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I'm having a hard time getting my head around the whole DMCA issue within Second Life, namely with regard to clothing design but I guess it covers all areas.

RL clothing companies have a hard time proving copyright infringement, so it's going to be even tougher for digital creations to prove infringement. In the UK you generally have 15 years of protection before anyone can copy your design, in Europe it's less, which causes a quandry and in the USA, well I can't find anywhere that says you can claim infringement on RL designs, although clothing designers want such protections.

The conflict stems from the simple fact that if designs can be copyrighted, then the first person to create a T-shirt could stop anyone else from selling a T-Shirt, which would be silly. So then we dig a bit deeper, it's the same colour, same wrinkles, same shading, same item but different creator.

How do you prove it was your design? How do you prove you've been ripped off? Forget for a moment the moral argument and think about the proof argument. Knowing you'been ripped off is going to hurt, proving it is going to be hard.

Then there's the issue of photo sourcing, if you download a photo, import it into Second Life, do you have a leg to stand on in an IP case in the first place?

There have been some previous cases, the Eros case springs to mind but no legal precedent was set there. I believe Stroker was right in this case, but he was in the position of having the clout to be able to pursue the issue, how many other residents are in that position?

There was also a furniture maker whose name escapes me, RL furniture maker whose products were being sold in Second Life, but I can't recall whether that was a copyright issue over the designs or a trademark issue over people using their name.

Trademark issues are more clear cut. If someone is selling Coca Cola in Second Life, then Coca Cola can obviously claim infringement. The name, the logo, they belong to Coca Cola.

Trademarks bring me to a side issue, but not unrelated point. Why don't clothing designers incorporate their logos into their designs? Is this unfashionable? Problematic? Unpopular? Say for example you want an item from Armidi, surely if people can tell right away it's an Armidi then some sort of peer pressure will discourage others from buying or wearing Armidi rip offs?

Long term, with new grids appearing this issue is only going to get worse and when grids appear that aren't American based, then there are going to be all sorts of other issues. What can content creators do to try and protect their IP rights?