirely from scratch (my own textures, my own scripts, and so forht): according to the LL TOS i give LL a license to use what i upload/create (albeit a pretty broad license, agreed), but i still retain the IP

2. i buy something with full copy permissions from a vendor in-LL-world, that is i acquire a license not the IP.

in the first case, i can do whatever i want to do with my content: i can take it with me to whatever place i want, i can sell it, i can give it away for free, i can do all of that at the same time since i own the copyright (which is the IP in this case).

with the latter case we do have a problem: what exactly is the license under which i obtained the content? what does it allow?

the answer: we don’t know for sure. did the content creator own all the rights to the content parts she used in making the content she sold to me? from a (perhaps naïve) user perspective all we have are the permissions.¹ we assumed those were full copy permissions, so i can claim that i do have a license to copy the content in whatever way i want, including taking it with me to an OpenSim grid.

i can see that LL’s “permissions” system is basically a kindergarten version of a “license” system (it certainly is not a DRM system and was never intended to be that). it in no way addresses real “IP” licensing issues — and i seriously doubt that all of the content creators in SecondLife have thought about things like certificates of originality and about making sure that they do have the required licenses to actually sell (license) their content.

i argue that in the absence of a proper licensing system we cannot then complain about content being used in ways that we have not expected (i.e., full copy permission content being taken to other virtual world).

what i fail to see, however, is how this damages OpenSim. all it can do is give SecondInventory a bad name (perhaps deservedly, perhaps undeservedly) and it does point to (yet another) deficiency of SecondLife: no clear way of specifying licensing terms (how can you even express GPL licensing terms with the permissions system?).

while looking at the 24C3 hack list of the currently ongoing 24C3 hack conf, i found this howto detailing the procedure to create fake fingerprints — all you need are:

• glass with fingerprint of the person you want to impersonate
• screw-top of a bottle (like the one from a coke bottle)
• super-glue
• wood glue (PVA)
• skin friendly glue (theatrical glue)
• digital camera
• PC
• laser printer
• foil

the process itself is rather easy — and, together with german TV station WDR, they demonstrated that you can use that method to fool the fingerprint recognition system used by the European super-market chain EDEKA…

EDEKA seemed non-fazed:

Edeka Südwest teilt uns auf Anfrage schriftlich mit, man sehe „keinen Handlungsbedarf“. Die bestehenden Sicherheitsvorkehrungen seien, „wie unsere Erfahrungen gezeigt haben, vollkommen ausreichend“.¹

…and they went on to state that the system they used was being used by the US government and other governments worldwide.

wow. good security relies either on something only i know, or something only i have, or something only i am. the emphasis is on only, your fingerprints? they are all over the place…and that place…and that place over there as well, yep.

the scary thing is, fingerprints are being used (as secondary biometrics) for the new biometric EU passports!

i was just reading pranab’s interesting blog entry about “user generated content — how important is it?”, in which he looks at how user generated content is perceived by the corporate dudes & dudettes, and he remarks

Also at the same time, I feel that UGC is very important, and unlike what some people consider that UGC is secondary, my conclusion is that is perhaps the most important factor for VWs. VWs like Second life gives tools to its users who can build 3D models without the need for expensive 3d tools like Maya or trying to learn open source 3D tools like Blender.

— and i wholeheartedly agree. in fact, i think it’s one of the reasons that secondlife will become increasingly difficult to beat: it’s got tons and tons of user created content. even if you were willing to cough up the money to recreate content on a similar scale, it would not be the same because of the diversity of the content creators — we thrive on textures (visual textures, but also sound textures, fabric textures, food textures!), content generated following a corporate recipe will always lack that quality of textures we get from an environment that has grown over time (history!) and has been contributed to by many creative people. it’s also one of the reasons that internal, corporate driven virtual worlds and web 2.0 systems never really fare as well as external systems: too little texture, not enough real culture (the term corporate culture is in many cases, and increasingly so, an oxymoron, i think). chatting to the CTO of a larger consulting company recently (as part of my IBM work, i’m not about to change jobs i learned that their internal facebook look alike system was used by about 800 or so of their employee, but that they found more then 14’000 of their employee being active on the real facebook…

for me the conclusion is clear: don’t waste time with internal virtual world systems, don’t waste time with internal web 2.0 systems for which there are much better systems on the internet (don’t get me wrong: IBM’s fringe web 2.0 service is excellent and very useful, for example) — instead concentrate and contribute to open up and standardize on a SL based open grid!

andrew tanenbaum once remarked that “the network world is a jungle” and back then he was referring to the plethora of network protocols to choose from (anyone remember ISO CONS, TP4, X.25, X.400, the ISO/OSI vs TCP/IP wars, ISODE? ah, those were the days…) — a couple of years later (well, actually more than 20 years later, i’m showing my age) the jungle has become even denser and sometimes it seems we are going to suffocate in it.

