Second Life Announcement

We're here at the State of Play Conference and I'm blogging live (so excuse the absence of html).

Philip Rosedale, the main guy at Linden Labs, just announced that Second Life today has changed its Terms of Use to allow users to retain real world property rights in the virtual world products they produce. This is really really encouraging and really really important.

More later. Gotta prep for my paper...

Comments

[DivineShadow]

1.

*Plonk* *DivineShadow falls off chair*

[snip from https://secondlife.com/corporate/terms.php section 5.3 ]

"...you will retain any and all applicable copyright and/or other intellectual property rights with respect to any Content you create using the Service..."

[/snip]

[Unggi Yoon]

2.

Is'nt the revised section 5.3 of SL TOS faded by the section 4.3 of the same TOS?

------------------------------------------
4.3 All Data Is Temporary.

YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT, NOTWITHSTANDING ANY COPYRIGHT OR OTHER RIGHTS YOU MAY HAVE WITH RESPECT TO ITEMS YOU CREATE USING THE SERVICE,

ALL OF YOUR CONTENT AND ACCUMULATED STATUS HAS NO INTRINSIC CASH VALUE AND THAT LINDEN DOES NOT ENDORSE, AND EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS (SUBJECT TO ANY UNDERLYING RIGHTS IN THE CONTENT), ANY VALUE, CASH OR OTHERWISE, ATTRIBUTED TO CONTENT OR ACCUMULATED STATUS.

-----------------------------------------

[DivineShadow]

3.

No Unggi. What did you expect?

"You can sue us into oblivion should we have a service glitch or business direction change" or "We will be liable for taxes on your content" ?

[Ren]

4.

Also live and direct from NY Law School:-

I asked the Second Life guy and the There guy about turning off their servers and whether they have the right to deny access to people property if they have explicity granted rights - the both said, not problem as our EULA \ TOS give them the out.

Its going to be interestign how it playes out, copyright grants a whole set of stuff and if they the do give players copyright then they are by defintion constraining what that can do in ways that they may not be able to simply contract out of. I think that There and Second life have created problems for them selves, but i'm glad they have as it going to be good to see these issues resolved.

Ren
www.renreynolds.com

[Brask Mumei]

5.

I don't think they will cause any problems. If I buy your book, you still have copyright to it. However, you can't stop me throwing out the book, or not letting you have access to it.

The major restriction they have is in publishing player content out-of-game. However, this isn't a real restriction, IMO, as it is good practice to get permission before doing so even if you had the rights.

- Brask Mumei

[Jeff Cole]

6.

At this point (that is, without express contractual agreement or a much more complicated developer/customer financial relationship that might impose a legal duty), there isn't a court in America that will hold a developer has to keep the servers up. Period.

Or, for the "never-say-never" crowd: there isn't a court in America that will ultimately be affirmed ... .

The practical effect of SL's change is minimal. It may be culturally significant.

Jeff Cole

[DivineShadow]

7.

Ren,

"copyright grants a whole set of stuff and if they the do give players copyright then they are by defintion constraining what that can do in ways that they may not be able to simply contract out of."

They're not 'giving away' any rights they previously had to players. The creator of a work is assigned copyright over their work by default, the difference here is that 2nLife is not requesting that the user give up his copyright in order to participate in the medium. They *are* granting the (insert legal jargon here) permission to perform/reproduce/etc that work to 2ndLife. This seems neccesary for the service iself to function.

[Edward Castronova]

8.

Greg omits that this conference has also heard, from his own mouth, and I quote, "Ted has been channeling Agent Smith." Now that the secret is out, I want to tell you all that I feel free. Very free. You've liberated me...

[Unggi Yoon]

9.

: all
If the section 5.3 literally means gamers retain IP right over new items they create, not ownership over conventional(gaming company designed) items they get by play, then, IMO, It would be no amazing change, but just a re-writting of what the copyright act ordained.

Rather, looking at the next sentence of the section written with capital letters, I wonder if the TOS constrains what the copyright act give the creators as their rights.

:Brask Mumei
However, In TOS, the Linden didn't buy the user created items or contents. Linden denys the real value of them.

So, I wonder if the analogy of author and buyer could apply to Linden.

[Unggi Yoon]

10.

Before TOS of 2ndLife, there are some user agreements that deal with the legal matters of user created contents similarily.

