indeed... definitely a WTF moment

@someguy

actually, it's a civil matter, so 'innocent until proven guilty' really doesn't apply. A preponderance of information is required. Theoretically, if they can prove the IP address of the defendant is the same one tied to the account that did the duplicating and illegal transactions, then, in civil courts, they have a pretty strong case. Hell, a recent RIAA case in Deleuth was held on pretty much the exact same pieces of evidence, and the defendant was found guilty.

What I am really interested in is the application of copyright law in a virtual world. It is my understanding that these products are actually copyrighted by their owners, but how does Linden Labs certify a copyright certificate, and who do they go through?

Furthermore, if the defendant and the co-conspirators (or the other 10 does who were caught in this net) found an exploit, and reported it, will Linden Labs take action against the accounts. I mean, for this to get to this point after it sounds like LL was given a heads up by not only the plaintiff, but by several members in the blogging community, they'd have to do something to save face, and establish that they are indeed in control of their environment.

If anyone's going to go the whole "It's just stuff in a game" line, just remember that you can strip down any and all works into basic formats in the same argument.

Music is merely vibration of air molecules in a certain rhythm. Games are merely 1's and 0's coded into a disc, movies are nothing more than pixels on a screen, books are just ink on paper, computer applications are made up of data chiseled into the hard drive. The list goes on and on. These things, however, are all covered by copyright laws. How, then, should something like Second Life be different? The "it's not real" argument no longer holds any water because half the things we enjoy or use are 'not real,' in essence. The money in your bank account is electronic records of how much money you have. The entire internet is made up of nothing but code.

In this day and age the line between real and virtual goods is slowly, but surely becoming more and more blurred, so what makes people think they can judge what can be counted as 'work' or 'real' anymore? The only thing here is that it's less 'socially acceptable' and that's how people are going off of it.

I'm equally amazed by the responses to this, and by the attitude in the original article. Someone creates something and puts it up for sale (for actual money) then seeks legal action when someone else copies the thing and distributes it themselves. And people think he's being ridiculous?

I wonder how many of these people have ever tried to make money themselves.

If the plaintiffs wins I am going to be rich. I mean who hasn't gotten hacked. So now I can sue all those that have taken items for on Runescape and other game. GO PLAINTIFF!!!!

Yah hmmm... When i get hack on a game i don't sue. I suck it up and i ether quite or I just try to make it back. It not the big of a deal. I am sorry but this is not a legal matter this is matter for the game designers and admins not the courts.

Well, it's definitely a form of plagiarism or stealing of art design. Even if it involves sex toy designers. Yeah. It'd be like someone stealing my design for a website and using it for their website, except instead it involves virtual sex toys.

Personally a cease and desist is probably all they need to do, though, suing over it seems pointless. Unless they want money, in which case it becomes yet another frivolous lawsuit.

Oh, and I believe copyright or something along those lines can take place without a formal copyright written up. It's a lot easier to defend your works without it, but there are basic rights involved if you have written or made a work of art or what have you and you can prove you wrote it prior to the other person (and probably released it publicly, as well, I mean.) You don't HAVE to have the copyright certificate to have copyright rights. Uh, yeah.

Oh, and Second Life is apparently going to be the source of a CBS Evening News story. And yes, it's sensationalist ("SURE IT'S JUST A GAME, BUT IT DEPICTS MURDERS, AND DO YOUR KIDS HAVE TOO EASY ACCESS TO IT?!")

You know I've been waiting for something like this to happen in second life. With the way it is set up it was just a matter of time...

Personally I hope they win and I'll tell ya why. They spent time on those items and if he truely did just steal a copy of them and start selling then he deserves it. It would be akin to someone stealing a game mod, slapping his name on it, and then selling it.

Though my support for the fellow ends if he can not prove that the fellow stole his coding. I think anyone and everyone has the right to make an item "like" his if they put in the work.

This is what happens when you introduce a real world monetary system into a virtual world.

