A Second Life roadmap: Content-management/Intellectual-property
by Tateru Nino 
Aug 5th 2009 at 9:00AM
Filed under: Economy, News items, Opinion, Second Life, Legal, Virtual worlds
Linden Lab yesterday published a "Content Management Roadmap" for Second Life, which outlines directions that they'll be taking towards Intellectual Property in future. Why then, you might wonder, is it not called an "Intellectual Property Roadmap"? We think that's because – to the Lab – Intellectual property issues all resolve down to content-management, at the platform level.
The roadmap covers five main sections, three of which basically comprise methods of helping honest folks stay honest, one which recognizes and rewards top-sellers, and one which allows more expeditious property violation notices. We're not really sure how much of a roadmap this really is, as it purports to cover less than six months, and describes projects already near completion. Nevertheless, it's interesting reading.
Firstly, the infringement notification process. The existing DMCA notification process has been considered, at its best, to be awkward and considerably laggy. Based on the feedback we've received here at Massively, the Lab's DMCA notification process has been perceived as more of a barrier to intellectual property protections than a boost. The process so far has been a manual one from end-to-end, requiring each identified infringing piece of content to be located and removed by hand.
The somewhat archaic communications requirements for submission of the notice have just compounded those delays. The Lab promises new tools to enable them to act swiftly, where action is determined to be required, and an electronic notification system to allow infringements to be reported more readily by intellectual property holders.
The Content Seller Program, on the other hand, is a fairly vague, and appears to merely consist of badge, marker or some other form of indicator for sellers in good standing, who are already successful, marking them as trustworthy. Linden Lab proposes that participants in this program have identify and payment information on file, have warranted the necessary rights and licenses to the intellectual property of all their content, meet a certain minimum threshold in sales, and be in good-standing with a clean enforcement record.
Meet all of that and you're eligible for the Content Seller Program gold star. Maybe there will be cake.
How the CSP rating would be effectively communicated to potential customers is perhaps one of the most important points, and presently unknown.
The remaining three items basically cover helping honest users stay honest.
Honest users do not mean to infringe on the property rights of others, but it can happen accidentally or out of ignorance.
One item covers education. In our own experience, few average people have much of a grasp on what copyright is, or how it functions. Linden Lab intends to more clearly document the practicalities of fundamental intellectual property.
The next item allows license information to be somehow attached to content, though confusingly there's no indication that anyone other than users of the Lab's Project Nebraska standalone solution will actually be able to see or access that license information.
Our confusion here is compounded by the fact that so far the Lab has not indicated that there will be any interoperability or transfer of content permitted between the Second Life grid and Project Nebraska installations – so either the Lab is confused, or they've tipped off an otherwise unannounced feature.
Either way, being in receipt of license terms is not the same as compliance with those terms. If it were, 70% of the world's legal system would shut down overnight.
Since replication of content in a system like Project Nebraska would be technically unrestricted and unlimited, the best that the license metadata could do would be to prevent accidentally infringing duplication of content by those who might otherwise be unaware of licensing restrictions.
Lastly, we have "Standard Industry Practices for Copying Tools."
Linden Lab makes a suggestion as to what some of those practices might be like, but ultimately is asking those people who make import/export/backup tools to get together and make their own code of standards, and then stick to them – and nothing more than that.
The Lab doesn't state any plans to modify its current stance towards copying tools (that is: Any and all such tools are permitted for allowable copies and backups, but infringement will still not be tolerated). The Lab has stated that it intends to never provide any duplication or backup tools in any Lab-sponsored or -developed viewer or tool, for any purpose.
While the Lab seems to have no interest in mandating rules for copy/backup tools, it hints that – in the event of a widespread failure of tool-providers to manage limits effectively, that it will take broad and unspecified actions against tools or toolmakers.
All in all, it's quite an interesting read. We're at least as keen as Linden Lab to hear your own thoughts on it all.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Raven Haalan said on 9:38AM 8-05-2009
It is an interesting read. As you observe, a lot of it revolves around existing initiatives, but the redefinition of "ownership" of stuff you buy to restrict it to SL only is certainly telling.
Basically, they are saying if you migrate to OpenSim, you can't take it with you.
Good post.
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Eris said on 9:41AM 8-05-2009
There are certainly some encouraging aspirations in LL's post but lots of devilish details too. One thing that raised an eyebrow was mention of removing (potentially) illegal content as a result of a DMCA filing. As I understand it, LL currently only remove the content visible in-world and nothing from Inventory yet this post explicitly mentions methods for tracking and removing every instance of disputed content. I think that's something they've always been legally obliged to do but historically haven't (been able to get) done?
