Wikipedia has a short overview explaining CopyBot and the controversy that ensued mainly on Second Life about it. In a nutshell, the controversy came in when people were using this tool called CopyBot, which was originally created with good intentions-to use as a backup tool for saving information on your hard drive. The controversy came in when it was being used to “replicate avatar appearances without the content creator’s permission” as well as other objects.
Copyright issues are well known in libraries. As the 3D Web becomes more prevalent, how will issues such as CopyBot affect teens? Will similar tools keep being created? Copyright may be understood in completely different terms to teens growing up today.
To become more familiar with CopyBot, check out the following resources:
Use of CopyBot and Similar Tools by Cory Linden
libsecondlife (creators of CopyBot)
Posted by Kelly Czarnecki
