New blog post on LL's Content Management Roadmap

Really? He put in even that much effort? I am amazed.

LOL thats what I thought, but he needs another project now zindra is done

Or rather, he needs a new shiny distraction for the geenral populace, now that Zindra is about to become a free-fire zone of land speculators and desperate people who want land there but were denied free moves.

It's a lovely thought, isn't it?

However, like the idea of an adult showcase it won't happen I bet. For a start unless adult content providers really pg up they won't be allowed on the website. So the trusty kite mark will be useful only to flogging to those inworld. AC providers will still be required to pay full price for an extremely reduced service. just like they do on xsl.

and it's not just textures that need to be verified, it's scripts, sculpties and animations too. My heart sinks at the thought of having to go through every prim for ever item I've created in the last 2 1/2 years to identify all components, find the creator and get a documented licence for use inworld and outside.

These days lot of texture sellers explicitly exclude taking outside SL so that cuts out LLs BIAB before we start.

It's all good fun

1. They don't have to. The ToS already say they are only licensing their textures for use in the SL service.

2. It doesn't matter, LL will simply state that their SL-in-a-box product is part of the SL service.

I'm not really conversant with licensing these days but I doubt LL can over ride any licence that the creator wishes to apply.

It may be relatively robust for plywood cubes created inworld but for textures that are created outside and brought into sl and then sold I would think there could be issues around the sale (if it was on xsl ie outside second life). I haven't read that bit of the ToS for a while but to me that appeared to be a blanket end user licence rather than a component supplier to content creator licence.

Many texture sellers also sell on renderosity etc and have their own licensing. I think renderosity has a default licence that applies if the creator doesn't specify a licence.

I would think the courts would approach the sl licence the same way and I doubt that LLs claim that its private offering is SL if a texture maker complained about unauthorised use.

This is what LLs lawyers should be dealing with. I'll lay bets that they don't even have a lawyer specialising in digital copyright on their payroll.

All I know is this is one discussion LL can have without me. I'll just wait for their final offering and see what my position is.

When you upload content to Second Life you grant *Linden Labs* the right to use your content any way they want within the Second Life service. You don't grant Linden Labs nor anyone else the right to use your content outside that service.

What this means is that texture creators should not need to say "you can't use this texture on other grids", because that restriction is already in place. LL makes that explicit in this blog post.

1. XSL is part of the Second Life service now.

2. Textures sold on XSL are not actually transferred outside SL in the process. They go straight from the magic box to the customer within SL.

1. you just pointed out that the licence only applies to LL - not to the customers of LL

2. XSL may be now be part of the sl service but up until jan 20 it wasn't

3. not everything is delivered via magic box - sometimes it's email

and as for your point 2. see my point 1.

(tongue in cheek)
From now on, the only thing LL will hear from me when they ask for "feedback," is the sound of crickets chirping. I might actually post "play the sound of crickets here."

How many times will it take for us to learn that LL has already decided what they are going to do.. and are only "asking for feedback" so that we can get all our rage out now and when it comes time for the change, be completely apathetic about it?

Lets just save ourselves the headache and the drama by being completely apathetic about it now.
(removes tongue from cheek)

Or.. come to think of it, it's not so tongue in cheek, is it?

Edit Hmm.. I couldn't use the <> around the crickets here...

The customers of LL get no license at all. Unless the texture creator grants an additional license explicitly granting people the right to transfer the texture out of the SL service, the only rights the customer has are those granted through the LL mandatory license, using the SL service.

I'm only talking about textures delivered in-world.

Wait, you can get SL content delivered from XStreet via EMAIL? O.o

How does that work?

photoshop files, e books, software. not everything sold on xsl is for immediate use in sl.

Well, I asked "how does that work?". Does it send you a link or the actual content?

Regardless, it doesn't change the fact that stuff that is delivered inside of SL has the license that LL has with the creators of the content, and that doesn't include rights to use it outside of SL, nor does it confer any other additional rights without negotiation direct to the creator.

Content that exists and is transferred outside of SL is not under the SL license, but under whatever license the creator specifies.

they seem to be different for each but from what i've seen you get a notecard with a website you register your details with and and email address or just an email address that you drop a note to with your purchase details

Sorry for the inconvenience of not answering your question





which was my original point that argent started replying to.

Here's your original point:


My first point was that anyone who is taking textures they bought in SL outside SL is already in violation of copyright, so those texture sellers don't need to do anything extra to deal with that case. Do you take exception to that?

My second point was that work.secondlife.com is part of "the secondlife service", so Linden Labs is covered there... the creators have granted LL a license to use their textures in the service when they agree to the ToS. Do you take exception to that?

This is where I'm having problems obviously. The ToS applies to LL use not to people who buy them directly from the seller. A lot of sellers previously didn't explicitly restrict use to sl only, so there is no clear licensing restrictions. If I have to affirm something I'm not going to make assumptions of intention on behalf of the component creators.

