Is it right to do this as a seller??

I've figured you out Ricardo.

My conclusion then is that you're easily amused, and that we should quit feeding the trolls.

I sincerely doubt you can.

But if it blows your top go for it.

Stop trying, Bree is the one that impressed me tonight. See? I even called her Bree.

No. If someone creates something using components that were original created by someone else the original creator still holds the copyright.

So person Y makes a Table using textures that were created by person X, person Y does not gain the copyright over the textures created by person X. Person X keeps those.

Person Y keeps the copyright over the portion of the work that they created uniquely.

If person Y didnt have the rights to USE person X's textures, person X can demand person Y remove them. Person X can also demand Linden Lab remove them from everything person Y ever sold containing the textures.

LOL!!!

Told you, too much info, head hurts.

hey!

crap stuff is under copyright as high quality stuff is.
copyright is no quality_guarantie.

you can buy an item but not the copyright.
you may do whatever you want with this item, cos its yours as the money you paid for is mine
you may use it, damage it, delete it, - copy or transfer (depends on permissions)

jm2c

Point well taken. (Sorry: I got sloppy, carving down a much longer post that contrasted not-so-common-sense views that, unfortunately, have some prominence in inter-grid permissions discussions.)
But if, in lieu of an explicit license, C/M/T does not grant an implicit license, then we're all copyright violators many times over. It had better be the case that an external license is required if the C/M/T permissions are to be further constrained, not just "intent" of the copyright owner. If every copy-perm item must be accompanied by an explicit license to actually grant that copy permission, there will be a lot fewer people buying a lot fewer products.
But the CD has a scary copyright notice on it--it certainly doesn't have stamped on the cover that it's free to copy and transfer, whereas C/M/T permissions essentially do that for things like full perm textures and animations. In that way, it seems to me that those external licenses are less like shrink-wrap EULAs than they are like NDA contracts.

The point is because C/M/T isn't a implicit license, we are NOT violating copyright. We would only be violating copyright if the item comes with an implicit license in the first place.

What you are all trying to discuss here is something altogether different it's 'Intellectual Copyright'.

The permissions system in SL should come with the options that Flickr use on their site to categorize licensing, clear defined licenses and should be included as part of the permissions set up on such external sites as Xstreet and OnRez too.

But by default, the creator retains copyright. For the buyer to be able to do anything with it at all besides view the original, there must be a license grant, implicit or explicit.

OK I'll run with that. So are we saying that avatars being agents of the company Linden Lab that because LL doesn't supply 'licenses' that it is them, LL, that are ultimately responsible for copyright violation?

That's an interesting direction. I believe that the ToS probably keeps LL out of too much trouble there (or tries to, anyway), as long as the content is used within "the service" and according to the terms of the service (which presumably means vanilla C/M/T... with any other licenses being a matter between the licensing parties).

I'm not sure where you're going with this, but one related tangent is whether LL could be held responsible for making content available outside the LL-managed SecondLife grid, without permission from the copyright owner. Personally, I think they could be liable for that: I don't think the ToS granted LL permission to copy my content to any OpenSim grids--which their asset servers would effectively be doing. I don't think OpenSim grids are any more part of the agreement than if the asset servers were to automatically post user-generated textures to Flickr.

Your second paragraph is probably correct, I wouldn't dispute that at all. The TOS is a service contract/agreement, it's not necessarily legal, depending on your country of origin. Contracts can't be above the law of the land. The TOS does appear to me to be a agent contract, but not being an expert at all, I wondered that if it can be argued legally that it is such a contract, who is responsible ultimately regarding copyright infringement within the confines of SL?

I'm now thinking I may be on the wrong track and that agents of a company are just as liable, maybe someone can clarify that?

All the items in my store are sold with transfer rights, I have absolutely no problem with people giving away or reselling products they buy from me, you are putting words in my mouth by claiming any different. This discussion is in regards to full perm items (mostly textures and animations) that are sold to creators for use in their own creations. These items have to be sold full permissions for them to be of any use and all of the items like that I have bought do come with license agreements based on copyright law. The SexGen lawsuit makes it very clear that copyright laws are enforceable in SecondLife. You alone seem to have some special knowledge that copyright law is not applicable in SecondLife but you are unwilling or unable to share that with us.

Let me be a bit more precise.

The C/M/T permissions can't always be assumed to fully define the terms of an implicit license. That doesn't mean there is no implicit license - the very act of selling proves that there is an implicit license. The question is what are the terms of that license? IANAL, but I'm pretty sure there's an awful lot of case law and litigation that deal with specific cases where the two parties to a contract can't agree on what the contract actually said or meant.


