Get three services for $100/moNovember 15, 2006 4:00 AM PST
'Second Life' faces threat to its virtual economy
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The controversy gathered steam Monday when Linden Lab, which publishes Second Life, posted a blog alerting residents of the virtual world to the
Second Life users can purchase virtual items with a pretend currency called Linden dollars--named for game creator Linden Lab. But they use real-life currency to acquire that virtual coin. In fact, there's an exchange rate between the two: One U.S. dollar will buy 271 Lindens, enough to buy a basic outfit for an avatar, which is the digital representation of a person.
Problem is, it's not clear yet if there's anything Linden Lab can do to stop people from using the bot. Linden Lab said Second Life content creators who had their wares stolen had few immediate options for stopping the thefts and that the best recourse for them could be to file a Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaint--in the real world--against offenders.
Some virtual entrepreneurs now worry their livelihoods are at stake, and some are threatening to shut down their in-world businesses before they get fleeced.
"The problem with the DMCA is that it takes many weeks," said Jim Mallon, a Second Life content creator who has been in the virtual world since its 2003 beta. "By that time, someone's work could be (copied and stolen) and distributed all over the grid. I am so surprised Linden Lab did not see this coming and stop it."
Second Life is an
a Second Life
content creator
The reaction to CopyBot is not the first virtual revolt. Many Second Life residents recently complained when Linden Lab announced it was raising the price for the in-world "islands" it sells. As a result, the company said
Residents have also complained about other issues, such as problems with the user interface and previous issues related to the security of created content.
On Tuesday afternoon, even as the controversy raged, Linden Lab posted a second blog entry addressing CopyBot and the resulting fallout.
Titled "
"Second Life needs features to provide more information about assets and the results of copying them," Ondrejka's post began. "Unfortunately, these are not yet in place. Until they are, the use of CopyBot or any other external application to make unauthorized duplicates within Second Life will be treated as a violation and may result in your account(s) being banned."
To "Baba Yamamoto," the Second Life name of one of the members of the group that created CopyBot, the uproar over the software is understandable but disappointing.
Yamamoto told CNET News.com that CopyBot was created as a tool for testing and demonstrations and was never intended to be used for illegal theft. But because the tool was created using an open-source license, some Second Life users have gotten hold of it and are now freely using and distributing it.
"It's not that the code is some kind of exploit," Yamamoto said. "It deals with legitimate client data that every client receives, but it takes that data and converts it to a packet and sends it back to the servers, duplicating the appearance of objects and avatars. It acts like an import/export tool."
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.
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?
(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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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.