On August 15th, 2013 Second Life users were issued a new Terms of
Service Agreement upon logging into this virtual world. If you are here,
then you accepted the new TOS Agreement License.
There are major
differences between the preceding TOS and the new TOS. One difference in
particular has caused uproar amongst Content Creators in Second Life, with good
reason.
Below, in excerpt, is section 2.3 of the
August 2013 TOS.
This is the
section that has caused residents of Second Life, especially Content Creators,
the most concern.
2.3 You grant Linden
Lab certain licenses to your User Content
" you agree to
grant to Linden Lab, the non-exclusive, unrestricted, unconditional, unlimited,
worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, and cost-free right and license to use,
copy, record, distribute, reproduce, disclose, sell, re-sell, sublicense
(through multiple levels), modify, display, publicly perform, transmit,
publish, broadcast, translate, make derivative works of, and otherwise exploit
in any manner whatsoever, all or any portion of your User Content (and
derivative works thereof), for any purpose whatsoever in all formats, on or
through any media, software, formula, or medium now known or hereafter
developed, and with any technology or devices now known or hereafter developed,
and to advertise, market, and promote the same."
What Does that Mean for Second Life Users?
At an October 2013
meeting at the Rose Theatre in Second Life, members of the Second Life Bar Association
and the United Content Creators of Second Life explained what this agreement
means legally for all residents.
You may see this
meeting on Youtube here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxls7dPNB-Y . The meeting is lengthy,
approximately two hours long.
For those of you who
cannot sit through a long meeting I will explain what the TOS agreement means
legally according to Agenda Faromet of the SLBA.
When you create
something you have exclusive rights over your creation. When using the
various forms of media on the internet you give certain permissions. That is
how facebook , Twitpic, Linkedin, Youtube, for example, work. When
you have exclusive rights you have the right to make copies, share or transfer,
modify, publicly perform or publicly display your creation. Any activity on the
internet involves all of these. You give your permission to these services to
be able to do this. That is how the
internet works. Non-exclusive means more than one person has the rights
to do the above with something you created. Perpetual means never ending,
it goes on forever. Irrevocable means you cannot take back your permission.
Sub- Licensable means permission is passed on to other parties without
the permission of the creator, it is not necessary to get permission from the
creator. Unlimited means, there are no limits or restrictions.
Agreeing to the newest
TOS from Linden Labs gives Linden Labs permission to do anything they wish,
whatsoever, with your content. As Agenda said, "The Terms of Service
Agreement,( August 2013) is ;" non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable,
world-wide, unrestricted, unconditional and unlimited".
The words
"sell" and "re-sell" are included in section 2.3 of the TOS,
however, as explained by Agenda, these terms are usually used in Patent and
Trade Secrets agreements not in Copyright agreements. You should note
that Linden Labs can sell and resell your content even if those words were not
included in the TOS.
There it is, the
reason many people are confused, angry and fearful about their work on Second Life.
It is not a user friendly agreement as the preceding TOS was. These type of
user agreements are everywhere on the net and some are "friendlier"
than others. Linden Labs has stated it was their attempt to streamline their
business by creating a TOS to cover their products. As for Linden Labs' other
products, this TOS may serve them well, however, in the case of Second Life it
has presented some great difficulties.
What could improve this TOS Agreement?
The conclusion of the
meeting in October produced the following recommendations on improving the TOS
Agreement:
To improve the TOS,
the agreement must contain; a) A limit for the purpose for which content can be
used b) A limit to the scope for content uploaded to LL Services so content
will only be used within the scope of the licenses. c) A limit to the Terms of
the license, if you delete something or close your account the license ends (for
example).
The August TOS 2013
includes all content presently existing and in the future, content before the
2013 TOS is also included in this license. To try to cover content by
date, time and existing licenses at the time of use, would not be a viable
method for any company to attempt.
Many groups and
individuals contacted Linden Labs asking for clarification or requesting
revision or at least a meeting to discuss the TOS. The TOS was the
subject of blogs, and gamer magazines and internet sites. One such site,
Wagner James Au's NEW WORLD NOTES, received an answer from Peter Gray, Linden
Lab's spokesman on September 12, 2013.
You can read the entire response online
at
Below is an excerpt from
the response from Peter Gray, LL, to Wagner James Au's New World Notes blog:
"As evidenced by
Second Life’s extensive history, functionality and well-documented policies for
providing a platform on which users can create and profit from their creations,
Linden Lab respects the proprietary rights of Second Life’s content creators.
We regret that our intention in revising our Terms of Service to streamline our
business may have been misconstrued by some as an attempt to appropriate Second
Life residents’ original content. We have no intention of abandoning our
deep-rooted dedication to facilitating residents’ ability to create and
commercialize such content in Second Life. In fact, we strive to provide Second
Life’s residents with evermore opportunities to do so."
