Who's minding AWG and does any of it matter?

I've been trying to keep tabs on what AWG is up to, but I'm kind of swamped with RL at the moment. What I'm concerned about is whether proper concern for content IP is getting reflected in those efforts. I'm reading some fuzzy thinking and frantic hand-waving about abstractions of "permissions" and this worries me, because the last I knew, content that was not explicitly licensed by the creator to operate on another grid was implicitly forbidden to cross into that grid.

Now, if other content creators think the way I do, the whole inter-grid Inventory-inclusive TP thing is waste of AWG's efforts. I mean, there's just no way I'm licensing any of my content to be used on a third party grid (as if having it on LL's grid weren't risky enough).

So, to the IP law folks here: Are any of you watching what AWG has been doing, and the current scheme for default inter-grid content permissions, enough to know whether I'm worrying about a non-issue?

And, for extra points: if my content leaks over to Sam's Fly-By-Night Grid and Underage Pr0n Emporium, wouldn't LL be in direct violation of my copyright? I know agreeing to the ToS grants away my patents, but copyright is a different thing. I'm not seeing anything shielding LL from liability if it is the agent producing the copies--which would seem to be the case if they send my unlicensed content to another grid. Or did I unwittingly indemnify them somewhere along the way?

From my understanding on all this inter-op is that Nothing is ever going to be allowed to be taken off of the LL asset servers and moved about to the other grids. I am for this inter-op but not the content sharing with other grids.

I share your concerns, Qie. LL has said that they have no intention of creating a system that would weaken the scant protections we have now so I think their intentions are good, but how it actually plays out remains to be seen. I'll be happy as long as I have the right to say no. I need to hear a whole lot more about exactly how the whole trusted and non-trusted grid thing is going to work before I'll know exactly how to feel about all of this.

Frankly I'm not sure why other grid operators would want asset transfer from the SL grid to their own grid. You'd think they'd want their own local economy and their own exclusive content as a draw to both consumers and content creators. Otherwise what's the real incentive to go elsewhere if not different content and new markets? I think some of these new grids are missing the boat by not planning to have an economy. They open themselves up to having to deal with IP nightmares. It seems foolish to believe that such a grid wouldn't become a haven for stolen content from the SL grid and they're going to have to deal with DMCAs whether they want to or not.

SL's economy, despite the bad things that go with it, is SL's biggest draw. Cheap land will be a big draw at first, but if there's nothing to attract high end content creators I can't see cheap land being enough. 3rd party grids need content, so they either need to create a robust local economy to attract creators or they're going to need to earn the trust of existing SL content creators. So far I've heard nothing about either from the 3rd party grid folks.

Was there ever anything to actually back up that claim?

Nothing I ever bought came with a license and while you can make a case that it's obviously only intended for use on Second Life since it was specifically designed for that platform, you can't make a case that it's only intended for use on a Linden Lab operated grid unless that was explicitly part of a license.

You're trying to impose additional licensing restrictions *after* the sale, which just does not work.

As far as the TOS is concerned: it still limits the "service" to Linden Lab provided software, there is no clause which would deem it acceptable to stream content to third-party viewers. If it's not necessary to adjust the TOS to deal with sending content over to third-party viewers then it's not necessary to adjust it to deal with sending content across grids which is exactly the same thing and carries similar (not entirely the same due to scripts) risks.

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As far as making sure that assets are properly protected: that's what grid trust should accomplish. If a third party grid is run by respectable company XYZ there's no reason not to send content on over to it, particularly since it's already happening today with the firewalled IBM sims which aren't a true part of the LL operated grid.

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Edited to add that I personally think the whole "interop" between grid is an utter waste of Linden time, but if it has to happen I might as well have access to my entire inventory over there since I paid for it and I'm not planning on buying the same skin and the same outfits 10 times on 10 different grids from the same creator as Chip just alludes to just so I don't look like Ruth/a cloud and look consistent.

Asset mobility between grids is a mixed bag.

