Builder Content

[Bruce Lehmann]

With the advent of all these new virtual reality platforms coming up there is an issue I feel needs to be addressed. That is, creator content and its use and protection. In example, when one of the new VRML/X3d based platforms started, I know of at least 2 creators that found out that their content was being used only by trying out the program and then discovering that it (both worlds and avatars) was there. There was no acknowledgement or credit given to the artist. The fact that when the Blaxxun development server was/is up and running and these worlds were listed might give the appearance that this is free content, it is NOT. I manage 5 weekly newspapers and one of the problems I constantly run across is Junior Editors wanting to pull down a great picture from the internet or even their e-mail and print it in their papers. The standing rule is, if they cannot show me a disclaimer on the site or CLEAR permission/releases to use this content, it is a no-go. The internet tends to give a lot of people the impression that it is a free-for-all when it comes to content.
Another point is that content creators need to read carefully when submitting their creations to these places. In some cases, you are literally giving your creations away to the companies.
It doesn’t take that much more time or effort to at least, on the companies’ ends, to give to the creators the credit that they are due. Some of the work available is pure art and should be treated as such. If it was easy to do everyone would be doing it. Including the platform providers. On the other end, if we, as builders and creators, see that content is being used we should let the users know that they need permission or at the least credit the creator.
In my personal case, I have implemented this in the form of not linking any worlds but my own. I had some worlds like the Abbey and the Waterpark on the main page of this site. I have now taken these down and either leave to the creator to link the worlds themselves or request/allow me to do it.
I am not taking shots at these new platforms. I am excited about the idea that some of these are using the technology that most of us like to build in. I merely want to make sure that we as creators are not abused and short changed in the process of introducing these new ideas. Without quality content, there is no 3D web in my opinion. You can provide the way to get there, but it is no good without great places to go.
I would love to see other views and possibly some ideas on how to protect what we create.
I would HATE to see good builders pulling their work off the internet in order to protect it. That would be a loss for everyone who value this virtual environment.

[fabricator]

I have this problem, not with worlds but with people hotlinking the screenshots of my worlds. In one case a screenshot of one of my games was used to represent a flash based game (which wasn't as good either).

I've taken to sabotaging anyone using hotlinking, except where its to actually promote a link to my site. One download site stole almost an entire gigabyte from my site by hotlinking directly to Avatar Studio, without mentioning 3d, vrml or linking to the information page either.

There are several ways to deal with content thieves:
1) Make the content in such a way that its going to be hard to download, use no_cache for one critical file, or use full urls or urls with "\content\blah\tree.wrl" etc.
2) Write your name throughout the code so you can prove it was yours. (sites like cybertown SHOULD do this automatically, but don't)
3) Put your name or site logo in texture(s).
4) Put copyright notices in world or on your site.

I'm trying to save up for a BSContact site license at the moment. Gotten no help so far as any paid work pays the bills and a few things I need and that is it.

[Tim Batchelor]

Paul Aslin said:

I have this problem, not with worlds but with people hotlinking the screenshots of my worlds. In one case a screenshot of one of my games was used to represent a flash based game (which wasn't as good either).

I've taken to sabotaging anyone using hotlinking, except where its to actually promote a link to my site. One download site stole almost an entire gigabyte from my site by hotlinking directly to Avatar Studio, without mentioning 3d, vrml or linking to the information page either.

There are several ways to deal with content thieves:
1) Make the content in such a way that its going to be hard to download, use no_cache for one critical file, or use full urls or urls with "\content\blah\tree.wrl" etc.
2) Write your name throughout the code so you can prove it was yours. (sites like cybertown SHOULD do this automatically, but don't)
3) Put your name or site logo in texture(s).
4) Put copyright notices in world or on your site.

I'm trying to save up for a BSContact site license at the moment. Gotten no help so far as any paid work pays the bills and a few things I need and that is it.

Regarding BS contact ( Hi all btw) this is the ONLY VRML viewer that DOES actually have an encryption feature that I know of. Some years ago I had a discussion with Holger Grahn, then of Blaxxun, and the original/lead? developer of 'contact' about encryption because I was concerned about people ripping off my code. He's now with Bitmanagement ( or was) and they have implemented such a system . Basically a code key resides at the top level of your domain which contact looks at before decrypting content on your website. This is great, fantastic even and should be the greatest boon to VRML builders since VRML itself was developed. Unfortunately bitmanagement software is a business and they want you to pay a big chunk of money to use this feature ( the site license etc that Paul Aslin refers to ) and to put it simply, most if not all independant VRML/X3d builders simply can't afford to use this method to protect our work.

What the hell can we do about it ? Only thing I can think of offhand is to try to put some pressure onto Bitmanagement to make the encryption feature more widely and cheaply available to world builders. They have the technology and we need it, surely some way can be found to let the little guys use this encryption technology for a price thats affordable?

[fabricator]

Tim Batchelor said:

What the hell can we do about it ? Only thing I can think of offhand is to try to put some pressure onto Bitmanagement to make the encryption feature more widely and cheaply available to world builders. They have the technology and we need it, surely some way can be found to let the little guys use this encryption technology for a price thats affordable?

Ironically the head of bitmangement posted on the world builder's forum some months ago about such a plan. Basically site license for 1euro provided its non profit content, bitmanagement get to use it to help promote their software, and a link from your site listing them as a sponsor.

It was dependant on an upgrade to the bitmanagement site, which I have yet to see appear.

I've been thinking another solution would be to have a shared site, with a license for that domain. Then run it as a $5-10 a year hosting service or something like that. If run on a windows server there might be a way to rig the file uploader script to run everything through BS Encrypt.

