We have been working away to get perms implemented in the release version of BuilderBot. It seems to work ok, but there are some session issues that are a bit tweaky. In fact we sent a copy of the pre-release application over to Jack at LL last night. We would like to be among the first to have registered status for SL. There have been a lot of tech issues getting this to run smoothly -- makes us wonder if LL isn't messing around with something somewhere to block 3rd party applications completely. 

LL's latest threat to kill accounts that use "unapproved" viewers has also stopped our testing on the SL grid for BuilderBot. No one, rightly so, wants to give LL a reason to delete their account (especially if they can copy their own stuff off the grid)

From the Second Life perspective Digtial Rights Management (DRM) is clear enuff. You can +mod/+copy/-trans stuff and that works well enough. But actually the people that buy stuff never really accept/agree a licence on how they will use your content. In fact, the seller also does not expressly state that the content that was sold was theirs to sell in the first place. So while there is quasi-enforcement, is there really a DRM licence?

So the first major question is, can you take stuff off the SL grid? In practice the answer is of course yes. You could rip it and reload it to another grid without too much effort. But let's assume that we are not griefers/theives and want to pay for licences and use them properely. But right now since their is no licence agreement between seller and buyer what is a reasonable practice? Can you +copy something across a grid to your avatar? Is +copy to yourself across another grid not really +trans? If you can't move something to your alt, is your avatar on another grid a legit +copy or is it breaking -trans?

And what about freebies? SInce it was given away for free, is there any harm in moving it to another grid?

Like many core SL users, the OpenSpace fiasco inspired us to look around seriously at alternatives to relying solely upon Linden Lab. The OpenSim software, which is open source and free, seemed worthy of review as we could reuse our existing SL inventory and we hear that IBM and Microsoft are starting to contribute code and actually using the software somehow.

We have been testing the OpenSim software on our own very own Rezzable Private Grid Alpha (not associated with any other opengrid) for the last 2 months or so and I wanted to share some notes about what we have find out. Big thanks to the OpenSim code gurus Stefan and Darren over at Tribal Media who supported us on this test and are currently continuing to maintain our Private Grid with us.