Think about it. How much would people be willing to travel internationally in RL, if the only way you could go from country to country was to step across the border naked, and you had to buy an entirely new wardrobe after you are in that country? If you couldn't bring any photos or merchandise or souveniers back with you? Why bother to travel like that? Why not just make a phone call, if all you can do is talk and look?

As a furry, some naked Ruth Human with no attachments that appears on some other grid with my name attached to it is NOT me. Nor is it at all likely to BE me, at any time in the future. A Human avatar may be able to write down all their slider settings, import or use a passable skin, and create new hair and clothes, and come up with something that generally resembles their appearance on their home grid. It's much harder to do that if your normal avatar is not Human. On most of the grids so far, they don't yet support attachments on the avatar, or have full scripting support. So even if you are a gifted Avatar designer and scripter, it's impossible to replicate on those grids the kind of non-human avaars that are common in SL.

So "Ceera" can't travel to some other grid, without some sort of inventory mobility.

Yet as a content creator, I want to have some assurance that any of my creations that DO travel to other grids continue to protect my IP rights, and don't instantly become freebies on every grid they get replicated to. SL's own permissions system is bad as it stands, but there is no promise yet that any other grid will even have as much IP protection as SL has. Until they can assert and prove that content that is permitted across the border does not instantly become fair game for every rip-off artist on the planet, most content providers will say "NO!" to allowing their content to cross grid borders.

Anyone working on asset mobility between grids will need a far better system of asset permissions and IP protection than LL has in place now, before they will get any content providers to allow their content to be mobile.

And yet, if they CAN assure us that mobility is possible without making everything a freebie, then content providers would be happy to support those additional grids.

Right now, it's "wait and see", and hope they come up with a good system.

I strongly disagree with that. The vast majority of content in SL was created without knowledge that this would ever even become an issue. Are content creators supposed to include a 500 page license with every product addressing every contingency that might happen at some point in the future? That would be absurd. The content was created for SL, not for any other grid. I'd think that unless you got a product with a license that specifically allows you to take it off the SL grid then you should assume that you do not have that right.

I agree with Chip.

In addition, there is no reason why content creators on SL shouldn't have the option to say no as to whether their goods will be ported over to other grids, except that some people think we should not have that choice.

That this has been allowed to happen with the IMB sims, which are not a true part of the LL operated grid, without even consulting us, is not a good sign.

coco

A great deal of content was created without the knowledge that LL would eventually open source the viewer and that without the knowledge that LL would allow a third party to reverse engineer their protocol and allow applications based on libSL to freely connect to the grid.

Did you consent to allow LL to send your content over to a third party viewer which can be the likes of copybot, or was that just a decision that LL could unilaterally make and that everyone had to put up with?

Sending content over to a trusted grid would be *safer* than sending it over to an anonymous user using a copybot which is what happens constantly today so from a "protection" point of view there's really no reason to veto asset transfers altogether.

If you want absolute control over everything you create you either create an iron tight license or you do not sell what you create.

If you sell (or otherwise hand out) what you create then you give up absolute control over your creation. You still hold all the copyright and your content should be properly protected in case of infringement, but it's no longer your place to restrict what is and isn't allowed *after* purchase. You had your chance to do that prior to the sale.

If there's an actual law that prohibits it then that's that, but it's not something you can just retroactively restrict at will just because you feel like it.

Chip's nailed it.

Land by itself ain't much when you can't take your things, your clothes, your wallet, or even your face.

But that's a big question: who gets to decide "grid trust" for any specific content? As it happens, I (mostly) trust IBM, but not Joe's Discount Virtual World. But I'm sure Joe could find a Linden who'd "trust" him (for the right price?). And even if Joe's grid currently enforces some standard acceptable form of content permissions, once the content is on Joe's servers, it's open season when Joe decides to sell to some Sam (who maybe funds the purchase with proceeds from his SL copybot operations).

I have no problem with mapping avatar *identity* across grids. So if one wants to look the same on Joe's grid as on LL's, then one would have to either buy grid-transferable content (good luck), or pay the content creators for stuff that's licensed for use on Joe's grid.

