The Reality of the CopyBot (Updated)
Submitted by Taran on Tue, 11/14/2006 - 20:08
Update: Use of CopyBot and Similar Tools a ToS Violation - see?
Kitten Lulu mentioned the Copybot yesterday after the Sun Microsystems event. My initial reaction was, "That's BAD" (an exact quote). I didn't write about it since I was mulling over a few things related to copyright within SecondLife, and also because writing about it and inflaming it wasn't something I saw as worthwhile.
The reality is clearcut. Because of the nature of data traveling back and forth between the SecondLife server(s) and client. Kitten pointed me to this blog entry yesterday, which points to libsl. The specific thing to read there is that Copybot wasn't for sale.
Fair enough. But then, Prim Revolution put it up for sale. The jump to Prim Revolution's capacity to sell the product is of specific interest - how did this person get Copybot? The account was created yesterday (11/13/2006). No payment info on file. Who is this masked fellow, and how did he have such a prescient name? There's room for speculation there, of course.
Meanwhile, Robin Linden had met with the Seller's Guild and posted a blog entry about the whole thing. I posted a drowsy response which, in retrospect, was a mixing of issues I was thinking about and didn't belong there. Mea culpa.
But when I read the blog entry, I couldn't help but think.... "The sellers guild, who are they? And... isn't that sort of like inviting the wolves to discuss dinner?" The non-business owner is concerned in this too - but how? They are dinner. And, in an odd twist, I've been reading Edward Castronova's Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games
Then I remembered another person I know in SecondLife mentioning, "Maybe this will cause the business owners to open up a little." Open, in this sense, means less proprietary. And the reality of the copyright protection mechanisms in SecondLife is that once it's yours, it's yours for the life of SecondLife. I await the day when someone in real life inherits a SecondLife estate, or another virtual world estate.
In it's own way, the fears of business owners are the dreams of many newcomers in SecondLife. Many things cost over $1 US - which in itself is a matter of supply and demand. Well, the supply went up. The cost should go down. That's business, which is something that in the real world the RIAA, MPAA and BSA haven't managed to figure out through the reel to reel, the cassette
recorder, the CD burner, the DVD burner... and the internet.
At 3 years old, SecondLife has caught up quickly to the sophistication of the real world. Now that the copybot is out, the sense of security that business owners had over what they create and it's inability to be copied has been shaken. Even if the copybot goes away and never comes back again, what business owners are really afraid of is simply loss of profits.
Therefore, the sensible thing to do is to decrease prices so that copying 'illegally' is not something which people want to do. And in a way they have done so - by closing businesses, they've cut their own throats in a way over the threat that they would have their throats cut.
When these businesses reopen... will the prices be lower in an effort to make copying things less attractive?
And even as I write that and speak with someone about it, I get an IM -
I put on 20 classifieds earlier Nobody in the middle of a linden sea withthe word copy bot in it, I had no graphics on those until i was done writing them all.. and i can tell you that at LEAST 50 or so avatars tped into that spot as i was placing them
The point, of course, is that they will initially copy everything. But that will be balanced by the Lindens and community somehow, and then... it will waver... and when this all settles down...
Businesses will reopen, sims will reopen, prices will be the same. BUT the average person wouldn't even consider copying unless... prices are reasonable. The criminals? They'll always be there, doing such things, and they'll get caught, and they will be punished. As I wrote that, someone sent me a 'Simple Copybot Defeater' which IM spams people until people touch it. Apparently the copybot has problems with IM Spam.
In future, businesses might be well advised to keep an eye on their pricing. The nature of the technology in use will always allow some measure of copying. It just has to be less attractive. Constantly creating new things and realistic pricing are the only real defense business owners have. It's a lesson that the RIAA, MPAA and BSA haven't figured out in a period of globalization, but one which can be learned effectively within SecondLife.
Enjoy the ride.
Many things cost over $1 US
Many things cost over $1 US - which in itself is a matter of supply and demand. Well, the supply went up. The cost should go down.
Every single time I read an "argument" like this, it rekindles my desire to find the moron who convinced everyone they could be experts on economics just by remembering "supply and demand", and wipe out his entire blood line.
Guess what? There is a lot more to understanding economics and business than supply and demand. I know, goes against everything you've read on the internet by people who like to criticize copyright law and the concept of "intellectual property".
So let's get down to what you've completely missed... Cost of development, cost of materials, cost of tools, cost of maintaining a retail presence. These things are factors, in addition to supply and demand, as to whether or not it's worth anyone's time to create and sell content in the first place.
You demonstrate a complete ignorance of that when you say this:
"Therefore, the sensible thing to do is to decrease prices so that copying 'illegally' is not something which people want to do. And in a way they have done so - by closing businesses, they've cut their own throats in a way over the threat that they would have their throats cut."
Tell me, how exactly does a business cut their prices to compete with virtually free and still be able to pay to operate a retail space, let alone have an incentive to create content that people otherwise aren't creating only to have some jackass running copybot steal it the day they put it on the market?
That's the thing you've missed here. A lot of things that cost over a buck are items that aren't things that everyone is willing to pay any money for. These things can take hours, days, weeks, and longer in some cases to develop. They've gotten developed for their relatively smaller target markets, where enough have been willing and able to pay the price desired to make the creators work worth while.
Not everyone is out trying to sell to every guy with a few lindens in his pocket. In fact, I would say most of the better things to buy in SL are NOT targeted at every jane and john, but are found in specialty shops. Just because what you are buying has a virtually unlimited supply, does not mean you should only have to pay 1 linden for it. If only a thousand people are willing to pay money for it in the first place, then the creator is forced to sell it for a buck because some lazy jackass copied it and is now selling it for a buck in a giant bargain store, and the creator makes 1,000 lindens(a little under 4 bucks), for something that took him a couple of days to get right, tell me exactly where is the incentive to create?
That is why some of the shops are closing down. They're hoping to send a message to the community what the potential threat of this tool actually is. This is a real threat to the second life economy and it's a shame that so many people commenting on this with your viewpoint are as ignorant of economics and how businesses operate in the real world as you are. Sending the message that these guys are whining over nothing, or worse, that it's their fault for "high prices"(the nerve of someone asking me for a buck in exchange for enjoying the fruits of their labor! Don't they know that information wants to be free!) is very much wrong. These guys aren't the RIAA or the MPAA(and that's a real cheap shot BTW, bringing those bastards up here), these are mostly small business people, who do real work themselves to create things or pay others to create things.
You may not see the value of that to the community, especially if you've been infected with socialist dogma, but the value is there and if the second life economy goes down because of it, it's going to be a much less interesting place. Maybe all the people blaming and villainizing the business people could start creating stuff for us for free to realize a socialist utopia in second life. Free, because after all, the supply is limitless. Right?
This rhetoric sounds familiar.
It's the socialist remark that keeps popping up. I'm not a socialist, so that card doesn't play well. I'll trump it any day with a capitalist bent. Give me $1,000 every time you call me a socialist and I'll agree with you out of my capitalist nature. Geez.
The rhetoric is lost on me, you see. You can't whine about the challenges of being in business, you have to address them. By all means, if you cannot find a reasonable way to profit without exorbitant pricing, then by all means go with the exorbitant pricing. But by doing that, the incentive to copy increases.
This isn't about 'economics'. It's about keeping things within normal limits and so making copying things illegally and risking trouble less worth the risk. At what dollar amount would you risk getting sent to prison for? $1? $10? $100? $1,000,000?
That's not economics, it's a little trick called common sense. Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time. :-)
In it's own way, the fears
Prok, go away.
You're not welcome here. You're banned from this blog after this post too. And keep your trolling alts too.:-)
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