Copyright / deals than people don't keep

Hi guys,

perhaps u all can help me out about issues i have been having in SL with the design work i do.

I recently made a Display system and logo for a store, that person only payed 40% of that work and she is due for over 1 month now

Due i need to file a DMCA report to have Linden Labs remove all textures or are they easiear ways to do that

thanks for the input, i think this myght be helpfull for other people who has similar issues

From the sound of things, a DMCA is not applicable in this case and LL will not get involved (though they've been known to do just about anything). Correct me if I'm wrong, but you let your customer have something you created, and then they defaulted on final payment. Live and learn in my opinion. Don't permanently enable content until the customer has paid in full, that way if they try to screw you, you have the power to pull the content yourself. A common method to do this is to build a secret kill switch into the creation that only you, the creator, can activate. Once you receive payment you can optionally remove this additional "feature".

But i am talking about textures and those need to have perm for people to sell their products, how come can Linden be out of the process if u have logs of all

In RL if u do a work and don't get payed like u agreed on you have the right to getyour work back

LL considers that a resident to resident dispute and has for the most part stayed out of those.

So does that mean that in case u create something like s texture make a deal that has logs, the person doesn't keep, and you can't do anything...

And what about TOS

1.3 Content available in the Service may be provided by users of the Service, rather than by Linden Lab. Linden Lab and other parties have rights in their respective content, which you agree to respect.

You acknowledge that: (i) by using the Service you may have access to graphics, sound effects, music, video, audio, computer programs, animation, text and other creative output (collectively, "Content", and (ii) Content may be provided under license by independent content providers, including contributions from other users of the Service (all such independent content providers, "Content Providers". Linden Lab does not pre-screen Content.

You acknowledge that Linden Lab and other Content Providers have rights in their respective Content under copyright and other applicable laws and treaty provisions, and that except as described in this Agreement, such rights are not licensed or otherwise transferred by mere use of the Service. You accept full responsibility and liability for your use of any Content in violation of any such rights. You agree that your creation of Content is not in any way based upon any expectation of compensation from Linden Lab.

How is that enforced????????

Do you have a written contract? That would include notecards if you have transaction and chat logs to help prove that you agreed to the same notecard.

Depending on the contract, you may have a copyright violation, a breech of contract, or both. The only thing LL will help you with easily is a DMCA. Depending on how much you're owed, it's probably not worth pursuing other legal avenues.

It isn't, sorry to say. It is a big topic of discussion lately.

For future reference: If what you are selling someone is solely a custom set of textures, and they need to see the textures before paying you, do this:

YOU make a prim and apply the texture to the prim. They look at the prim, approve the texture, and pay you. THEN you give them that texture.

Or, better yet, you give them a copy of the texture, but with the word DEMO printed across it. They approve and pay you, and you give them the actual texture, without the word DEMO splashed across it.

Otherwise, it's like a cashier a a store handing you your merchandise, and allowing you to take it home and then come back with the cash. Maybe you have money at home and intend to come back and pay, or maybe not. But most cashiers would agree they'd be foolish to let the merchandise leave the store without first getting paid for it!

Well i see what u mean but i do retain copyright for the creations i do, no amtter payed or not

In case o f any breech or not i am entitled to get what i smine even if i have to pay those alost 40%


This needs to be discussed really cause this way you got a open door for people stealing you

The TOS states u got copyrights on the work u do, it as to be a way to enforce it, with whom should i speak with at LL on this, any ideas

It's the same as real life, you can take the other party to court. LL has been known to reveal information when it's subpoenaed.

I don't think you can file a DCMA when you created it for the customer and handed it over. They never stole it. How I see it, you have a monetary dispute with another resident. LL can't get involved with all disputes between the thousands of businesses and customers out there.

Your best bet is to put it down to experience and follow the advice given here in future. Don't hand over all the work full perms until you receive payment in full.

I don't know what you were charging for the work, but surely not enough to take them to court?

does that mean u need to take them to court for a couple of linden dollars lolol

Yes, that is about the size of it. You can try filing a support ticket but you really are on your own. Have you tried to contact the person who owes you this money?

Here's how I would approach this situation, from a legal perspective. First of all, copyright is a non-issue. NewspaperGuy, unless there's some part of the story you haven't shared, the fact is the copyright on the material you created for your client was never yours to begin with. What you did was you entered into what's known as a "work for hire" agreement with the client. In such cases, the IP belongs to the client, not you.

This is what happens when you work without a contact. If you had put together a written legal agreement before the work began, you could have specified that the IP belongs to you until the client purchases it from you. But again, unless there's more to the story, it sounds like you didn't do that. So by default, the work you were creating on the client's behalf was simply a digital and/or physical manifestation of IP that they already owned, from the start. After all, it was their brand name on the logo you made, right? The fact that you might have designed the look of it doesn't make it automatically yours.

