[Opensim-users] Correcting some errors

[Michael Cortez]

From: Karen Palen <karen_palen at yahoo.com>
 > That is not piracy, the legal doctrines are "fair use" and
 > "first sale" if you care to research them, Wikipedia does a
 > fairly good job of explaining them and I will look up the
 > case law if you really want.
 >
 > The content that I am moving from Second Life to MY sim are
 > one or more of these:
 >
 > 1) Stuff I built myself
 >
 > 2) Full permissions under SL DRM system (when purchased or
 > obtained that way)
 >
 > 3) Moved with the explicit permission (sometimes at the
 > request of) the creator.
 >
 > I add the caveat to 2 above since about half of my SL
 > inventory is now "full perm" due to a Second Life database
 > glitch that reset the all of the permission flags. ALL of
 > that content remains on SL only!

I am somewhat curious about your opinion on the argument that the legal 
doctrines of Fair Use and First Sale don't actually apply to content in 
Second Life because you are not actually purchasing a tangible good.

Rather, some argue that you are purchasing a license for the use of 
content within the framework of the virtual world -- where within that 
framework you are licensed the ability to optionally Copy, Transfer or 
Edit the content.

Therefore, because you have not actually purchased a good and the 
license specifically applies only to that virtual world, transferring or 
otherwise using the content outside of that framework is a violation of 
your license.  The analogy being, electronic purchase of a license to 
use software (such as Adobe Creative Suite [Photoshop], or Turbo Tax) 
where that license generally permits you to install the software on a 
limited number of computers, and does not permit you to resell, give 
away, or otherwise transfer ownership (of the license or the product.)

When I first heard this argument, the person promoting it backed it with 
verbiage from the Linden Labs' Second Life Terms of Service where it 
indicated that creators of software were *licensing* their content for 
use *within* the system.

Now of course, purchasing products outside of the system via the various 
websites complicates matters -- because those sales don't take place 
within the system in the first place -- but the products are delivered 
within that system.

Feel free to reply off-list, as I'm not going to delve much into the 
argument -- just curious since you indicated that you "DO know something 
about IP law."

--
Michael Cortez