Copybot 2.0 Image courtesy of Vint Falken
One of the things you quickly realise between being a blogger and a content creator is that you have to weigh up when to give coverage to such a tool as Copybot, and what the ramifications are to yourself as a content creator.
I’ve known about copybot clients for years now, but I’ve always refused to publish names and certainly won’t link to any. Ann O’Toole sent me a link to a copybot blog after yesterday’s article which is distributing entire builds. But by simply writing about them- even if you’re denouncing it – you still raise awareness of where they are and how to access them. As they say, there’s no such thing as bad publicity – it’s all still publicity.
The converse is that the more coverage you give to something like this, the more people who will be geared into doing something constructive about it.
Copybot is one of those issues I always danced around, simply because to entertain it may do more damage than harm. Advocates would harper on about it being a useful tool to some, but that’s like saying torrents are useful tools. It’s true, but the number of people using it as a useful tool is overshadowed compared to how many utilise it for illict purposes.
I maintain that the vast majority of Second Life users don’t read blogs, so it may not be an issue – although a thief with a search engine can be a dangerous thing. And the bigger a blog is, the wider its sphere of influence, and with that comes a social responsibility.
My own social responsibility has always included to avoid naming names – when you start targeting individuals, you play a crass game which delves you into gutter blogging. And usually, said people are perfectly capable of identifying themselves.
Copybot clients differ slightly, as they’re not individuals. But by giving their name, are you not just enabling someone to steal? Would this not make you a co-conspirator? It’s not as if Google won’t find a link pretty quickly..
There are still some copybot clients out there which I know of, but nobody I’ve seen has mentioned. I’m sure there are others which I’m unaware of, and are under the radar. Thing is – does outing their names provide awareness to the SL community to protect themselves, or does it just enable those who want to steal to go forth and do so?
Lizzie Lexington on September 29, 2009
I have been saying this privately to individuals involved in content creation for a while. Sometimes drawing attention to an “issue” makes it a bigger problem than it was to begin with. Hows that for agreeing with ya, YAY!
Crap Mariner on September 29, 2009
Hrm… is there a third choice?
-ls/cm
Ann Otoole on September 29, 2009
From what screenshots have been passed around and came my way most of the “tools that shall not be named” are all basically the same thing. I guess all the cool kids want to feel like they made something clever so they grabbed the source for one and changed the name on it.
The one we can detect? Sure name it. Let everyone that wants to run it and get their accounts banned from SL if not hacked from keyloggers. Just that many less idiots in SL.
I think we can see that LL is going to refuse to put language in the TOS in respect to these clients so I guess the left wingnut ideology problem is still present.
Paisley Beebe on September 30, 2009
You should publicise the issue….not the names of links that provide the means to steal. Not discussing, Not publicising pushes it underground, prevents public awareness and keeps victims and would be victims vulnerable. In general, this is good practice for all crime and abuse. A comparison would be child abuse, for centuries it was either excepted or buried. Has publicising it? prosecuting the perpetrators made it worse? it has certainly provided more support to the victims.
Publicising the crime of free downloading and trying to educate the general public may or may not have helped. I certainly know now every time I play a DVD that downloading a “free” movie is a crime. does it want me go steal one, well… no Im a reasonable moral person. Its the reasonable moral people we need to educate and lots of those still think SL is a sort of cartoon “free for all” world where the normal rules of RL don’t apply. We also want to give support to the victims and help them to stop the theft and distribution through educating them on what they actually can be doing to report the theft ect…
Yes if you are a immoral thief bent on revenge, laughs or whatever, you will find these viewers, even just googling copybot viewer…no need to get the actual name. “Step Up” is hoping to educate the users of SL about how to spot a stolen copy, and that it is against the TOS for SL, to use one of these viewers in this way. Its not just a “game” where RL rules do not apply.
There are so many analogies in RL you can apply to the “Lets Not Publicise it or everyone will get the idea”, where the sad upshot of this attitude results in more victims…vulnerable through lack of awareness of their rights, with no forum to speak about the abuse to them, and gain help and support.
Paisley
Lizzie Lexington on September 30, 2009
I get what you mean Paisley but I hate comparing this issue to child abuse – that’s whole other thing in my opinion. Making people aware of child abuse is about protecting innocent lives. Its just different.