Quote from E.Reiljans :

Well, it works well out there in mainland China. :/

Yeah, but do we really have to go for inspiration there?

I've given this some thought and I think there only one viable solution that's not overly complicated to implement and still rather secure.

- Each user would be given an unique encryption key used to symmetrically encrypt/decrypt skins.
- When user A uploads a skin to LFSWorld, server automatically encrypts the .jpg file with user's key.
- When user B requested user A's skin, LFS would download the encrpyted .jpg from LFS world.
- LFS would then fetch user A's key to decrypt the file, load in into memory and then it would dump the key.
- To make this method even more secure, users would be allowed to disable downloading skins for .sprs and .mprs.

Sure, this approach has a couple of shortcomings, the worst being the ability to sniff the key from network packets. It would however require for the skin thief to capture all network communication and analyze it afterwards. Another problem is reading the decrypted skins from memory directly. On the other hand, an average petty skin stealer wouldn't be up to anything like this...

I have a soloution. Stop whinging like little girls when somebody doesnt care about your pretend paintjob for a pretend car in a pretend world going round a pretend racing track.

Get a life sad acts.

Well, As good as the idea is, much like securom and other such anti-theft/piracy it gets hacked, and companies spiral in ing money away into anti-piracy tricks.

Quote from MadCatX :

What Bluebird suggests is not really a solution, it's rather a workaround that'd stop all these complains. If it was made clear that by sharing your skin online you automatically give anybody permission to modify it, people would stop complaining. However, it's more like "We can't stop murderers from killing people, so let's just make killing legal" kind of solution.
Perhaps the private skins should be shared separately so that only people you'd want to have them could get their hands on them.

Rather odd comparing criminal-acts with how to protect creation of art/software whatever.
Last decade open-source produces has proved itself as a very good way to produce lots of good software. It is effectively shutting down the unix-operating system and on your deskop number of great opensource programs is steadily increasing. Mozilla firefox to name a good example which forced microsoft to start improving their lousy browser.

For the few who complain they want to keep their skin for themselves, why the hell did they create their skins for? Just to show off to the very few who are online on the same server when they are online themselves? What a waste of your time If they are so concerned about stealing, they should be paying all those company's big money for all the logos they are using in their skins


Or maybe keep things open and stop complaining is a better idea? So others can improve or make worse what you have created. And we end up with a lot more different skins to choose from

Quote from Bluebird B B :

Rather odd comparing criminal-acts with how to protect creation of art/software whatever.

It makes as much sense as comparing car skins to OOS software... no offense intended

I'm all for opensource and people sharing their ideas and creations for somebody else to build upon them, but is this really the issue here? People actually want skins to be proprietary - if nobody had problems with his/her skins being used by someone else, we wouldn't be having this discussion right now.

IMHO making skins a public domain would only shift the problem from
A: How can I make people stop stealing my skins?
B: Well, you can't, suck it up.
to
A: Can I stop these fags using my skins?
B: RTFM, when you upload a skin to LFSWorld, you're giving anybody permission to use and modify it.

Making something people don't like legal doesn't make people like it, right, it only gives you an excuse not to deal with it.

But Bluebird B B has a point, if skins are using manufacturers' logos, then I don't know if one is allowed to claim proprietary on the skin. May be the use of logos are copyrighted by the manufactures and may be it is not allowed to use them.

For example the games companies has to get license to use the manufacturers' logo. So does n't apply to users creating skins too? In that case I don't think users who re-use logos(copyrighted images) etc can claim copyright on their skin. But then again, I think user creating skins is a non-commerical purpose, so not sure about the licensing and copyrights etc.

But the underlying thing is, not all user creates skins are created from scratch. Some are created from scratch, some are not, some are adaptations. Even the OP's skin has Lotus logo. Probably only the carbon-fibre texture is made by the skinner. I am not saying that making a skin with logos is easy. It is still hard work. But it is very difficult draw a line between original and adapted, and even if we manage to draw a line, it is difficult to implement complicated mechanisms to protect skins. Only thing we can hope is, users respecting the work of another user, and asking permission to use them/modify them.

Forget the encryption please. LFS is a Direct-X game, which means the texture it uses can be directly exported from the video card's memory. Anything you do to the skin files will have no effect at all in this part.

BTW, don't think E.Reiljans' post about the murdering in Chine is true...

Just allow the skin's uploader to list the usernames that can use the skin.

So if someone's not allowed, they'll get a blank skin.

This has come up sooooo many times and all ideas to "solve" this non-issue have been stupid.

Is this really a problem... Really?

So, someone has copied your skin... oh no. Take it as the complement it is and add your sig/tag in a non visible part of the skin surface so you get the credit if if someone looks in the skin file if that is what you are after.

Nobody is making money from skins and you live in a "take, reuse, mash" world, learn to live with it.

If you don't want you skin copied then DO NOT UPLOAD IT!

Now I am not trying to be "that guy who says you don't need it", but you really don't . Skin is car color, paintjob and sponsor logos - You can't say anything about sponsors or color, so in the end it's all about that paintjob and if that's that good, you should just make it useless for anyone else - and that's an easy part... just include your nick in your paintjob design. For instance, if you have flame design, you should just draw those flames around your nick, or make your name drop shadow in them etc. - fellow racers will see your design with flames and your nick and thiefs will not use it, because the can't stole it without your name on it

I think something like that IS necessary, and I like Audi TT's idea (it's similar to something I suggested ages ago). Yes, someone would eventually figure out a workaround, but I'm not sure it'd ever go public. The effort wouldn't really be worth the return for the programmer.

So as long as your .skin file couldn't just be opened with Paint then it'd help the issue. It wouldn't solve it entirely, but I bet it'd cut down skin stealing by about 80%. And that's better than nothing.