That of Pixeltees.com is one of examples.

http://www.pixeltees.com/legal/?&c=20031114-190541-4058867278#user_agreement

"The images you put put put in your store are not infringing on the intellectual property rights of others. ... This means you can't draw Mickey Mouse or Buck Rogers and sell it in your store. Draw a hippo or something original instead. That's what this is all about. "

"Assuming you aren't ripping someone else off (see above), THE IMAGES ON THE SHIRTS YOU DRAW ARE OWNED BY YOU. You give Pixeltees a non-exclusive, royalty-free right to store your images and make and sell products with your copyright. We will ask you for permission for any other uses."

-Unggi Yoon

[DivineShadow]

11.

"Before TOS of 2ndLife, there are some user agreements that deal with the legal matters of user created contents similarily."

I agree, in the context of the bigger digital world its a trivial change. But still, in the context of Entertainment VWs it is not, given that the majority of licenses out there simply state that you reliquish all interests to the game company.

[BuhBuhCuh]

12.

Unggi Yoon Wrote:
"If the section 5.3 literally means gamers retain IP right over new items they create, not ownership over conventional (gaming company designed) items they get by play, then, IMO, It would be no amazing change, but just a re-writting of what the copyright act ordained."

One of the major "features" of Second Life is the ability to create content within the service. You will find that users are using a basic 3D modeling toolset to create wholly original content, not game company designed. Due to this feature, Second Life is currently populated by an immense amount of content that the company played no part in besides providing the service (tools) to create. So you are right Unggi, this should not be a major change; this is comparable to any 3D modeling software's TOS where the artist retains their rights.

SL has the advantage that it’s pretty easy to figure out what user-created content is, and reading through the "Who owns my lightsaber" thread, it seems to make sense that users should be able to retain rights to content they create. There is some sorting out over what "user created content" means (am I the one creating a blaster in SWG?) but I think that this will become less ambiguous as more and more play spaces allow you to customize your experience as SL and 'There' do now.

So while this should not be a big deal, it is, because it is leading the way in thinking about how future virtual worlds are built, especially as more and more VWs are built more and more by the user. Or rather, it is only a big deal if virtual worlds are a big deal, and I don't think we would be reading this if we didn't think they are.

bbc

[Unggi Yoon]

13.

Thanks BuhBuhCuh and DivineShadow.

I agree that this chage has imfortant meaning in the development of VW.

In Korea, Nexon's Mabinogi let users create contents(music) within the service.

I think TOS of the Mabinogi will also adopt section similar to that of SL...

Unggi Yoon

[Michael Chui]

14.

I would have thought it obvious. People sell power tools, people sell lumber, hell, there are wood-working classes and workshops, but none of these people owns the birdhouses their customers make.

The only difference I see is the virtual aspect.

[Celia Pearce]

15.

For those who don't know, there are some precedents for this issue of server governance (I'm stealing language from Ted here). If I'm not mistaken, ActiveWorlds, which was originally founded in 1995 and is still an active and vibrant non-game virtual world, went through a bankgruptcy or some other kind of business collapse, and was relcaimed by some configuration or user ownership. I've asked my friend Bruce Damer, who is sort of the unofficial and official historian of virtual reality communties (author of Avatars! and propietor of the Contact Consortium www.ccon.org and who also recently did a user-acquistion deal with OnLive, another vr community, to chime in on this, either via me or through direct blogging.

None of this stuff is entirely new so it would be good for us to put our gaze back to the gay nineties to track similar issues.

[DivineShadow]

16.

"I would have thought it obvious. People sell power tools, people sell lumber, hell, there are wood-working classes and workshops, but none of these people owns the birdhouses their customers make."

There's a bit more of a difference. It is more like a playground sandbox. You can play with the sand and create anything you want (build a castle, sketch an invention, write a poem), but you can't take the sand with you, and if a storm comes your creation may get wiped away. Sounds normal thus far.
The renters of these sandboxes are claiming that they own the sand and the box -fair enough-. But somehow they are also claiming they have intellectual property rights on anything you create with that sand. Furthermore some will even kick you out of their sandbox should you trade any sort of toy your dad may have given you for any amount of sand. Pretty weird, huh?

[Alan Stern]

17.

Yay for Second Life! (& Yay for the free subscription from the conference materials!)

I think Second Life's new take is a great step forward. As above posters have noted, the real trick will be an online service explicitly allowing and recognizing subscribers' legal rights in items FOUND in the world or in the characters created. I for one am glad Second Life is moving this aspect of online gaming in a relatively new direction.

[B. Smith]

18.

The fecal material has impacted the rotating blades with a reverberating "piiinnnngggg".

This is going to be interesting.

[Dave Rickey]

19.

