Second Life Businesses Close Due To Cloning 409
Warren Ellis is reporting that many Second Life vendors are closing up shop due to the recent explosion of a program called "Copybot," designed to clone other people's possessions. From the article: "The night before last, I was looking around a no-fire combat sandbox, where people design and test weapons and vehicles, when an argument broke out; a thing going by the name Nimrod Yaffle was cloning things out of other people's inventories, and claiming he could freely do it because he'd been playing with Copybot with employees of SL creator/operators Linden Lab. All hell broke loose, in the sort of drama you can only find on the internet. Linden Lab's first official response? If you feel your IP has been compromised by Copybot, we'll sort of help you lodge a DCMA complaint in the US. Businesses started shutting down moments later." Update 20:43 GMT by SM Several users have mentioned that the Second Life blog has a few thoughts on this issue and quite a few comments from users already.
value (Score:5, Insightful)
Property Rights (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, the more the community respects intellectual property in SL, the greater the benefits of using CopyBot. It's the Prisoners Dilemma [wikipedia.org] all over again.
Re:value (Score:4, Insightful)
An important moment in history (Score:5, Insightful)
I get the sense that this will be remembered as an important battle in open vs. closed development models.
We have content creators that were thriving because of DRM-- the content creators wouldn't have put the same kind of time and effort into their creations if they couldn't be protected. And we have all that business coming to an abrupt close because of open source development.
I'm not saying open source is bad, or that DRM is good. I'm just saying that this is bringing to forefront the fact that people are going to need to change in the future how they think about work and ownership.
This will be a major turning point for our society (Score:5, Insightful)
What will happen when we have replicators (like the ones on Star Trek) that allow us to replicate everything in the real world quickly and easily? (not just music)
Think about it... the end of scarcity. A fundamental shift in the nature of the world economy. I'm not sure where it leads, but life sure gets interesting right around then...
copyright is not theft (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright (notwithstanding developments of the past 50ish years) is an agreement that a government (which SL is in this case) makes with people that they can benefit from their creations for a time in exchange for everyone eventually getting to benefit from the creation.
Commerce is not inherently petty. Commerce can motivate wonderful creations (such as SL itself). It can also motivate horrible acts.
I create some because I like it. I create more when I have financial interest in doing so.
Tea, Earl Grey, Hot (Score:5, Insightful)
"I'll fix your roof if you fix install my dishwasher."
"I'll do research on fuel cell membranes if you build the rest of the car..."
Head...hurts...
Industrial Revolution (Score:2, Insightful)
If the analogy applies, then macroeconomically speaking, this is good -- now SLers can have in-game content and their money too, instead of having to choose one or the other, having been liberated from this choice by open-source development.
I'm not so sure this requires a new way to think about work and ownership, although it may require content creators to think of new ways to get at the money. You'll have to invent a new shiny to get it from them.
RIAA member businesses close due to cloning (Score:5, Insightful)
"The night before last, I was looking around a music store, where people buy and sell music, when an argument broke out; a person going by the name Average Joe was copying tracks of musician's CDs, and claiming he could freely do it because he'd been playing with the copy command produced by the maker of his operating system. All hell broke loose, in the sort of drama you can only find in music stores. The RIAA's first official response? If you feel your IP has been compromised by "the copy command", we'll file a lawsuit against the copier and not give you any of the profits from the suit. Musicians started committing suicide moments later."
Seriously... think about it. Music won't stop being created in the real world just because people can copy things. And objects won't stop being created in Second Life just because people can copy them. All it means is that one thing that used to be a valuable service to people (creating copies of things) is no longer valuable because people can do it themselves.
The other thing (creating new content, or unique content (such as live performances)) is still of value, and always will be, as it will never be the case that all people are equally able to be competent creators or artists. Change your business model. Instead of selling copies of your thing, sell your creative services under contract. It's a model where people hire you to create something new that has never existed before, rather than paying you for a copy of something that already exists elsewhere.
This could actually be the best thing that ever happened to Second Life, because it can result in a more innovative and open "society" and a fairer "economy", and serve as an example for the real world.
Re:Details (Score:3, Insightful)
Frankly, these sorts of things have been around forever in SL, but Copybot was the first to gain a lot of notoriety. If people are closing their shops now (I doubt this is more than a small handful of vocal protesters) then they're just late on the train. Ultimately your client needs to be able to display the data, and the client is in the hands of the users, so as LL rightly pointed out, no technical means will ever make your creations 100% secure. If you can't handle the thought of that, then not only should you step out of Second Life, but you should probably step out of your Real Life, since that also holds true there as well.
