I have been approached a couple of times recently regarding an “issue” mentioned on the publication known as the “Second Life Herald”, on the subject of a “new copybot”. (I do not read this publication on a regular basis any more, on account of its tedious hagiography of groups of annoying children; an odd pursuit, not my part to judge I suppose but not in my interests to read, either.)
Let us be clear on a few details in this instance.
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There is nothing at all new about any of this. The idea that with the initial outcry relating to “copybot”, the functions responsible and the use thereof went away, is simply nonsense. The prohibition was a socially-based one, making the possession or use of a copybot illegal, but the technology never disappeared. In fact, as far as I can see, this “copybot 2″ is just a simple modification of the “testclient” that is freely available. Anyone with any interest could make a similar product, we are not talking about Programming Genii here.
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There are no physical countermeasures - at least, none which will prevent people from copying designs and textures as presented in SL. Anyone attempting to sell you an item which claims to “defend against copybot” is as much a fraudster as anyone duplicating your design and selling it. The entirety of SL depends on the “client” - that is, the thing that is running on your own Engine - receiving information as to what it should display, the exact geometry of every part, the textures, and so on and so on. No, this cannot be encrypted without utterly crippling the already tardy speeds at which SL operates, and being crackable in any case.
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The only countermeasures, therefore, are social ones. There is the option of relying, instead of on simple product sales, on things which cannot be duplicated - services, customised versions, work on special and personalised products. (This may require some alteration of the expectations of purchasers on the Grid but to be quite frank, those expecting large amounts of time to be devoted to their whims are, at the moment, mostly extraordinary misers.)
The other part of this is that the Gods of the World, the Blessed Lindens, must actively enforce matters of copyright and duplication, to a far greater degree than they do at the moment.
What if the latter does not happen? Well, industry will not vanish. Even if copies are easily made and resold, people will still have some loyalty and decency and wish to reward the original creators, particularly at the very low prices charged in general. Little-known designers will be too little-known for anyone to bother copy them; well-known designers will be able to play on their “brands”. Those between are in the most danger I would say, but still, they won’t lose too much in the way of sales.
But they will lose some. The idea of designing things within Second Life, in the knowledge that anyone can copy whatever it is you make and resell it for whatever price they feel like, will put people off bothering in the first place. The prospect of reward spurs people on to create - that is why we have copyright legislation in the first place, to encourage creative activity, with the underlying assumption that creative activity is a good thing for society in general (an assumption with which I would agree).
I would mention here that my own activities, and those of others who concentrate on providing Scripted Amusements, are less at threat, as Scripts currently exist only on the Grid, are not sent to Clients and are thus not Copiable. However, this is merely a coincidence. The issue of Content Duplication is no less important to me merely because it affects my fellows and not myself.
So - what happens if we have a “free-as-in-free-beer” Second Life, enforced by Code? Designing becomes less profitable. Some designers leave. (A number will stay on, certainly, but professionals, apart from the largest who can play on their brands, will be rarer.) The general level of design goes down. There are fewer products available, and fewer to be copied, with the copy-resellers being parasites on the skills of others.
There is a way around this, and that is as stated previously: the owners of the world, the blessed Laboratory, must enforce rules far more strictly. It is not a perfect solution, as clearly there are far more places than can be checked, but without it nothing will happen. Not just “DMCA” nonsense, which is just a mechanism for covering one’s bottom in the face of future legal action, but actively removing duplicated content.
There are all sorts of ways that this can be made easier - registers of content being uploaded, watermarks and so on - but in the end it is the will that is important, and that means governance, active enforcement of rules. Attack content-thieving accounts; delete them and their alts. Enforce DMCA takedowns properly, as rubbish as they might be.
Without that? Oh well, nothing terribly serious. Content creators will be discouraged from ever entering SL. Nobody will bother to learn the obscure, undocumented, ever-changing details of how the tools work - unless they already have a out-world patron, in which case they will rarely be putting anything on the open grid. Second Life will become less and less interesting. And the “Second Life Protocol” will become less and less relevant, and less and less likely to become the dominant virtual world protocol, and then it will be 2009 and we will all be speaking about SL as certain old-timers do about ActiveWorlds.
You know, nothing that anybody might care about.
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