I would argue strongly for enhanced permissions features to include settings for the 'user-after-next' which would not only do something to protect limited-use content but would, I think, stimulate the whole creative marketplace. This would seem like the idea opportunity to get that into place if it's technically practical.
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Prokofy said on 12:39PM 8-05-2009
Tateru, as always, you've certainly displayed *your* hand here, with your very biased take on this document, which of course anyone can read.
Re licensing, there isn't any "confusion" as you indicate but in fact an indication that some kind of licensing to indicate intents for permissions off the main LL grid will be in the works. We can only hope this won't take the form of the commerce-killing Creative Commons which pressures people into distributing their works for free with the chimera of some income to come mysteriously down the road from this largesse and loss for themselves. Second Life is the opposite of Creative Commons in that regard in that it enables people to offer copies of their work *for sale* with a permissions system build in, not requiring hanging licenses and generally working despite the exploits. The coupling of copyright and commerce is overwhelming chosen over CC type gambits and works pretty good, giving the lie to the whole CC culture. (That's why there's such a determined minority trying to kill off whatever DRM there is and commerce model there is in SL, because it's a huge advertisement for the ineffectiveness of CC).
As for the "vague warnings," they aren't vague at all. Here's what Cyn wrote, which you failed to report:
"If we face a situation in which users or developers of copying tools are engaged in or inducing wide-spread infringement, we reserve our right to pursue necessary means to stop this activity, including technological blocking measures as well as legal action to protect against unauthorized use of Second Life."
Technological blocking measures, Tateru. And while you and other extremists may find this "futile" it is in fact effective *enough* and they're not required to tell you what they are to be effective : )
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tony said on 1:39PM 8-05-2009
I found Adam's response to be informative, and I think he brings up some valid points. What LL really needs to do is add an 'Exportable' permissions bit that well meaning copy/export software tools can use. That along with a space for copyright data (name, date, URL or license text ).
http://www.adamfrisby.com/blog/2009/08/on-content-management-standards-practices/comment-page-1/#comment-8324
The restrictions they mention are a bit one sided and I think needs to take into account the large user groups that allow others to build and share freely.
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Dusan Writer said on 3:30PM 8-05-2009
Tateru:
Great summary. I'm definitely of the opinion that the Lab has come down with a strong position on the tools that allow copying of content....I don't know why others don't read the same thing, but they seem to be fairly clearly saying that those types of tools (where there is no perm check) facilitate infringement, and that they will take whatever steps necessary to protect against that.
Now, they left wiggle room by talking about the community arriving at new 'standards' but it's clear that if you released a "sim copybot" today, which allowed porting of content including that which you don't own or have full permissions for, that they will do what they need to.
Finally, I'm not sure I understand the basis of the following claim:
"Since replication of content in a system like Project Nebraska would be technically unrestricted and unlimited, the best that the license metadata could do would be to prevent accidentally infringing duplication of content by those who might otherwise be unaware of licensing restrictions."
How do you know that? You make it sound like Nebraska won't have a permission system, or that Nebraska users will somehow have access to the asset servers or whatever.
Maybe you could clarify what you mean?
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Tateru Nino said on 8:06PM 8-05-2009
It's a very strong hands-off position on policy for copy/backup tools, definitely. It makes sense to stay out of the liability loop by not getting involved. If you skim over it, though, it's easy to interpret it the opposite way. Nevertheless, the Lab's clearly saying that they don't want any part in that process.
As for Nebraska, yes, since that's supposed to be running on the customer's own hardware. Content replication should be trivial. Physical access to the hardware pretty much trumps any protection that might be in place, and we're not expecting any especial security measures beyond the norm.
Dusan Writer said on 10:31PM 8-05-2009
Hmmm....well, it will be interesting to see when they launch Nebraska how that plays out. While I agree that physical access gives a 'level of control' I'm not sure we've seen anything that indicates how the software running on it will be 'packaged'.
I'm not an expert in these kinds of things but I think, for example, of the Google appliance - you get a server, but the "stuff" inside is kind of locked down.
For enterprise clients, they're hardly going to want to hack the server, so the comment that it will be unrestricted and unlimited isn't a certain thing if the admin doesn't have some sort of asset server access.
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Tateru Nino said on 11:26PM 8-05-2009
Barring any information to the contrary (certainly none has emerged), I'm assuming that access to the data will be no less or more difficult than accessing, say, the wordpress database on a WP installation on your own server.
Dusan Writer said on 11:37PM 8-05-2009
Hmmm....OK. Well, I guess we wait and see, although frankly I wonder if the opposite stance might be equally valid - "Barring any information to the contrary, I'm assuming that access to the data files will be restricted".
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