Volkov Catteneo: Yes, I am Robert Leatherwood
By Eric Reuters
Robert Leatherwood confirmed to Reuters over the weekend that he was indeed the owner of the Volkov Catteneo avatar.
Last year, Kevin Alderman (Second Life: Stroker Serpentine) sued Catteneo in the first Second Life-based copyright infringement case. Alderman did not know the real life name behind the account. After a four-month investigation employing subpoenas and private detectives, Alderman identified Leatherwood, 19, as Catteneo.
Leatherwood ignored court papers, resulting in a default judgment for Alderman. But until this weekend Leatherwood insisted that Alderman had identified the wrong person, and the Catteneo account, still active in Second Life, also referred to Leatherwood as a separate person.
Leatherwood has dropped the charade. “You are correct in that we are the same person,” Leatherwood/Catteneo said in response to questions in a Second Life interview. “I didn’t see a logical point in admitting my identity back in that time in order to help structure Stroker’s flimsy case in any way.”
The veil of anonymity between Second Life avatars and real world identities, a cherished aspect of Linden Lab’s virtual world, can be problematic for virtual world businesses pursuing civil actions such as copyright infringement lawsuits.
The route taken by Alderman, a subpoena to Linden Lab and PayPal to get Internet Service Provider information, followed by further subpoenas of the ISPs to identify account holders, is likely to be the standard procedure for Second Life-based lawsuits, said Sean Kane, a lawyer with expertise in virtual worlds.
“Just to identify someone in order to serve them, you’re easily talking upwards of ten thousand dollars,” Kane said. Even as claims of theft in Second Life increase, the financial burdens of discovering real-world identities make lawsuits in most cases unlikely.
