![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.hypergridbusiness.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Cacha-on-the-go.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n(Image courtesy PocketGacha.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Second Life, with a much bigger economy than that of OpenSim, also has a much bigger problem with\u00a0copyright infringement than OpenSim<\/a>.<\/p>\n For instance, copybotters have long been using specialized third party viewers to duplicate creators\u2019 content and offer them for sale, lowering demand for the legitimate versions of the items and demoralizing creators.<\/p>\n More recently, content thieves have been exploiting a glitch to create illegal copies of products are reselling them.<\/p>\n These dupers may have cost creators and original owners thousands of dollars over the past two years, Oobleck\u00a0Allagash, founder and creator of\u00a0PocketGacha<\/a>\u00a0in Second Life,<\/span>\u00a0told\u00a0Hypergrid Business<\/em>.<\/p>\n This is a particularly vexing problem for the extremely popular Gacha ecosystem.<\/p>\n Gachas are vending machines that give customers random items, some more rare and valuable than others. Customers who get items they don\u2019t want can trade them or sell them, creating a hot resale market and increasing the appeal of the Gatcha system.<\/p>\n \u201cThe best I can muster for a speculative look at this would be that tens of thousands of real life dollars were lost over the past two years,\u201d he said. \u201cThat would be a significant blow to sales by creators, many of whom are one-person cottage industry artists whose livelihoods depend on every sale.\u201d<\/p>\n Allagash recently discovered that items from his company were being resold without permission on the Second Life Marketplace. He discovered this by checking the back-end records for PocketGacha, a HUD-based system for merchants that tracks players and sales.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is an exploit that involves the person crashing a sim and duplicating a transfer item in unlimited amounts,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u201cIt duplicates perfectly with all the original aspects intact and the creator name the same.\u201d<\/p>\n PocketGacha helps users to \u201cbuy on the fly\u201d as they demo products and avoid lag issues in a crowded sim. Without PocketGacha, users would need to first gather demo items, go home, try them on, make a list and then go to find the items at the event to buy the ones they like.<\/p>\n For the past few years, Second Life has\u00a0been lax in addressing the problem, said Allagash. The company has been reluctant to remove dupers from the ecosystem, and instead remove only the affected Gacha, but the duper remains in the ecosystem, and continues to re-post the removed Gacha.<\/p>\n \u201cMany of these dupers have multiple DMCA take-downs of single sets yet continue as users and sellers without being banned or removed from the game,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n That is beginning to change.<\/p>\n On Wednesday, Second Life banned one well known duper, an act Allagash applauds.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are very happy that in light of it taking time to patch all of the exploits Linden Lab is now taking steps to properly remove violators and a develop a stop gap to protect creator content,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The company said in\u00a0post\u00a0<\/a>last month that they are continually creating new tools and discovering new techniques to solve this problem and have put in place techniques and methods that are bearing fruits. They also said their move to the cloud would allow introducing new products that would help stop the bad guys.<\/p>\n But while errors and glitches that allow copy of transfer items can occur, Linden Lab should, after two years, have come up with a method to identify and remove the bad actors from the grid, according to Allagash.<\/p>\n \u201cLinden Lab has the ability to investigate the dupers and see within minutes irregularities with listings on Marketplace which have impossible quantities loaded for sale,\u201d he said. \u201cIn addition, while an IP ban might not completely work, each person is required to have billing information and there are ways to regulate things with these obvious culprits.\u201d<\/p>\n Being too aggressive about removing these sellers may hurt the bottom line, both in terms of resources spent addressing the problem, and in the form of lost revenues.<\/p>\n Linden Lab collects a five percent commission on all products sold in the Marketplace.<\/p>\n The behavior is also unwelcome and those doing it also hurt their creativity, another creator who has been in Second Life since 2003, Lupus Furyo, told\u00a0Hypergrid Business.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cSecond Life creators, just like any other, infuse their spirit in their digital creations, and it\u2019s impossible to steal their work by just copying and selling their stuff,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s exactly what many people engaged in such activity never got right. One does not learn anything by following that kind of path in their\u00a0life<\/span>\u00a0whether virtual or real\u201d.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, High Fidelity has already rolled out\u00a0Digital Asset Registry<\/a>, a blockchain-based system that lets virtual world users attach digital certificates to their creations using digital fingerprints to secure item origins and unique ownership.<\/p>\n Item ownership will remain on the items regardless of where the items are distributed in the virtual world. There will also be a new cryptocurrency-based High Fidelity Coin that users can use to purchase products from the marketplace\u00a0Avatar Island<\/a>, and which can be traded on cryptocurrency exchanges.<\/p>\n Users can also offer their items for sale to other users on the Avatar Island.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (Image courtesy PocketGacha.) Second Life, with a much bigger economy than that of OpenSim, also has a much bigger problem with\u00a0copyright infringement than OpenSim. For instance, copybotters have long been using specialized third party viewers to duplicate creators\u2019 content and offer them for sale, lowering demand for the legitimate versions of the items and demoralizing … Continue reading