The practice of illegally copying or cloning objects in Second Life is a very big issue that should be taken seriously but there are merchants and creators specially in SLExchange who does not believe or do they care about this issue. In one thread, a creator and a merchant posted her case on content theft. She found one of her creations copied prim-per-prim and texture-per-texture and that can only be done by using a third party program. Fortunately, a DMCA complaint was filed with Linden Labs and it looked like the original creator won but what pissed me off is the fact that many argued that it isn’t possible and that CopyBot no longer exist.

An object owned by Korena Starbrook was copied and was being distributed for FREE! :(

Okay, there might not be anymore CopyBot programs out there but you don’t need a program named CopyBot to copy objects in Second Life. All you need is LibSecondLife’s Test Client and you can get that by downloading and installing LibSecondLife. LibSecondLife is the heart of almost all text based Second Life viewers out there which are commonly known as SL Bots.

Now, most of these bots omitted the ability to copy objects but not the Test Client. The Test Client has it all. With it, you can copy textures and objects regardless of permission. The only thing it can’t copy are scripts and animations. So, if you are planning to start a Second Life Business then I suggest you start with scripting and animation specially if you are paranoid about content theft.

Just by using two commands, you’ll be able to copy or duplicate any object you can find. These commands are the “export” and “import” commands. The “export” command saves the object data into your computer in an XML file while the “import” command reads an objects XML file and rebuild it in-world. It does this regardless of permission and copies the textures as well. Once the rebuilding is complete, the duplicate will have you as the creator with full permission to the object. Now, you can do whatever you want with it. Sell it, give it to friends, modify it, just about anything you can think you can do with a full permission object.

What was mentioned above can be easily done, not with a CopyBot program, but with LibSecondLife’s Test Client. There are so many technical people in Second Life. Programmers, engineers, scripters, etc. If I, a non-coder/non-programmer internet user, was able to figure this all out and successfully test it then just imagine how many people know about this and are copying other people’s creations everyday. Seriously, filing a DMCA complaint is nothing compared to the real damage such a practice can do to a creator and to Second Life itself.

I got interested with this CopyBot thing when I met a few people who happened to drop by my home in Second Life, 3 Stars and a Sun, and one of the guy mentioned somthing about copying and copybot. He also logged in another avatar and it said some weird line in public chat. Now, the other guy scolded the first guy for showing it to me. They stayed a little longer on my land doing some juvenile but harmless stuff before they left to go DEMO shopping.

Afterwards, I tried to search for this so called CopyBot but I never found it so I went back to LibSecondLife since it’s the source of all of this so called  Text Only clients for Second Life and downloaded the latest release. Unlike before where you still have to compile the source to get the Test Client, now you can easily download and install LibSecondLife and it comes with a compiled Test Client for you. Neat eh?

I’ve known about LibSecondLife and it’s Test Client for quite sometime now so I’m fairly familiar with it but what I wasn’t familiar with is that it can be used to copy objects and textures. Maybe because I wasn’t looking for it back then. I was mainly concern about, you know, using it for camping, LOL!

There are many ways of copying an object specially when the object you intend to copy is modifiable like you can copy it the hard way by going at it prim-per-prim recording each setting manually and then recreating it later or you can purchase a cloning script or replication script and just drop it inside the object you want copied. These are only possible when the object is modifiable but what if the object is not modifiable and set to transfer only?

Second Life thrives from user created content. Being inspired by a creation is very different from copying it prim-per-prim and using programs derived from LibSecondLife to copy objects is a serious violation since it disregards or bypass the permission system of Second Life. Creators should take this issue seriously and not pass it off like it’s a fad thing only to cry foul when their creations get copied exactly and stolen easily.