Attached Link: http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2007/10/herman-miller-c.html

There is a flag that can be set to prevent the sharing of textures and objects in SecondLife, but it seems that the copybots, that somebody unleashed, make that feature moot. Linden will delete accounts that use it as a TOS violation, but that requires finding and reporting the problem on a one-by-one basis. That's the same real world problem with copyright violations on the internet. The problem in SL is a subset of the larger problem on the net. In terms of hurting merchant profits, the copyright violations outside of SL are a significantly greater issue. That's not to excuse what's happening in SL, but more a matter of putitng it in perspective.

The point I'm trying to make is that the problem in SL does not equate to there being a worse class of people who use that online community than what exists outside of that community. I'm always concerned when people make wide aspersions against various groups. I was amazed at the amount of vitriol I received when I announced that I'd created a Poser forum in MySpace. People need to separate emotions from logic and not so blindly accept media hyperbole that is used to sell circulation to advertisers. The vast majority of SL members are not thieves or bad people. The million dollars a day being exchanged in that world attests to the honesty of the majority of members. Where there is a lot of money changing hands, there will be thieves. It doesn't matter whether we're talking SL, the net, or real world.

The real solution to the copyright problems in SL would be for Linden to eventually do away with converting their SL money to real money for the general in-world populace. That wouldn't stop all thefts, but would minimize it because there would be no real world profits to be made. They could then authorize real stores on a case by case basis that could earn real money from Linden sales. Controlling who can have a store reduces the amount of copyright violations and makes it easier to control when it happens. That would take more work for them, but having a virtual environment that can readily compromise copyrights puts more responsibility on them to protect copyrights. Other virtual worlds are controlled wholly by the companies that run them and users cannot introduce or readily change elements in those worlds.

I'd have to agree that the new texture converter plug-in is going to be subject to rampant abuse. I'd at least hope that it downsizes the texture to the low resolution of a P2 figure.

Furniture maker, Herman Miller, took an interesting approach to SL vendors selling knock-offs of their real world products and I've provided a link the article. Herman Miller took a nice proactive direction to solving the problem by selling offical wares in SL. I have no idea how that approach worked in the long run.

I wonder what went wrong with DAZ's entry into SL. They invested a substantial amount of time and money to establish a presence there and abandoned it (though they must still be paying the monthly fee for maintaining the island). It seemed they were hoping for merchant support that never came.

My visual indexes of Poser content are at http://www.sharecg.com/pf/rgagnon