Being able to report someone for using a Copybot and having his account suspended is probably the best solution to this problem. You'll just have to accept that a few people may slip through the cracks, but given that SL is a largely lawless society anyway I'm not sure why you'd expect strict enforcement on this one thing.
Re:An important moment in history (Score:1, Insightful)
Open Source is not stealing another person's creation, it's choosing a license that frees YOUR creation. Your post sounds like a very subtle troll, unfortunately...
Re:tee hee (Score:5, Insightful)
Value is in the service. (Score:5, Insightful)
The businesses that are closing were all operating on the wrong business model. Rather than try to make money selling the same object over and over, as if each copy had some value, they should have been figuring out ways to make money selling unique, individually created, bespoke objects. Selling the same stream of bits over and over is stupid. But if you could create something new for each person, then you'd not be selling bits, but your creative labor and skills -- it's not "bits" that you're selling anymore, but "service." That's a sustainable, proven business model.
I hope that Linden keeps the copying devices around, and lets people have free reign with them, because I think in time, you'll see the SL economy recover, and it would be a good demonstration of an 'information economy' that's not based on artificial scarcity or restrictions on information, but rather on mutually beneficial services.
Re:Value is in the ability to create. (Score:3, Insightful)
A copy of a Picaso doesn't lower the value of the original--but if it was the ability to make an EXACT copy, of course it would. If you couldn't tell the difference between the original and the copies, then the original is only worth what the copies are worth.
That's exactly how digital copies of digital entities work.
Re:Industrial Revolution (Score:1, Insightful)
But it doesn't. You're talking man versus a machine which can do his job. This situation is about the creators leaving, not the manual laborers. In the real world, profit is made by volume of sales, everyone wants an iPod. In this game, the driving force is uniqueness, so if there are no longer creators, then the economy dwindles.
Re:value (Score:5, Insightful)
UHH... YES... in the financial world, US government bonds are used as a riskless metric because if the US government ever defaults we all will have bigger things to worry about than our investments.
Re:Duping bugs happen in every game. (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that people want to keep their designs secret, even while using them in the game. Obviously, this is impossible because in order to render the object, each SL client has to download the object's wireframe, textures, etc.
Most duping bugs are solved by securing data or fixing a bug on the server side, but that won't work in this situation because what's being copied is the same information the game client needs to display the game properly.
Re:This will be a major turning point for our soci (Score:4, Insightful)
In the real world, everytime something gets copied easily, all hell breaks loose. Music, games, videos, books... Someday, it will be real objects, and if the world doesn't change (hahaha, world, change? ROFL), there will be equivalents of DMCA and entities like the RIAA to bitch and complain, instead of embracing this as a way to throw society in a world where money doesn't matter anymore... It is kind of sad, and i'm glad i'll be dead before it happens.
And I'm not putting any kids in that world, either.
Re:Industrial Revolution (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see why it's either-or. You're talking about two sides of the same coin.
When it's impossible to make money by selling the same work over and over, you must necessarily switch to a business model which demands payment for the entire work's creation up front (because you can't depend on being paid piecemeal by selling copies of the work later). Essentially, the artist becomes a tradesman, just like a plumber or electrician: pay me for my time and I'll make something for you.
DRM exists to prevent this, and preserve the manufacturing-type (payment per 'unit' or copy) business model, where the cost of production of a work is amortized out over the sale of many identical copies. Rather than charging what the copies cost to produce, it creates an artificial scarcity that allows their cost to be increased up to the maximum that consumers are willing to pay.
Without DRM, the copies cease to have value, but the skilled labor that goes into their creation still does, and could be sold even in the absence of DRM (or copyright).
Re:value (Score:3, Insightful)
Backed by the U.S. government only goes so far as the U.S. government can exert its influence. Sure, that's just about anywhere it damn well pleases at the moment (militarily, economically, politically, whatever), but maybe that's the point to make with SL. Items in SL are backed just as far as the game/construct/whatever can exert influence. The problem is that a lot of people are placing "real" value on these items, and there's no way SL rules are going to be able to exert themselves outside of SL. A EULA could get close, but even that means you just get kicked out of SL if you break the rules, no "real" world consequences on face value - unless you put "real" value in SL, which, in our current analogy, would be like holding up some other commodity as risk-free instead of US bonds.
It's an interesting and no doubt will be a growing sociological and psychological issue. Our whole basis for value is often how well the most basic unit can be backed. For money, that's a solid guarantee that if the US economy completely collapses we all go Mad Max. For SL and many other "non-real" worlds, well, it's definitely not that solid.