It's not like textures I've uploaded to SL have any business showing up on Lively someday. But not only that: if the stuff got there through grid interop, then it wouldn't be some Lively customer's infraction--it would be LL's.

I don't know much about what happens at IBM's sims, but I'd wager that if they are bothering to test interoperability there, they're likely also looking at the issue of content portability and protection. I'd rather it happen in a closed, professional environment like IBM's than on some testbed hosted in some college hacker's dorm room.

I'm conflicted on the issues. There are definately more perspectives to consider than just those of content creators alone or those of end users alone. Generally my feeling is that if I pay for something in Second Life, I own it. I should have the ability, and the right, to take it with me when I visit other grids. It's not my responsibility to protect the IP rights of its creators, beyond the behavioral responsibilities I already have in SL now. It's the responsibility of the designers of the inter-grid architecture, and the operators of the grids, to devise (and enforce) protections that are at least as effective as those in place on agni today.

I know that's a tall order that is probably one of the most complex technical problems in the queue to be solved for virtual worlds. If the organization of AWG is anything close to as chaotic and incoherent as JIRA, this problem might not ever get solved within that group.

Unfortunately, Kitty, what you want doesn't coincide with copyright law, or an understanding of what it is you've actually purchased when you buy content in SL. All you've purchased is a limited license to use that conent. While I can certainly understand your desire to be able to take and use what you've purchased wherever and however you want, that simply is never going to be the case (and isn't the case in the real world either). Your claim that there needs to be an explicit license with every item telling you what you can and can't do is a red herring. Existing copyright law already lays that out.

I know it's tempting to look at it like you've purchased a car and the auto maker is telling you that you're not allowed to drive the car to Ohio, but that's a false analogy. A better analogy might be that you've purchased an art print to hang in your bedroom and then decide you'd also like to hang it in your hallway. You can't take the print to your local Kinko's and have it copied. You'd be breaking the law, and so would Kinko's (which is why they wouldn't do it for you). When an asset moves from SL to another grid it isn't like taking that print off the wall of your bedroom and moving it to your hall. It's being copied to that other grid and I think Qie is exactly right to point out that if that's allowed without explicit consent of the copyright owner then LL becomes party to copyright infringement, just as Kinko's would be if they copied your art print without permission from the copyright owner.

If you're asking that question then you're at least open to the possibility.

If the answer to "Should assets be portable across grids?" is an outright no, then the definition of what's trusted and what's not isn't an issue, you already dismissed the entire concept.

I personally don't see any reason why assets shouldn't be "portable" across trusted grids by default. Who and what and how is a big point still, but again it's just agreeing to the priniciple, not a specific implementation.

If Joe can bribe a Linden to flag a grid as trusted then he could just as easily bribe said Linden for a database bump of the asset server and get content that way and it would be far less risky for the hypothetical Linden.

If other grids have their own separate economy you wouldn't have a problem with a Qie Niangao that isn't you selling your copybotted creations on that third party grid?

Avatar identity is another place where it's necessary to establish trust: you need to have assurances that "Qie Niangao" on the LL grid and "Qie Niangao" on an SL-linked grid are one and the same.

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Outright denying asset transfers across trusted grids only targets legitimate consumers and noone else. You'd have to be very naive to think that content won't get copybotted en masse if open grids become popular; preventing asset transfers of what people paid for isn't going to stop content theft across grids, it just stops people who bought something to legally use it elsewhere.

Which is different from buying a limited license to the music on an audio CD how?

You can copy the CD just as long as you don't distribute it in any way, or you can convert it to another medium (such as an MP3) without the need to buy it a second time as MP3s.

Or you can drive across the state line while it still plays in your CD player.

But, see, you don't own "it"... you own the license to use it somewhere. An obvious case is that if I sell even a full-perm texture, the buyer doesn't have the right to post it on their Flickr page.