Although I can't point directly at any texture sellers I'm sure I have seen some who are happy for them to be used outside.

I don't see how someone selling them in sl changes anything - it would be like an assumption that if you bought textures from renderosity without an explicit licence you could only use them to create things to sell there.

So I would have thought that basic copyright applies but without specific clauses there would be a general use - and I suspect a lot of people have previously thought like that too.

However, as my post on this said, this is why I would need to clarify with each creator what their intended use was. LL is talking about other platforms too as part of this over arching content policy so clarification on how it can be used will be important in the long run.



but only LL - you could draw a long bow and say that because the texture is being stored on the server LL has the right to display it or not on a prim but I don't understand the point in relation to anything I originally posted.

That aside, I always assume that that bit means LL can use it in whatever way they want to as long as they keep it in sl - i.e. they can do whatever they want with anything you create, from using it in publicity to using your creation in one of their builds.

Since I'm no a LL lawyer though I have no clear idea what they actually intended it to mean.

Actually, Copyright Law specifies that any right not explicitly granted (or implicitly through normal fair use) the user does not have. So, unless the creator explicitly gave you the right to use it elsewhere, they automatically reserve that right to themselves and deny it to you by default.



Well, if you obtain them through SL, it makes a huge difference, because there is already an explicit license to use them inside of SL, and no license to use them outside of SL, thus you are back to the same situation with rights being reserved which have not explicitly been granted by some license.



Yeah, you have to get explicit licenses from creators if you plan on doing more with their content than simply use it for yourself. Unless you can establish some kind of "oral contract" defense, they could easily just say "I never intended for those to be used anywhere but SL" later, and the law would support them.

How does this work further down the chain. For example you purchase a texture and use it in your product, does your product inherit the license of the texture, or can you say it's fine to use your product in other grids?

I sense /fail on the way...

How many times have I read reviews on xstreet saying "This product is a copied hack of my product" where I go to Mr. my's product and the review says "I'm that first person, and actually, Mr. my here has put out a copied hack of my product."

- And then I examine their features and they're completely different in what they offer...

Now imagine if both of these vendors have had sales of those products in the thousands...

And one day, LL deletes all of it, from one or both of them. Deleting all that content that innocent 3rd through 10,000th parties bought in good faith...

Yeah if I bought something that ended up was copybotted would LL delete it from me? And would I get my L back?

There's a little rule in the law about being a good faith buyer or good faith seller.

Which goes something like;

If you buy stolen goods in good faith from a merchant believing them to be legitimate, the lawful owner has no legal claim against you and no right of return. All they can do is sue the person who stole the good for 'conversion' - ie, for the lost value, or lost profits.

In other words, if LL -DID- delete all those sold copies, they would be violating the law - I can't remember if that's a tort or contracts violation though.

What they can do is make the second merchant who copied the item disgorge -ALL- of the profits made since they first starting selling it - and as that will likely end up being a massive amount of money, it will end up hitting that unlawful merchant with a bill in the hundreds or thousands of RL dollars...

But if they touch any of us that bought the product in good faith, we could all sue LL over it - and if its a tort, we could sue in the millions of US dollars. But if its a contract violation, we'd be suing for nothing more than the value of the lindens we paid.

Every single proposal in the blog post is a great one and long overdue.

If they actually follow-through. Which is always the problem with Linden Lab- great promises never fulfilled.

I'll believe it when I see it.

If they bought them *inside SL*, then they are covered by the grant to LL.

If they didn't explicitly license them then the only license in force is the one in the ToS.

This has nothing to do with their intent. This is the license in force.

I'm sure there are, but until they explicitly state that the license grant in the ToS applies.

For example, I license Cyberflight under an open source license that allows redistribution outside the SL grid. You can take the source to Cyberflight and port it to Opensim if you want. But if I hadn't put that license on Cyberflight you would have to come tyo me and ask before you did so.

If Renderosity had an explicit license grant in their terms of service that said that, then that would be the case, yes.

For example, if you make something in Little Big Planet, it belongs to Sony, lock stock and bitmap. Because that's what their terms of service say. Linden Labs terms of service says that you grant a license to LL for the use of your content in the SL service. In the absence of other licenses, that's what applies.
What do you mean by "that cuts out LLs BIAB" then?

That's what they say.
No.

There's a more general rule in law that it's really not a smart idea for anyone, no matter how well-meaning, to trash something someone's paid good money for unless they've got some sort of court order behind them.

I don't what American law on the subject is like (and this isn't my field anyway) but I think any English-based company would be very ill-advised to take such action without making sure it first had good authority so to do. Linden Labs at the moment can get away with very flaky behaviour because there's usually so little money involved it's not worth calling them on it. But if some bright Linden wrecks an in-world business from which someone's deriving even a quite modest RL income, things might be different.