looking at virtual worlds, we don’t (yet?) have a jungle but there sure are quite a number of virtual world systems and virtual world “wannabes” out there — raising the questions which ones are really virtual worlds (and which ones are just glorified 3D or worse 2.5D chat systems) and which should we support?

virtual worlds & glorified chat systems

the first question — what features make a system a virtual world system as opposed to a mere embellished chat system with avatars — is, i admit, a bit of a challenge. intuitively, i guess, we are all tempted to state, “i’ll recognise a virtual world when i’m in it.” — which is probably true for most of us, but is not really a good criterium.

what do we expect from a virtual world? well, it has to feel real; that means, it has to be able to draw us in to the virtual world in such a way that we no longer realize that we are not the avatar and also forget that we in fact and in reality sitting in front of a computer with just a tiny window into the virtual world and a rather limited way of interacting with that virtual world — this being drawn in is what we call immersive experience. for me an immersive experience only occurs when i can interact with a credible, 3D world. Credible in this context means that the virtual world at least exhibits similar features to and “behavior” as the “real-life” world i’m living in (is it real, though?):

• 3D: things and scenes before me appear to be three dimensional¹
• free movement: i can move about a scenery as i want to and change perspective as i want to
• impact: i can influence and change the environment i (or my avatar) am part of
• interact: there are others “in-world” and we can interact with one another (chat, take a walk together, do things together)
• create, sell & buy: i can create stuff, i can give stuff away, accept stuff from other avatars, i can sell and buy stuff
• physics: the virtual world exhibits limitations², either by imposing “laws of physics” on objects or by restricting resources (size of an virtual world space) or by restricting my abilities (e.g., how far can i see? how far can i hear?)

those points, i think, establish a baseline of what constitutes a virtual world system. anything below that baseline is a glorified chat system at best, i’d say. anything above that baseline just enhances the experience.

ideal virtual world systems & virtual universes

what would an ideal virtual world system look like? when can we talk of a virtual universe?

obviously, an ideal virtual world should be more than just a virtual world, so what are the features that (i think) make it ideal?

• real word–virtual world interconnect: first, i’d like to be able to link real world and virtual world. touching an object in the virtual world, for example, could open a browser window (or map a browser window into the virtual world); or the status of an object in the real world should influence the status of one or more objects in the virtual world.

• internal & external APIs: then, second, we should be able to program the virtual world system from the inside as well as from the outside. this feature, requires that there are in-world and real-world virtual world APIs that allow us to interact with the virtual world at least on the same level as an avatar of that virtual world.

• property: an ideal virtual world system gives me control over the stuff i own. i can take my belongings and make a backup onto my backup service. i can take my belongings and leave (and join a different virtual world). i can pass on whatever i own to another avatar.

• self-hosting: next, with an ideal virtual world system i can host my own private virtual world and have complete say over who can access and who cannot access it.

• virtual universe grid: i can hook up to other, independently operated virtual world systems of (at least) the same type and create a virtual universe grid.

• cross-platform & accessibility: an ideal virtual world aims for cross-platform coverage and accessibility. i can run the client on a windows system, on an apple OSX system, a linux system, or on a mobile platform. if i’m blind i can use a text-only client. when i’m away from broadband connections i can use reduced graphics clients or even text-only clients.

• open source: finally, an ideal virtual world gives me open-source³ access to both the client and the grid (server) code.

“so weit, so gut“… the next step will be to try and collect information about existing virtual worlds.

SecondLife, contender to the throne?

SecondLife seems to do quite well in the virtual worlds category. the source code to the client has been open-sourced by linden labs (who own the current SecondLife grid). the server code has been promised by linden labs but that so far has not happened. however, as tao takashi reported on his blog recently, linden labs have instantiated the SL Architecture Working Group recently and invited experts from all over (disclaimer: yours truly is part of it as well) and with the following vision (in the words of zero linden):

We imagine a future where Second Life is able grow beyond the borders of Linden Lab. We see regions running on open source, alternative simulators. We see web services that allow people to build mash-ups of Second Life and the Web. We see organizations being able to integrate their members and their members’ avatars. This is the vision of future Second Life Grid that we want to develop.

Last week we hosted the first Architecture Working Group meeting. Our aim is to build the technology and standards for such a vision by developing them through the direct involvement of Linden Lab, external developers, and the community. The initial group included Residents and organizations active in the technical development of Second Life, as well as virtual worlds in general. We hope it will be the first of an ever expanding process.

thus, we can hope for and, in fact, expect SecondLife to develop over the coming months and years into a fully fledged virtual universe!

OpenSim

OpenSim while in many aspects not quite on par with the SecondLife grid (but making steady progress) has already the concept of foreign grids, providing the first version of a virtual universe!

others…

still need to investigate ActiveWorlds, torque based VWs, & croquet. stay tuned