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Second Life Lawsuit Heads to Federal Court
Conlaw writes "A former plumbing contractor who has made a new career selling virtual cyber sex toys in the virtual world of Second Life, has now brought suit against another player who is allegedly copying and selling a device called the Sex Gen. The plaintiff, whose avatar is known as 'Stroker Serpentine,' is seeking the real name of the copycat entrepreneur. The reporter describing the lawsuit included commentary from a cyber law professor whose university maintains a virtual Supreme Court in the Second Life world."
Someone better start operating one...Then virtual cops can come and enforce the decision and virtual collectors agencies can come and take your virtual goods to pay any restitutions and then your virtual character can be locked up in virtual jail where you can escape with the virtual file to saw off the virtual bars. Then they can have a virtual chase of the prison escapee..
Naaa, he should just go on Cyber Jerry Springer or Cyber Maury and present his case to the people.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Why should a virtual not be beholden to the laws of a specific nation? Frankly, the game is a service put out by a company and they should be, like every business, subject to the laws of the particular nation they operate out of.
What really irks me is people who try and make the case that the internet is its own reality.
What happened? People first took games too seriously because of violent content, now since MMORPGs, gamers also take it too seriously in general.
What happened?
a Sex Gen is kind of a machine that manipulates avatars into various positions. [...] Alderman said Volkov Catteneo is not the only avatar who has done him wrong. "A lot of people copy me, copy my work, copy my ideas," he said. "Because it's an anonymous platform where you're an avatar cartoon character, as opposed to a real-life person, people think they can operate with impunity."
He's basically talking about animation files. Now, if people literally copy the bits in his animation files, that would be a copyright violation; he'd have a case. But SL makes it pretty hard to do that, and that doesn't sound like what he is complaining about.
Sounds like he is complaining about that people create animations that are "like" his, not merely his. But that basically means that he claims a copyright on the missionary position and that's not right. Copyright doesn't protect ideas, it only protects specific expressions of those ideas. And generic, common expressions aren't copyrightable either, and it seems like the missionary position is pretty generic and common.
could someone make a living selling sex toys to imaginary people
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
One would have to assume from TFA that the plaintif has copyright and trademarks that he feels are being infringed on. He certainly has been making real income from a real business, and feels that someone is unfairly making money off of his ideas and stealing his customers. He feels he has a right to the protection of his intellectual property, whether sold through a virtual world or not.
This might be the best case I've seen for drawing firmer lines around what is reasonably protected IP.
Can this case be extended to software patents? Certainly there are some parallels, but is there any chance that a courts ruling in this can be applied to the other issues that the industry faces?
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
I bet anyone who read that will never look at Pinocchio the same.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Wouldn't it be nice if all virtual Second Lifers would take a virtual flying leap off a virtual cliff and land on top of a virtual field full of virtual knives and were chopped into virtual pieces which were then virtually eaten by virtual aliens from the virtual planet X-Omicron-Y who had virtually arrived after being invited by a virtual President Bush who had just been virtually turned into a virtual reality clone of himself?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The Old World had:
1. Lawsuits.
2. Taxes.
3. Life
So what does the New World have?
1. Virtual Lawsuits.
2. Virtual Taxes.
3. Virtual Life.
Kinda makes you wonder if people are really as stupid and detached from reality as they act.....
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
The fact that this is happening in the first place, or that I actually knew Stroker from a few years back, or that he's a former plumber trying to make a living selling digimawhatsits to stuff in your digimalwhoosals.
Either way, I'm going to go cry myself to sleep now.g
I'll believe in corporations having personhood when Texas executes one... - advocate_one
Somebody set us up the dildo!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
is that selling sex toys in Second Life apparently pays more than a unionized contracting gig like plumbing.
Actually, SL is pretty good about IP. You can imbue items with "no copy" proprties and stuff like that.
Posting from a Wii btw.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
This is like HP complaining that Lexmark copied their work/idea about selling printers and expensive inkjet cartridges.
Someone needs to go out a get a third life.
I guess he is selling plumbing services of another sort.
In Second Life you own the IP for the items you create. That is made explicitly clear in the TOS. They even explain how you can send take-down notices as per the process outlined by the DMCA.
They do not, however, serve as judge and jury. IP is a legal issue, and so if you have an IP dispute you need to resolve it in court.
