What Exactly IS OpenLife?

Hi Chip,

It's right here where you lose me.

Without recourse to RL, how can we decide who the IP rights belong to?

The first person to load something into SL isn't necessarily the IP owner and in fact is almost surely not.

Above you casually talk about the "IP rights of others".. who is it that owns the IP .. I can almost guarantee not the person who took a picture of a dress in Cosmopolitan, copied it and uploaded it to SL.

So any assessment of who is the actual "criminal" must include a RL research task. Something which I suggest is outside the realm of LL's responsibility even if they had they resources to do it.

May I ask, if you really have designed a beautiful dress, or designed a beautiful building, or written a killer application that does something, why wouldn't you register it in RL..?

What i was meaning is that digital right managements do NOT work, they never worked, if you can see or hear it you can copy it, and the scripts are by far not protected either because any scripter with half a brain can reverse engineer everything you made.

DRM systems are trying to force the concept of virtual scarcity on a medium where it hasn't sense as everything can be copied for no cost and without depossessing the original owner from his belonging.

What i'm wondering is how artists like, me , Chip or pretty much any of the peoples that makes a substancial part of their real life income in secondlife to keep creating and being encouraged to do so in a DRM free multiverse.

Another idea i had was that for each creation we could put a price tag on our website or something and if you want it you can donate all or part of the amount we ask, once the amount of donations is reached we would simply release it for everyone.


I know peoples won't agree with me but any restriction system designed to monetize who can use what content is going to fail at some point, and it goes directly agains the expansion of the grids.

From what I've read of your posts, you should know better than that. The theft doesn't happen inside SL, it happens on the client's end by caching/intercepting the prim params/animation/texture/shape and later recreating/reuploading the item wherever.

If you recreate it on another grid, there's no evidence you did anything wrong on the main grid since it all happened client-side. There's also no evidence that a "Yumi Murakami" on another grid is actually you, even if you come here and boast about what you did, so there's nothing to get you banned/suspended over on the main grid. (I'm not saying you *would* do that, just making up an example)

And the same is true in the other direction also.

A couple of points, Stephen. Copyright protections do not extend to real world clothing designs. They can be covered by design patents (which are very limited), and textile patterns are covered by copyright, but a specific style of dress, shirt, or what have you isn't something that can be copyrighted, unless it exists solely as a piece of art. Architecture is protected by copyright from being reproduced in a "tangible means." I'm not sure if a virtual representation would constitute a tangible means. My guess would be no, but it would certainly behoove LL or any other user created content driven mmo to know the answer to that. In addition, copyright is granted automatically, regardless of whether or not it's registered with the copyright office. Doing so certainly makes proving a claim easier, but it isn't necessary to be protected under the law. That's all FYI in case these are things you're not aware of. Virtual world operators can't hope to be effective supporters of copyright laws or fulfill their obligations under the DMCA unless they're well versed in the laws themselves.

You're correct that first upload can't definitively prove authorship. A full on dispute will have to move to a real world court for resolution, but most cases never get that far. People who know they're in the wrong, when confronted by a DMCA claim, arbitrated by the provider, generally comply voluntarily. Even if they don't the provider has a legal obligation under the DMCA to remove the disputed content, and in LL's case there are penalties for filing false claims to deter people from filing them maliciously. No one said the law was easy, or fun.

The bottom line is that a service provider can either demonstrate that it wants to do what it can to aid artists in protecting their IP or not, and one that not only does so but innovates in that direction would likely reap large rewards for it. My point of view is that it's something that's in the best interests of developers such as yourself to be viewed by artists as an ally rather than a barrier to protecting their rights. I don't have the answers on how best to do that. I'm not trying to develop the metaverse. I'm just an artist who'd like to keep making cool stuff for it as long as it's mutually advantageous.

Horrible money men? As in, ruthless businessmen? Nope, never crossed my mind Or maybe I don't understand what you mean.

Hi Chip

Thanks for the info and you're right, although we're not planning on developing a new virtual world, we'll make sure we're aware of our legal obligations.. although to be honest we have nicely suited lawyers for that..

My understanding may therefore be flawed, however as far as I know (from the perspective of a non-lawyer);

Since our servers are located in the UK and not the US we would operate under the EUCD rather than the DMCA.

As far as I'm aware (and again we'll get advice on this), the key provision within both the DMCA and the EUCD is that of a "safe harbor" for Online Service Providers.. I'm guessing it wouldn't be hard for LL or us to show that our applications do in fact come under that category.