This just reinforces my theory that Second Life is only populated by sex fetishists and politicians.

@dog_welder

I assume those are the only people who would be able to deal with the crappy controls and still want to be there.

personally I, at one time did try Second life, but after about 10 minutes, trying to understand the "flying" controls and how to make items, I simply gave up and resumed playing World of Warcraft (btw, anyone play on tortheldrin here? =p )

@fridgemagnet

While I'm onboard with ya on most your stuff. I just have to say this:

Innocent till proven guilty.

It can "seem" like the dude is guilty till the end of time, but unless they can prove it..... Now don't get me wrong if the dude did steal said items/coding he deserves whats coming to em. Though in a game like that theres only so many ways to code the same effect and you in my opinion can't hold a copyright to that. Perhaps he saw their business and made his own? Sure most likely not, but still...

@dog weilder

I could go into second life for a class on how to make video games. I stopped going after i dropped out of the college. But i still get emails for it.

@someguy: Sure, quite right, and sometimes big content creators in SL are ridiculously snippy about chasing people who have, in fact, just made something that looks like something the creator made.

However, having looked at the screenshots, reading up on the exploit and the history and the letters sent, I'm very very very suspicious indeed, put it that way. This isn't simple stuff to duplicate, it takes a long time to make.

There's a lot more about it on Virtually Blind:
http://virtuallyblind.com/2007/10/27/content-creators-sue-rase-kenzo/

They can say whatever they want to say. It’s a video game. I didn’t know you could sue anyone over it.

Doesn't Second Life's terms of service (among other things) spell out pretty clearly that everything a player creates in the game becomes his or her intellectual property?

yet more proof to my theory that everyone who obsesses over Second Life doesn't have a first one. (also, Germans Love David Hasselhoff)

but i was pretty sure SL has all sorts of things in the ToS to protect against people stealing your crazy ideas.

To clarify, not all of the creators in the suit make sex objects. Nephalilne of Pixel Dolls is a long established clothing maker, as is Munchflower Zaius (Nomine), LeCadre sells a variety of things...

@Ghost coins: if there was a successful court case I think LL would certainly end up banning the avatars concerned, that would be a breach of their ToS. But they're taking a very hands-off approach at the moment as far as I can see, like they usually do with "resident disputes". The account certainly isn't banned right now.

In the past people have been suspended for just _posting_ exploits even after they've reported them, so I doubt that if the defendants actually _used_ exploits, having reported them would save them.

Just pretend it's music and not video game code and there's no question this lawsuit would be a cakewalk.

No really, what the f***?

This might actually be more interesting than people give it credit for. According to the brief, the plaintiffs are claiming they've lost over $75,000 in stolen sales. If the creators have the intellectual property rights to this (SL pretty clearly states they do, and several of the items are actually copyrighted under federal law), then this is, in fact, a pretty hefty theft. The analogy made earlier about this being akin to music piracy is fairly accurate - the defendants took the items sold by the SL merchants, and promptly copied and resold the items without paying the merchant. If this was a real world situation or dealing with pirated music, this would barely register as news.

Yeah, we can all make the jokes about "OMG, stolen virtual sex toys? LOLZ", but there is a legitimate case here. These SL merchants filled a niche, and their sales were demonstrably hurt by this theft. I imagine any judge who is able to get past the 'virtual' part of the suit will rule in favor of the SL merchants.

Addendum: Was only skimming over the brief (IANAL - yet) - the $75,000 may be including penalties sought, and not just lost sales.

@-Jes-: Pretty fair summary of the permissions system, I'd say. What I understand happened here is that items marked "transfer no-copy" (i.e. you can give them to someone else or resell them, but only once, you lose it once you've transferred it as you can't take a copy) were duplicated many times by using an exploit involving server rollbacks. This means you can sell the duplicates, even if you don't, yourself, have full copy permission.

