[Opensim-dev] Copyright, IPR and stuff on assets

[Tleiades]

Hi

I know that maybe I am getting ahead of my self, but I think we need to 
start debating on how to handle money, copyrights, IPR and stuff like that. 
In a few months we will be ready for people to start providing content to 
grids.

Then the question on who has rights to the stuff starts to emerge, for 
osgrid, matters are pretty simple, but what about all the other grids? will 
they have the same policy as osgrid, or will they lean more towards LL?, if 
they lean towards LL, how will ownership be transferred, how can money 
exchange hands?

We could leave this issue hidden in the closet, so another question is: 
"Should we try to address this issue?"

Personally I think that we would be better of content wise, if content 
creators could have monetary gain from creating content, just like LL. On 
the otherhand, I strongly believe that the business model where a content 
creator makes an original, and then makes a living, from selling a copy of 
the original, is dead in this digital age. (Yes, this is the same problem, 
the record industry, the software industry, and a lot of others are facing)

Some people are going to object to an open source grid, based on fear of 
having their creation. To my knowledge the only type of content which will 
have an increased risk of being exposed are scripts, other than that, I 
think everything else can be ripped today; my guess is that people will be 
more worried, and that we need to have our arguments in place.

Let me try to outline some of the arguments I can see:
1) Yes, there is an increased risk of content being ripped, but that 
increase is "only" related to scripts
2) A service/subcription model, where you customers buys a service, rather 
than content will have no problems with content being ripped

Then the next question comes up, what kind of money to support? and how to 
make that money trustworthy? LL currently has an - apparently - well running 
system for handling micropayments called L$. I doubt we can tap into that, 
but paypal has a similar system, albeit with some limitations:

https://www.paypal.com/helpcenter/main.jsp;jsessionid=HLGVD6HyJnyTkQ1KzC2Tt3hph0pwtpG4PJyDyR27fHxW8s4PJfmT!-1650576528?t=solutionTab&ft=homeTab&ps=&solutionId=13088&locale=en_US&_dyncharset=UTF-8&cmd=_help-ext&serverInstance=9005

So what do you think, should we let this bear sleep?

/Tleiades