I think the arrival of the web is the key that now makes it all possible. I have attached a document I knocked together yesterday that sketches out how such a revenue model could work. Of course, this requires that the market is able to act collectively in making a deal with the vendor of the product. If the market wants a creature, then they collectively stump up the money. This means we need the ability to address the market as a whole and facilitate a sale to that market as a whole.
#Second life copybot scripts full
If we intend to obtain revenue through sale of creatures to a potentially very large market, then given that these things are digital artefacts I’d suggest that they are sold in a single transaction thus securing the full revenue in one go. I mentioned to X that one of the ways of avoiding the costs of preventing copying (let alone copyright infringement), is to abandon the attempt altogether. And it would be quite a development effort (as well as a hit on system performance) to engineer a system that could secure creatures from being copied. The problem with this is that the creatures must be prevented from being copied – in order not to quickly jeopardise further sale of the creature at an economic price.
![second life copybot scripts second life copybot scripts](https://www.outworldz.com/Secondlife/Tools/images/SLFemale.jpg)
by charging for sales of creatures from a gallery: either of those developed in-house or by players (who would be remunerated in some way). I had a very brief discussion with X recently of how revenue would be obtained from the MMOG game, i.e. Here’s a tiny segment of umpteen conversations I had on the subject (this one with the MD involving a colleague called ‘X’): Way back in 2000 I foresaw this issue (obvious to those with two brain cells). Already the story has several interesting facets, which I’ll write more about next week. All we can say for sure is that it will be fascinating to watch.
![second life copybot scripts second life copybot scripts](https://64.media.tumblr.com/9aeda66d054c46b1a80f82ac0e649632/7eff379f41d3f610-a2/s250x250_c1/125111ad8b1c2c71a3bd9bc7fda6fb41c6a72f21.jpg)
It’s too early to predict all of the impacts this will have. Like Lambourghinis and sorbet, manufactured virtual objects couldn’t easily be copied – until the CopyBot came along. Only you can make widgets, so people have to come to you to buy them. So if you design a cool virtual widget, you can “manufacture” copies to sell to people, but your customers can’t re-copy the widgets they buy. If you design an object in SecondLife, the system lets you make copies of the object, but if you mark the object as uncopyable, the system won’t let other users copy it. Could these businesses survive? Could any business that provided goods survive?Ī SecondLife business that designs and sells virtual objects faces the same challenge. There would be no waiting at the ice cream parlor, even on the hottest summer night. Lambourghini would have trouble selling cars. Needless to say, this would cause Big Trouble in the real-world economy. When you get down to the last cup in the freezer, just copy it again. Like the lime sorbet at the local ice cream parlor? Buy a cup, take it home, and fill your freezer with copies. Want a new Lambourghini sportscar? Just find one in a parking lot and copy it. Point this CopyGadget at any real-world object, push a button, and you get a perfect copy of that object. To understand the possible impact of CopyBot, imagine such a thing existed in real life. Most days, the SecondLife economy sees transactions worth a total of between $500,000 and $1,000,000 (real U.S. Quite a few people make their living in SecondLife, running businesses that make Linden-Dollar profits, which are then cashed in for U.S. Linden Dollars are real money – they can be traded for U.S.
![second life copybot scripts second life copybot scripts](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/secondlife-111120040336-phpapp02/85/exploiting-second-life-10-320.jpg)
Objects can be sold for a currency called Linden Dollars.
![second life copybot scripts second life copybot scripts](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/secondlife-111120040336-phpapp02/95/exploiting-second-life-11-728.jpg)
Residents are given a sophisticated toolset they can use to design complex objects, specifying the objects’ shape, appearance, and behavior. SecondLife has about 1.5 million residents. If you’re not familiar with virtual worlds, you might think the word “economy” is a stretch. (Here’s a Reuters story.) This raises some interesting technical issues, but I want to focus today on how it effects SecondLife’s economy. Somebody in SecondLife, a popular multiplayer virtual world, created a gadget called the CopyBot, which can make a perfect copy of any object in the SecondLife world. Here’s one from the It-Was-Only-a-Matter-of-Time file.