Wired News: Second Life Will Save Copyright
Take the fashion industry. As law professors Chris Sprigman and Kal Raustiala write in their paper on the subject, neither copyright nor patent law prohibit copying fashion designs. There is some protection for the brand associated with the apparel, but no law prohibits a knock-off Chanel suit, peasant skirt or narrow lapel. And yet fashion is highly innovative, with new styles several times a year, despite low IP protection.Similarly, professors Emmanuelle Fauchart and Eric von Hippel write that haute French cuisine (.pdf) is another area with low IP protection, yet high levels of innovation and creativity. No law prevents copying recipes. Instead, French chefs have developed social norms, much like those Linden Labs seeks to empower, against exact copying, dissemination of tricks of the trade and adopting significant innovations without crediting the chef responsible.
Failure to follow these norms results in reputation harm, including ostracism.
I will be interested to see how this little experiment works out, and more interested to see if we in the “real” world learn anything from it. At this point, I am skeptical that we will change anything with our copyright laws. The judicial system in the U.S. has too much inertia to change something like that.