More Sim Stuff.

[swestrup]

I wanted to talk about a couple of different things. First of all here is a link to an article about a 3D fashion simulator being developed to help folks shop for clothing. THIS is far more like the kind of UI I've been thinking about than what Maxis provides.

I've also been thinking about the simulated object forgery problem that tjernobyl brought up in the discussion here. Until I read _sps_'s response, I hadn't considered the following method of making a forgery (and so I think my response to tjernobyl missed the point):

1. Install a legitimately bought template object.
2. Run a query program on the template that asks for each resource it contains.
3. Feed the resources (suitably altered) into a template compiler
4. Sign and seal the new template using a new nym.
5. Start selling or giving away the new template.

Now, I can see no way to prevent steps 1-4. In fact, if our template editor is any good it should happily do items 1-4 for you with a few keystrokes. (Some artists will have multiple nyms, after all). Making it hard for legit users to create and/or modify templates is counterproductive. (Actually, I expect that one would have to disable some safeguards in the editor for the above to go completely smoothly, if you can't show that you own both nyms, but that will probably not be hard to do.) That only leaves step 5 to try and fix. There we have some leverage.

I have been imagining a brokerage service which helps connect buyers and sellers and which supports the online portion of the template trading protocol. When a legit artist registers a new template with us, we will record the 'fuzzy signatures' (_sps_ and I have done research on these -- its very doable) of all of the contained resources. This will allow us to detect when someone has made changes to a registered resource and is trying to reregister it as if new. We may employ something similar on the servers that host the virtual world that neighborhoods plug into. No unregistered objects will be allowed in the game. (This requires us to make registration free, transferable and without onus on the registerer, but I wanted to do that anyway.)

All of this creates a 'safe haven' where only legit copies of created objects get used. It does NOT prevent a black market with its own servers and brokerage service, but I can see no acceptable way to prevent that (and I'm not sure how such a black market could be profitable in a free economy anyway). We can prevent it from happening 'accidentally', by allowing other legit brokerage services to spawn off from us and for other distributed neighborhoods to be set up. By specifying, in advance, methods of starting up new services and how data will be exchanged between them we prevent anyone having to hack the code out of necessity because we've given ourselves an unfair edge. The only advantage the first system will have is that of first-to-market. As time goes on it may no longer be the biggest or the best of the brokerage services or online envionments, but it should manage to hold its own and continue to be profitable. It may be heresy in a capitalistic society, but filthy rich is good enough for me. I don't need to go for 'richest'. Besides, this is just one of a dozen such schemes I have designs for.

One final point I should make: Forgery and illegal trading of copywrit Sims objects is rife and yet many folks are still making money creating and selling the objects they've made. This is in an environment with NO safeguards other than word of mouth and social pressure to prevent it. So, while I feel we need to address the forgery problem to the best of our abilities, the business plan should work even if we have no forgery protection. After all, no modern currency is easier to forge than US dollars, but that hasn't stopped their use around the world.

So, what do folks think of this?