How many times in recent years have we heard that "information wants to be free"? Not just free as in no cost, but free as in no restrictions. In other words, once it's ones and zeroes, if I can access it, I can have it, even if I have to do a little hacking. This is the principle behind defenses of unauthorized file-sharing, it is the concept that leads to groups like Digital Freedom to argue that possessing something for one purpose should permit you to do multiple other purposes, it is the ethos that drives the anti-copyright crowd.

So I hope none of those folks spend time on Linden Labs' Second Life. Dean Takahashi reports that hackers have come up with a way to steal Linden dollars from avatars, or the digital representatives of Second Life players. It turns out it's not an armed robbery like the headline suggests, more of a long-distance pickpocket technique.

So what? you say. Who cares if a few pretend people (or animals, as avatars sometimes are) lose some pretend money? Well, Second Life players would point out that Linden dollars are convertible to U.S. dollars. In fact, there are some creative people who make significant money designing clothes, furniture and other goods in Second Life and selling it to other players (a similar controversy erupted earlier this year about a program that allowed you to go into, say, a virtual clothing store and copy all of the clothes, depriving the designers of sales).

I don't want to see any Second Life player pickpocketed and lose the equivalent of real dollars, regardless of what the exchange rate is between the currencies. But I must point out here that the song, movie, photograph, graphic artwork, novel, etc. that you download without paying for it — because it is information and wants to be free — has economic value, and far more than a digital walletful of Linden dollars. And there is a real human being (or multiple human beings) behind that digital work that created it in hopes of receiving compensation for it. If you want it enough to download it, you should be able to pay for it. If you're still torn, imagine how you'd feel if someone stole all your Linden dollars.

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This entry was posted on Monday, December 3rd, 2007 at 12:57 pm by Patrick Ross and is filed under copyright opponents, creators, p2p, piracy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.