Second Life Businesses Close Due To Cloning

Warren Ellis is reporting that many Second Life vendors are closing up shop due to the recent explosion of a program called "Copybot," designed to clone other people's possessions. From the article: "The night before last, I was looking around a no-fire combat sandbox, where people design and test weapons and vehicles, when an argument broke out; a thing going by the name Nimrod Yaffle was cloning things out of other people's inventories, and claiming he could freely do it because he'd been playing with Copybot with employees of SL creator/operators Linden Lab. All hell broke loose, in the sort of drama you can only find on the internet. Linden Lab's first official response? If you feel your IP has been compromised by Copybot, we'll sort of help you lodge a DCMA complaint in the US. Businesses started shutting down moments later." Update 20:43 GMT by SM Several users have mentioned that the Second Life blog has a few thoughts on this issue and quite a few comments from users already.

Comments

No Not Good...

[Neo_piper]

Wrong. Patents are theft, Copyrights are for people who want compensation for their own legitimate original creations, or at least that's how it was intended to be.
If you want to make another item identical to mine that's just fine, No Patents, but you have to do it from the ground up not just cutting and pasting, Copyright.
This could be one of the "Big Bads" that eventually kill Secondlife outright.
BTW your simple analysis that "Copyright is Theft" is more than enough to peg you as someone too immature to be yiffing anyway.

Work for the glory, only?

[amyhughes]

Okay, so I've just paid to have some unique content created for me and someone comes along with a copy tool and duplicates it and gives it to all their friends, and puts it in a freebie store for everyone to share. I've paid for something that exists elsewhere, same as before, but I've paid (say) $50 instead of $1. This is progress?

People who are not creative undervalue creativity. This is not surprising.

I've created content for Second Life. Despite the trivializing that comes from the "information wants to be free" crowd I will say with firsthand experience that it's a lot of work. Linden Labs' business model explicitly (as in, from the horse's mouth, in writing, in its mission statement) relies on the hard work of people creating content for them. They've now changed the terms of how this work will be compensated. It's now for glory only, and that will draw a different crowd. Certainly nothing wrong with that motivation or that crowd, but frankly, as evidenced by the quality of freebies available compared to for-pay items, the game will suffer.

This is kinda what is happening in China right now

[Optic7]

I heard a report on public radio a few months back (either NPR or Marketplace - I don't have time to search through their archives for the link right now), where they said that this same kind of effect is what has stopped any recognizable brands of products to come out of China.

They have all this manufacturing power, but because of weak enforcement of IP laws, as soon as some product starts to stand out, 50 other factories will start making the exact same thing, even using the same packaging and logos (clones, just like in SL), making them undiscernible from the real thing in the eyes of the consumer. Instant dilution of brand power.

It makes sense if you think about it and compare to some other Asian countries - Japan has a ton of well-known brands, Korea has several brands that are starting to establish themselves very well, like Hyundai and Samsung, but there really isn't any established/recognizable Chinese brand of any product. I think the report went on to say that Lenovo is one of the first companies trying to break out of this pattern, but whether they will be successful is yet to be seen.

Objects are worthless, time is not.

[Kadin2048]

The copies are worthless, probably, but the original is not.

Let's assume we live in an all-digital, completely non-conservative world, where any object or piece of information can be duplicated instantly, at zero cost or energy expenditure.

You might think that this makes a lot of professions impossible. How could you be a photographer? Quite easily. Rather than trying to sell content that has already been created, you sell your ability to create new content. E.g., I would still pay you to take a portrait of me, because no pictures of me exist already (or none that I want / don't have already). After you take the picture, and I pay you for your time, I can then go and make a billion copies of it -- but you were already paid for your time. Rather than trying to be shady about it, and amortize the value of your time over 100 copies that you might sell me in the future, you demand the payment up front, you get it, and I take my new picture and you take your money. The transaction is complete.

In short, if you can copy goods already extant at zero cost, the demand that remains is for customized goods, or goods which don't already exist. Rather than looking at an artistic occupation as essentially a production/manufacturing job, turning out identical intellectual-property widgets, you have to view it as a service job, selling your time and skills in order to produce something which meets a customer's specifications.