Protecting content in an open grid

From Second Life Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Discussion on the mailing list

Unfortunately the archive messed up and the permission thread is all over the place, but here are some link from which you might want to follow downwards the stream: (probably also happens due to keyword juggling in the subject)

Basically it's the September archive.

Summary

  • I think all participants are more or less agreeing on the fact that a strong(er) DRM is not possible to be implemented.
  • Permissions are here to stay, but these access constraints can hold only within the walls of specific managed grids.
  • New permissions might be needed such as:
    • allow an asset only to be used inside one region domain
    • allow an asset only to be used inside one grid (= list of trusted region domains)
    • allow an asset only to be used inside a set of region domains
      • For example, using signed certificates and revocation lists (possible implementation)
  • It should also possible to create full-perm assets that stay full perm (such as a GPL-style license).
  • It should be possible to make your intent more clear.
    • Additional specific flags indicating certain permissions, even if they can't be enforced to serve as notice.
    • An additional license field for license and copyright text, similar to land covenants (for e.g. CC licenses)

Thought on DRM

This is a personal thought, but rooted in some fairly deep considerations. Given the real world nature of a distributed application and security, DRM becomes a perpetual arms race, and not one any standard is likely to win. We can, and should, however, try to make sure the system can aid in marking intent and in detecting theft and abuse, so that people can use other remedies when the theft hits levels where that matters.

A second, related thought, is that, we can, and should ensure that what we build permits marking content such that a sub cluster with a trusted set of services and trusted clients and keep content within that space, while allowing public hosted content to be used.

- user:Zha Ewry 9/25/2007

Related Jira Entry

VRW-2571 : Copyleft/share-alike permission for SL Items