("Transfer copy" permission enables you to sell as many copies as you like, but nobody's fool enough to actually sell items with those permissions unless they want them ripped off everywhere. "Copy no-transfer" is also popular as it means you can make copies of things for your own safe-keeping, in case the server crashes or you delete them by accident, but you can't then sell or give them to other people.)

@neoSpider

Yeah, even I have to agree that the 'code should be free' has some interesting arguments behind it. I kinda straddle the boarder since I work for a commercial software company which also interacts with the open source community.

I think the big issue here is that the artist didn't want his creations to be freely distributed, Second Life had a framework in place to implement that desire, then someone found a way around that. Reselling the items for a profit took away any support the guy might have had ^_^;

For mediums that don't have natural tie ins (Movies have merchandise, music has live shows and merchandise, software MIGHT have 'services') this becomes a big deal. It is tempting to say 'the right balance is hard to reach' but in the end, we need multiple balance for multiple needs.

It is my understanding that these products are actually copyrighted by their owners, but how does Linden Labs certify a copyright certificate, and who do they go through?

The way I understand it, copyright certificates are proof of copyright, but they aren't a requirement for a copyright to exist. The essay I'm writing for my college English class is copyrighted by me automatically because I created it. Hypothetically if someone took it and started printing copies of it and passing them around without my permission I could take action, but I'd have a hard time proving it was mine originally, which is what copyright certificates are for.

Again, I'm no expert on law but that's my understanding. Second Life probably has its own ways to keep track of who made what, so if Linden Labs were willing to cooperate and hand that information over a copyright certificate might not be necessary to prove anything.

Somehow, I don't think the law of the United States applies in the virtual world.

I seriously don't see why people are so shocked by this. I'm not a secondlife player/user myself, but I have taken a peek just to see what all the fuss was about. Making an item in the game is a lot more complicated then most people here realize I believe. Its a multistep process that involves:

1. From a series of basic shapes creating a said item. This can be a very time comsuming process depending on the item. You take said items and bend, stretch, and so on to get a part of the whole. I saw a car in my short time that had a working pistons and probably well over 500 parts for example...

2. After you have the shape you go through and texture said items to finish the look you want. This can be complicated since the game only comes with a few default textures. You can make your own from what I saw.

3. You then have to program said item to produce effects. Such as a couch being programmed to allow sitting down, lying down, and whatever else you want. Or in the example of the car i mentioned earlier...get the tires moving, pistons moving, steering wheel moving, and so on. This can be extremely complicated or simple depending on the item.

So stealing a fellows work isn't an oh well its just a game. Some of these people have probably spent countless hours making said items and countless more learning to work with the ingame creation system. Which is why I support them going after this fellow.

There is clearly stealing going on here.

Of course it's virtual but a little research shows that the Serpentine bissness is bigger than most.

can somebody explain to me the significance of the 'paper airplane' like image to this?

@Brent

The difference is that most MMOs make a point of the fact that in-game moneies exists only in game, trading virtual goods for real money is illegal, whereas in second life, Linden have basically tried to create the right to print money, and they are going to deal with the repurcussions of that.

If someone stole your stuff in another MMO and then sold it on, then it would be the companies problem, not yours, you aren't losing any real money, only virtual equipment, and the seller would be breaching the terms of playing the game, so you wouldn't be able to sue for lost earnings, because there were no earnings on your part to lose.

This, however, is another matter, the plaintiff has lost real-life money, considering they also spend real life money for advertising, keeping a shop open etc (iirc you rent land in SL) then they would expect a return for that investment, if someone copies their items and then sells them on for the eqiuvalent of real money, then it becomes a matter where there is actual loss of real income and a situation where you can sue.

@DavCube

Agreed, it's over the top, but it's the rod Linden made for their own back, I, personally, can see second life ending one day in a storm of Karma, they are too involved with peoples first lives to be a second one, and by constantly crossing the line between the two, I have a feeling there's a lot of unpleasantness ahead over this sort of thing.

If real money wasn't involved, this wouldn't have happened.