For more than a month
this writer has spent countless hours reading every document, blog, article and
discussion on the latest TOS Agreement for Second Life. This is the best
example of Linden Lab's response to the reaction of residents to the TOS Agreement,
it was sent to a number of bloggers and websites. Repeatedly, Linden Labs
declares it is" not their intent to appropriate Second Life resident's
original content".
If it is not Linden
Lab's intent to appropriate Second Life resident's original content why is it
not clarified in the TOS? If the TOS does not include or reflect the
intent of Linden Labs then a revision would be in order. For anyone who
has spent hours pouring over the TOS agreement, it is not a matter of misconstruing
the terms in the TOS as Mr. Gray suggests. The TOS is a legal, binding
agreement and in its' present form, it clearly gives the rights to Linden Labs
to appropriate Second Life resident's original content
As residents of Second Life, we can only
deal with what is written in the TOS and from a legal standpoint, the TOS as it
presently exists, does not reflect the intent mentioned in the above statement
from Mr. Gray and repeatedly from Linden Labs. Linden Labs needs to revise,
clarify and limit this TOS in order to reflect clearly what the purpose of this
agreement intends.
Recent replies from
Linden Labs state that they will review the TOS but it will take time. A
new CEO, Ebbe Altberg, joined Linden Labs on February 10, 2014. Mr.
Altberg hasn't really had time to delve into the TOS Agreement as of yet
although in his introductory remarks, he maintains much the same position as
Mr. Gray's response in September 2013.
It has now been
over six months since the Terms of Service Agreement was introduced to the
residents of Second Life. How much time it will take for a review and
revision of the TOS is anyone's guess. Would it be impossible for Linden
Labs to revert to the older TOS, preceding the 2013 one, while Linden Labs
reviews and revises the present TOS? The preceding TOS wasn't perfect,
but it was workable. This would go a long way to calm the residents of Second Life
and could be shown as an act of good will from Linden Labs while it corrects
the flawed TOS, 2013.
The more time passes
it creates more speculation, conspiracy theories and lack of trust . As
expressed on many blogs some creators have left SL and some are continuing on trying
to find a solution, maintaining their content but not producing any new content
and waiting for further response from Linden Labs. One detailed blog on
the immediate effects of the TOS so far on Second Life is Hypergridbusiness:
It is a difficult position
to be in, on the one hand, we have the troublesome, all encompassing TOS,
which clearly needs some form of revision and on the other, we have Linden Labs
stating they have no intent whatsoever of appropriating Second Life resident's
original content even though their TOS says just that. One side is
legally binding and carries a lot of weight; the other is not and doesn't do much
to quell resident's concern. Therein lies the dilemma. We wait and hope we hear
news from Linden Labs regarding revising the existing TOS soon.
It seems to me that there is a lot of overreaction to the revised ToS from the content creators. This version of the ToS contains some bizarre statements, but does anyone really believe that Linden Lab is going to steal someone's bling shoes and sell them on the black market? At most, the response should be "Why did you word this sentence in this way?" Instead, some people are competing with others to come up with the most extreme reaction. I have seen two external websites associated with 3D mesh creations where the owners have posted statements prohibiting their content from being used in Second Life. There's no way they would be able to tell if it's being used in SL, and even without the revised ToS, the griefers can copybot anything, so your very special mesh products weren't safe to begin with.
ReplyDeleteI was reading a discussion in one of the blogs where someone speculated that some of the wording about displaying and copying, recording and transmitting, might be giving LL a license to save your item on their hard disk and display it to someone else on their computer monitor. That is a sensible explanation, but it doesn't explain why they would need to sell or resell or make derivative works. There are many questions about the ToS, and unfortunately there is no discussion interface between Linden Lab and its customers anymore, so we will have to wait for a pronouncement from on high and hope it's a good one.
Thanks for the article. It's good to keep this issue in front of people.
Well, I was wanting to learn to model some things for Daz3d and I found marvelous designer and tutorials for creating content for secondlife. I was thinking about creating for secondlife and getting my daughter into it and making clothes. But the terms of service pretty much mean , I won't, period. You couldn't pay me to go create content and give it away forever for crumbs. No one is over reacting to terms of service that lay claim to everything people upload. (Not that all those people own the right to upload it anyway.) What anyone says it means is crap and their comments about it are just misleading. "No we aren't trying to steal your stuff" "But it says so right here..." So well, I don't want to get an account and model things for secondlife. And yeah that means I won't have one and my kids won't either.
ReplyDelete