SL Designers, IP and Knock-off’s

The Second Life Herald is reporting that there’s been a rather big incidence of IP theft in the designer clothing world today. Which is something that every business has to deal with at some point – you live with the people in the same busines, make strong ties, and fight on common goals (such as IP theft). You just make sure you’re doing it better than the others.

What did made me raise an eyebrow in the interview was this quote: “I’m just glad nobody cares to buy crap knock-offs.” I hate to disaapoint, but in the digital world of SL, there’s no such thing as a crap rip-off. If you make a digital copy of something, then it’s identical. In some cases here they’ve not managed to get the texture ID from an object so they’ve had to use their own – and yes, that is crap in the screenshot on SLH – but let’s not kid ourselves on the quality here.

Where the Designers can win, is in sticking together and getting the word out when this happens (but please stay civil and not descend to the mob reaction we had at the release of Copy Bot), and in providing a full service. For example always making sure people can get in touch with them, hiring people to man the shops at busy times, giving yourself a web presence at SL Boutique and SL Exchange (at a minimum). People will pay extra for that.

As to the copiers, if there’s an easy route to money, people will always try, but it’s the backend stuff, the support, the extra personal touch, that will provide the true value.