Archive notice: This article was originally published on October 31, 2007. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
In the online world Second Life (SL), there is renewed excitement over counterfeit brands and pirated copies of virtual products. As the Washington Post reports, six Second Life companies have filed a lawsuit against a total of eleven suspected SL users in a New York court. The plaintiffs are seeking damages as well as an injunction and argue that the virtual copies of their goods result in real harm. Once again, the lead plaintiff is sex toy manufacturer Eros LLC, which had already gone to court once in the summer of this year because an SL user had copied a virtual sex device called “SexGen” without permission.
Now accused are a US citizen with the avatar name “Rase Kenzo” as well as ten other users whose real identities are unknown, however. The accused are said to have copied products from the plaintiff companies without permission and sold them in the virtual world. According to the plaintiff, they thereby made themselves guilty of copyright-infringement, unfair competition and brand counterfeiting. Since business within Second Life generally goes very well and the virtual Linden dollars can be exchanged for real dollars, the companies have little sense of humor regarding their copyrights and view Second Life as a source of income, not as a game.
However, the legal situation for virtual spaces has so far not been regulated and there are also no internationally applicable guidelines. “Second Life actually has no legal system of its own. Depending on the violation, it is usually not even clear which law exactly applies,” as Gregor Schütze, an employee of the European Centre for E-Commerce and Internet Law and a Second Life expert, explained in a conversation with pressetext.de. In general, conventional laws also apply to trademark violations in relation to the Internet. In virtual worlds, however, investigating and prosecuting criminals is much more complicated than in the real world, Schütze continued.
The Second Life operators Linden Lab leave the copyrights to virtual content to the users themselves. Trading it is legal and the profits generated can be converted into real money. The judicial decision in the current legal dispute could develop into a precedent case and point the way for future copyright regulations in online worlds.