If CopyBot Comes Back, Should Anyone Care?

Not CopyBot 2: Impressive video demo of Second Inventory, Angelo Biondi's offline content copier (see site FAQ denying any relation to CopyBot)

"Have a scoop for you," someone messaged me yesterday, writing it out like it was a headline already: "CopyBot 2.0 Hits Second Life, Lindens cover it up as they have no idea how to stop it." 

Born in 2006, CopyBot was a program leveraging the open source version of Second Life to enable copying of content (albeit imperfectly), and its mere existence caused tumult across the grid, seemingly threatening an economic collapse.  Hundreds of stores closed, and thousands protested to the Lindens until they belatedly interceded, and specifically forbade it.  (You can read the whole story here.) What my source said reflected a rumor that's been rumbling unconfirmed through the Second Life blogosphere these last couple weeks, most recently by Vint Falken: supposedly, new and improved versions of CopyBot are surreptitiously making their way back into the world, and the Lindens are waging a shadow war against them.

Any truth to this?  At the moment, I've no idea.  More interesting to me is the underlying assumption that gives this rumor any juice at all: the belief that CopyBot itself caused the chaos that came before.  So it's worth remembering what actually happened in 2006:

The unsubstantiated panic over CopyBot caused the chaos.  Consider:

- Though thousands of Residents protested CopyBot, and hundreds of thousands in-world at the time were affected by the store closings and boycotts, the Lindens received complaints from only 50 Residents, claiming harm.  To my knowledge, none of those complaints were even substantiated.

- I posted an announcement on my blog and in my Second Life group, requesting that Resident content creators harmed by CopyBot contact me.  Not a single person did.

- I randomly interviewed five top content creators, including several who make some or all of their living from their SL businesses.  Some expressed deep concern, but none reported being hurt by CopyBot, and several expressed irritation at the community's reaction to CopyBot.

- In the wake of the CopyBot panic, numerous landowners installed "anti-CopyBot" devices that spewed random foreign letters onto the chat channels, in the belief that this somehow protected their content from unauthorized imitation.  They were annoying and distracting, and as I wrote then, "The only obvious evidence of CopyBot's harm... are the defenses created against it."

By all available evidence, then, the original CopyBot was to content theft what Al Qaeda was to The Mooninites of Boston.

Something to keep in mind, even if the rumors of CopyBot 2 turn out to be true.

Comments

[T_S_Kimball]

As my comment to Vint's weblog has yet to appear since yesterday afternoon, I'll post the general gist here:

-> For the average person logging on (those mostly interested in socializing and the occasional purchase), even CB-1 did not matter. This will be no different, despite discussion otherwise.

-> As you said, most of the damage was done from the hype and reaction itself rather than the actual thefts. One example of that is myself - I was on the libsl group (primarily filling out comments for functions generated around the protocol). Between the bad press around CB and a revised ethics policy from my RL work, I'm no longer able to participate (can't even do anything with the released client).

-> There have been ways of stealing from the client almost as soon as the *very first* one was released, ever. People will continue to do it as things change, just for the challenge (Here, Vint's quote from the discussion /w Philip is dead on target). I personally think that's sad, but only because the effort could be better suited toward producing a better, competing product!

--TSK

[Ann Otoole]

Just means LL will have to step up and get serious with policy and governance in respect to IP rights. As it is they have their heads in the sand. Maybe they need to have "Ostrich Studio" as the IP rights and Governance workgroup in LL.

There are things LL can do about it. They cannot stop it. thats a fact. But they can make it very unattractive to get caught. I still think people might think twice before ripping something to sell if it meant that when they sold that ripped skin and sold it only to log in one day and find thousands of angry customers after them because their fancy skin now says "stolen skin" all over it. Peer pressure can be a wonderful thing.

I've given up on IP rights for now. Especially on the pjira. Better things to do than worry about that which is ignored by LL. Much better things to do than enter suggestions on pjira and be attacked for expressing an opinion and trying to help improve things.

This problem is something for the new CEO to contend with. This one issue will be the number one thang that tells us what we are dealing with where the new CEO is concerned.

[Vint Falken]

TSK, I did not get your comment in my moderation queue. I found you between Askimet spam. I'm sorry, I gave up on digging through that everyday manually. Now everything in there just goes 'delete'. (Yours got saved in time, though! ;))

"CopyBot 2.0 Hits Second Life, Lindens cover it up as they have no idea how to stop it."

It's that so-called shadow war I'm curious about. If they are doing something about it, why not share that with us?

If they would do that, openly communicate on this, people would be less 'Lindens don't take our rights serious' and they could indeed 'de-mythify' some rumours & some of the so called 'ways' to stop copybot.

[Nyoko Salome]

"SCRIPTS WILL BE UPLOADED NOT COMPILED...
DON'T FORGET TO OPEN/RE-EDIT/SAVE THE SCRIPT/S..."

that's a little something i see in the copying window. is this program cracking script protections??? :\

[Zetaphor]

There is a ton of info flying around now as "rumors" about CopyBot, and where its coming from, so I am here to clear it up.

READ BELOW FOR THE *REAL FULL* STORY!

CopyBot 2.0 is here. CopyBot never left us, it simply went into hiding. CopyBot is nothing more than the export and import commands of TestClient, written by Eddy Stryker. As of today there are multiple CopyBot applications floating around the web, some free, others not. One of which is SLBot, on SLX. All this is was a copy of TestClient, with an interface wrapped around it. SLBot required registration as part of the purchase, because those idiots think selling free and open source software is fun. So then the Patriotic Nigras took a copy of SLBot, and decompiled it. They then released it on their blog as an executable, and the source over SVN. So yeah, CopyBot is alive and kicking, and this time he has a pretty interface.

Whether or not CopyBot is of any real importance is up to the individual, but at least now you know the facts.
/me flips the bird to those idiots who think selling free software is a good idea!

[Androgyne Michinaga]

The thing is that you wouldn't know that your creations have been copied, unless you spotted them on sale somewhere else. If someone gets the copying program and then goes around making themselves a huge wardrobe, getting all the gadgets etc, but doesn't put it for sale in a shop, nobody will now.

[Anonymous]

It is most certainly alive and kicking, not only that but it is getting regular updates. 2.2 (Alpha) was released the other day which adds the ability to replicate sculpted prims. Work is also being done to allow the copying of attachments.

As Zetaphor said, "CopyBot never left us, it simply went into hiding", and now it's being updated regularly -- that's what content creators should worry about.

[Grace]

Looks like NeilLife is now opensource...

Mirror: http://www.2shared.com/file/7031965/38b2749a/neillife-opensource20.html

Lots of Emerald Viewer features and a special Neil Life "ToolBar" with some hacks.