Do they somehow obtain that license when Flickr gets "trusted grid" status? After all, it's certainly not Flickr that's doing anything untrustworthy--they're just letting the same identity use SL-licensed content on their "grid".

(Btw, Kitty, by "identity" I'm talking about mapping avatars on different grids to the same RL legally responsible agent; I'm not making any claims to avatar *names* which I see as a whole different problem.)

The honest user isn't really the problem, Kitty, and I agree with you that content creators should be looking to strike a good balance between protecting themselves without unduly punishing the honest consumer. But, what the honest consumer needs to understand is that if interconnected grids using SL's architecture become a content theft free-for-all what will happen is that content creators will start saying "screw this" and abandoning the platform in droves, and then everyone loses. The music industry is stuck. They can't be a music industry without releasing music, and they can't release music without opening themselves up to rampant theft. An artist, on the other hand, can simply go apply their skills to something else. I think LL needs to be very careful with this can of worms lest they end up with a platform that contains nothing but stale recycled content that's been stolen a thousand times over and no one making professional content for the platform any more.

for those following this discussion, and trying to figure out what AWG is:
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Architecture_Working_Group

Is this the direction interop is going? I sure hope not. I don't know why asset server transactions couldn't work exactly the same way on other grids as they do on agni. Crossing a grid boundary should ultimately be functionally no different than crossing a region boundary.

LL has to be able to ensure that IP protections and TOS also move across the border seamlessly or else they open themselves up to liability issues. A 3rd party grid will have to have some kind of contractual obligation before LL will be able to assign trusted status and allow any kind of seamless integration.

However, there is a reasonable use allowance and if you take your bot to another grid and the inventory is limited to use by that av, then I am willing to gamble the reasonable use would hold.

I don't know how this is intended to be implemented or even if there is a road map, much less how it will work out, but if the inventory issue of what accompanies the avatar is separated from the intergrid sales, then I think something that is or works like a buffer could suffice, giving only what is necessary to be read and acted on within the other grid, without it actually becoming part of the asset server items on the other grid. Whether that requires an entire new class of (temporary) objects, I don't know.

AWG has been very open about these discussions, Saijanai even posted a thread here about intergrid permissions:
/13/d5/267473/1.html

If I really wanted to know, I'd ask Saijanai, Qie ... but that would give you just the working group perspective. Zha might have a better take on what actually is going to happen.

I've been busy and haven't been to an AWG meeting or Zero office hour in ages, so I don't know where this stands. I do get alarmed by the volume of discussion whenever I log in, tho ... they seem to be moving rather quickly in some direction that I haven't been able to take the time to discern.
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When you cross a region boundary, everything you are wearing gets sent to the server for the region you are entering. Everything that you rez in that region gets sent to the server for the region you are in. Even if LL controlled the asset servers for all grids everywhere in the universe, as soon as you wear or rez something in a region on Fast Eddie's Bargain Grid, Fast Eddie owns a copy of it.

Which is no different than getting within draw distance of another avie, excluding scripts.

If you wear an attachment, a "viewer" can copy it. If you rez something, a "viewer" can copy it. Same with sounds, shapes, textures, animations, , etc. The only asset that would be more exposed than it currently is would be scripts and that's something that can be worked out.

Joe and Jane both want to bring the same house over to a third-part grid but where Jane bought a copy of the house, Joe just whipped out his copbot and let it loose on the house. Even though Jane paid for the house she can't use it on another grid while Joe stole it and gets free use of it wherever he want.

Restricting asset transfers across grids isn't about fear of widespread infringement, "thieves" don't need the feature since they already have all the necessary tools. It's fine to argue against asset transfers, but don't hide the fact that's it about nothing but restricting consumer use of what's been bought behind excuses about content theft.

This implies that you think the value of the scripts in SL is nearly worthless. The scripts in SL are worth millions of US$. Also, copybotted things show the copier as creator. Transferring assets to another grid will allow the stolen copies to be indistinguishable from the legitimate ones.

What was the question again? I blinked somewhere in there.