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

value

[Anonymous Coward]

And hence the "real value" of virtual goods is exposed for the umpteenth time...

Re:value

[Anonymous Coward]

For the mod who marked the parent overrated: "Tulip mania".

The tulip bulb crash of 1636-37 reads a lot like the dot-bomb of our day and to the folly of investing in overvalued, non-critical items.

Property Rights

[Sean0michael]

If you've ever wondered what it would be like in a world without intellectual property, trademarks, patents, etc. then you've found it. Programs like CopyBot do not serve the community interest, and in the long term will hurt the individuals using the program. If your business' products are entirely reproducible and then sold for cheap, you cannot sustain a living in such a place. It kills innovation because there is no longer a reward for it. There is no gift culture like in OSS, no list of contributors to your code. Without reward, few will continue to produce in SL. This, ultimately, means there will be little to copy, and so those who use it will lose the advantage they have.

Of course, the more the community respects intellectual property in SL, the greater the benefits of using CopyBot. It's the Prisoners Dilemma all over again.

An important moment in history

[Unoti]

I'm a developer of scripted animals in SL, the number 1 developer, depending on how you count such things. I clear a a few hundred dollars profit every month after paying for my property. This copybot thing hasn't hit me too hard directly because the copybot doesn't copy scripts, only models. But it is hitting me hard in the sense that most of the content creators in SL are closing shop, which closes down the whole world as we knew it.

I get the sense that this will be remembered as an important battle in open vs. closed development models.

We have content creators that were thriving because of DRM-- the content creators wouldn't have put the same kind of time and effort into their creations if they couldn't be protected. And we have all that business coming to an abrupt close because of open source development.

I'm not saying open source is bad, or that DRM is good. I'm just saying that this is bringing to forefront the fact that people are going to need to change in the future how they think about work and ownership.

Re:FP

[Anonymous Coward]

As the Register put it, Second Life is a game where: "people who have sex with dolls in real life can have sex with cartoon animals in fake life".

This will be a major turning point for our society

[CokeBear]

I don't think people are quite grasping the significance of this.
What will happen when we have replicators (like the ones on Star Trek) that allow us to replicate everything in the real world quickly and easily? (not just music)

Think about it... the end of scarcity. A fundamental shift in the nature of the world economy. I'm not sure where it leads, but life sure gets interesting right around then...

copyright is not theft

[tigre]

Copyright (notwithstanding developments of the past 50ish years) is an agreement that a government (which SL is in this case) makes with people that they can benefit from their creations for a time in exchange for everyone eventually getting to benefit from the creation.

Commerce is not inherently petty. Commerce can motivate wonderful creations (such as SL itself). It can also motivate horrible acts.

I create some because I like it. I create more when I have financial interest in doing so.

Tea, Earl Grey, Hot

[lymond01]

So say everything can be cloned. What do you barter for? It would have to be services, experience, wisdom. How do you reward these things then? It's hard to imagine a world without trade of physical items (money, good, etc). The "price" for doing things would be just cost of labor, as parts are free. But then you need to put a value on services, education, knowledge.

"I'll fix your roof if you fix install my dishwasher."
"I'll do research on fuel cell membranes if you build the rest of the car..."

Head...hurts...

RIAA member businesses close due to cloning

[c0d3h4x0r]

Some Shmuck is reporting that many musicians are closing up shop due to the recent explosion of a technology called "file copying", designed to copy other people's files. From the article:
"The night before last, I was looking around a music store, where people buy and sell music, when an argument broke out; a person going by the name Average Joe was copying tracks of musician's CDs, and claiming he could freely do it because he'd been playing with the copy command produced by the maker of his operating system. All hell broke loose, in the sort of drama you can only find in music stores. The RIAA's first official response? If you feel your IP has been compromised by "the copy command", we'll file a lawsuit against the copier and not give you any of the profits from the suit. Musicians started committing suicide moments later."

Seriously... think about it. Music won't stop being created in the real world just because people can copy things. And objects won't stop being created in Second Life just because people can copy them. All it means is that one thing that used to be a valuable service to people (creating copies of things) is no longer valuable because people can do it themselves.

The other thing (creating new content, or unique content (such as live performances)) is still of value, and always will be, as it will never be the case that all people are equally able to be competent creators or artists. Change your business model. Instead of selling copies of your thing, sell your creative services under contract. It's a model where people hire you to create something new that has never existed before, rather than paying you for a copy of something that already exists elsewhere.

This could actually be the best thing that ever happened to Second Life, because it can result in a more innovative and open "society" and a fairer "economy", and serve as an example for the real world.

Value is in the service.

