Hey peoples, My questions are this: Right now Adobe's Atmosphere output is not "protected". Meaning that not so clever people can easily "grab" avatars, worlds etc while using the program and browsing the internet. This includes the textures that we work on so hard. While a little trick of the trade is to place an empty html document named "index.html" or "index.htm" in the directory where your files are (this prevents people getting a directory list from your site of that directory and grabing things this way) preventing a "list" view online. It does not however prevent getting the direct ".aer", ".MTS" and ".MTX" files since they can be accessed and saved directly to ones own hard drive. So ..... 1) Is there a way to prevent this? It probely won't happen until Adobe and ViewPoint encrypts the files somehow. But I thought I'd ask anyway. 2) If I use a copywrited model (whether mine or a commercial model) what is the ussage terms if any? Since it is not for sale, and just used for pleasure and only in the Atmosphere domain what happens if someone "grabs" it or you want to give it as an avatar to a friend or community? I know this is kind of conveluded<--sp, but see if you can follow this. I.E. I have made an avatar from DAZ's Snowman. While it got converted to a ViewPoint model and the original object is now a very reduced polygon ViewPoint model and the texture map is also greatly reduced (so it's not really useful as a good model for rendering anymore except in ViewPoint -- but some poeple may want it anyway), will I get in trouble for passing it along to others? Thanks for any insight. James

Without a way to effectively stop the ability to grab the files, be it from cache or otherwise, doing so would infringe on the right of the author to profit from their creation, in that market. Regardless of resolution, it's still derivative of the author's work.

-Rob
rbtwhiz.com

James, We thought a good deal about how content from AvLab will potentially be used, ranging from needing to have it shared by viewers and visitors inside worlds, to end-users that would produce a few Avatars for a small group of friends or family, to full commercial end uses. We determined that there was some risk in allowing an unrestricted commercial re-use of the supplied content, so are authorizing these sorts of uses on a case by case basis. Personal use, is probably a bit difficult to fully define, but that level of content sharing isn't likely to be harmful. Commercial use is something we want to encourage, but want to reserve some fashion of control as to what kind of direction this can take. It may be of some help to check out our enduser license agreement for reference points. These might be of some help for you. It seems to me that content in Atmosphere worlds is similar in respect to content delivered via html, you'll need to share it for your visitors to view it. You can enter in a copyright blurb as part of an entry statement for visitors that might help to state your copyright claim. I just put in an entry message into the revised, as of tonight, curiousworld site. I'll be on the East Coast with Adobe this week, so it's not a bad time to have any thoughts about content protection. We have our agenda on this issue, and it is very focused on a means of locking content to specific worlds as well as restricting un-wanted content from worlds. Steve Cooper

Thanks Steve, This answers a lot. And Yes I read the EULA. I always do that first ;-) I know it's hard to keep things out of pirates hands even with protected programs. It's good to know that Adobe will be actively discussing this part of Atmosphere. I know the problems a public program like this must entail. Keep us aprised of event please. Have fun at Adobe, don't work too hard. James aka jschoen, aka JamesSF PS: Great wedding pics! And come visit us in my xmas world.