Socially|Mundane

I remember back in Fall, 2006 the absolute hysteria that broke-out when "Copybot" first appeared on the scene. If you've never seen wide-spread frenzied freaked-out tizzy among the populace at-large, that was it.

I remember seeing whole parcels - some as large as a quarter sim or larger - suddenly with ban-lines up, surrounding entire shopping malls. About one in five retailers had either ban-lines surrounding their parcel or turned-off, sometimes even removed their vendors.

The sheer panic was ridiculous and it was half-impossible to purchase anything. That on top of the griefer attacks that were prevalent at the time and those of you who were around then will remember the infamous "grey-goo" attack that shut the grid down for most of a three-day weekend.

Back then, no one really understood what copybot was and is. It was thought that copybot would 'rip' entire creations, including scripts, textures and basically create a full-permissions, fully functioning copy of whatever it was, including fully-functioning copies of whatever was in the contents of other prims - such as sales vendors.

Then some rumor started spread that a particular phrase spoken in open chat would disable the copybot - so everywhere you went, open chat was spamming the entire parcel, driving everyone up the wall. And it never would have (nor does it now) worked anyway. Sometimes you still run into a location with this silly thing going. And going. And going. And...
The shopping experience in those days was a tooth-grinder at best.
Then, not all that long ago, over at alarmist tabloid Second Life Herald more stories about "Copybot 2.0" were written - it typical alarmist fashion, obviously hoping to incite more alarm and possible panic. A video was included showing the alleged copybot recreating a prim airplane from a no-copy, no-modify original. [And yes, I think to them because, as long as you remember they are an over-the-top tabloid, the writing is actually quite funny.]

Of course what you don't see in the video is the thing actually working or moving or doing anything at all. That's because the copybot that really does exist, basically copies prims. Not scripts or other contents within prims. The resulting copies are hollow.

There are actually builder's tools that already do this in-world, called "prim-duplicators." They copy prims, including textures, and scripts within. However, the copied scripts are broken and don't work. They must be recompiled, which you can't do unless you have modify permissions anyway.

The difference with copybot is that it also will grab whatever textures are visible on your screen because it uses a Dynamic Link Library (DLL) that is freely available on the internet. So what?

My point is that copybot is not what it's cracked-up to be and the fact of the matter is: if you can see it, you can copy it. This is true for movies and music (RIAA and MPAA might want to take this to heart.)
Besides that, if Linden Lab discovers you using the copybot, you'll be banned. That is a permanent eviction from Second Life, you account(s) deleted. So, for all you merchants and creators out there: take heart. With such a high risk of getting a permanent boot from Second Life, anyone using this toll will use it carefully. In otherword, your creations must be of a popularity and quality to be worth the risk of copying.

Personally, I don't have such an ego to think my products are even worth notice from primthieves, much less worth the risk of using copybot on them. And even if they did, sales are definitely worth sneezing at, so other copies out in the wild really wouldn't bother me much anyway.
However, just to prove that copybot does, in fact exist:

"Tutorial How to use Copybot:
You should know what a copybot is. If not, gtfo. 
Basic Setup 1. Open up the Copybot GUI. If using the stable sauce, you will get errors. Continue to the next step anyway. 2. Register a new account with copybot by clicking the New Account button (The (+) button in the toolbar). 1. Fill in the account details. 2. Add in the IRC channel you wish to connect to."

So why do I link to here? Because, first of all, I'm not too worried about it. My products isn't worth copying. And if someone does copy them, all they'll get are the prims. The scripts are where the value is. And second: why the hell not? You will see for yourself the complicated set-up and use. Yes, it's a lot easier to use than it has been in the past. But it is still quite a hurdle for any casual user. And those that would actually use this already know where this is as well as what an anonymous remailer is, and what spoofing is, and what all that hacker nonsense is already anyway.

So, now that I've made publicly available the location and instruction how to use the copybot, are you peeing your pants thinking you'll suddenly get ripped-off in SL now? Conceited enough to believe your creations are actually good enough for a user of the copybot to actually take notice of and then takes the risks in using it on your stuff?

And for those who wonder how I found this? It's simple. In the statistics of this block, there is metadata that shows me how people got here. A few of the locations game from this other web site, so I investigated. And that's how I found it.
/me yawns.