Re:This is kinda what is happening in China right (Score:5, Insightful)
You dumbass.
Trademarks don't 'artifically limit' the supply of anything. Trademarks make it so you can trust the product.
Without enforced trademarks, all products are the lowest possible quality, because there's no point in making something better than that, because no one can say 'Hey, that worked well, I'll buy another one of those.' or 'Well, that fell apart immediately, i won't buy that kind anymore.'.
Trademarks are merely artifical signatures. Just like someone shouldn't be able to walk up to a hospital and say he's you and request your medical records, someone shouldn't be able to sell something he claims was manufactured by you if it wasn't. Trademark law is, at root, a specific form of fraud prevention.
That's not say trademarks haven't been abused, and that selling the brand instead of the product is stupid, and I realize there's sort of a knee-jerk reaction against 'intellectual property' here, and I agree with a lot of it, but anyone who thinks society would be better off if people had no way to tell the difference between a Toshiba laptop and some craptacular Korean brand designed to look like one with a Toshiba labeled slapped on it is an idiot.
Re:This is kinda what is happening in China right (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, this is pretty much how I feel. Trademark law can get out-of-hand sometimes. But it's generally a good thing and has not overstepped its bounds in any severe manner.
Re:Second Life was Hype (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Value is in the service. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is kinda what is happening in China right (Score:2, Insightful)
Sounds good. Maybe the rest of the world should use that as an example. Instead of one rich company you get 51 companies making a living. No-one becomes big enough to abuse the advantage. Surely that is the free market.
Re:Value is in the service. (Score:5, Insightful)
Would the rich society that supports artists buy art if all their fellow societians would have the same thing as soon as they showed it off?
(*Look at my new mink! Yes its now my new mink, and my new mink *)
This "Killed" uniqueness as it is now impossible to be "unique".
Those that WERE willing to pay prices for unique wares are no longer as copybot kills the ability to be unique and show off.
Was not referring to physical goods. (Score:5, Insightful)
McDonalds and Mercedes sell identical items over and over, because if I have a Mercedes, I can't just copy it and give you a Mercedes, too -- the real world doesn't work that way, because of pesky things like conservation of mass and energy. However, in the realm of information, if I have an "item" (and I would say that the term 'knowing' it is preferable and more appropriate to 'owning' it), I can give ('tell') it to you, without affecting the original. In this realm, the copies have virtually no value; in time, their cost will drop down to the marginal production cost (which is very low). So it's silly to try to have a business model that revolves around amortizing the cost of production out over not-yet-sold copies.
Anyway, I hope that clears it up. I was not implying that manufacturing identical goods and selling them was an unfeasible business model in the real world; it's not and won't be. However, selling the same piece of information over and over, is not, in my estimation, sustainable without a lot of heavy-handed controls on the market.
Re:Objects are worthless, time is not. (Score:4, Insightful)
And yes, the photographer should price their time irregardless of the number of photos the customer will print later. How many they'll make is not relevant to the sales transaction, once you rule out the possibility of pay-per-copy (as in the case of a nonconservative informational realm without DRM). You can't view it as a 'loss' when it's not possible to make money that way in the first place.
I suspect that although there would be initial resistance to the business model, you would find that many photographers would be willing to turn over reproduction rights for slightly less than a hundred dollars an hour, depending on their reputation and skills. (Actually I used to know a good local wedding photographer who worked this way, although he catered mostly to other photographers.)
So anyway, I guess I'll agree with you: the photographer would price their time with the assumption built-in that you would make a lot of copies (or at least, that you wouldn't provide any further income to them by buying more copies). So their rate would be basically the rate they charge now, plus an amount equal to the income they obtain from further print sales, divided out per hour of labor. E.g., if right now they charge a base rate of $50/hr take the photos, an average shoot lasts 5 hours, and then charge $10 per print, and on average sell 10 prints per shoot, then they'd probably want to charge about $70/hr if they were going to turn over all the negatives to you afterwards instead of holding onto them. There's nothing unfair about that, and it's not even clear that the customer is getting a bad deal: if the customer makes more prints than average, then they actually save money.
My point is that this pricing is basically inevitable: without onerous DRM, you can't give someone a photo in a digital format without also allowing them to copy it. So if you want to stay in business, you're going to want to charge the "prints included" rate, rather than the lower one. If I was going to open up shop as a wedding photographer (shudder) tomorrow, given that people are going to want their photos in some sort of digital format -- to send to relatives, make into DVDs/books/whatever -- I would certainly not try to keep myself afloat by artificially lowering my rate, hoping that I'd make it up later on "in volume." Trying to sell the same string of numbers more than once (particularly to the same person!) is a mistake.
