Hair.. and copybot

I used to think that content theft in SL is a fringe phenomenon, because I rarely if ever encountered copybotted items when I inspected what others were wearing. However, this opinion was clearly based on insufficient and biased data - usually I only inspect female fashion, and only stuff that I like, but didn't know yet.

So I decided to improve on this, and to do a somewhat more rigorous study. I went to two of my favourite hangouts - House of V and Cumdumpsters (yeah, that's a place as seedy as the name suggests...), and in each place simply inspected the hair of the first fifty avatars I encountered. Without regard to sex, name, nationality, appearance, or anything.. just the first fifty people in both sims, i.e. 100 altogether. Actually, it was 105, because I can't count.. anyway, the result was:

• 88 people were wearing legitimately bought hair
• 13 people had copybotted hair
• 4 people had hair from a creator (?) named 'Philips Replacement'

The latter seems to be a banned account, and I couldn't find any information on it. I have no idea whether he was selling stolen hair, or was banned for some other reason (the hair didn't look too exciting..). So, depending on the status of the latter four items, we have between 12 and 16 per cent of stolen hair. Not as much as the hysterical rants on some fashion blogs might indicate, but quite a significant fraction.

What I'm wearing:

• Solange - Shimmy dress, mauve
• Rozoregalia - Necklace Nornir
• ICoN - BC Earrings
  
• MASSIVE ATHAks - Moon hair