Eros lawyers ID ‘John Doe’ avatar; Youth denies he’s Catteneo
By Eric Reuters
SECOND LIFE, Oct 25 (Reuters) - The Leatherwood family didn’t expect a private investigator to knock on their door, interrupting their Monday Night Football with a lot of questions about a Second Life avatar named “Volkov Catteneo.”
After almost four months of searching, lawyers have identified Robert Leatherwood, 19, of North Richland Hills, Tx., as Second Life avatar “Volkov Catteneo.” Catteneo sits at the center of a potentially precedent setting Second Life copyright case, according to Frank Taney, who represents the plaintiff, Eros chief Kevin Alderman.
Leatherwood has denied he’s the real-life person behind the Catteneo avatar, said Taney.
The Leatherwood family has declined requests for interview.
In July, Second Life adult goods magnate Alderman, known in the virtual world as Stroker Serpentine, sued an avatar named Volkov Catteneo for copyright infringement. Alderman claimed the avatar sold illicit copies of his SexGen Platinum bed, a piece of furniture for the virtual boudoir. Because Alderman didn’t know Catteneo’s real-life identity, the case was filed as Eros LLC v John Doe.
In an interview with Reuters, Catteneo admitted he traded in copies of the bed, but boasted Alderman would be unable to find him.
The avatar said he sold 50 duplicates of the bed that an accomplice made. The copies were created using an exploit in Second Life’s copy-protection software, knowledge of which has recently surfaced on several Second Life blogs.
Catteneo’s contacts devised a means to deliberately crash sims in the virtual world, triggering a rollback. During a rollback, the Second Life inventory server, which keeps track of which objects are in any part of the virtual world, restores to a previous point in time. By removing SexGen beds from a sim seconds before a deliberate crash, the rollback recreates the item, making a duplicate. By repeating the process, two items can become four, and four become eight.
In September, when asked by Reuters if rollbacks could be exploited to create duplicate objects, Linden Lab spokeswoman Catherine Smith said she conferred with the company’s technical team and they did not believe it was possible.
Taney’s team filed papers on Wednesday in U.S. federal court to change the name of Alderman’s case to Eros LLC v Robert Leatherwood and John Does 1-10. "John Does 1-10" suggests the suit will also target additional accomplices who have yet to be identified, Taney said.
Alderman’s team subpoenaed Linden Lab and PayPal for Catteneo’s Internet Protocol addresses, and then subpoenaed Internet service providers AT&T and Charter Communications to determine the real-world billing addresses associated with the IP information.
The AT&T account traced back to Leatherwood’s home. The Charter Communications address led to another Dallas-area residence. “I’ve spoken to several members of that house, and they told me he [Leatherwood] brought his computer over there and plugged into their connection,” Taney said.
Taney sent private investigator Richard Slatkin to confront the man he believed to be Catteneo in real-life. Slatkin visited what he described as a modest home with a broken car out front on Monday evening. Leatherwood lives with his uncle, grandmother, and great-grandmother.
Slatkin described Leatherwood as 6'-4", weighing 325 lbs, with a black T-shirt, black shorts, long hair and a goatee. Leatherwood repeatedly said he was not Volkov Catteneo and hadn’t logged into Second Life in over a year. “He showed no emotion,” Slatkin told Reuters.
Slatkin offered the youth and his family a legal settlement, which would end the case in exchange for an undisclosed amount of money, a legally binding promise to cease and desist from all future copying, and Leatherwood’s help in identifying other copiers. Leatherwood’s family calmly accepted the papers, and told Slatkin they needed to consult with a lawyer before proceeding.
“The only defense they had was the grandmother said he [Robert Leatherwood] had severe attention deficit disorder and perhaps didn’t understand what he was doing,” Slatkin said.
“That he continues to deny it, that’s not really surprising to me,” said Taney, lawyer for Alderman. He said Leatherwood has 20 days to reach a settlement agreement, or he’ll move forward with discovery, where legal depositions will be collected from members of the two households that Catteneo’s IP addresses trace to.
