[Opensim-dev] Legal Issues was RFC Profiles

Tue Mar 31 16:44:19 UTC 2009

+1, strongly agree.  How content is handled is largely IMO an issue of
the TOS extended by the grid owner.  OpenSIM should provide a robust
permissions system to allow content creators to manage access to
resources inside a grid but how something leaves or moves across a grid
is tied to the TOS for that grid.

Mike

On Tue, 2009-03-31 at 16:34 +0000, Colin B. Withers wrote:
> Won't this also force grids to do what SL do and forbid users to transfer their accounts/log in details to someone else (and hence all their inventory)?
> 
> Why do I get the feeling that we are starting to wade in mud?
> 
> Can't all the issues of permissions, i.e. the three future (next owner) permissions, and the extra two current permissions (anyone can copy, anyone can move), and licensing, all be dealt with in the TOS of the individual grids, which then apply to all users of that grid, both creators and end-users?
> 
> Can you imagine the mess of an object with multiple textures, filled with various anims, scripts and notecards (thinking sexgen bed here), and they all have different permissions/licenses. Doesn't bear thinking about :(
> 
> Rock
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: opensim-dev-bounces at lists.berlios.de [mailto:opensim-dev-bounces at lists.berlios.de] On Behalf Of Michael Cortez
> Sent: Tuesday, March 31, 2009 5:05 PM
> To: opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de
> Subject: Re: [Opensim-dev] Legal Issues was RFC Profiles
> 
> Tom Willans wrote:
> > Who are you giving permissions to the Avatar or the owner of the Avatar?
> This is the rudimentary issue at the bottom of this, and is IMHO the 
> cause of most of the confusion.
> 
> You can't make a legal agreement with an Avatar -- in all likelyhood, 
> the only legal standings an avatar is going to have in court is as an 
> alias for an actual human.
> 
> Therefore you are always making an agreement with the owner.
> 
> Now you may be making an agreement that the owner is being licensed to 
> use an object within the confines of a specific grid, t the owner is 
> permitted to make digital copies of said object within the regions of 
> that grid, is restricted to using those copies with a single specific 
> avatar and is not allowed to provide those copies to other people.  This 
> is what some creators and users believe is happening when you mark 
> something as No Transfer, Copy, No Mod.
> 
> Now others believe, for the same permissions that you are:
> 
> Selling the owner a digital copy of the item.  Since they now own it, 
> they are legally entitled to fair rights usage including backing it up.  
> They believe they have agreed to some terms of usage during the 
> purchase, which includes the fact that they will not modify the item or 
> provide it to others.  However since they (the human) own it, they feel 
> they can use said item anywhere, any grid, or any purpose including 
> importing it into their own 3D applications and creating 3D meshes that 
> they may render to jpeg and use to decorate their personal website.
> 
> And then there are lots of shades of gray between those two points.
> 
> > The permissions based system regardless of security issues does 
> > address this however imperfectly.
> IMHO the permissions system, as envisioned by LL fails utterly to convey 
> in a manor that is clear and concise as to what you are actually buying 
> or licensing when you spend L$ within SL, to "purchase" an object.
> 
> For more fun, one can always try to decode the LL Terms of Service:
> 
> Section 1.3: 
> ... "You acknowledge that Linden Lab and other Content Providers have 
> rights in their respective Content under copyright and other applicable 
> laws and treaty provisions, and that except as described in this 
> Agreement, such rights are not licensed or otherwise transferred by mere 
> use of the Service." ...
> 
> Section 3.2
> ..."Notwithstanding the foregoing, you understand and agree that by 
> submitting your Content to any area of the service, you automatically 
> grant (and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant) 
> to Linden Lab:"...  (a) a royalty-free, worldwide, fully paid-up, 
> perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license to (i) use, 
> reproduce and distribute your Content within the Service as permitted by 
> you through your interactions on the Service
> 
> Many of these sections have been misread and misquoted, I myself have 
> done so. 
> 
> However at this point, I am fairly certain the intent of the only 
> license users of Second Life are agreeing to by merely using the system, 
> and buying/selling content in a normal fashion (no included license 
> notecards and such) -- is the right to use LL's SL.  You never have any 
> legal rights at all to the items you "buy" in the system.  A license is 
> never established between the content creators and the buyers -- instead 
> the license creators have licensed the content to Linden Labs, and under 
> the Terms of Service, Linden Labs allows other users to utilize the 
> content within the system.  I'm not even sure you can argue quid pro quo 
> has granted you a license or ownership, because LL makes it quite clear 
> that "Linden Dollars" have no intrinsic value, and all you have is a 
> license to move around some bits on their database servers that are 
> labeled as "Linden Dollars"
> 
> I highly doubt this is the intent of the vast mast majority of OpenSim 
> developers and potential users for this to be the case on any grid they 
> provide or visit. 
> 
> --
> Michael Cortez
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-- 
Mike Dickson <mike.dickson at hp.com>
BladeSystem infrastructure R&D