It's funny, no matter how far technology advances and how many new gizmos are invented. Someone will look at it and think, "I would really like to have sex with that or stick it in someone's ass."

For some reason that makes me think of the Mensa jerks that just sit around sovling puzzles and showing off how smart they are instead of solving real problems.

I think a bigger problem is the encouragement of virtual prostitution.

@Brent

I'm inclined to agree with you, you cannot simply apply the law as it suits, as I think someone else here mentioned, if the evidence gathered is admissiable in a court of law, so is that fact that the owners property was illegally broken into in order to gather it, the Law cannot be applied as it suits people else it's not a law.

I'm still convinced the crux of the matter is that Linden Labs have taken on this responsiblity and they are going to have to deal with it, it's going to get a lot lot worse before it gets better, basically, it'll be like the .COM bubble all over again.

"Dog_Welder Says:
October 28th, 2007 at 11:54 am

This just reinforces my theory that Second Life is only populated by sex fetishists and politicians."

Hah. I have been beaten, well done sir.

Although there are more interesting issues in this case, there is a problem of subject matter jurisdiction. It involves the certificates of registration, which were referenced by a couple of people above.

Before a plaintiff can file a claim for copyright infringement, he or she must register the copyright in the relevant work with the Copyright Office. Without the registration, a federal court lacks subject matter jurisdiction over an infringement claim.

Under 17 U.S.C. 411(a), "no action for infringement of the copyright in any United States work shall be instituted until preregistration or registration of the copyright claim has been made in accordance with this title. In any case, however, where the deposit, application, and fee required for registration have been delivered to the Copyright Office in proper form and registration has been refused, the applicant is entitled to institute an action for infringement if notice thereof, with a copy of the complaint, is served on the Register of Copyrights."*

In the present case, the complaint does not reference the jurisdictional requirements of 411(a). For most courts, section 411(a) requires filing an application with the Copyright Office AND receiving a response, either in the form of a registration certificate or a refusal to issue a certificate. An application alone is not sufficient, and it looks like that's all the plaintiffs have so far. (Paragraphs 28, 40, 51, 62, 73, and 84.) In the view of some courts, however, merely filing an application is sufficient to confer subject matter jurisdiction, but the defendant in this case could very plausibly move to dismiss the copyright infringement claim, given the majority view. Or the judge could raise the issue herself.

There is one other jurisdictional problem in the complaint, but it probably doesn't make any difference. Although the complaint raises federal questions, including federal questions under the Lanham Act, the complaint also asserts that the court has diversity jurisdiction. Diversity jurisdiction allows federal courts to hear cases that do not arise under federal law, provided the plaintiffs and defendants are citizens of different states.** The complaint, however, fails to allege the citizenship of most of the parties. Paragraphs 5, 6, 7, 8, and 10 provide only the parties' states of residence. Residence is not the same as citizenship for purposes of establishing diversity jurisdiction. Hence, the complaint should contain the parties' states of citizenship. See, e.g., Leveraged Leasing Administration Corp. v. Pacificorp Capital, 87 F.3d 44, 47 (2d Cir. 1996) ("It is also clear that a statement of the parties' residence is insufficient to establish their citizenship."). But again, this probably doesn't matter since the Lanham Act claims raise federal questions.

-Bill

*More on 411 here:
http://williampatry.blogspot.com/2007/07/plain-meaning-and-section-411a....
(Copyright guru William Patry says the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit follows the rule that an application alone is insufficient for purposes of 411(a), which would then control in the present case and mandate a dismissal of the infringement claim. I'm not yet persuaded that the Second Circuit has spoken clearly on this question, which would then leave the question open for the district court.)

**In Take-Two v. Thompson, which was covered on this blog a while back, Take-Two alleged that Jack Thompson was a citizen of Florida. (Complaint, paragraph 2.) Jack Thompson denied this allegation and said, "No one is a citizen of a state. People are citizens of countries, and Thompson is a citizen of the United States." (Amended Answer, paragraph 2.) But Article III, section 2 of the United States Constitution refers to "Citizens of different states." And 28 U.S.C. 1332, the diversity jurisdiction statute, refers to "citizens of different states." So Jack Thompson was mistaken. Plus, it was an odd thing to say.

