You’ve pointed out the bigger threat, though, which is the issue of Fair Use under U.S. copyright law. On the one hand, you have the intellectual property companies like Time Warner, Paramount, Sony and others, whose content is being used in SL, often without their permission. On the other hand, the expense and confusion of policing something like Second Life for these kinds of violations could very likely far exceed any potential value to the owners of that intellectual content. Speaking from the perspective of somebody who deals with the security of IP on a daily basis (I work for one of these IP holders, but I can’t say for which one here), these companies tend to only choose battles they think not only that they can win, but that are worth winning.

Before Sony bought Paramount Pictures, Paramount was waging a legal campaign against Star Trek fan sites for nearly a decade. The resulting fandom backlash created so much of a public image problem for Paramount that they had to drop it – and all they were really doing was playing “whack a mole” with the fan sites anyway. I think the IP industry has matured in that respect to some degree – they’re not quite so willing to bite the hand that feeds them as they once were.

To address your last comment, “SL isn’t that much of a threat now, but in the future it may be.” The thing that makes SL cool is its user-created content, but that’s also what makes the run-time engine so crappy and slow compared to other services. Anyone can make anything, or change anything in real time, so you can’t pre-bake the rendered environment. That makes most of the cheats and speedups used in modern games useless, so SL looks ten years old. Apart from the social phenomenon SL represents, I don’t see it climbing any further up the food chain than it already is, relatively speaking. I certainly don’t see it becoming a sharp enough focal point to draw business away from DC comics unless the whole platform underwent a paradigm shift so that it could focus just on that, and even then…

OH OKAY.

Just because they havent done it yet or did it years ago doesnt mean they wont ever do it. It’s just not on their plate atm.

once dc comics online picks up, they will probably go after anyone eho may be cutting into their market share. SL isnt that much of a threat now, but in the future it may be. Then there’s the offchance that they may not realise it.

First, like a true tard, he assumes because one lawsuit failed, that the sl comic book “fandom” is safe. This is a common myth. Most fandoms think they’re immune to lawsuits and will get as ballsy as selling copywritten content because “they’re fans” or using someone else’s creation.

Marvel, DC, and any other company dont even have to sue to get rid of a chunk of you asshats. They just have to send a DMCA complaint to Linden Labs, and I know you know that LL folds under pressure very quickly. You AR the shit out of people and pressure the lindens into responding to your abuse and doing what you want. or they fold when the media puts pressure on them.

Also, assuming everyone’s a teenager that you dont like or acts in a way you dont like is arrogant as hell.

I lol’d.

What I meant to say was that Marvel sued NCSoft because City of Heroes “could” have characters that resembled Marvel comic characters. And Marvel tried to prove that by creating Marvel comic characters using the NCSoft program.

Which is different than saying here’s a sim where you could act out your Gotham fantasies when you are trying to have a pay service for that. I would say that would be slightly different because you are theoretically losing a sale if someone uses the Gotham City sim instead of your own online service.

On the other side, if I can’t be Black Canary in Gotham because a sim founder already filled that role, then I might be willing to pay in order to play that character in a simulation of Gotham City somewhere else.

Of course, there’s always the possibility that that last post wasn’t really Alyx but somebody trying to sockpuppet him. The real Alyx isn’t really quite that feckless. I don’t think.)

That’s true, really, Jessica, you have a point. Marvel did first look at going after individuals, but the financial realities of filing such a lawsuit pretty much demanded that they go after somebody from whom they stood a chance of actually getting some satisfaction from, i.e., NCSoft. The simple mathematics of going after individual users of a service would have been like playing whack-a-mole. They might go through the complex and expensive dance of legal action against each individual, only to have to repeat it again in a month with the next person.

So basically, Marvel went for the big target. Time Warner will be disinclined to sue Linden Lab, because there’s no legal precedent of anyone ever winning a case like this against an MMO – and that’s really the only target big enough to warrant their attention. Everybody else is too small to gamble the legal expenses on the chance of winning what would be little more than a symbolic victory. Before the lawyers get the green light to sue, the accounting department gets a vote. If they don’t see piles of money waiting for them on the other side, the whole idea gets tossed.

I share your sentiments regarding the RIAA – Jonathan Coulton wrote a “Podsafe Christmas Song” which sums up the sentiment nicely: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50UhOdBHsQg