Second life has been a bogey on my radar for long. It also seems to host a number of Creative Commons shin-digs, so I find this article titled
'Second Life' faces threat to its virtual economy To be quite odd:
Groups of Second Life content creators were gathering digitally Tuesday to protest the dissemination of a program they worry could badly damage the virtual world's nascent economy.
The controversy gathered steam Monday when Linden Lab, which publishes Second Life, posted a blog alerting residents of the virtual world to the existence of a program or bot called CopyBot, which allows someone to copy any object in Second Life. That includes goods such as clothing that people purchase for their in-world avatars, and even the virtual PCs that computer giant Dell announced Tuesday it is going to sell in the digital world.
Quoting one of the protesters, the article goes on to say:
"The essence of the creativity in this world is largely because of creators and their work being protected," Mallon said. "This tool defeats all protection. So if you labor to build a business like we all have, your work can be stolen."
The analogy to copyright is not too hard to see.
Update: Cory Doctorow has a much more in depth analysis of the snarls of this issue
here.
