anyway, back to the show.

Rezzables and others actions were “questionable to unethical” as they presented themselves as “advocates and leaders for professional creatives” This I believe true.

Anyone interested in a history lesson or suggestion for professional co-professional ethics and behaviors should at least visit the GAG or many other “old” profesional content creatives website.

The last week has been even more “questionable” as those who “had taken and asked for the most” from the “questionable culture and attitudes toward” non programmer “content creators” that IS part of the TAO of Linden, defended or executed the same non professional or open tactics to protect their own self interests above any said “profession” at whatever stage it is of “virtual worlds designer/artist”.

Now that the new web3.d metarati have caught up to the 1999 wed3d metarati in terms of realization of ones value and work product… what will you do next.

another SL dance party may not be the best answer-;)

BTW- collada is NOT a “standard” for wed3d, same as VRML or X3D were/are(ISO STANDARD) nor is O3D, collada and soon o3d are both like SWF (flash) or DXF (autodesk) standards due to a single companies domninance or market attempts, not an attempt at a agreed organizational bodies standards…like ISO.

As suggested last week, id be glad to sign-if i agree with the content- a letter directed to LL Business/Legal asking strongly for a redefined TOS in terms of the CMT “rules” of the SL platform/mmo game.

SL is as many said years ago.. another AOL, and many will reinvent their careers using it. And like AOL it is not capable of becoming a wider medium that many wanted to call it, the “metaverse”.

realtime 3d immersive media will not go away, either will the 2d web platform of virtualization.

Whose modes and actions we promote will define the society we are as we realize that virtualization with 3d ,edia, is just the lastest step in a process other started decades ago.

virtual food pellets for thought.
c3

These issues are broad and important. What saddens me is that we’re in a time when the business models that support the monetization of digital content creation are still relatively new and are evolving, Second Life has stumbled onto one that seems to be working, that has holes and frustrations but that is able to support a robust user-to-user economy and YET….and yet the Lab seems to prefer that this sort of organically evolve, that it doesn’t need a nudge now and then, and that for all the focus on tools they provide little guidance or strategic direction around the issue.

There are so MANY frustrations: attribution, group perms, bulk perms (fixed but, um, broken), back-up, etc. But in working on these problems at a granular tool level rather than within a policy framework, we risk seeing further erosions and waking up one day to realize that what was valuable is no longer so.

I’m reminded of Mark Helprin’s refusal to allow edits to a speech he wrote for George Bush, claiming that the copyright didn’t extend to their right to edit it:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124804423491263485.html

In any case, I think this more broadly supports my main argument:

- Copyright is executed within an explicit framework within Second Life that includes the concept of C/M/T.
- Contracts can be made between buyers and creators to over-write those perms.
- This is, however, in conflict with the stated goals of Linden Lab to facilitate IP protection and leads to an extrapolation whereby that protection comes in conflict with tools to “copy all”.
- The Lab needs to think about more than just the tools they use, they need to clearly articulate policy and the direction of that policy, and to look at enforcement as a mechanism for further communicating their intent.

As of today, the Lab’s policy is: “no one should rip of your content unless you have explicitly granted that right, but if they do, go hire some lawyers.”

But, while we’re on the topic of tools, I think the Lab could go a long way if they’d GOM or buy out Second Inventory or otherwise create a way for content creators to back up their works. I wonder even if they could do this on an estate level - kind of a “group owned” idea that’s applied at the sim level rather than the object level.

I’m not entirely sure what would work - what I DO think would work is a sort of “IP Summit” - a way in which these issues can be discussed in a transparent way and we can all get a clear sense of how all these mechanisms and licenses can fit together to protect the user-generated content business model or to at least know once and for all that the future of SL is elsewhere.

Suppose I make a chair from scratch in Second Life. Linden Lab lets me own the copyright in that chair.

Because I agreed to the SL Terms of Service (ToS), I must grant Linden Lab a limited license to do a few things like use photos of my chair in their marketing brochures. Read the SL ToS for more details.

I can sell Sam a copy of the chair and write a license which says, “Sam may sit in this chair on Fridays in September, and Sam must place it on a yellow floor, and Sam may make 4 copies of the chair, and those copies have the same restrictions.” Sam must agree to the license and we should keep some kind of proof that he agreed. (It’s a contract.)

SL includes some DRM tools which can help enforce licenses (e.g. enforcement of the next user’s ability to modify, copy, and transfer/sell the item). Obviously, SL’s DRM tools can’t enforce my requirement that Sam only place my chair on yellow floors. Linden Lab never anticipated that restriction, nor could they anticipate all possible restrictions. They just made tools to enforce some of the more common restrictions.

Right now, it seems to me like few people even know about licenses. The few people who do know about licenses seem only to know about the various Creative Commons licenses, the GPL, and the BSD license. Textures R Us is one glimmer of hope: they have a carefully-written license on the textures they sell.

Just for fun, here are some more licenses:

“Sally may only rez this chair when she has more than 347 L$ in her SL account balance.”

“Tim may make copies of this chair and may sell copies of this chair to people born in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada.”

Summary points:

* There are infinitely many licenses one can write to govern how others may use my content (intellectual property in which I own the copyright).

* Second Life doesn’t have any default or obvious tools for writing licenses. I suppose you could write a license on a notecard, but then how do you get proof that both sides agreed to it? For bigger things, you really should print a license on paper and have both parties sign it in ink. If you’re okay with digital signatures (like those provided by VeriSign), then you can do that too.

* The mod / copy / trans permissions that you set on an object are NOT a license. Those are just tools to help you enforce a license.

—–

In the Rezzable case, I suspect Rezzable owns the copyright in the content that their employees and contractors made for them, so they can do whatever they please with it, including copying it off The SL Grid to another virtual world. (The original creator retains the moral rights in the content, but that doesn’t usually mean much, unless you’re French and the creation is a piece of art, but I digress…)

Great post. I need more caffeine and a couple of more readings to let the first wash sink in, but kudos on the analyses.