I read the article (weird, eh?) and I am not sure if the accused is:
1) Selling byte-for-byte duplicates with the same object name and brand name,
2) Selling byte-for-byte duplicates under a different object or brand name,
3) Selling similar but created-from-the-ground-up products under the same object name or brand name,
4) Selling similar but created-from-the-ground-up products under a different object or brand name.
I think these distinctions are pretty important, especially when making an IP claim. If selling the object under the same object or brand name, he could be accused of violating a trademark (which isn't exactly the same thing). If he is selling byte-for-byte duplicates of the products, then current IP laws (as bad as they are) would logically apply.
However, if he simply created a similar product, and is selling it under a different name, then this is just another case of someone believing that having made an intellectual product entitles them to ownership of anything and everything similar. This is, IMO, the most harmful abuse of the concept of IP....the ownership of a class of ideas over a particular instance of an idea. The maker of a sex-toy is not within his rights to expect that no one else can make similar sex toys, IMO, and IP laws should make that clear.
Well, *shit*.
I was playing Half-Life 2 last night, so that's gonna be trouble. I could plead self-defense on all the dead Combine, and since they're not *really* people then I could probably dodge a manslaughter charge, but I shot a medic right in the head when he wouldn't get out of my way in the hall and like ten people saw it. Better get Robert Blake's lawyer on speed dial...
"having a (first) life should be made mandatory."
But then what would become of Slashdot?
A dating site.
It's when you pretend you have a girlfriend.
Most slashdotters should be familiar with the concept...
What if the owners of Second Life were to change their operations to another country. Say, one that decided that all enforced different laws about art and wished to execute not just artists, but those that supported artists in second life?
Not a good idea to support real-world laws to a digital world.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
My girlfriend continues to rail against "all of the killing and murder going on in her house" every night as I game. I try to tell her than I am I am trying to save the world.
Horns are really just a broken halo.
Belgian police patrols Second Life to prevent rape
That's the kind of greedy stupidity that has tax men worldwide trying to work out how to get money out of the other multiplayer online games as well. Creating a new currency and money moving where they cannot tax it is the sort of thing governments take seriously.
The articles that were being sold were digital duplicates. The plaintiff was selling them based on the popularity of our "SexGen" line. This is not a matter of competition, it is a matter of exploit and theft. All the scripts, animations and sounds were identical. We would not have brought this suit to court otherwise.
working with a licensed plumber. When people asked if I was a full time plumber they would be dismayed and sometimes concerned when I told them I worked with computers mostly during the day. People generally want their plumbers to be plumbers.
Just imagine his client's faces when he said he creates sex toys in a virtual world on the side. (I imagine he probably didn't tell them that or left plumbing before this but still, it would be funny to see.)
(BTW, Plumbing is fun. Except when it involves feces.)
I hope to god that Jack Thompson doesn't read that post. Who knows what damage he could do with a quote.
If this were really happening, what would you think?
This all hinges on whether he has suffered financial loss. Linden Labs have turned this into a grey area.
On the one hand, Linden Dollars are game tokens. They have absolutely no intrinsic worth in real life, nor does Second Life "property". This means that LL have no obligations to make their systems to "trading standards", and spurious losses are not uncommon.
On the other hand, alongside third parties, LL operate and profit from a currency exchange between US and Linden dollars. They manage the market to try to maintain a stable exchange rate, meaning there is a de facto value for Linden Dollars in real life, even though it is not a currency.
IMHO, the first carries more weight, and it means that the "financial loss" premise for this action is invalid. Whatever the actions taken by the defendant, the plaintiff cannot have suffered financial loss because the "currency" in which this loss has arisen has no statutory value.
The last scintilla of doubt just rode out of town
That's the kind of greedy stupidity that has tax men worldwide trying to work out how to get money out of the other multiplayer online games as well.
Look, as much as I hate taxes, if there's anything I hate more there's an unevenly applied tax. Particularly in SL where it sounds like you're actually coding new items and you get paid in a currency that's officially convertable to USD, is there any reason this should be any different than if I hire a US developer to some coding work for me, payable in NOK? If so, I'm going to build a virtual world with virtual x86 machines where people work on virtual software, and I don't need to pay taxes. Then I'll copy-paste the software out in the real world and sell it. Think the IRS will buy that?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings