Not That I've Ever Mentioned This Before About SecondLife: Trademark Infringement

Second Life -- A Whole New World of Trademark Infringement? (Sarah Adamczyk, Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic, UC Berkeley, October 27, 2006):

...Trademark violations, however, are an entirely different issue. The DMCA does not apply to trademark infringement and, while most service providers merely host trademark infringing material that would not be considered “in commerce” under the Lanham Act, the sale of knockoff goods in Second Life clearly constitutes business commerce. Any argument that Second Life could be protected under Section 230(c) of the Common Decency Act of 1996 must be tempered by the S.D.N.Y. opinion in Gucci America, Inc. v. Hall & Assoc. [2] In that case, the court held that ISP immunity under Section 230(c) was constrained by the language in Section 230(e)(2), which stated, “Nothing in this section shall be construed to limit or expand any law pertaining to intellectual property.” Since the DMCA was enacted two years after the CDA, the court found no legislative intent for Section 230(c) to provide immunity for all IP infringing activity since “[t]o find otherwise would render the immunities created by the DMCA from copyright infringement actions superfluous.”

Second Life itself may be able to enforce trademark and copyright infringements through the “terms of service agreement” to which all residents consent. Though Second Life does not formally police for infringement, there are incentives for Second Life to limit trademark infringement. As big companies are opening shop in Second Life, few will invest significantly if they feel their trademark has been diluted through unlicensed products. It’s unclear what Second Life’s capacity is to enforce black market activity—with more than 10,000 residents active at any given time, there are as many means for selling knockoff goods in Second Life as there are in the real world.

Ultimately, Linden Labs, the creator of Second Life, relies on the vigilance of SL community residents to monitor trademark and copyright abuses. Yet one boutique still sells a virtual reproduction of the entire Ikea catalog. Virtual computers with the Apple logo have been sold, without Apple’s permission. Residents walk the streets of Second Life wearing knockoff clothes and are solicited by black-market vendors selling entire lines of counterfeit goods. Linden Labs may not actively be seeking out offending material, but many of the infringing acts are so rampant and blatant that ignoring these abuses practically amounts to willful ignorance.

Maybe I wrote about this before. Brother, can you spare a landspeeder?

But seriously - I haven't seen a way to report abuse of trademark, and to report the abuse of copyright using DMCA you have to be the complaintant and you have to write a letter.

So I don't see how the community polices trademark issues. The community certainly can't report copyright violations through the present system unless they are the complaintants. Hmm. And then, of course, comes the litigation... again...

A little help here? Yeah, you, Darth Vader. We're sending you to the next evolution of WSIS to explain this problem. Sure, you can use my landspeeder.