You can't take it with you?

The official SL blog announced that avatars have teleported from a Preview Grid sim to an OpenSim sim. As no inventory moved with the avatars, they appeared at the OpenSim side as Ruth.

Near the top of the comments was a demand that items be prohibited from moving from place to place without creator permission; another commenter even thought it should be forbidden outright.

I fear that we might be headed for the nightmare that currently exists for digital media, i.e. so-called "digital rights management." DRM schemes only impede honest people from doing reasonable things with their purchases; the real pirates get around them. They are also a drag on performance (see Peter Gutmann's analysis of content protection in Windows Vista. One of the aforementioned commenters pointed out that her demands involved moving essentially all of SL save rendering to the server--just what we need, putting all the work on an already overloaded performance bottleneck).

Imagine yourself in RL taking a vacation. At the border you're told "Sorry, but you can't take your clothing with you. Please strip, and then we'll let you pass... and of course, you must buy all new clothing and accessories that you can only wear while in our country. Have a nice day." Would you put up with that? That's the fate awaiting you in the metaverse if the DRM advocates get their way.

As an honest SL resident who does not steal content and who supports businesses whose work I like, here's my position: I will not do business with those who forbid me to take items that I legitimately buy with me wherever I go. I urge you, Gentle Reader, to take a similar stand.

P.S. Some DRM schemes allow hardware to be disabled remotely; the content providers think of it as damage control when security holes become known. So if you happen to have the same graphics card or monitor as a pirate who is found out, it will be remotely disabled, and you, despite having done nothing wrong, will have to go buy more hardware if you want to use DRM-ed content.

P.P.S. It may just be that you have to get new drivers, though OTOH, if it's discovered that a piece of hardware has a security hole inherent in its design, I wouldn't be surprised if the driver is disabled and no new driver made available, which would have the same effect.

P.P.P.S. On the third hand, as Lt. Arex from the animated Star Trek might say, the distinction between having to download and install a new driver and having to replace hardware might not matter to you if, say, you're in the middle of giving an important presentation that involves displaying high-resolution content.