Second Life Hairstyle Raises Copyright Question
February 15th, 2007 by Benjamin Duranske
The Second Life Herald recently ran a post about designer ‘Rach Snookums’ who, SLH writer ‘Seola Sassoon’ (also an in-world designer) alleged, “blatantly ripped items from many popular designers” and sold them in-world.
The Second Life Herald post (which incorrectly identifies the alleged infringer’s avatar as ‘Rach Snookem’) is available here.
Virtually Blind contacted ‘Snookums,’ who admitted that “most of the design” for one hairstyle line (which she has since pulled from inventory) “was based on another designer.”
She said that she did not intend to violate anyone’s intellectual property rights, and that everything she currently sells is designed by herself and her partner. ‘Snookums’ also pointed out that many hairstyles, shoes, and clothing designs in Second Life are very similar. “I guess at the time I didn’t see the problem of modeling off another design,” ‘Snookums’ said.
According to ‘Snookums,’ the potentially infringing designs were removed from her inventory “about a day, at the most” after she started receiving complaints.
The SLH post also claimed that ‘Snookums’ banned designers from her shop to keep them from seeing her designs, but ‘Snookums’ said that she started banning people from her store only after posts about the controversy began appearing on the web. According to ‘Snookums,’ after the story broke, she was banned from many designers’ parcels, and about sixty Sellers Guild members came to her shop and were abusive to her customers.
“I didn’t ban people because I was hiding anything,” ‘Snookums’ says. “I got a little defensive and banned people who banned me first, and people who were misbehaving.”
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