Any original work with fixed expression, including electronic fixation, is protected by copyright in the U.S.

@William Ford- Of course, as I'm sure you know a person can register their copyright at any time during the life of the copyright. You'll get additional advantages the earlier you register it, but you can still register it and bring a suit at pretty much any point. So I'm pretty sure the suit can eventually occur. Turnaround at the Copyright Office will take several months, though.

@ Ghost coins

"What I am really interested in is the application of copyright law in a virtual world. It is my understanding that these products are actually copyrighted by their owners, but how does Linden Labs certify a copyright certificate, and who do they go through?"

This is precisely what I'm interested in finding out. It was definitely an inevitable matter, it looks like it's time for it to be settled. Or at least for SOME kind of precedent to be set.

Sry, they should seek virtual justice in the virtual world.

Unless the "items" (ie. the coded items that were stolen) are in someway patented or otherwise copyrighted, there is no real way to stop someone taking them under fair use in the real world.

This is why game worlds have rules (eg. no using hacks). Just delete the guys account and restore the items... = \

Alternately, set up Second Life courts to deal with Second Life crime. This is just another waste of taxpayers money (I'm not even a US citizen and I feel a tad outraged that your cash is being p#ssed away like this)

Although, this raises a very real question of where you find 12 virtual jury members who are willing to abandon their 2nd Life f#ckfest long enough to hear evidence. ; )

@Brent

I think you are running down the slippery slope more then nessesary. Take away the 'game' and 'virtual word' labels and this quickly reduces to simple IP law, which is pretty well established.

Person A creates block of IP for sale. Person B finds a way to copy that block and starts selling it at reduced cost. There are many existing examples of pure virtual IP (the logic blocks ARM sells are a good example), or for that matter, eBooks and the like.

Laws DO apply to virtual worlds when they have real life effects, or more accuratly, those real life effects are covered by real laws. Just because something happens on-line does not make it exempt from the legal system.

(Whoa, two "person A" posts. That wasn't there when I started! Honest!)

Again I don't think people are understanding exactly what has gone on here. These people have sent a cease and desist to the fellow...his response was take a flying leap. They have contacted the game masters....they got no response. This was their last choice in dealing with this situation. And as for them going to the guys virtual apartment...If its flagged as open for all its ok for them to go there. He could of easily locked people out....Its like stealing a bunch of things and hiding them in a public place.

Oh and Dennis why don't you change the name of this article? I think the title is part of why people don't take it seriously. From what I've read yes some were sex toys but just as many were furniture, clothes, and so on.

@Brent Hay: The law protects copyright. The medium doesn't matter - book, painting, website, Second Life product. If you breach copyright you can be sued.

Being protected against breaking and entering, trespass or whatever is not the same. It specifically refers to physical property, not diaries, email boxes, virtual apartments etc. I suppose he could sue them for causing him emotional distress, but that's not the same thing at all.

He's just being cheeky and trying to confuse people about what the legal issue actually is by comparing the two. This is not some sort of "game crime", it's a clear IP issue that just happens to be occurring within SL.

True your breaking in to new ground but if they are bending the law to apply Copyright (assuming they did patent it before the even in question happen) why not trespass? He bought a section of property and assuming he told them no to enter they would be guilty of trespass. Argo they would also be guilty of legal search and seizure. Its breaking in to new legal ground but Why not?

The problem is also that Linden Lab is not always responding correctly when designers point them at 'stolen' content. It is quite easy to steal clothing textures for instance. They are put up for sale by the thief and the original designer reports that to Linden Lab. If the designer is lucky, Linden Lab might take the 'duplicate shop' down and might ban/punish the violating avatar (there is no way to check that out for sure).

But then what happens? Another avatar appears selling the stolen stuff or the previous said avatar just relocates his shop.

