[Opensim-users] Announcement of inventory tool (MyInventory), mostly of interest to grid operators/grid nauts

[Melanie]

Hi,

On 15/11/2012 17:59, Snowcrash Short wrote:
> IANAL! but...

Precisely.

> There is no doubt that the creator owns the copyright, and the user has a
> license to use said item. One of the operative words here is "User" and not
> "Avatar", avatars have no legal standing, users do. One of the many issues
> here is that there is no agreement made between somebody clicking "Pay" on
> an object in a virtual world and the one "selling" the object, but thats a
> side issue.

In fact, there is. It's called the Terms Of Service of the grid in
question and such terms lay out the interpretation of the in world
permissions. Those of Second Life and of Avination limit the grant
of license to the grid of origin. In Second Life, this cannot be
overridden while Avination allows an explicit, written license to
export items. Avination will support the "exportable" flag if and
when it becomes available to allow creators to mark their items as
exportable, however, any item created before the adoption of such a
flag will default to NOT exportable and the flag default will also
be NOT exportable.

> This is where I see content creators being in a far better position than
> the Record Industry were back in the zero'es, the pricing on most content
> is so low that it really isn't worth while to pirate it for the ordinary
> user. But ease of access is very much an issue in opensim grids.

In fact, ease of access is mostly given in "open" grids like OSGrid.
The only thing really missing is a tool that allows upload of .iar
and possible .oar through a client connection. This is useful for
people on grids that don't support user connected simulators or
where the user doesn't have the time/expertise/resources to operate
a simulator.

> This very much depends on the country you live in, in my country I am
> entitled to use any digital asset I have licensed in any way I see fit - as
> long as this is done for personal use and I have not made a prior agreement
> with the distributor to not use the asset in said manner.

As above, that agreement is called the Terms Of Service. Since the
grid is the distributor, this is a valid and legally binding
agreement in any country.

> I do not agree with you about damaging the opensim community, quite the
> opposite. I see two major obstacles preventing widespread use, one is easy
> access to content, and the second is a usable search tool.

The damaging part is the public's impression that OpenSim equals
content theft.

> There is a lot of free content available, either CC licensed or public
> domain, but until now only grid operators have had access to it.
> MyInventory is intended to give the user access to this content without
> having to be technical savy enough to install and run a simulator.

See above, such a tool would be a great thing to have.

- Melanie