I just glanced at a handful of CDs and DVDs. Most had a copyright notice on the CD proper, one didn't have any (or at least I couldn't find it), although the case papers did, and one had a circle-P instead of a circle-C, which I don't understand. Only one DVD actually had a 'scary notice' on the DVD itself.

So, for example, if I sell you a used CD without the original case, and the CD itself doesn't have the copyright notice - or it got rubbed off - that doesn't mean it's now ok to duplicate the CD.

But you do raise an important point. If I explicitly describe the C/M/T permissions on the vendor image for selling something, that implies something much stronger than the actual permissions on the object. The reason is that I had to take deliberate action to put the C/M/T on the image, whereas I don't have to do anything for some set of C/M/T permissions to wind up on the object itself. Plus the vendor image is clearly part of my offer to sell. Thus the buyer has a much stronger case that the seller really did intend the permissions on the vendor image to be the ones granted by the license.

Actually, they do supply a license. See section 3.1 of the TOS.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. All copyrights, along with patents, trademarks, trade secrets, and perhaps other intangibles come under the heading of "Intellectual Property." That's just a general term used to group these things together as a subject, but I don't think it has any legal significance by itself.


That's a great idea. No doubt the original developers viewed permissions as only those things that could and should be enforced by the software. But it makes sense to add a license field to objects, perhaps with a drop-down list of suitable, standard open-source licenses. There are open source repositories that do this in some way, purely as a convenience for both users and contributors, so why not SL?

No, he doesn't. He's being a troll. See http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-an-internet-troll.htm, for example, and please stop responding to him. He'll starve and move on.

I'm not dumb, I know what the score is here. However, there are perhaps readers that don't and for their protection and the protection of people that do sell (licensed) full permission items I think it is important to dispute his points.

Agreed, but that's not what she said.

I didn't mean to suggest that, and I'm sorry if it came out that way. And I quite agree that the misconceptions must be fixed.

I just suggest doing so without quoting his posts, mentioning his name, or commenting on him more than minimally necessary to make sense.

I never said she did. That was merely a starting point, a basis for comparison, so I'm not sure what your point is. The remainder of my post goes on to address the issues that both you and she were discussing.

Kidd, I actually should have been more careful in wording my last post. I understand where you are coming from and didn't take any offense to your comment at all.

Ricardo - I'm not picking on you here. I just want a clarification of something you've been implying.

You seem to be implying that there should be no protection for people who are building things that have been built before. I'm basing that on statements like,

"if you create something. And we all know what geniuses sl has where each and every single one of them comes up with their own 'first time ever' creations. NO one ever creates anything that was created before. Everything, every single item is created first- hand every single time."

What are you trying to say here? That people who make an item that has already been made should get no protection, no matter how different their item is from others, or that you should have the right to take their work and do whatever you want with it, including copying it and selling it?

As a real life analogy, General Motors gets protection on its products, even though Ford was the first car manufacturing company in the US. It's not like the design team at GM all of a sudden says, "HOLY CHRIST! We've invented something never seen before on the planet earth! It's a four wheeled horse cart powered by an internal combustion engine that runs on gasoline! We shall dub it the "automobile" and it shall make us famous throughout the land!" Then Ford gets wind of it and says, "You dildos! We've been making those for at least 100 years. you have no right to make 4-wheeled gas-powered automobiles! Cease immediately, or design a 5-wheeled nuclear-powered vehicle!"

Instead, they just design a new car, or modify an old one, and then apply for the necessary trademarks, etc. They get the same protection, even though cars are not a new concept.

The analogy to SL is the same, isn't it? I made a microscope. I think I should get some protection for that particular item. It's not the first one in SL, and certainly not the best one, but I made that particular one, and I don't think it's fair for other people to be able to make unlimited copies and profit off of my work. It doesn't matter if it's poor quality or if it isn't a unique concept. What matters is that it's my labor and my design.

Ricardo has long held content creators in contempt but the general gist seems to be that claiming rights over items where the creator has downloaded copyrighted material to create them in the first place is laughable.

I don't actually think Ricardo was talking copyright initially, he seemed to be talking more along the lines of content creators telling him what he can and can't do with an item that has transfer permissions. He did make an exception for items with no transfer permissions.

There are some questionable areas as to how enforceable the permissions system is when an item is sold with transfer permissions and no click license.