Content Theft and Second Life

Second Life provides a medium where people can express their creativity by allowing its users the abilities to create their own content and upload it in-world. Unfortunately, not everyone chose to the path of creation instead many others chose the path of theft by stealing what other users have created.

Second Life does not only allows its users to create. It also allows them to make or earn or profit from their creations through what is called a virtual economy where users can buy, trade and sell their creations to other users in exchange for an in-world currency called the Linden Dollars (L$). These Linden Dollars can be exchanged into real world currency like the US Dollar and be withdrawn as well.

As with anything that involves money or with things that has real life value, theft is also widespread in Second Life. Before, content thieves use a third party program called copybot but today they are using alternate viewers with copybot capabilities to do their dirty deeds. One of the more popular of this so called ripper viewers is CryoLife which was created by a developer who is now with the Greenlife Emerald Team (another alternate viewer).

Viewers like CryoLife made copybotting as easy as clicking a button or navigating a pie or dropdown menu. Anyone who is familiar with the official Second Life viewer can use it with ease. Other ripper viewers took it further by adding features that can steal texture, scripts, sounds and even avatar shapes.

The tools for stealing content in Second Life continue to advance while creators continue to be targets of thieves and rippers without any means of protecting themselves.

Currently, a few users of Second Life has filed a class action lawsuit against Linden Labs, developer and owner of Second Life, for allowing content theft to continue in-world and for profiting (indirectly or directly) from it. How will this turn of event affects content creators remains to be seen but I hope that in the end the result will bring an end to content theft in Second Life.