Re:Was not referring to physical goods. (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is the best business model? Trying to sell one copy at a price of $10,000,000, or trying to sell a hundred thousand copies at a price of $100? Selling the same bits over and over again is a viable business model, and it's the only reason the software industry, the movie industry and the music industry exist.
Re:value (Score:5, Insightful)
The tulip bulb crash of 1636-37 reads a lot like the dot-bomb of our day and to the folly of investing in overvalued, non-critical items.
Re:Duping bugs happen in every game. (Score:4, Insightful)
It would require something much more process intensive, such as similarity matching. That would be a PITA as well, since it would be much less process intensive to modify the object, but make it look the same, and if the comparison points are too broad, it could block anything that's even remotely similar -- all spheres, as a simple example.
Re:The US dollar has halved over the last 5 years (Score:3, Insightful)
This isn't business software, this is Second Life. (Score:3, Insightful)
It is foolish for a vendor to enter this market and expect to somehow impose scarcity onto entites that which the game engine does not pretend to enforce any resource control. The risk of violating 2nd Life's policy (if this activity is forbidden without permission) is low for those that would use these techniques, so it's meaningless.
In this case, this is the seller's fault, their own calculated risk.
Clearly a different model is required for successful sale of objects in Second Life to guarantee success for vendors. I applaud the action of those that exploit obvious weaknesses in the system because they will cause people to take notice and change their business approaches to minimize their risk.
They should not expect Linden Labs to do this job for them. That is poor business practice and it artificially restricts the rights of individuals who are not the clients of these vendors.
Was not referring to ethics and morality. (Score:1, Insightful)
Which is just a polite way of saying that people will abuse technology for their benefit to the detriment of others.
"So yes, I think that ultimately, when copying becomes easy enough and widespread enough, the only software that will be written, is that which is paid for up front and in advance. It's not as though this doesn't happen all the time, right now. In fact, I suspect in terms of lines of code written, far more 'software' has been written on contract than on speculation. (Think of all the business software, billions of lines of customized stuff.) I make my living this way, as do a whole lot of other people. (Granted, a lot of what we do involves implementing and working with already-written software, but the cost of that is usually small compared to the cost of implementation and customization, and the latter are also where the value is added.) In this model, you don't even try to "sell" software, or any sort of "products" at all -- you sell services. Essentially, what the client buys is the time of a bunch of skilled people, to accomplish a specific task."
There's one fundamental flaw with the above argument. Availability. The code that your "service" people are paying for isn't widely available (open source excepting). Ease of copying isn't as much of a problem. Plus the "service" model has already been tried. It was called the patron system. You may want to look it up and the resulting consequences.
"I'm not really engaging in any value judgments here. I don't think software "should" be sold in one way or the other. That's a meaningless argument. I think it's inevitable; DRM and other copy-control technologies are a finger in a dike that's already broken. It'll probably always be hard or annoying enough to copy information, notwithstanding the ever-present bludgeon of Copyright, that some commercial development will always continue because it looks lucrative enough on paper that people will try it ("write one piece of code, and sell it a thousand times over?"), I just don't think that's where the majority of the money is, in the long term."
It's not an issue of absolutes any more than Linux security is. It is however an issue of those two words that slashdot consistently ignores. (morality and ethics). NO business model can survive an ever increasingly immoral public.
Re:Duping bugs happen in every game. (Score:3, Insightful)
Every time you create a prim it gets a hidden field, that's a signature with LL's private key of something unique to the prim (like a GUID) and your UID (or GID if it's group-owned). When you give it away (directly or recursively, as part of a larger object), LL will give the object a new signature. If you make the object freely copiable, the signature will be of the GUID and the null string. If you try to copy an object that doesn't belong to you (or the null string), the server will refuse. If you sell an object, its copy-ownership stays with you, but the conventional ownership (for rezzing, etc.) goes to the purchaser - so only you can authorize copies of it but only the purchaser can do anything with it.
Since you can only create signatures with LL's private key, but you can verify them with their public key, this should give pretty much tamper-proof ownership of objects with a literal "copy right".
Re:Industrial Revolution (Score:3, Insightful)
Because if no one pays for it, it won't get created at all. It doesn't take long to notice that the thing you're waiting for isn't happening, and at that point, you realize you'll have to make a move if you ever want to see it happen.
If I knew I could wait and get it for free, then of course not. But the only way I can know that is if I know there's someone else who values that creation enough that he's willing to pay for it, which solves the problem quite nicely: the creator gets paid and everyone gets to use what he created.