Even A Fantasy Life Can Have Troubles
A Florida based business filed a suit for copyright infringement earlier this week. So what? you ask. The business sells erotic products in a virtual computer game world and has sued a character called Volkov Catteneo for selling allegedly illegal copies of a virtual bed that allows game characters to have sex with each other - in a variety of positions.
The game is Second Life, and one of the fairly unique things about this game is that users are encouraged to create their own products, to which they retain intellectual property rights, and trade or sell the items within the game. Apparently, there is quite a lot of real world cash that passes hands between the players. Eros, LLC, the company that makes and sells the sex beds, is one of the more successful, generating nearly half a million dollars off the beds alone - and that’s just one of their Second Life products.
The buzz around the internet is that this is the first virtual copyright suit, becaue it involves a bed that doesn’t exist outside this imaginary Second Life world. But in reality, the suit is just like many other infringement suits. The bed is actually a set of graphics coupled with a piece of software code - both of which are copyrightable. The defendant in this case is so far known only by his character name, so the plaintiff will have to subpoena the owner of Second Life and others in an attempt to determine his true identity, but that happens frequently as well. The Recording Industry of America (RIAA) has filed numerous music infringement suits against nameless college students, and then subpoenaed the Universities for names of IP address users.
Bottom line is that this lawsuit is not unique or first impression, although it is a very interesting set of facts, and so will be written about some more, I suspect. But it’s only likely to give us new and interesting legal outcomes if, as one commentator aptly put it, something weird comes out of a thoroughly bewildered judge.
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