Well after years and years of us wondering, Linden Lab have finally spoken up about Intellectual Property rights of content creators in Second Life.
There’s quite a lot to digest in their blogpost, which firstly focuses on the much criticised DMCA process. The long paperwork trail was indeed cumbersome, and a digital process is certainly welcome. But it’s going to need a lot of protections in place to make it work. The easier you make something, the more prone it becomes to abuse. The last thing we need is content randomly disappearing every other week because someone with a grudge felt like griefing, and think they can hide behind their keyboard.
The Permissions system in Second Life has long been outdated for the needs of creators too – I’d quite like to see flexibility such as the “ability to permit non-commercial distribution but prohibit resale”. This, in my eyes, represents a positive move for a lot of content. A system which allows texture/scultpy maps to be resold on prims, but not as the textures themselves would be handy too.
I’ll admit the “sticky licenses” flew right over my head, but it sounds rather plush, to be able to attach metadata to content. Kinda like digimarking your products so you can check up on any suspicious content.
I’m going to smoothly gloss over the Standard Industry Practices for Copying Tools, because that read like a personal letter to a certain company I’m strongly affiliated with. And it’d be all kinds of stupid for me to open my mouth on that!
The Content Seller Program is something I’ve discussed here before. I feared it’d create a two-tier class in SL society if it was implemented incorrectly – when Blue Linden first floated the idea a couple of years ago in his office hours, he suggested SL residents would pay to enter such a program. The sums suggested ran into 6 figures, which would rule out a large proportion of honest retailers.
The whole system, as Linden Lab have currently proposed it (pre-feedback) works off a system of trust. And sometimes I wonder how much we trust our fellow avatar. I’d like to think the system could work, but I feel that it’d just lead to a lot of accusations, witch hunts and ensuing dramas as an “accredited retailer” gets busted and the whole thing loses credibility.
Ultimately though, all this does nothing to stop copybot and theft happening – it’s still going to keep being a problem, and it’s not going to go away anytime soon.
Overall though, it’s nice to know Linden Lab still give a damn, isn’t it?
Bluegum on August 5, 2009
Correct me if I am wrong but I thought most theft involves manipulating the viewer and/or data stream the viewer processes. So was there anything about implementing a registration/approval process before allowing third party viewers to connect to the grid?
Baby P’s Take on August 5, 2009
[...] A few bits tip his brit hand (we don’t name our kids Nigel here, baby p) but Prad weights in on the Man Steppin In. [...]
Lizzie Lexington on August 5, 2009
I think LL has dragged their feet on the subject because they had doubts regarding if the creators in SL were legitimate businesses or just folks taking on a hobby. Being in the sales/biz dev side of the IT world for 10 years now I could easily see them taking on this attitude or perspective. The anonymity of the world in which we choose to be a part of can easily make one take these business owners less seriously. But then again who really knows why LL was so slow to address this issue, and this is just my opinion.
Dale Innis on August 6, 2009
Love the blue mouse! Where’d that come from?
@bluegum: Before they could go about allowing some viewers but not others to attach to the grid, they’d have to publish some sort of rules for how an approved viewer should behave. I think that’s what they’re aiming for in the “Standard Industry Practices for Copying Tools” section. Once they’ve done that, they can say “thou shalt not distribute SL viewers that misbehave”. If someone does make a misbehaving SL viewer, it’ll be hard to reliably prevent it from connecting to the grid (it can always masquerade as an approved viewer), but just making it clear that misbehaving viewers are Not Welcome might help significantly.
See this JIRA for considerable discussion of the possibilities.
Bluegum on August 8, 2009
Thanks Dale, I’ve voted in favour. In my experience there is very little that is impossible to programme – just lots that is either hard or unpalatable. But too hard is not the same as impossible it all comes down to priorities.