[Bruce Lehmann]

As to number 2, you could "comment" an identifying string of numbers into the code that would be unique to you, and not as easily decifered as a name, Just a thought.

Paul Aslin said:

I have this problem, not with worlds but with people hotlinking the screenshots of my worlds. In one case a screenshot of one of my games was used to represent a flash based game (which wasn't as good either).

I've taken to sabotaging anyone using hotlinking, except where its to actually promote a link to my site. One download site stole almost an entire gigabyte from my site by hotlinking directly to Avatar Studio, without mentioning 3d, vrml or linking to the information page either.

There are several ways to deal with content thieves:
1) Make the content in such a way that its going to be hard to download, use no_cache for one critical file, or use full urls or urls with "\content\blah\tree.wrl" etc.
2) Write your name throughout the code so you can prove it was yours. (sites like cybertown SHOULD do this automatically, but don't)
3) Put your name or site logo in texture(s).
4) Put copyright notices in world or on your site.

I'm trying to save up for a BSContact site license at the moment. Gotten no help so far as any paid work pays the bills and a few things I need and that is it.

[Deighv]

I am not a VRML creator and know very little of what is, and is not, possible when writing VRML code. However, is possible to insert javascript into the actual VRML code that would detect if the world was being run from a URL that it was not intended to be run from? I know this is possible in HTML when you'd like to prevent a unscrupulous website from linking to your content and displaying it in a frame on their own site and if possible with VRML it would help prevent unauthorized display of your world. You could, for example, have the script close the page if the world is found to be on a site, or in a frame, it was not intended for.

[fabricator]

Deighv said:

However, is possible to insert javascript into the actual VRML code that would detect if the world was being run from a URL that it was not intended to be run from? I know this is possible in HTML when you'd like to prevent a unscrupulous website from linking to your content and displaying it in a frame on their own site and if possible with VRML it would help prevent unauthorized display of your world. You could, for example, have the script close the page if the world is found to be on a site, or in a frame, it was not intended for.

Sure you can make code to get the url of the world itself, and switch it to say a blank world, or re-direct to your site. But that would only work if they rehost the content on their site.

The plugins tend to be walled off from html, so its not easy to get the parent frame/html document.

[Hiperia3D - Jordi R Cardona]

This is getting a very interesting group and conversation.

Prevent content copy is the best, but smashing the thieves is something that everyone can do.

First, make a free account in this international copyright protection service:

https://www.safecreative.org/

Then, upload and register your website and the files of your VRML worlds.

Next time someone copies your content, you can make a claim to their host or domain name provider, who will force him to retire the content.

My wife and me have done this dozens of times. She has a big cultural site and some people use to try to copy her. I was also copied sometimes.

You must know that no host or domain provider tolerates copyright infringement.

[mars]

hello deighv and hello group, this is my first post on this forum, hopefully together we will find ways to protect our code.

it is indeed very possible to use url or a cookie from page etc to ensure that the world is only run on the server for which it is intended, this could be used as part of a strategy for protecting the code. A big problem is that; however the code is encrypted, an unencrypted copy is still going to be present in the browser - which needs this for the activex control. bxx allows save of worlds -- so this needs to be disabled with a key mask.
a key cookie is how bitmanagement encrypts on servers, with some kind of public private key pair system.
perhaps a server based script could more easily encrypt and protect decryption algorithms from being seen
the problem with a purely javascript solution is that it is usually possible to read the code. an avatar can easily be constructed which returns the world code should a client wish to do this by accessing the browser world nodes.

Obfuscating code can be useful, something I have used is search replace to transform code into something which looks a little like:

field sfbool O011ll1110 1

function Ol0I10I011lO11I (0O111Oll,lOO0l11l){if (Olll11II1== lI0011){l01II1010DOIO11=IOll101100 -IIll110OO0 ;return l11OO0l1;}}

naming the various variabe and field names in such a way is a bit of an art, having similar and evolved variable names encrypted in random order will also make it difficult to put back into an easily readable form, as changing some variables will also change others which contain those strings.
Big problem with this though is that debugging on a server is a problem, also it takes danged ages to do.




Deighv said:

I am not a VRML creator and know very little of what is, and is not, possible when writing VRML code. However, is possible to insert javascript into the actual VRML code that would detect if the world was being run from a URL that it was not intended to be run from? I know this is possible in HTML when you'd like to prevent a unscrupulous website from linking to your content and displaying it in a frame on their own site and if possible with VRML it would help prevent unauthorized display of your world. You could, for example, have the script close the page if the world is found to be on a site, or in a frame, it was not intended for.

[alain]

I will post the most stupid post here

1 - to say hello to all guys here who stay alive with vrml :)
and thanx

2 - to say that it is great to LEARN from non encrypted wrls
( I wonder how the vrml planet would be if all was encrypted since 1997 :(

scuse if I am a bit off the topic LOL

[mars]

alain is right of course, it is much fun for the hacker to learn so we must always show them our code.
i don't mind helping people learn alain, but i wish to be able to choose.
some code can also be very dangerous to all, in the wrong hands.

[Bruce Lehmann]

I feel the same way. It's when you see yours or others work showing up places with no acknowlegment and being used without permission that kind of tweaks me out a little. Thsn, unfortunately, because of a few, the well-intended peoplle suffer. Or worse, as I said at the beginning, it gets pulled down and then no-ine gets to enjoy it. I don't take my work very seriously and I am flattered when someone wants to use it. But, it is common courtesy to at least ask or credit the creator for what they do.

[mars]

Good to see you here btw alain :)