[Kadin2048]

I think you nailed it.

The businesses that are closing were all operating on the wrong business model. Rather than try to make money selling the same object over and over, as if each copy had some value, they should have been figuring out ways to make money selling unique, individually created, bespoke objects. Selling the same stream of bits over and over is stupid. But if you could create something new for each person, then you'd not be selling bits, but your creative labor and skills -- it's not "bits" that you're selling anymore, but "service." That's a sustainable, proven business model.

I hope that Linden keeps the copying devices around, and lets people have free reign with them, because I think in time, you'll see the SL economy recover, and it would be a good demonstration of an 'information economy' that's not based on artificial scarcity or restrictions on information, but rather on mutually beneficial services.

Re:Value is in the service.

[DeadMilkman]

How is it still unique when as soon as you walk outside with it anyone else can have it too?

Would the rich society that supports artists buy art if all their fellow societians would have the same thing as soon as they showed it off?

(*Look at my new mink! Yes its now my new mink, and my new mink *)

This "Killed" uniqueness as it is now impossible to be "unique".

Those that WERE willing to pay prices for unique wares are no longer as copybot kills the ability to be unique and show off.

Re:Industrial Revolution

[Kadin2048]

This isn't mass prodution versus custom creation. It is buying CDs versus DLing them for free on Napster.

I don't see why it's either-or. You're talking about two sides of the same coin.

When it's impossible to make money by selling the same work over and over, you must necessarily switch to a business model which demands payment for the entire work's creation up front (because you can't depend on being paid piecemeal by selling copies of the work later). Essentially, the artist becomes a tradesman, just like a plumber or electrician: pay me for my time and I'll make something for you.

DRM exists to prevent this, and preserve the manufacturing-type (payment per 'unit' or copy) business model, where the cost of production of a work is amortized out over the sale of many identical copies. Rather than charging what the copies cost to produce, it creates an artificial scarcity that allows their cost to be increased up to the maximum that consumers are willing to pay.

Without DRM, the copies cease to have value, but the skilled labor that goes into their creation still does, and could be sold even in the absence of DRM (or copyright).

Re:This is kinda what is happening in China right

[DavidTC]

You dumbass.

Trademarks don't 'artifically limit' the supply of anything. Trademarks make it so you can trust the product.

Without enforced trademarks, all products are the lowest possible quality, because there's no point in making something better than that, because no one can say 'Hey, that worked well, I'll buy another one of those.' or 'Well, that fell apart immediately, i won't buy that kind anymore.'.

Trademarks are merely artifical signatures. Just like someone shouldn't be able to walk up to a hospital and say he's you and request your medical records, someone shouldn't be able to sell something he claims was manufactured by you if it wasn't. Trademark law is, at root, a specific form of fraud prevention.

That's not say trademarks haven't been abused, and that selling the brand instead of the product is stupid, and I realize there's sort of a knee-jerk reaction against 'intellectual property' here, and I agree with a lot of it, but anyone who thinks society would be better off if people had no way to tell the difference between a Toshiba laptop and some craptacular Korean brand designed to look like one with a Toshiba labeled slapped on it is an idiot.

Was not referring to physical goods.

[Kadin2048]

How is this +4 Insightful? You're arguing that items need to be unique in order to be desirable or profitable. Rolex, Mercedes Benz, heck, even McDonalds has "a sustainable, proven business model" of selling identical wares over and over again. Artisians enjoy making unique contributions to the world. Some of them make a very good living, but that's rare. Businesses, on the other hand, strive to make money the in most efficent manner possible. Despite being uncool, both have their place in the world. How much do you think your computer would cost if each one had to be hand-crafted?

I guess I wasn't clear: I was only talking about in the digital, nonconservative realm, where you can duplicate an object that's already been created with virtually no effort or energy expenditure (well, there is some, but it's trivial).

McDonalds and Mercedes sell identical items over and over, because if I have a Mercedes, I can't just copy it and give you a Mercedes, too -- the real world doesn't work that way, because of pesky things like conservation of mass and energy. However, in the realm of information, if I have an "item" (and I would say that the term 'knowing' it is preferable and more appropriate to 'owning' it), I can give ('tell') it to you, without affecting the original. In this realm, the copies have virtually no value; in time, their cost will drop down to the marginal production cost (which is very low). So it's silly to try to have a business model that revolves around amortizing the cost of production out over not-yet-sold copies.

Anyway, I hope that clears it up. I was not implying that manufacturing identical goods and selling them was an unfeasible business model in the real world; it's not and won't be. However, selling the same piece of information over and over, is not, in my estimation, sustainable without a lot of heavy-handed controls on the market.