Terms of Use: suggestions, thoughts

Well, after a minor fiasco with my sculpted trees and their misinterpreted ToU, I thought I'd come to you guys first to make sure the new ToU's for my products is clear and uncontroversial. I still need to update the ToU of my trees in preparation for the official grand opening of my store, but I have written a new ToU for my full-perms products.

Yea, it's a bit lengthy, but I want to make sure I've covered all my legal bases and made it very clear. Any comments or suggestions would be helpful It's also very much a draft, so there's probably typos/grammar errors. It was also specifically written for a gems pack, so I'll need to generalize it on that.

---------

This ToU (Terms of Use) is designed to specify under which circumstances you may use and distribute this product. By purchasing this product you agree to the full ToU in entirety and represents a contract between you, the purchaser, and Aminom Marvin. If you disagree with any of the terms, but still wish to purchase, contact Aminom Marvin to negotiate an alternative ToU with different terms or clarified/elaborated terms. Some terms may need modification if there are specific partners you work with on creating content. This document is designed to protect Aminom Marvin from content theft while offering the purchaser rights to use this product without limitations of intended use, and to be fair-minded and balanced. If you have any questions or concerns about this ToU, please contact Aminom Marvin via SL IM, or by emailing him at [email]tobinist@yahoo.com[/email]

1) You may resell/redistribute the contents of this package only in specific ways. You may not resell/redistribute them individually or as a package. You may resell/redistribute them as part of a qualifiably different product that integrates them (such as jewelry, attachments, buildings, vehicles and the like.) In addition, you may freely transfer this product full-permissions to alternate SL accounts held by you, provided that they are accessed and used solely by you.

2) If you resell/redistribute these gems as part of a build, the build must not be full permissions. It must either have mod/copy, mod/transfer, or copy/transfer permissions. This is to prevent the sculpted prims in the product to be ripped and re-used by the end user.

3) You may not download the sculpt image data nor geometric data of these gems to reverse engineer them, or modify the geometric data for use as a basis for your own work. You may download them with the sole purpose of backups and/or to use in a 3D modeling program as aids for texturing. This does not prohibit individuals from making their own similar products using similar means and methods, only from specifically downloading these gems and editing them in a third-party editor.

4) These gems are only licensed for resell/redistribution in the "main grid" and "teen grid" server systems run by Linden Lab. If you have accounts with access to both teen and main grids (in compliance with LL's TOS), you may use this product on both grids. You may not use them on any other grid/server system. This is necessary because in the future if other grids/server systems are connected to the Second Life system, they may have varying levels of security for content creators. In the future, if this happens, Aminom Marvin will individually review the trustworthiness and security provisions of third party server systems/grids and expand the license to allow this product to be used in them. If modifications to this product are required to transfer this product to other approved server systems, it will be done free of charge upon request.

I am no lawyer.. but they seem clear enough to me.

It is straightforward, clear, and concise. And I'm sure that it will be completely ignored by someone within the first week, and within a month there will be a new business in a box with the entire product line.

Seems clear to me too .

I'm not sure if you can rely on LL to ever enforce a license though, I'd guess they would consider it a "resident dispute" .

I price most of my recent work out of the price range of BYOB people (3000-5000 ellbux). Most of my customers are content creators. I'd like to price it less, but very early on I realized that inexpensive full-perm stuff gets pirated like crazy



DMCA notices, and if need be, legal action. This ToU is to make sure there is a basis behind DMCA's etc, because if one files a DMCA without legitimate basis, they open themselves up to legal action. LL does ban people for repeated violations though, which is a step in the right direction.

I don't like the opening paragraph...it's too wishy-washy.



I suggest:

These Terms of Use govern how you may use and distribute this product. By purchasing this product you agree to them in their entirety. These Terms of Use represent a contract between you, the purchaser, and Aminom Marvin. If you have any questions or concerns about these Terms of Use, contact Aminom Marvin via SL IM, or by email at [email]tobinist@yahoo.com[/email]

don't use the term reverse engineering, because you can't make a term of use that forbid it, considering reverse engineering is entirely legal.

looks like microsoft

agree to the terms when buying this product
terms are sealed in the product
open the product to read the terms and you can`t return it cause it`s unsealed

make a sign to read the terms befor buying

Yeah. If it's like Aminom's trees, these already exist--though as it happens I bought the trees without seeing it. Ideally, to really make it binding, you'd probably need to require a positive action (clicking an "I agree" button) before allowing the purchase transaction to go through... which means a vendor, at least, and some scripting that could be perilous in these times of transaction flakiness. So... not sure which is worse: risk of the ToU being invalidated by its delivery mechanism, or risk of product delivery getting b0rked by the ToU distribution method.