MUV601 - Robin Le Couteur - Assignment 2, blog 4 -2018


Demonstrate your understanding of the need and the means for protecting Intellectual Property in a virtual world.

What is intellectual property(IP)? A definition from this site sums it up well: https://m.esa.int/About_Us/Law_at_ESA/Intellectual_Property_Rights/What_is_intellectual_property

”Intellectual Property (IP) refers to the protection of creations of the mind, which have both a moral and a commercial value.”

Basically IP is anything intangible that someone has created that has some sort of value. Laws on IP give creators exclusive rights to financially exploit their creations or reap the benefits of their creations in any way. IP laws enable creators to control the use of their creations by only allowing people to use or sell them with their permission which can be granted at a cost or for free in some cases, but generally with some terms of use to protect from unintended use.

How does the permissions system help protect IP?

In one of my previous blogs I talked about the SL permissions system. This system is a big part of protecting IP in Second Life. This is because to protect IP, you must restrict people from just walking up to your creations and taking them. The permissions system allows you to stop people from copying or taking creations unless you give them permission, which generally includes paying a fee of some sort. You can also just block outright if you don’t want anyone to have your creations.

If you sell or give someone a copy of your creation, you also don’t necessarily want them to just start selling copies of your work, so you can stop people from transferring and copying your work.

Also, if you don’t want people to tinker with your creations, you can block them from modifying with the permissions system.

As you can see, the permissions system plays a very big role in ensuring that your IP is protected.  

CopyBot

Looking at the definition in this wiki: https://wiki.casperdns.com/index.php/CopyBot, a CopyBot is any SL client which is capable of exporting items while avoiding the permissions system.
Since the viewer downloads all the SL data for you to view, it means that CopyBot viewers can just take that raw data and export it without being affected by the permissions system. Copybots can steal prims, sculpties, sounds, textures etc, but they cannot copy scripts.

The functionality of a CopyBot viewer is actually built in to legitimate viewers, the difference is that the legitimate viewers will not export anything unless you have permissions. In that sense you could say the the only way you should use CopyBot is as the official implementation that honors permissions. If you have to use a CopyBot viewer to export something, you probably aren't supposed to be exporting it and could be suspended or banned.

How can Creators Protect (Or Open Up ) Their Creations

The first thing that creators should do to protect their creations is to figure out hoe to effectively use the permissions system. This will protect against regular users from misusing their creations. As explained earlier in this post there is many ways to restrict the use of creations, but is is also worth noting that the opposite is true. It is possible for creators to reduce permissions to allow users more control over their creations, but it is still important to have at least some basic permissions in place to stop misuse.

A good thing to do is to check the marketplace now and then to see if your stolen work is being sold without your permission. If you spot this you can file a DMCA copyright infringement notice to Linden Labs as described here: https://www.lindenlab.com/legal/intellectual-property-infringement-notification-policy

If you want people to be able to use your work freely you can also license your work under a public license such as a Creative Commons license. Such a license grants free use to your work as long as they credit you for your work.

Otherwise, just keep creating and building your brand. You will end up more successful than thieves if you can create original content and market it well. Also since CopyBots can't steal scripts, a heavily scripted item is hard for thieves to recreate if you have properly set permissions.

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