The copybot

Here's simple info on how the thing works, what it can and cannot do, from a post in the Linden blog. It's less capable than I had heard but still nasty. Folks like builders, hair designers, and furniture makers will have to be the most careful it seems. Though it could be used to copy scripted objects like DoMoCo cars, but they wouldn't have the original scripts, but could be misrepresented as having such

Thanks to Szentasha Salome for the post:

Heres some info I collected from a libsecondlife developer who was kind enough to answer my questions:

CopyBot Information

CopyBot is a program written by libsecondlife to debug an open-source Second Life client API. It intercepts and interprets communications from the Second Life server and the custom client. This information includes descriptive information about primitive shapes, body shapes, baked avatar textures, and primitive textures. Using this information, avatars and primitives can be duplicated and reconstructed by the client. The creator of the new object will be that of the account used to log in with the custom client.

The CopyBot client is a primitive SecondLife client. The avatar will first appear as the basic Ruth female avatar, until it copies the form of another avatar. The CopyBot avatar can not move. It can only teleport. It is not designed to speak in vicinity and only responds to IMs. The CopyBot operates through commands IM'd to it by another avatar, and can only duplicate items in the direct vicinity, so its operator is likely to be close by. The target of a copy operation can be another avatar, or a prim object. If the target is an avatar, it gets the avatars shape and all prim attachments, which appear in the inventory of the CopyBot. Note that it does not get any clothing items - it only gains the baked texturing of the target avatar. If the target is an unattached object, the object is created 3 meters above the CopyBot avatar's head. Note, this will not be successful in sims where object creation is disabled. The CopyBot client can not pick up the object. The thief must log out of CopyBot and log in with the standard SecondLife client to pick up the object. Avatar shapes are not maintained when the CopyBot logs off, so can not be saved.

In summary:

What can the CopyBot create a copy of?
- fully textured objects attached to avatars in proximity
- fully textured objects in proximity

What can the CopyBot not copy?
- any object contents, including scripts, animations, sounds and textures
- clothing
- shapes
- textures (objects are textured but the CopyBot does not get the original textures)

Implications:
- If CopyBot copies you, only your attachments can be transfered, not your shape, clothing, appearance.
- If CopyBot copies your attachments, the attachments will be simple objects without any special functionality since they will not contain scripts, animations, etc.
- If CopyBot copies your product vendor, it will only get an object that looks like your vendor. It will not contain your product or any of the vendor scripts.
- The same is true for unattached objects.
- You can turn off object creation in sims containing unattached objects you do not wish to be duplicated

I hope this helps to answer some of your questions.

~Szentasha


Also from reading the blog, it bot has to be close and in line of sight of the object to be copied, because it can't move or control camera. So I guess one might look out for two avatars in close proximity with one never talking.

Normally I'm a big supporter of the open source movement, I run Linux after all and have an SVN client installed to access Subversion repositories for those projects that don't do regular source tarball releases like they ought to. But I think the libSL project should probably have been a little more picky about who had access to their code.