Lets clear this up right here. Just because Mesh Support won’t be included in the Second Life 2.0 *VIEWER* upgrade, that doesn’t mean it is not coming. The Second Life 2.0 viewer is NOT introducing any new features, to the best of my knowledge. It is simply a User Interface redesign (I suppose though, you could think of THAT as a new feature). Previously, the term “SL 2.0″ has been used, in a broader sense, to reference the new features that are coming, but this is a mistake when speaking about the viewer upgrade.

If you really think about it, the media API and C# won’t be included w/ SL 2.0 either, but does that mean they won’t eventually come into being?

Greetings from Tim.

1. “have identity and payment information on file with Linden Lab; ”
2. “be in good standing and not have been suspended for any violation of the Second Life Terms of Service;
3. “meet a minimum threshold for content transactions;”
4. “and affirm that all necessary intellectual property rights and licenses have been obtained for all content that the Resident has for sale.”

If Linden Labs impliments the program properly and not only enforces it, but actively polices content theft, I think it will solve many of these of these instances and complaints about mesh support.

By the same token, thieves can use computers to rip CDs to MP3s, so let’s ban computers. And let’s ban automobiles, which bank robbers can use as getaway cars; masks, which they can use to obscure their features; guns and knives, which they can use to threaten bank tellers; paper or cloth bags, which they can force bank tellers to stuff the money into; pens, pencils and paper, which they can use to write holdup notes…

Seriously, though, if you restrict everything that an unscrupulous person *might* abuse, it does a grave disservice to all the honest people who could do something really fantastic with it.

Everybody isn’t going to be able to do something like this. You said it yourself. All a thief needs is a plugin to their favorite 3D software. Well, that assumes the prospective thief has a favorite 3D software program in the first place, or that they know anything about 3D in general. It may not seem like it to people like us, but this sort of stuff is extremely complicated to most people out there.

Is there a large number of people ready, willing and able to pull this sort of scam? Yes. However, I bet that number is relatively small when compared to the amount of people out there ready, willing and able to either start working their own polygon meshes on to the grid, or learn how to.

Yeah, they’re going to have to come up with some new policy to handle this sort of thing, but I tend to have a lot of faith in Linden Lab. I mean, they’ve gotten this far, right?

Also, in my perfect world, I would penalize not only the people selling stolen stuff (be it content ripped off some website, a video game or somebody else’s SIM), but I would go after the people buying it also. Anybody caught with stolen content in their inventory would think twice about buying anything from just anywhere, and the word would get out about the charlatans in question pretty quick. Maybe nuking peoples accounts for buying stolen property is a little overboard, but some sort of disciplinary action would be great. If the market for stolen goods were cut down, I’m willing to bet it would have a direct effect on the amount of cyber-theft going on in the grid.