You have to consider the specific context here: Second Life allow players to upload original content. Let's say that I create a unique and new model for a table (an original creative act), and I upload that to Second Life. Under the standard EULA, all rights to that model would be transferred to Linden Labs by the fact that I (the originator) uploaded it there after agreeing to the EULA. Under this version, uploading it gives Linden Labs a liscense to use that model in Second Life as they see fit, *but* I retain all other rights. I can use it in my demo reel (if I am a professional modeller), or even put it into another game, or sell it to someone else (although I'd probably have to disclose Linden Labs liscense, that would be between me and the third party).

The earlier section specifically exempts copyright, and applies only to any "cash" value the specific object wearing my table's model in the game Second Life may have, it's a CYA clause for Linden Labs to avoid all the complications we've been waving our hands towards.

--Dave

[DivineShadow]

20.

I'm still wondering how original my custom-designed house is in UO, how orginal my SWG characters are, etc. Linden labs has you building complex objects by selection and arrangement of a limited set of primitives. UO has me building a house by selecting and arranging from a good set of basic building blocks, and SWG has me creating a character by selecting and arranging it's attributes and further modifying them during the course of the use of the service.
At this level I don't see a difference between what goes on in any of these services.

[Alan Stern]

21.

One very unique aspect of Second Life is that players can write scripts for the objects that govern their behavior. In this manner, unlike UO or SWG or DAOC or EQ or etc., the user can distinctly create something unique that is not a combination of "pre-existing" attributes. (Arguably the script could be called a "combination of pre-existing attributes" but I think that's splitting hairs. Essentially the player is writing new code that interacts with the virtual world in potentially new ways.)

I can't wait until someone gets a copyright on their SL script. Or maybe a Trademark on their new business or a patent on the new game they invent (though I doubt the latter, prohibitively expensive imo). It's only a matter of time.

[Cory Ondrejka]

22.

Dave,
The license Linden Lab keeps is as limited as we could make it and was specifically crafter to allow you to take your table to Design Within Reach and try to get them to make it. Even more interesting, your original act of creation could have happend within Second Life (in fact, since we don't have an importer it would have had to) and you still would have those rights.

Alan,
Yes, the scripting language side of things was a major driver in our thought process and, as you suggested, is most definitely not simply a reuse of Linden assets. Also, wrt "found" items, note that an additional change in our TOS is that content that we add to the world is playing by the same rules that user's content is, so we'll make the same choices that our users will about whether our content should be protected or not. The most obvious example of this would be that other products take all your rights away when you (a player) creates/uploads something, yet allows Nike or McDonalds to retain all of their rights while placing content in world. My opinion is that kind of duality is, in the long run, a mistake and that you'll get better creations if users get a level playing field.

Cory

[Richard Bartle]

23.

Back in Blighty after the conference...

I asked the 2nd Life people whether the EULA could be subsequently changed to undo the change that allowed players to own any IP the created. They said no: it's irrevocable.

I didn't ask them what their attitude would be to an individual whose IP in their virtual world consisted of a second, sub-virtual world ("EverQuest clone implemented in 2nd Life"). Presumably there might be issues if the creator of that sub-world declined to assign to its players any IP that those players created within that sub-world. If 2nd Life are assigning all IP to those that create it, and the designers of a sub-world use the EQ argument that says anything created by their IP is also their IP, then it does look like it's a situation that could possibly arise. The sub-world might have trouble persuading people to sign its EULA, though...

Richard

[Brask Mumei]

24.

"I'm still wondering how original my custom-designed house is in UO, how orginal my SWG characters are, etc."

The question of the originality of those items could be argued. However, I *AM* very certain how original the stories I wrote inside books inside UO were. I am also very certain how original the spoken dialog between myself and my companions was. (This is a direct extension of the previous - during a story-telling contest inside UO, EA theoritically gains all rights to any story told).

Second Life is merely brining their EULA in line with what people already think it is. I certainly don't see "All contents copyright EA, reproduced without permission" on the bottom of peoples logs of in-character conversation.

- Brask Mumei

[Julian Dibbell]

25.

"I can't wait until someone gets a copyright on their SL script. Or maybe a Trademark on their new business or a patent on the new game they invent (though I doubt the latter, prohibitively expensive imo). It's only a matter of time."

Actually, there's no need to wait for anyone to "get" a copyright on their SL script. Under current U.S. law, SL scripts are and always have been copyrighted as soon as they're written. All Linden Labs has done is stop requiring users to sign over those rights in exchange for permission to play on the SL servers.

Patent law is another story, and I still haven't looked at the new SL TOS closely enough to know how they're handling it. I do know they were advised by Lawrence Lessig to handle it differently from copyright, given the extent to which patent already plays havoc with creativity in other arenas of software production.

Cory, can you comment? Is Linden Labs going to require players to waive the right to patent?

