My Thoughts on CopyBot, Copyright, and SL Business in 2007

Your prim/texture business is at risk no matter what, and CopyBot has no effect.

I am not meaning to come off cynical with this post. I do want to point out facts of which every business owner should make themselves aware.

Assumed: SL continues to increase in size and features.

1. SL will have better search tools made available, either by Linden Lab or through some third party.
2. More and more content creators will make more and more items available.

Combine and stir.

Result: Residents will have easy access to hundreds of similar products which will force sellers to slash prices to compete.

Advice: If you wish to survive as a vendor of virtual items:
1. Start learning to script or get friendly with someone who can. Scripts already are the differentiating factor in most items, and will only continue to be the things that make your products stand out.
2. Focus on doing custom work. There's an exponentially increasing demand for talented builders of all sorts for Metaverse Development Companies. We also pay in US$, not L$. (At least, the scrupulous ones.)
3. Establish a rock-solid brand name that will keep customer loyalty.

Notice, CopyBot has nothing to do with your real business risk.

Conversely, those who feel CopyBot is a threat, I say this:

1. Since CopyBot has been declared abuse-reportable by Linden Lab, anyone caught selling things made by CopyBot risk losing their money, account, land, etc.
2. No one will make very much money with CopyBot before being discovered. We as a community have grown too good at spotting freebie-resellers and outing them; this same skill will combat *any* sort of Copyright infringement.
3. Spamming "!quit" is pointless. If you stop panicking and think, you'd realize anyone unscrupulous enough to use CopyBot to steal items will just remove that line of code that accepts the "!quit". Don't be a spammer. It lags sims and pisses people off.