'Grey goo' engulfs virtual world

I've written a number of times about Second Life. This article is interesting and could potentially raise awareness of the potential of real world grey goo from future nanotechnologies. The other interesting aspect of the article is about a program someone introduced called CopyBot that can copy any object in Second Life. Since many people are actually making a living or earning some money from creating virtual objects, there is conjecture that future earnings in Second Life will mostly/only come from services. So will people be less inclined to spend time designing cool objects that people were willing to buy? The article makes intellectual property seem worthless as it would be futile to combat piracy - will this be true in the future, vastly more rich virtual environments? I picture people willing to pay for information, but if you can't protect it...

"The problem is, if you can see the object, you have to have the information in some form," she says. "A clever reverse engineer will likely always be able to grab that information."

Seems like there will be solutions to this. For example, off the top of my head - If the processing was done on a secure system and only the visual of the object is passed, then a copy would be similar to the video tapes some pirates make of new movies while they're still only in the theater - a reasonable representation, but not perfect. I'm not technical enough to know if this is reasonable. Perhaps the copy is really that good. Maybe the copies will be that good for just these rudimentary virtual environments, but perhaps future objects/information will be much richer and just coping the visual aspects of it won't capture the real information (encapsulation). We may have to wait to find out! :)

'Grey goo' engulfs virtual world
18:13 20 November 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Will Knight

The increasingly popular virtual world Second Life was overwhelmed by a flood of "self-replicating" objects, dubbed "grey goo", on Sunday.

The trouble began with the appearance of a virtual gold rings in several areas of the virtual world. As users touched these rings, they starting replicating wildly and, eventually, the servers on which the game is hosted began creaking under the strain of the additional activity.

From 2245 GMT on Sunday, for about half-an-hour, tens of thousands of Second Life users were locked out of the world while staff removed the objects. The objects were dubbed "grey goo", after the concept of out-of-control self-replicating nanotechnology (See How safe is nanotech).

"An attack of self-replicators is causing heavy load on the database, which is in turn slowing down in-world activity," an administrator wrote on the official Second Life blog on Sunday evening (GMT). "We have isolated the grey goo and are currently cleaning up the grid. We’ll keep you updated as status changes."

Simple hack

Experienced Second Life residents dismissed the incident as unremarkable, although inconvenient. "Grey goo is not a clever hack or anything ingenious," says Aimee Weber, who develops virtual objects within Second Life for companies and research institutes. "You could write one in 5 minutes."

Weber notes that self-replicating objects have been released before and says the ability to create such objects is, in fact, a crucial aspect of the world. "Linden Lab considered making self replication impossible – it's certainly within their power to do so," she told New Scientist. "But there were enough legitimate and cool uses for self replication that they decided to keep it."

The incident follows a more controversial episode within Second Life – the release of a program called CopyBot, which can be used to copy any in-world object. CopyBot bypasses the game's in-built copy controls, analysing network communications in order to gather the information needed to replicate an object. As some users make money by selling virtual objects within Second Life, Weber says this program could transform the economy of Second Life from being based on objects to focussing on services.

In the long run, there may be no way to guard against programs such as CopyBot, she adds. "The problem is, if you can see the object, you have to have the information in some form," she says. "A clever reverse engineer will likely always be able to grab that information."

http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/mg17723880.900-how-safe-is-nanotech.html