Adam publicly replies to Linden Lab’s recent changes to content management policy. "Overall it is a step to right direction".
I wanted to take a few moments to publically reply to Linden
Lab's recent changes to content management policy. I think
overall it is a step in the right direction;
however one subsection of the policy leaves me with grave
reservations - the suggested standards for backup utilities. To
quote from the
original posting on this subject:
To those developing copying tools, we urge the simultaneous
development of standard industry practices that protect against
intellectual property infringement. For example, consider the
following standard practices for tools copying content from Second
Life:
- Check that the user of the tool is the Second Life "creator" of
the content;
- Do not facilitate the export of an entire Second Life
inventory; and
- Preserve the Second Life "creator" name and information that
the content was originally created in the Second Life virtual
world.
To summarise in other words, "You may only export content you
created, and only if you label them as something you created in
Second Life first, with your second life avatar name; and you
cannot back up your whole inventory at once - you must do so
piecemeal." - every single one of these restrictions eliminates a
large swathe of legitimate users and uses. Let's go into them in
detail.
Check that the user of the tool is the Second Life "creator" of
the content
You have now eliminated all the content that is explicitly
marked as compatible off-grid; everything licensed under creative
commons or Open Source licenses, everything in the public domain.
While I concur with 'Full Permission != Permission to Export';
there is no way right now of programmatically indicating whether
you want to allow content to be exported - however there are ways
of legally indicating it, such as license files, README notecards,
et al.
While Full Permissions are not an ideal situation - the overlap
between content allowed off-grid, and full permission freebies is
significant enough that a full permission check is a acceptable
compromise. I personally would say 'Full Permission OR Creator'; as
both indicate a high level of permissiveness with the content
itself (and the creator should always be able to export their own
content). It is worth noting that Second Inventory (the popular
backup tool) has been using 'Full Permission' as its own metric for
over a year now; with I believe mostly acceptable results (it is
not used as an infringement tool - the infringement part is always
done by a illegitimate tool first).
Do not facilitate the export of an entire Second Life
inventory
Hello.
The only possible reasoning for this I imagine is simply to
prevent competition - by allowing full inventory export; you make
it easy to translate content you developed from Second Life, to the
numerous third party grids. If someone high profile wants to leave
for one of these, these tools definetely help streamline the
process. With 50,000+ downloads of the OpenSimulator software since
December - I suspect there is an alterior motive for this
'standard' that is not related at all to helping content creators;
infact I cannot see a reason at all where this helps Content
Creators.
The unintentional targets of this are now people who perform
inventory backups - the Second Life Inventory server is about
99.99% reliable - which means 1 in 10,000 users can expect to lose
their whole inventory, and 1 in 10,000 items will mysteriously
vanish over the course of a year. There are reasons why Second
Inventory market themselves as a backup tool for the unreliable
asset & inventory services - and it is distinctly related to
deficiencies in the platform itself.
As far as I can tell, this rule makes backups harder - which
hurts content creators, because legitimate backup tools are now out
of the question. It's also saying something about the supposed 'You
own your IP' line Linden Lab has been stating for the last 7 years.
If we own our IP, how can you state what we can do with it?
which brings us to…
Preserve the Second Life "creator" name and information that
the content was originally created in the Second Life virtual
world.
Many probably want to be able to do this optionally; but it is
not a mandatory feature. Mandating this indicates that you do not
have control over your IP - because Linden Lab is going to demand
attribution to Second Life. We at DeepThink developed a whole bunch
of content over the last 2 years for use in both Second
Life and OpenSim - I dont want that attributed to our content
creation account, I want that attributed to:
DeepThink Pty Ltd. <www.deepthinklabs.com> -
Copyright©2008, See attached license for licensing
information
and not…
Adam Zaius - Second Life
Forcing the latter is stupid, and less effective than the
former. The latter does not hold any form of copyright, it does not
imply any license - and it does not imply any contact information
for the creator or copyright holding entity [especially if they
leave SL]. The tools should include the capability to add
attribution metadata, and maybe they can default to showing a
Second Life name (eg 'Adam Zaius inSL') - but ultimately,
*I* want freeform legal attribution - which
carries a lot more weight in the real world, where copyright
matters.
This personally reeks of an disingenous alterior motive -
particularly the last bit (Created in SL) - I'm very skeptical that
Linden Lab would be able to legally enforce this; Textures and
other assets have no 'creative' input by Linden Lab. The procedural
primitive modelling may have some effect, but since a process is
not legally creative - I dont believe the procedural algorithms
themselves contribute creatively to the final work significantly
enough to give Linden Lab joint copyright - although a legal
experts opinion is definetely required here.
Ultimately, I think this is a counterproductive effort.
While I think this came from a earnest and honest discussion
internally at Linden Lab - I dont believe it has any real world
capacity to solve any real problems. Second Life needs a permission
system that is capable of indicating an export permission. It
should be clearly marked 'Allow Export'; and be tied hand-in-hand
with full permissions (so you can only check 'Allow Export' on
existing full permission content - this way people are under no
pretenses)
It's not an ideal solution to the permission model's
deficiencies - but it would be a much better start than the three
listed above. Since permissions are implemented as a 32-bit
bitflags on the backend, and 28 bits are currently unused,
implementing this would require no significant database or
architectural modifications to Linden Lab's backend (if anything it
is just a viewer modification.) - it would be a very simple
modification to make.
As a administrator on the most popular alternate grid - I dont
want content on the grid that doesn't belong. Infact we do spend a
great deal of time making sure that our freebie locations and
newbie content is all legitimately licensed (tell us if you find
something that isn't!), and the original creator intended the
content to be there; anything that simplifies that process has my
wholehearted approval.
Illegitimate content is not just irritating to deal with, it is
also a legal minefield - we do have a DMCA process for OSGrid, and
we've got some pretty sophisticated ways of removing every instance
of an asset off the core servers, but it is a painful and annoying
process. DMCA takedowns require certain legal procedures to be
followed to the letter - which makes things a liability if they are
done wrong; and there are significant extra considerations for
non-US residents and servers.
Speaking with four hats on - that of a Grid Admin, Software
Developer, Copyright Holder and Consumer - my firm response to this
proposal is 'go back, and try again.' - because it's not satisfying
the requirements; and won't do squat to solve the problem of
content piracy; infact it will likely have the opposite effect
where legitimate tools are handcuffed, and users favour of ones of
illegitimate design.
There are good solutions to this problem, and I've got a
proposal of my own in the works (one that I have been working on
for a number of weeks already) - but these 'Standards and
Practices' are complete hogwash; and degrate creator rights by
imposing restrictions on what creators can do with their own
content.
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