Second Life Counterfeiting and First Life Litigation
In a case coming right out of the edges of belief, a group of Second Lifers are suing another Second Lifer, Thomas Simon, claiming that he sold copies of the products out of his Second Life sex toy shop. It seems that the law is blind and virtual. I’m wondering if the case will be read in SL or terra firma.
Second Life produce is big business. Linden Labs own stats tool estimates that almost 450,000 people logged in over the past seven days. That’s a scary amount. Imagine selling small ticket items costing a US dollar to a market of that size? Drop by Amazon and take a gander at ‘Designing Your Second Life’. It advises you on how to make clothes and ‘establish a social community and career Life’. Hmm, am I missing something? A fad, you might say. Perhaps, but there’s a market for niche items by independent sellers, if the plantiffs of this case are anything to go by.
So, given the salivating market out there for SL goods, you’d think that counterfeiting items would be a tough job? Nope. It’s a well-known fact that it’s as simple as timing the pulling of items out of one’s inventory. Pick the correct moment for an inventory pull to sync with a system lag and in an effort to deal with the load, SL returns to a restore point. This has the side-effect of restoring the pulled item in the inventory. Now, where you had that designer dress, you have two. Magic, no?
Curiously enough, this is not the first case of copyright infringement in Second Life. Back in July, a similar suit was filed by Eros (also a plantiff in the new case) against a SLer named Volkov Cattaneo for allegedly copying their beds. Again, a play on sex toys. To date, the identity of Cattaneo has yet to be clearly established, although lawyers for Eros believe that they have tracked down the culprit.
It remains to be seen how the Simon case will get on in a court of law. Proof at the moment seems to centre around a collection of photos stored on Flickr. It will be interesting to see how this case develops and what implications it will have on the sale of products and services in virtual worlds. I wonder what precedents it will set and how theywill shape the virtual business ventures of the future.