Second Life
So the CopyBot I first heard about on Sunday is being sold on a shopping website for around $10US. I had a bit of discussion with Salazar last night - and with a few others. The thing people have been bringing up is, "Why make things and try to sell them anymore?" At this point that's overreacting if one acts upon it; I think, however it's a good theoretical question.

Many - not older residents like me, but many, many Second Lifers were brought in by the "make real money!" advertising that worked too well, some think. Even if the focus on money (I can't tell you how many bazillions of times a brand-new person has asked me, "How do I make money?") was not particularly subtle it was true enough at its core. You could, with talent and work and hours spent, make money.

People are now beginning to think that it won't be worth it if they spent 10 hours or so making a nice new product only to have someone reproduce it with open perms, and sell it or give it away, having invested 5 seconds and the CopyBot price (which, I hear, might be given away by another person who doesn't like the fact that someone is making money from this thing).

Although it's the internet and nothing is forever protected, it's certainly true that a smart group of people has pushed this issue in front of us now, when it might not've surfaced naturally for some time. As technology is evolving quickly you could argue that this is a way for it to evolve ways to protect content, or you could argue that had this not been created by libSL the technology might've developed in such a way that this hack wouldn't be as threatening at the point in the future it popped up. Either way we are caught with our trousers around our ankles now.