Entrepreneurs in Second Life are up in arms about a product called CopyBot…
CopyBot allows the user to create a replication of an object, including textures, that is fully permissive. Needless to say this product has caused tremendous worry among content creators who want to understand how its use may possibly affect their business.
According to Baba Yamamoto, one of the creators of CopyBot over at libSL, it was created as a debugging tool and the official application required a user to ask to be copied and presented a disclaimer before copying occured. However, as it was released into open source it appears to have morphed.
Linden Labs’ response to CopyBot is rather ineffectual so far – they’ve rolled out Section 4.2 of Second Life’s Terms of Service, which says thay your account can be banned if you use CopyBot to make unauthorized duplicates. Not surprisingly there have been over 800 comments on the SL blog responding to their approach.
