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LibSecondLife, the group that created CopyBot, lists as its mission statement being "an open-source effort to create a stable platform for third-party Second Life development." However altruistic its motivations may have been, the group appears to have lost control of its tool.
And many residents are very unhappy about that.
"The essence of the creativity in this world is largely because of creators and their work being protected," Mallon said. "This tool defeats all protection. So if you labor to build a business like we all have, your work can be stolen."
Another resident, Isabella Lazarno, agreed.
"Everything that everyone has worked for in here is now affected," Lazarno said.
As an example, resident Damanios Thetan demonstrated how easy it is to use CopyBot to copy objects.
Thetan showed News.com that copying an in-world car took no more than a few seconds. Similarly, Thetan created a quick copy of the author's avatar.
"My (alternate avatar) is run by CopyBot," said Thetan, explaining the process. "It copies the complete car, or everything I have attached. After it's copied, (I have) full permissions, meaning I can make as many copies as I want."
Other residents think that the fear of CopyBot may be overblown.
Eric Rice, a blogger known in-world as "Spin Martin," said that he has long seen Second Life content as digital artifacts that could be replicated.
"Their (businesses are) in the digital space, which may or may not have been obvious in the sense (that) data (has always been) copyable from day one," Rice said. "We just live with that truth."
But Rice added that he understands why content creators are worried the rug may be pulled out from under their businesses.
"I'm fascinated about the RIAA-ish angle--content people protecting their stuff passionately," he said.
Meanwhile, as content creators continue to meet throughout Second Life, Linden Lab is trying to put the controversy in context.
Ondrejka wrote in his blog post that anyone who feels their content is being stolen using CopyBot should inform Linden Lab in addition to filing a DMCA claim. Presumably, the company will take action on behalf of such content creators.
But Ondrejka also tried to explain why Linden Lab isn't able to immediately halt the use of CopyBot and other such tools.
"Like the World Wide Web, it will never be possible to prevent data that is drawn on your screen from being copied," he wrote. "While Linden Lab could get into an arms race with residents in an attempt to stop this copying, those attempts would surely fail and could harm legitimate projects within Second Life."
See more CNET content tagged:
Second Life,
virtual worlds,
creator,
DMCA,
economy
They have a virtual crime wave, how pathetic
your hard earned money, facing virtual inflation.
It's a virtual Bear's market. Real estate prices will drop into nothing, a virtual 1929.
student loans from art school.
HTFC
HTFC
Spam
Spam
Humbug
Guess DRM and copyright protection isn't so bad after all. Guess no-body's going to complain about the DMCA after all
Spam
Spam
Humbug
Guess DRM and copyright protection isn't so bad after all. Guess no-body's going to complain about the DMCA after all
1) The real world does face it. As long as there are speaker wires on stereos, music can be stolen. This is the digital VR equivalent. RIAA buys you nothing but trouble and legal fees. Good people buy; bad people steal. Good people deal and bad people learn.
2) A virtual economy is still a game and like online poker, it will be regulated eventually by the meatspace economy. Laws are passed, they are difficult to enforce, pirates load up and 'arggh matey' to that. It becomes a game of percentages just as shipping gold out of the devastation that was the Aztec kingdoms became a bet on getting enough stolen gold past the pirates ready to steal it again did.
3) The real danger to Linden Labs is pilfering of server logs for industrial chats. On the one hand, the Sun announcment and program could have used a utility that sends the chat log out as an Atom-formatted blog so that those without the high-speed connections required by SL could read the announcment. Companies hosting private events such as the kinds of design sessions held in the Jewel of Indra VRML worlds do can use those blogs for internal distribution. On the other hand, when security fails and someone outside the company either inside LL or outside LL gets and distributes those logs for sale or profit, LL will be sued for fiduciary abbrogation or some other neat legal and expensive cause.
The VR market is still emerging as Eric Maranne notes on the www-vrml and X3D lists. VR is a message and real-time 3D is a medium. The medium can be used for many different kinds of messages and not just VR in communities. Companies and individuals interested in the technologies and not just LL's implementation will do well to study the open unencumbered standards for VR on the web, and real-time 3D for other applications.
Don't confuse the houses with the bricks and the mortar.
Meanwhile, LL is a snow plow uncovering the roads that VRML built ten years ago. They had the same problems of pilfering but responded for the most part in accepting that and insisting that pilfered code retain the copyright notices but otherwise in the interests of building an open virtual reality on the web, copy and learn. The artists on Linden Labs server farm are late to this party and now learning what the VRML artists accepted from the beginning. "Sorry 'bout that" is the standard answer; call it the price of risk management and the learning curve.
CNet doesn't get this yet. It isn't news yet. When it is, they will be the first to report it and the last to know.
I guess that in reality, stealing is only in the eye of the beholder. If it's someone else's stuff that's being stolen, it's ok, but when it's YOURS, it's not. People's ethics on the internet makes me want to puke.
You didn't see this one coming? You took money from the real world where item duplication would mean molecular level science fiction then paid it into a software generated environment where informations natural state is to duplicate and spread then cried fawl when information duplicated and spread.. really???
Everybody want's a quick easy buck and thought a computer game was the place to get it.. good show
This is about as rational as people buying multi-player game items off Ebay cause they just gotta have the baddest dragon slayer in all (insert fictitious setting name here).
http://community.moove.com/cs/as.dll?ecitems&m=MK9M
This is just a huge failure by the developers that should never have occurred in the first place.
Too many times I've seen your posts, and they ALL smack of a self-righteous superiority.
Instead of being a jerk, why don't you actually contribute something constructive?
Instead of reacting with your gut all the time, why don't you think about these things and the consequences of your thoughts and actions. Nothing puts me on a high moral pedistal, but at least I stop to think about what might happen if we continue the way we are going.
Instead of reacting with your gut all the time, why don't you think about these things and the consequences of your thoughts and actions. Nothing puts me on a high moral pedistal, but at least I stop to think about what might happen if we continue the way we are going.
(a little side note I wonder if any of those people being "fleeced" steal music online... I guess they would know how it feels now!)
If this copybot is some sort of story to bring even more attention to the game, then LLabs better start looking for a new concept! because Second Life is dieing a slow death.
- By the Way
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by Len Bullard
November 15, 2006 9:32 PM PST
- I'm not endorsing stealing content clearly marked as owned. I'm saying that that is all DRM get you; a way to make it harder to steal and a way to prove it was indeed stolen. But you will pay a price for that defense in legal fees and if you carry it too far, in a lot of very pissed off customers who did pay for it and consider it theirs to use as they will. They will do as I saw my son did today with a game that he purchased in a store and after bringing it home, found he had to log on to the Internet and download more stuff just to play it. That kind of thing is ********.
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Reply to this comment
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See all 35 Comments >>You want protection. My point about what the VRMLers did was that without a binary, they found they couldn't protect anything and as a result, their community went into a tailspin without profits to show for legitimate hard work. So they coped as best as they could and now they are about to put their work in binaries if they so choose. That won't protect it; it will just make it a bit more inconvenient to steal.
But it is the closed system that is SecondLife that makes it possible to sell content there and it is the selling of content that makes it attractive to steal: it has value. So you live with the big bad world when you make stuff to sell. If LindenLabs can't protect it, find another place to sell it but be aware that the same scenario will repeat.
I didn't say that was a good thing; it's just Life Among the Mammals. Deal.