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

[Snowcrash Short]

On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 6:28 PM, Melanie <melanie at t-data.com> wrote:

> 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.
>
I disagree with the ease of access, the primary reason why I started this
project was that I wanted to try out a new grid, and had to spend 2 days
searching for suitable content for my avatar. The search aren't in place to
make it easy to find that content, and why should I spend two days
searching for content when I have a different account on a different grid,
with content I like? especially since that content is available under CC
license?

> 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.
>
However the TOS is not the end all thing most people believe, in my
country, the author of the document is very much responsible for making the
agreement clear, especially for non professional users, if the creator
cannot make a compelling argument that a clause is necessary and easily
understandable then it may verywell be disregarded in any court.

But that is really an aside thing, we are talking about content with so
little monetary value that most courts will disregard the case as too
trivial, which is even more an aside, since it is not the intention of me
nor MyInventory to violate anybodies copyright. It is however the intention
of the tool to empower the user and to grant the user better control of
content the user has a legal right to control.

>
> > 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.
> The inventory download features works equally well for OpenSim and LL
> grids, in fact it may work a little better on LL grids since the Folder
> versioning works a bit more reliable on LL's grids. IMO there is a lot more
> content theft going on on the LL grid, simply because they have a bigger
> userbase, where as most people currently on opensim based grids are a
> different type of users.
> > 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
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>
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