Ownership is one of the primary tenants of a capitalist society. Ownership implies that the owner has the right to control, benefit from, sell or transfer, and exclude others from his property (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property). Without an authority defining and protecting property, one can only have as much as he can keep others from stealing. Because this, generally, is not a very productive manner to live, governments of free societies make property rights a very high priority. In the United States, it is covered in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution:
“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
Of all forms of property, intellectual property is, by far, the hardest to protect. It is the idea that people own their own creations and innovations in the same manner people own tangible goods. A few types of intellectual property are patents, trademarks, and copyrights (http://www.intellectual-property.gov.uk). Intellectual property has provided some of the largest legal battles in recent history including the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) suing Napster and the movie industry's battle against file sharing programs.
Second Life, created by Linden Lab, is an on line game that thrives on its users freedom to do practically anything, only restricted by the Terms of Service (http://secondlife.com/corporate/tos.php) and Community Standards (http://secondlife.com/corporate/cs.php). All aspects of a character are customizable from hairstyle to the shoe size to the clothes they wear. Likewise, the world around the characters is just as flexible. The majority of the worlds buildings, trees, and businesses are all created by the users themselves.
Players make a living in Second Life by selling these creations. When an item is created, the creator has three flags that change how it can be distributed. The modify flag permits changes to the actual item, the copy flag allows it to be copied by the owner, and the transfer flag allows it to be exchanged amongst players. There is also a “Next Owner Permissions” area that will change these flags whenever it is transferred next. Disabling these flags allows creators to control how their creations are being used and distributed. They do not want their customers duplicating an item several thousand times and selling it at a huge discount.
Because none of these creations are actual, tangible items, they all fall into the category of intellectual property. This leads to the single biggest innovation from Second Life. From section 3.2 of the Terms of Service:
“You retain copyright and other intellectual property rights with respect to Content you create in Second Life, to the extent that you have such rights under applicable law.”
With a few exceptions given to Linden Lab, players actually own all rights to the items they create in the game. This gives residents a little more security to invest hundreds of their own dollars into a line of fashion or cars that they can sell for a thousand dollars across the Second Life population without having to worry about someone copying their hard work and selling it as their own.
Enter: CopyBot.
CopyBot was a program that, literally, copied an object in Second Life. Here is a video demonstrating its use: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L4f1Z-xrxc
LibSecondLife (http://www.libsecondlife.org), a group supported by Linden Lab, created the original CopyBot. LibSecondLife is an open source venture to help understand how the Second Life clients and servers communicate and to create a better system. The ultimate goal of the project is to make all of Second Life open-source, much like the Linux operating system.
CopyBot was intended to be used as a debugging tool where they could quickly duplicate and manipulate objects. In order to see other people's hair or clothes, your computer has to actually download the object's properties and store them so the graphics card can render them properly. CopyBot finds where this data is stored and makes a copy of the information and puts it onto a character or into inventory (http://taotakashi.wordpress.com/2006/11/15/the-copybot-controversy).
The use of this as a debugging tool is very viable and useful. This creates a fast and easy method of transferring an object from the world onto your hard drive. However, the implications on the real world are staggering. As seen in the video above, it, quite literally, gives users free reign to copy any object they want.
Shortly after its appearance on LibSecondLife, Second Life residents wanted it removed from the server. LibSecondLife responded accordingly and thought they had removed the software before people actually had a chance to make a version compatible with live servers (http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2006/11/bots_back_in_th.html). Unfortunatly, CopyBot appeared on SLExchange (http://www.slexchange.com), a Second Life auction site, and was available for wide distribution.
When CopyBot found its way into the game, the shopkeepers of the world protested by closing their stores. They didn't want to sell everything, just to see it copied and sold by someone else. Instead, the vendors took to the streets in protest around sellers of CopyBot and by the LibSecondLife building within Second Life (video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypFBsXSzGkU).
Linden Lab's response was that CopyBot violated the Second Life Terms of Service and banned the use of it or any similar programs.
Is that all? Second Life users are supposed to have full ownership and copyright privileges of their creations and all Linden Lab can do is eliminate the accounts that probably liquidated their assets already anyways?
Any further recourse must me undertaken by parties who were infringed upon. Linden Lab has a section of their website outlining the steps a user must take to report an infringement as part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (http://secondlife.com/corporate/dmca.php). This is a written document that first goes to Linden Lab, and then to the Federal Government where these lawsuits are taken care of. Unfortunately, this is the only recourse to seek financial damages and it is a very costly route both in court costs and lawyer fees.
The next step Linden Lab needs to take is to create an internal system that will deal with its users intellectual property. Currently, there is no kind of small claims court that is able to handle the more minor manners in Second Life. Linden Lab does not want to create an in game governing body, but there needs to be some system where users can take their minor matters to have these infringements rectified.
An alternate route would be in-game arbitration. Either Linden Lab or actual residents need to create a system where people can have an unbiased third party evaluate the case for a reasonable fee to enforce residents' property rights.
A relatively simple route Linden Lab can take is a more extensive system that shows where an item actually came from. If all objects had a created date and creator attached to them, then it can serve as both a brand name as well as printing. This can even increase the value of some products by having one of the first created and actually be able to prove it.
One final system would be to encrypt the properties of items. However, because Linden Lab is currently pushing to make all of Second Life open source, it would be of little use because the encryption algorithms would be publicly available.
The main conclusion here is that Linden Lab needs to do something to protect the valuables of its users. A society without any protections will consistently be exploited if the consequences are not significant enough. Second Life is starting to get big, but without significant protections for its user base, people will be unwilling to put their time and effort into creating new content. A safe economy will attract more consumers, more suppliers, and even real world businesses.
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