Vigilant Bunnies: Second Life's Playboy Staffers Investigate Knock-Offs, Offer Partnerships To Some Violators

According to CNN, virtual Playboy Bunnies are leaving their island paradise to track down unauthorized Playboy products being sold in Second Life.  This is not a sentence I ever imagined writing, but it happens to be the case, with voluptuous managers Kimberly Laughton and Kattatonic Yates showing up in full  regalia at sites advertising knock-off Playboy items, and scrupulously taking notes.

Contrary to the CNN report, Playboy Island manager MSGiro Grosso tells me, it's not a "crack-down"-- at least not yet.

"I asked the managers to find out who was doing knock offs," he tells me. "I just wanted to know how widespread it was."  In real life, Grosso is Marc Girolimetti of Green Grotto Studios, the metaverse development company that's running Playboy's official presence in Second Life.  Concerns over content theft have wracked SL's grassroots content creators for months, but this may be the first instance of a real world company actively joining their cause.

I ask Grosso how widespread the Playboy knock-offs are.

"It's enough to justify me asking who is doing it," he says.

For the moment, he adds, "I just want to know, and will decide what to do when I see the list."

Grosso's even offered a few partnership deals with knock-off creators.  "In some cases," he said, "we have already said, 'We love what you designed.  Are you up for a rev share for using the brand?'

"Some are up for it because we will help promote them," he says. "Some are not so cooperative."  In those cases, they've occasionally turned to the vendor's landlord.  "Some have signed lease agreements with landlords that say 'no copyright infringement'," Grosso explains, "and when you alert the landlords they shut the store down."

Those are two options that don't require invoking the DMCA, or other outside forces. "The harder ones may be dealt with through Linden.  I'm still deciding."

For now, the investigation continues, led by leggy babe avatars in rabbit ears who are themselves so integral to the Playboy brand.  Perhaps other real world companies in Second Life will take a cue from the Bunnies, sending out their own virtual emissaries.  Supermodel avatars patrolling Second Life fashion emporiums in search of L'Oreal rip-offs, for instance, or Mario and Luigi flying off Nintendo Island, looking for violators to hop on.

Image credit: MincedMedia Clip reporting for SL iReports.

Comments

[Laetizia Coronet]

Mario will be busy tracking down griefers who use Mario in their particle emitting griefs. Someone needs to tell Nintendo about the negative use of their brand... I'll welcome them with open arms!

Playboy knock-offs have been around for so long that some of it was already available as freebies back in Nov. of 06. It probably still is.

[skribe Forti]

Ssssh, be wery wery qwiet. I'm hunting wabbits.

[Pappy Enoch]

But a reel Playboat bunny am sum'fin speshul!

Be dawg if'n I ain't a gonna put mee sum hillbilly knock-off bunny stuff in my camp an' hide out until a passel o' them-thar Hunny-Bunnies shows up.

I gots mee a big ol' gunny sack fo' ketchin' bunnies...I'll trap 'em tu beekum a reg'lar Huge Hefner!

[Oxytone]

Playjackrabbits, Pappy?

[Two Worlds]

Suprisingly it's Playboy of all real life franchises that actually has the SL thing RIGHT. Remember about this time a year or two ago, when the SL news was absolutely brimming over with real life companies coming to the metaverse to hawk their wares in whatever off-kilter way their Madison Avenue suits told them to go? How many scores of them have dried up, leaving only the House That Hef Built?

I do remember how upon Playboy's announcement of a sim island in SL, how much this blog speculated this would ever be possible, amid the thousands upon thousands of unauthorized Playboy clones in the virtual world--and yet somehow whenever the Playboy sim holds one of their little shindigs the entire sim is absolutely PACKED, to the point of saturation, with residents all wanting to say they're on the "VIP list".

So again, Playboy got it right. Congrats. Calvin Klein/American Apparel/Armani/etc, take note.

[Seraphine]

It's important. Playboy is
being very nice about it, rather
than heavy handed. Tops off to them.

[MSGiro Grosso]

I think what Oxytone is really saying is that if all the corps who want to get into SL contacted Green Grotto Studios we wouldn't have this issue of them coming and leaving in a fortnight. Total no-brainer. ;-)

We spent a lot of time planning the entire strategy and we spend even more adapting it as time moves on. We have remain steadfastly focused in some areas and open to change, usually based on in-world trends or direct feedback, in others. I'm glad we have proven that it can really work, because I wholeheartedly feel like anybody, given the proper guidance, can succeed in Second Life.

Marc G