I believe the "safe harbor" provision of the DMCA is being cited by Google in defense of the Viacom claims against YouTube, so this case will be very interesting to watch.

Anyway the long and the short of it is (as far as I know) that under the safe harbor provision, LL has fulfilled it's responsibilities if it blocks access to alleged infringing material on receipt of a complaint from the "copyright owner or agent".

"copyright owner" is obviously the key phrase and proving yourself to be the "copyright owner" is in fact the problem I first raised earlier in this thread and would need recourse to RL where at least prima facie evidence of copyright would have to be shown.

I know I'm just coming off as some barrack room lawyer, which is a shame because I wouldn't even claim to be that.

For the doubters who do not think the other companies can ever compete with LL, check out this article.

http://www.massively.com/2008/02/03/ibm-partners-with-hipihi/

It seem that even though LL continues to tout their agreement with IBM, they fail to mention that they are not the only one. It seems IBM also has an agreement with HiPiHi... now what does that tell you.

A quote from the article:

"First, IBM is to provide hardware, services, and consultation on scalable architecture, essentially "battle-tested solutions". IBM's obviously getting into virtual worlds, and is too big and too experienced to put all of its eggs in one basket."

I imagine the 'one basket' they are talking about is LL.

That's very interesting. I personally didn't suggest that other companies would fail. I did say that other grids would fail, but I was thinking about the small stuff like OpenLife, and even then, I partially withdrew what I'd said. Companies the size of IBM, Microsoft, Google, etc. would be able to enter the field running if they chose to, because they have huge financial resources behind them. Even small scale companies could succeed to some extent, as Dave's company is doing right now. In fact, Dave's model, and similar models, might be the more immediate future for successful grids.

Yes, technically it didn't happen "in the SL world". But the client that did the theft was connected to SL at the time. The fact of other grids existing doesn't change that. Yes, you're right that the existance of other grids might make it easier for thieves to distribute their content, but it doesn't facilitate the actual theft.



I'd say that more worryingly, there's no evidence that the "Yumi Murakami" on another grid _isn't_ me if she decides to start selling the same things I do. (Um, maybe I am scared now, after all..)

That's it? Just doesn't have the essentials and its awesome?

I would conclude that Phreak FLow was expressing sarcasm... I have been on the OL grid maybe three times - haven't been able to log more often that with out sticking and my only progress so far is I have kept a skirt on... In other words - it is WAY in its infancy. Saying it is awesome, to my interpretation anyway, is a humorous comparison to SL functionality.

The other day when SL was down I decided to give Open Life a try, I created an account on their site, added the url to the last windlight version of SL (happend to still have it installed) as directed, and clicked connect......... Nothing, aparently there is a major delay in getting your account authorised (still waiting btw).

Not to be put off I d/l the stand-alone and gave that a go, Wohoo! it loaded, my own private island I thought. So I loaded a skin I've been working on, and some clothes textures and dug out my notebook and created a new shape for my new me. All seemed to work fine, so sporting my new (old SL self) look I proceded to rez a prim, nice moved it about a bit, seems fine, copyed it also fine, then tried to delete it. Hung! prim still there, me, stuck, unable to do anything other than spin on the spot. One reboot later, try to delete the prim again, same result.

Oh and on reboot everything I loaded, textures, shape ect... vanished....gone......nada.

Just my impressions of OpenLife but they realy seem to have a loooooong way to go.

Oh I also tried the Rex version, Stand alone and client, same result.

Gee.. sounds.. tempting.

It is just starting out- nowhere near SL and won't be I am sure for years - it is just a neat thing to see though- the early days. I will be happy when i can de-ruth...hell- I will be happy if i can figure out how to put a picture in their forum - but I am happy for having kept my skirt on ..l. it was drafty

QFT

If LL can't or won't even protect their own IP, how can it be expected they will protect residents IP?

I still think that eventually they will crack down on protecting their own IP. I hope the new grid projects bend over backwards to not only protect other's IP, but also take great pains to not allow anyone to steal anything from LL or residents.

I am surprised there has been no "new CEO" announcement yet. (Unless I have missed something?) But on the other hand I am not that surprised. I imagine that if a real CEO type, learns about how LL has actually done nothing to protect their product and witnesses the chuckle chuckle wink wink from LL, they might conclude they would be joining a hopeless, anarchic geek circus.