second life copybot items what happens if you get caught

While it may feel like “theft” to some, it’s hard to justify that as being theft since no one is missing anything.

It’s just not a very good business to be in. If you’re betting your livelihood on selling digital goods that are easily copied with zero marginal cost, you’re going to have to deal with people copying your products sooner or later no matter what. In the end, it does come back to the same basic economics that we discuss around here all the time. Of course, that’s not all that surprising, as digital goods are easily copied - and in the past we’ve even pointed out systems like copybot that made that process quite easy. It appears that’s coming true.Ī new lawsuit has been filed by a woman who uses Second Life, claiming that another member of Second Life was “stealing” the computer code used to build products that she sold in the virtual world. Specifically, our concern was that this was effectively bringing existing problematic laws, such as copyright, into this new world - or, rather, pulling those issues out of this world and throwing them onto the US justice system. While this move received cheers from those who thought it was better than the company that ran the game owning everything, we felt that it was only going to lead to some serious problems. It’s been almost exactly four years since Linden Lab announced that the digital goods anyone created within Second Life were owned by whoever created them - effectively bringing the outside world’s laws into the virtual world.

Tue, Oct 30th 2007 08:21am - Mike Masnick

Second life copybot items what happens if you get caught