Where you do have a case right now is in regard to what's known as "theft of services." The client hired you to do a job, and then failed to pay you for your labor. If you wish to pursue the matter, you can sue the client on those grounds. But as others have stated, LL as a matter of policy, does not get involved in such disputes. They'd be in for legal trouble themselves if they ever did. It's simply not their place.

Were this in fact a copyright matter, then they'd be legally obligated as a service provider to remove the disputed content, once you've filed a proper takedown notice. You can try to go that route if you wish, but I don't think you'll get very far. The client can very easily file a counter-notice, alleging that the IP was never yours to begin with, and then the content would be restored. Your recourse after that would be to go to court, and you'd probably lose, on the grounds that work-for-hire does not equate to IP ownership on the part of the hired.

Again, your case here is theft of services, not IP rights. That is the ground upon which you can win.

However, whether you'd win or not, there is practicality to consider. I don't know how much the client was supposed to have paid you, but I tend to doubt the amount would be enough to offset your cost of pursuing it, given that you probably don't even know the client's real name. If it's a matter of principle to you, then perhaps cost doesn't matter. But from a financial standpoint, you're unlikely to come out ahead on this one.



I'm sorry to have to put this coldly, but the best advice I can give you is to let this be a lesson. Never do work without a written RL contract in place.

I treat my SL clients exactly the same way as my RL ones. The fact of the matter is I'm working for a living here. Every client is a RL client. Whether our first meeting happened to have been in SL, or over the phone, or an E-mail, or a walk-in off the street, or two Dixie cups and a piece of string, makes no difference. Business is ALWAYS a RL endeavor.

If someone wants to hire me, I put together a written proposal, describing the scope of work, exact IP rights, and the estimated cost. Assuming the prospective client then accepts the proposal, the next step is to draw up a contract, on which goes the RL names and contact info of everyone involved. From there, I don't do any actual work until that contract is signed.

If a client were to fail to pay me after that, I'd have every legal means at my disposal to collect. Luckily, I've never had that happen (knock on wood).

Now, do I occasionally have to sit back and watch someone run for the hills as soon as I say the word "contract"? Absolutely. But my attitude when that happens is always "good riddance". If the mere mention of a contract is enough to send someone packing, then I know they never would have paid me anyway.

Bottom line, if you want your clients to be professional about paying you, then you MUST act as a professional yourself. Run your business like a business, or else it's going to amateur hour all day every day. Your clients won't take you any more seriously than you take yourself. If they see you as an amateur, you can't expect them to pay you as a professional. Be pro from the start, and you'll get paid every time.


All that said, the fact that you just laughed out loud at the prospect of taking someone to court would seem to indicate that you don't consider yourself to be a professional. No offense, but if that's the case, then you've got only yourself to blame when someone takes advantage of your self-imposed status as an amateur by refusing to pay you.

Course i did, she said she would pay when she could ...smiles, now i see she is not even on my contact list...so it proves me she is not intending on paying anything

I tried to put a support ticket, duno under what category.... however i reported to LL and had no news on the report i filled

http://tinyurl.com/yfwy8xb -- leads to the KB entry for "I paid for something, but didn't receive it as promised. Or: I provided something, but wasn't paid for it as promised."

i understand what u mean, and i got a design rl business for ten years, i been here for a short notice, however i always tought perhaps wrongly that LL would enforce these cases since when rl courts expenses are what they are, lawyers etc. It is a option that will give u way more expenses

Regardng RL contracts i know what u mean and i do them all the time, but in here i think it is only good to do them if the contract in numbers is worth it

However if Linden Labs enforces copybots....and all that and doesn't enforce teft why do they state they understand that the things u upload are ur creations and your intellectual property akak copyrighted materials

The contract idea and the fact people may just go with that idea seems ok, but the cost of having a specific contract is way to much for who deals in small Linden Dollars fees

Misconduct like those should be a matter of suspension of service for those inclined to cheat on people, or stating they would get a simplified way for disputes, on TOS, the fact is that now i assume they don't care for content creators at all, they just care that you upload 10L$ each texture and have nothing to other than proffit

Cause what good it serves u all those craps on TOS if u can't get them to get someone to pay what they are supposed to pay. Well good faith is not this case. I tend to think this leave sthe door open to all cheaters out there.