[Cory Ondrejka]

26.

Richard,
To clarify slightly, the terms of service could be changed again, but content created under the current scheme couldn't be undone by it, just like the new scheme doesn't go back in time and release content created under the old agreement.

So, when Dave adds his table to the world under the current agreement, he has the option to retain rights to it. Even if [insert evil large company name here] were to purchase Linden Lab and SL and switched SL back to the SW:G TOS, it wouldn't change the fact that Dave has the rights to his table.

As for the EQ inside SL question, if the creators of DarkLife (the folks who are currently trying to create a traditional RPG within SL) decide to keep control of their creations, that is fine, however they are still users like everyone else so they wouldn't have a claim to some other user's IP.

Cory

[Julian Dibbell]

27.

Cory,

When you say that the creators of your in-game RPG have no claim to some other user's IP, are you implying that the new TOS expressly prohibits their making such a claim?

Absent that sort of prohibition, I can't see what would stop the RPG makers from requiring players to hand over their intellectual property in exchange for permission to play, just as Sony et al. do. If you're really giving SL players full copyright in their creations, then you are also giving them the right to relinquish it in exchange for whatever consideration they'll accept.

No?

[DivineShadow]

28.

"As for the EQ inside SL question, if the creators of DarkLife (the folks who are currently trying to create a traditional RPG within SL) decide to keep control of their creations, that is fine, however they are still users like everyone else so they wouldn't have a claim to some other user's IP."

What Richard is bringing up is that they *could* require users to hand over all the remaining IP rights they have over those creations in order to participate in "DarkLife" or "2ndEQ" or even a toolkit of primitives they create. What Richard also subtly bings up is that they might have trouble getting people to agree ("The sub-world might have trouble persuading people to sign its EULA, though..."). The question for Richard is "Why?", 1stEverQuest does it, and so does nearly eveyone else.

The first answer that comes to mind is competition and alternatives. If you're going to loose your rights, might as well go with the best offering out there. Which takes us to the a second point. Why would you fork over your rights if you have a similar-or-higher quality offering that allows you to retain them? You just take your playing to the more agreeable company.

[Jeff Cole]

29.

This thread illustrates very clearly T.L.'s point in her 11/15 entry that "it's time for things like sociology, economics, anthropology, psychology, law, history, etc to emerge more strongly."

Here, it is law.

Legally, this discussion is really going nowhere because of a fundamental misunderstanding of IP *laws*--plural. Copyright is very distinct from patent, and both of which are very distinct from trademark. You cannot lump them into a single "IP law" context and meaningfully discuss them.

The change in the EULA not only reflects what customers might already "expect," but also reflects what might actually be the law. Regardless of property-context (intellectual or otherwise), it comes down to a contracts issue and the enforceability of EULA provisions. If the EULA is not enforceable, then the property issues are moot.

Jeff Cole

[Cory Ondrejka]

30.

Richard, DivineShadow and Julian,
The TOS doesn't forbid a user relinquishing their rights, so all of you are quite correct. I just wanted to reinforce that a developer in SL isn't in a privileged position where they automatically gain rights over another player's content.

It is an interesting question though -- should we be blocking additional agreements between players? I think that the answer is "no" but I'd love to hear opinions.

Cory

[DivineShadow]

31.

"It is an interesting question though -- should we be blocking additional agreements between players? I think that the answer is "no" but I'd love to hear opinions."

Would you be willing to act as enforcer of such a 'blocking' policy? What would be the benefits to you or the community? What would be the cost, tangible or otherwise?

[Alan Stern]

32.

As DivineShadow notes, to either approve, enforce or forbid inter-user agreements would open up a big can of worms. That avenue gets hairy fast, hence other companies' reluctance to allow out-of-world transactions.

The current system as presented by the modified ToS is fine. Any issues such as inter-user agreements, licenses and transactions will be regulated by the market. If those agreements or licenses are too prohibitive, users will find other avenues or other groups with whom to associate. Why get involved in an area that is traditionally market-regulated? (Yes, I know there are some non-market-regulated aspects. i.e. Statute of Frauds laws for those lawyers listening.)

Julian, my point way above in saying:

"I can't wait until someone gets a copyright on their SL script. Or maybe a Trademark on their new business or a patent on the new game they invent (though I doubt the latter, prohibitively expensive imo). It's only a matter of time."

was referring to official registration. Yes, copyright and trademark rights extend backwards, often to inception, conception or first use in commerce, but until someone registers it with the PTO, there's no constructive notice or presumption of legitimacy, etc.

[Torley Wong]

33.

Hi, I'm just reading this article.