So although I admit that having the first claim about SexGen beds is indeed funny, I believe this case is not a bad thing. Rulings will make how we should regard 'virtual goods' much more clear. If only the Bragg case wasn't settled we should have an idea about virtual land ownership by now too. :(

Again the property some of you are trying to say they "possibly" illegally searched is a nonissue. Like I said its a public area in the game. He could from what i understand...easily shut everyone, specific people, or all but a list from his property. It would be like going to an auction and seeing your artwork up for sale. Are you saying at a public auction you couldn't go and take pictures to prove they were infact selling your stuff? Thats about what this equates to...

er, for "not to be private" in the second paragraph, read "to be private"

*************
InJM said:

According to my limited SL knowledge, it is illegal to take an item without the owner’s permission and when those items are linked to real life money, then things get sticky.
*************

Yeah, I imagined there would be some in game penalty for stealing in SL.

The ultimate redress to this situation is for a game administrator to ban the offenders account and extract either the item or a comparable amount of in game paraphernalia to compensate the victim for his losses.

There is no overriding law controlling virtual items because each game (each world) has it's own set of terms and conditions that are not uniform to begin with. Blizzard will not condone exchange of virtual property for real world funds on US servers. Sony permits some cash for virtual property on particular servers who have an item exchange.

Unless all MMO's play by the same virtual property rules, I think anyone with an ounce of sense would throw responsibility back to the operators of the game. After all, most games specify that any item you get in game is licensed, not owned.

eg. Blizzard can and will change the stats on an item for game balance, sometimes making an extremely valuable item relatively worthless. Thunderfury (a legendary sword) was such an item. Crafted at lvl 60, it was still potent at lvl 70. So Blizz changed it so that the effect that made it so potent didn't work nearly as well vs lvl 70 mobs. Overnight, a weapon that took many hours to complete became relatively useless, and further, people had often sold or passed over lvl 70 items which would have replaced it in it's post "fix" condition. Does that mean that every TFury owner can sue blizz for devaluing an item that cost them a lot of time and effort to make?

What somerguy said. SL's "ingame help" probably doesn't match up to what Blizzard or other subscription MMOs have.

Yes, that does need to be emphasised, I think a lot of people get confused and think it's all "you stole my Cloudsong".

Crafting objects in most MMOs basically just means you pick from a number of pre-created things that were made by one of the game devs. You might need to have the right ingredients and skills but you're only making it "yourself" in game terms. You, the person playing the game, isn't really making anything.

Creating objects in SL means you use the in-game design tools to build an object in SL, constructing it from prims, texturing it, programming it. You may also be using outside programs to create parts which you then upload e.g. textures, sounds, meshes, animations, where it's not really practical to have creation tools within the client.

You can build whatever it is you want to and there is no input by the devs apart from to give you the tools and the servers to use the objects on in the first place (which is hardly nothing, but Adobe don't have input on something I make with Photoshop apart from making the tool in the first place either) and a few free textures and samples to get you started. Very little of the content you see in SL has been created by LL - trees, ground textures, the sky, that sort of thing, and a few actual buildings and areas, not many. Almost everything around you has been built by a resident at some stage.

I could log in and, say, script a system which scrapes weather data for a location from the web and simulates that with clouds, rain, wind and so on in-world. This is very different from having to grind my way up to a level and find the right materials to craft a Magic Weather Globe.

But this is a game, @Matthew if it weren't would it be posted here? As well as the fact that by collecting evidence by breaking into his 'virtual home' without permission and taking photos of the premises without permission, they broke US law as well, nulling all the evidence.

Well SAID Ashton! WHen ya boil it all down and scrape the scum off the top, it's ALL just a matter of supply and demand, eh? I don't believe SL creations (or ANY other) are defined as "Intellectual Property" lightly. IMHO;... "If someone is willing to pay for it... It's art."

I think virtual sex toys are the wave of the future and are going to become the popular sex toys on the market around 2010.