And to be truthfull, it makes want to stop working on sl...cause if i need to see a 20k deal with a contract, faxes, lawyer to get one etc, if things u got logs on doesn't prove nothing, if u need to be like that..then it sucks

however i do think, on the professional part u state, i do agree with u. But getting all those procedures to do a such a small ammount in numbers seems a bit strange

Well what i would say, don't trust ur shadow on SL, cause LL is not there for u, and nobody is....that is just a shame

We're in slight disagreement on what constitutes "worth it", I guess. To me, a contract that helps ensure I'll get paid is pretty much always worth it, since it takes five minutes to fill in the blanks on my standard project agreement document if it's for something small, and maybe 30 minutes if it's for anything complicated. The small project might pay peanuts, say, $100 or something, but if I've got twenty of those in a year, that's $2000 in income, guaranteed by about an hour and a half worth of paperwork. And of course, for the big projects, the numbers go without saying.

I even do contracts with work for friends, and even when I'm not charging them, as it prevents disagreements later.



Copybots abuse the system. LL bans them because the company has an obligation to protect the integrity of system.

As for "theft", it depends on what kind of theft you're talking about. Theft of services is not LL's concern, and cannot be, lest they open themselves up for all kinds of legal problems the moment they make an unjust decision. It's the domain of courts to decide who owes whom what, not private companies.

When it comes to IP theft, then they do step in, because they're legally required to as a service provider. When served a proper takedown notice, they're obligated to remove the content in question. And when served a proper counter-notice, they're just as obligated to restore the content. In neither scenario do they make any judgments about who actually owns the IP. They do what the law requires them to do.

The fact that they do make a point of stating that your IP is your own only serves to underscore the fact that it is YOU, not them, who are responsible for protecting it.




I'm not sure what cost you feel is associated with drawing up a simple agreement. It could be a simple paragraph. All you really need is something to the effect of, "The undersigned, ________, herein referred to as Client, seeks to hire the undersigned, _______, herein referred to as Builder, to create various 3D models, textures, scripts, and other digital assets, collectively referred to as Work Project, in Second Life. See attached Exhibit A for description and/or diagrams of proposed Work Project. Client shall pay Builder a sum of $______ upon delivery of the completed Work Project. Builder retains all associated Intellectual Property rights to the completed Work Project, and all project elements, not including any trademarks already owned by Client, until such time as Client has paid Builder in full."

Then simply write up a description of the project, or a make drawing, or whatever, label it Exhibit A, and attach it to the document. It's only takes a few minutes to do this, and it can save countless hours of aggravation later.




You're not looking at it from all sides. If LL were to act as cops for this sort of thing, what would stop a malicious content creator from claiming that a client owes more money than was originally agreed to? LL has no practical means of investigating these things, let alone determining the truth of the situation. It's completely unfair to expect them to step in and dictate who'd right and wrong. This is why courts exist.

Remember, copyright is RL matter, and so is a labor agreement. Just because the item being created is intended for use in SL does not mean that the host of SL should be expected to act as judge and jury. If you were creating a website for a client, would you expect the whatever company might host the site to step in to settle any disputes you might have with that client? Of course not. You can't expect that of LL either. SL is just a hosting service for out content and activities, nothing more, nothing less.




Nowhere in the TOS does it say SL users can't lie to each other. You and I might wish it did, but it doesn't, and it wouldn't make any difference even if it did. Again, it's not reasonable to expect a hosting company to settle a dispute between users of the service. That's for courts, and only courts, to do.




If the fact that you need to run a business like a business in order to ensure profit is enough to make you not want to run a business, then don't run a business. It's certainly not for everyone.

That said, I find it extremely puzzling that you would be surprised by any of this, given that you said you run a design firm in RL. I can't imagine why you wouldn't have approached your SL business in exactly the same way as you RL one. It's the same type of business, after all.

As for faxes, what is this, 1992? All you need is a digitally signable PDF, and an E-mail address. Don't you use those in your RL design business? If you don't, you really should. All my clients have all got E-mail and Adobe Reader. I'd be surprised if very many of them have fax machines.

And as for lawyers, you only need to bring them in if and when it ever becomes time to sue, and then only if the amount is too big for small claims court.




All I can say to the numbers thing is I don't work for micropayments. If you're content to put your labor into something that's going to pay the equivalent of just a few cents, then maybe you're right that it's not worth making it all neat and legal. But if that's the case, then why would you even care if someone stiffs you on the bill?

I charge RL rates for everything I do. If a client wants to pay a few hundred Linden dollars, they can hire an amateur. I can't afford to work for pennies on the dollar.




I don't know if I'd go so far as to say don't trust your shadow, but I would say don't trust anyone in SL any further than you would if it were any place else on the Internet.

i will file a dmca to linden labs, cause it was uploaded by me, it is my intellectual property and then i'll see how LL goes

Whether or not you uploaded the image file(s) in no way correlates with whether or not you own the IP. People upload images they don't own all the time.

