Second Life sex program lawsuit
Second Life; full of weirdos and sexy lawsuits. Allegedly.
That said, today's first is a little bit more interesting than most others, if only because of the adult nature.
The real world owner of one of SL's most popular sex programs, which gives users realistic 'equipment' and provides them with the resulting animations, has been forced into court to protect his rude programing skills.
You see, Second Life is filled with user-generated content and users who create in-game items and animations may then sell them on to other users for the in-game currency, Linden Dollars, which have a real exchange rate and everything.
Kevin Alderman, owner of SL company Eros LLC, created the sexy program and has sold it within quite successfully for the last four years. Recently though, Kevin found out that an avatar called 'Volkov Catteneo' has been reselling his work without permission. When Alderman confronted Volkov, he reportedly responded with; "What are you going to do? Sue me?"
Yes, he is.
Apparently, this is the first real-world litigation between customers of the game, with the crux being that items created in a game by a user are owned by the creator, along with the copyright. It seems Alderman has a perfectly valid case of copyright infringement on his hands then and has set his lawyers to the task of gathering PayPal records and evidence for the case ahead.
Ever tried Second Life? Ever stolen or pirated software? Let us know in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyAnd this case is bad news, as it blurs the line between virtual and real and would give the US government a stronger case to tax virtual worlds. As i imagine one of the arguments will be loss of earnings, and if you can sue for it i'm pretty sure you can tax it :(
Thankfully not, I try my best to stay clear of it!
You know when things are bad when you require a second life, not content with the one you have.
Just erase the game and servers I say, be a lot less headaches for us all.
i am thinking of Glider..... :p
I know only 1 person with a completely legal system. She buys her music off of iTunes and everything.
It's sad when I only know one person who doesn't commit internet piracy...
:D
Vista ultimate for $40 and office ultimate for $70 i think it was.
Still, if the guy had created content of his own and the other is making a profit without the author's permission (and even laughing at his face as it seems), I say GO!! and crunch him under mountains of legal papers. That'll teach him to play fair... and some respect for others' work.
I would be one of those people, there's no need for illegal software when we have free alternatives.
Thats a good idea, he should sue for the money they use in the game.
So is Second Life. There is an essential blind spot in many people's minds in relation to Second Life (many of them even from inside SL) because it uses game system mechanics (logging into an online virtual world populated by 3d figures on a 3d landscape) that it is a game, but in essence, all SL IS is just another venue for the transfer of information from one person to one or more other people. One of the stated objectives of SL by it's designers, is for it to be the next stage of evolution for the web. There are no objectives except those one sets for oneself . Like the web, it's simply an environment onto which people impose their personal agendas.
The press, of course, focuses on the E Ticket items - people making money in SL, and of course the Sex. Making money is no big thing; anyone with something to sell and an email address can get a paypal account and conduct business through the web. People make money off of all kinds of non-essential items: from designer clothes, to ringtones. Useless fripperies, as true in first life as in Second Life. Now sex, sex has glommed onto every form of communication since cave paintings. Porn drove the VHS standard, the CD Rom, the DVD, and many web protocols. Is it a surprise to anyone that it's in SL? Everyone talks about the uselessness of virtual sex, but someone's got to be lying, because porn is EVERYWHERE. Last time I was in Rome, across the street from the Vatican, I saw some of the filthiest smut you can imagine at a street vendor, tucked in with the humorous postcards of Michaelangelo 's David's cock, and the the latest Michellin travel guides. Porn is a HUGE business, so someone somewhere is buying it, and not just some trenchcoat wearing sociopaths. What's the difference between a virtual call-girl and a smutty story with pictures in a magazine? Only the interactive aspect - there's a real person, disinterested or not, at the other end of those pixels.
Myself, I've been a digital compositor for the film and television industry for 11 years now. I rode the dot.com roller coaster, been married, divorced, and like Billy the Kid for killing, averaged out, been with a different woman for every year I've lived (and I was around when Camelot fell in the streets of Dallas, barely). I've wallowed in life, eaten it's fruits with appetite and appreciation. And I see Second Life not so much as an escape from my first life, but as an _extention_ - a new avenue for exploration and communication. Working in the film industry has been vastly rewarding, but even there, I never (directly) worked for a member of the peerage, a knight; however, in SL I did - a visiting surgeon who was giving a talk inWorld, and wanted an avatar that resembled him. On any given day I can chat with PhD's and artists, bricklayers and doctors, hookers and priests. I can attend a "live" reading by Vonnegut, or go to a concert given by an obscure Australian garage band. If I were so inclined, I could build an exact full scale model of my rw home and consult with decorators from around the world, live and in situ, and make the changes there and then, and even get an estimate on what it would cost to make those changes in the outside world.
Mind you, it's far from perfect. It has problems like any other forum. Plenty of folks endanger primary relationships over it, or pass up opportunities to pursue it - however, plenty of folks will allow anything to have that degree of focus in their lives: from religion to politics to sports. They're seeking a plug for some hole in their lives, as EVERYONE is - some simply take it too far, and that's not just a problem with SL.
I'm not saying it's deadly serious, however, SL isn't a game. It's a tool - for fun, or business, or self-expression.
* Consider if you will: not 20 years ago, the idea of a person with a pod stuck in their ear allowing anyone to access them 24/7 like a a piece of required data would have been the crux of a sci fi cautionary tale - today, it's business as usual. The phone has within my adult lifetime changed from a feature of a place (home, office, or if you're a captain of industry, a radiophone in your car!) to a feature of a fully functional, socially integrated person.
I think the recommended ones are like a human body and mind or something. I haven't checked in a while though.
Glass houses....