Massively^™

On 14 November, 2003 Linden Lab caused quite a stir by announcing that users who created or published content via the Second Life service would "retain full intellectual property protection for the digital content they create, including characters, clothing, scripts, textures, objects and designs."

Essentially, the same rights that they'd have anywhere else (barring assorted terms of use/service to the contrary). It seems obvious, in many ways, but ultimately it's actually very rare. Terms of use/service which express a contradictory position are in the majority. In fact, go to the filing cabinet and pull out the contract for your current RL job. Odds are, there are a whole slew of creator rights that you've already signed away that have little or nothing to do with your job.

That, unfortunately, is the normal condition. When it comes to the new, novel, or creative -- almost everyone wants a piece of your pie, and few want to leave a slice for you, if they can avoid it. Even taking Sturgeon's (second) Law into account, competition for the remaining portion of human content and pop-culture is quite stiff.

Van Hemlock would like to talk about a certain virtual world, but, alas, he cannot. It's not because he doesn't want to -- he does. Or because he thinks any less of ... this place, because he doesn't. It's just because he's careful. A certain entity has laid claim to some letters placed next to other letters, and he's just respecting their rights. Van Hemlock isn't angry. He's just confused.

Other games and virtual worlds have trademarks and yet manage not to anger their fan communities .... Right or wrong? We don't know, but Van Hemlock's hilarious take on the matter had us smirking and turning certain trademarked properties into pieces of public art for fun.

Linden Lab reports that it is putting more 'resources' on to DMCA duty to deal with improper duplication of content in Second Life.

This would be a significant improvement over reports of one person, not even performing the DMCA processing full-time. We don't think the new people will be full-time either, but more person-hours either way. Well, that's all assuming that 'resources' means people. Maybe it means the rumored part-time DMCA processor is now full-time.

See if you can follow our reasoning on this one. Avatar Reality, the creators of the Blue Mars project, which is aimed at delivering a next-gen graphical Second Life-like MMO, are outsourcing the actual content of the game, while they work on the engine. Given the screenshots, and what we've been told by the studio, there will likely be many replicas of real-life objects -- golf equipment, for example, for the golf game that's said to be in development.

However, one of Blue Mars' third-party developers, Virtual Space Entertainment, sports a company logo that's eerily similar to that of mountain bike-makers Specialized. Is VSE so into their role as replicators of real things that the mandate has seeped into every aspect of the company? Someone's in trouble here, and it's not Specialized.

[Thanks, Peter!]

You may or may not have heard of V-Day. It is an international day of activity with the aim of stopping violence against women. If you have never heard of the protest day before, you have almost certainly heard of its most famous fundraising activity: the Vagina Monologues.
A group of women in Second Life decided to stage the Vagina Monologues as part of fundraising activities for V-Day. They correctly approached vday.org, and were given permission to perform. Then things got messy. According to Lillie Yifu's excellent (but frequently NSFW) blog 2nd Sex HBO hold the copyright for broadcast versions of the play, and claim that Second Life is a broadcast rather than a theatrical performance medium. Whilst I can see their lawyer's point, I rather think they've missed the wider point of just why they are looking to do this.

However, happily, all is not lost. The organisers have decided to host their own event, called In the Pink. If you would like to know more about this and get involved, or write for it there is a meeting on Tuesday 30th at 6pm SLTime in the VLS theatre sim.

After Aimee's post on the actions of Guide Hawk (or guidehawk_ltd) with respect to using resident's imagery to promote his guide book, I asked Linden Lab about Guide Hawk's claim that he paid and has authorization from Linden Lab for use of the material and their name for promotion of his auctions.

Linden Lab's response was - well, they declined to answer the question.

A person who operates under the name Guide Hawk or guidehawk_ltd has been marketing Second Life related goods on eBay by using an array of images taken from other users. But here's the kicker ... he has watermarked these images and defends them as his own! Some examples include Khamindie by Arahan Claveau and an image by Lena Kennedy. Not the least of this person's victims is Linden Lab itself, whose trademark logo is used to promote the products without the "No infringement is intended" notice required of any website or blog that uses the logo which might cause brand confusion.

A simple misunderstanding? Well Lena Kennedy contacted Guide Hawk and by his response it would seem Guide is sticking to his guns. Here is what he had to say:

According to the New York Post, A group of Second Lifers are suing Thomas Simon, aka Rase Kenzo, a 36 year old Flushing, NY resident for copyright violations. The plaintiffs in the suit are: Kevin Alderman of Florida; Shannon Grei, of Oregon; Linda Baca of Indiana; Teasa Copprue of Michigan; Kasi Lewis of Georgia; and Michael Hester of Virginia. Grei supports herself through item sales through her Second Life store -- for the uninitiated, Second Life allows users to "cash out" their in-game currency, called Lindens, for real-world currency.

There's two issues here -- and this is a good time to mention that not only am I not a lawyer, I don't even play one on TV -- the alleged copyright infraction and the methods used by the plaintiffs to gain their evidence. Because the plaintiffs found their evidence by entering his SL home uninvited, he feels U.S. search and seizure laws should apply. However, at the time of this writing, I am not aware if Simon has filed a counter-suit.

Second Life allows content creators to place restrictions on objects they create: you can set them to be unmodifiable, non-transferrable, and non-copyable. Allegedly, Simon used an exploit to break the permissions and re-sell the items. VintFalken offers some technical insight on the matter (potential NSFW links).