Once again, your beef here is theft of services, not theft of IP. What the client stole from you was your labor, not your property. The client owns the property; there is no question of that. One cannot steal what one already owns.

Now, if you knowingly file a false DMCA takedown notice, you will have broken the law. I have no idea how LL handles such things. My guess is they'll probably just ignore it the first time around. But just so you're aware of what COULD happen, they would be well within their rights to ban you for wasting their time, and to seek damages. Further your former client would have every right to sue you as well, for trying to claim their IP as your own. Don't go down that road.

I would invite you to read the following:





Look, this is no different than if a client in RL, say, McDonald's, and hired you to create a sign for them. If they were to fail to pay you for your work after you delivered the finished product to them, you would take them to court for theft of services. In no event would be able to claim ownership of their name, their logo, or any of the imagery you created for them under a basic work for hire arrangement. You don't own the golden arches just because you put them on a sign.

Why is that, you may ask? The answer is simple. While it was your labor that created the physical sign, it was only through use of their IP that the sign was even creatable in the first place. Even if you designed the thing, its existence was their idea.

It's no different than if they had hired you to cook a hamburger for them. You don't own the burger just because you cooked it. As long as you were working for them, you wer their representative. As such, whatever you produced for them belongs to them, even if they fail to pay you. In the absence of any binding agreement to the contrary, workproduct IP automatically belongs to the client.

The same is true here. You had no agreement with the client waiving any of their inherent IP rights. While you did the physical labor to create the work, it was only so because they hired you to do it. The work was simply a manifestation of IP that the client already owned, even if you designed it.

If you want to seek recompense for your labor, by all means, do so. That is your right, and it's their obligation to pay you. But to try to claim that you now own their IP, just because they stiffed you on a labor bill, is just not how these things work.

If you wanted to arrange it so you would own the IP in the event of the client's failure to pay, you should have specified that in a contract. But you didn't. And that's that.

No, at least in the US. See the Copyright Office's Circular 9 at http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf .

In order to be a work for hire, either you must be an employee or there must be a written contract that says it's a work for hire. It doesn't sound like either those apply. I suppose it's possible that document is outdated, but I doubt it.

Given that, the rest of the note is moot.

This is why you have to be careful about getting legal advice from the net.

If you're an attorney, then kindly explain whether I'm misinterpreting the Copyright Office's circular or it's outdated.

If you're not, then please stop making legal assertions without at least saying that, and preferably by checking sources first. And feel free to answer the above question, if you still think I'm wrong.

I tend to write a fair bit on legal issues here, especially about copyright and taxes. When it seems like I'm getting into real legal conclusions, I'll remind people IANAL. And unless I'm absolutely sure about something, I double check sources and provide citations.

"A verbal contract ain't worth the paper it's written on."

Pep (Not my words, not strictly true, but works in practice.)

Copyright's not my area and I don't know anything about US law, but whichever way you look at it, this seems to me to be more about breach of contract than anything else (and certainly in the UK you can have verbal contracts). I am pretty sure -- unless it's changed -- that copyright is inalienable in the UK but you can contract temporarily to vest it in someone in exchange for a consideration.

The argument here, on NewspaperGuy's account, is not about who made the work. He agreed to produce it for his customer, and, according to him, the customer hasn't paid. That is, in exchange for a consideration (his fee), he's agreed to make something for the customer and let him use it. NewspaperGuy says the customer has, as yet, no right to use it, because he's not paid him. I've kept my side of the bargain, says NewspaperGuy, and I want the customer to keep his by paying me what we agreed.

We don't know what the customer would say -- perhaps he's going to say, "but I have kept my side of the bargain; we only agreed on half what NewspaperGuy claims we did".

Whichever way you look at it, it seems more like contract than copyright. I can't see any huge difference between, on the one hand, the painter and decorator who's fitted up someone's new store complaining he hasn't been paid, and, on the other, the signwriter who made the sign to hang outside it making the same complaint.

And in RL you would expect both the guy who painted the storefront and the guy who painted the sign to pursue claims for breach of contract in the small claims court.

What happens in the US if, an artist complains to the DMCA people that someone's using, on a website, a picture he made and the owner of the website says, "yes, but I've got every right to use it, because I paid the artist an agreed fee for this right?"

Do the DMCA people attempt themselves to resolve the question of whether the fee has, in fact, been paid or whether it was the full fee agreed on, or do they tell you to ask a court to resolve that question and then come back to them either with a decision from the court about that? And if they tell you to ask a court to sort it out, presumably it's the court who -- should it be so minded -- issues temporary injunctions against the website and its hosts, telling them not to use the image until the matter has been decided, isn't it?