All
residents who sign up for the Second Life agree to abide by the rules in the
Terms of Service (ToS) (the contract that you have not read but ACCEPT when you
created your account). It is very common for people not to know the rules. Unfortunately ignorance is not a defense
.
Many creators use their imagination to make
original content in Second Life, however, there are many questions about what
constitutes intellectual property. For example when you create things inspired
by real-world objects it’s important to make sure that you are not misusing
others intellectual property, i.e. characters or material from a movie, book or
other work protected by copyright. This
includes images of celebrities or names (protected as a "right of
publicity").
The copyright protected content, trademark, or
celebrity media cannot be used in Second Life, except by the owner himself. If you wish to use others intellectual
property it’s necessary to have the permission of the owner (in writing.)
When we agree with the Terms of Service, we grant
Linden Lab certain licenses to use our content. However, we retain any and all
intellectual property rights to the content that we send, publish, and submit
through the servers, sites and other areas of service. When we agree with the
Terms of Service we also affirm and ensure that we have all necessary
intellectual property rights, licenses, consents and permissions to use and
authorize Linden Lab and Second Life users to use any content that shows off
the manner contemplated by service and Terms of service.
As a matter of course we should all know the
use of Second Life is subject to copyright, trademark and the laws of
advertising law. These are complicated laws and it’s difficult to understand
the Terms of LL services and U.S. Policy Digital Millennium Copyright Act (
"DMCA"), which is the American law on copyright.
I’d like to emphasis that it’s important to
know that real world laws apply to intellectual property infringement, and
nothing about your use of Second Life will protect you if you are infringing o the
intellectual property rights of another person. The legitimate owner of the
intellectual property may bring a direct action in real world courts against
those who are violating the law.
One of the biggest "pests" of Second
Life is malicious the use of CopyBot or similar tools to copy the intellectual
property of other creators in violation of applicable law, and which also
violates the Second Life Terms of Service.
The original function of CopyBot was to benefit
content creators, not hurt them. This
tool has the ability to export information from objects outside SL, creating
"backups" of items; or to speed up the creation process. It’s a very
useful tool for managing object creation.
However, these "backups" can be
imported back into the SL. Anyone can export the information for any object and
import it back into Second Life, regardless of authorization from the owner
(creator) of the object. Thereby giving the object permissions that it did not
have before. Therefore the information
pertinent to your product can be exported by someone using CopyBot, causing the
object to become "full perm" with all copy permissions, modification
and transfer.
If copyright infringement as set out in the
Terms of Service is uncovered, Linden lab will take drastic action against the
users of these tools.
When we
accept the terms of service, we agree to use Second Life as provided, without
unauthorized or other means of access or unlawful use of the software. We
should not and cannot enter in to unauthorized work or conduct unauthorized
distribution of the Linden Software. Making illegal copies violates the Terms
of Service and may result in suspension or prohibition of Second Life accounts.
If you believe that another resident used
CopyBot (or a similar application) to make illegal copies of your content, you
should send LL an abuse report and provide as much information as possible to
support your claim. While technology cannot prevent the copying of data drawn
on the screen, residents who try to profit illicitly using CopyBot will not be
tolerated.
It’s important to remember that many residents
are allowed to have or sell copy devices because there are legitimate uses of
these copying mechanisms. It is the offense of copying others work that is not
allowed or tolerated.
Additional Information:
Images taken from the official Linden Lab
websites
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