Interesting article on Second Life Rights, and Content Theft

Yeah, if it were me, besides being a little red-faced, I would happily re-import all of them for you without the alpha.

To Ian, Kidd and Lear. The points you make on U.S. law are valid, and you will get no argument from me on the ins and outs of the legalities involved. It is obvious that you are all reasonably conversant with it enough to protect your own works and interests, while also giving your customers a fair go, so thats all good.

I just note that I'm not a U.S. citizen and I don't practice my trade in the U.S. I do so in New Zealand. We have our laws governing copyright, patents, fair use, application, accreditation, etc etc. Different in the details in parts but broadly similar in principle. And as has been mentioned by your good selves, things used, deployed, etc etc invoke different aspects of the law that we need be mindful of when drawing up our contracts, terms of use, of service, et al.

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To Feld. My reference to prior art was just that. In my work, its a general, generic even, phrase, that covers any situation where someone pops up and says "hey! thats mine". Maybe sometimes it is, but at other times, you just hold up a copy of someone else's work and go "Ah! Prior art mate. I think your claim is stuffed. And if you push it, the person who made what I'm showing you, may very well sue you ass off." So yeah! while one can say the term only applies to patents then so what really in practice. Its how generalities go. I think also that the folk at Xerox would empathise with your point as well.

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True in general to what I do, other than to the components that must comply with the various laws that govern them and/or their use.

~
The following is where I came in and where I finish.

Metaphorical. Thats it. Good word.

When I log into SL and stand, I look at the world with a builders eye and often marvel at the craftmanship, the earthworks, the detail, the care, the beauty even of the builds. But more than this, whether it be a whole city, a beach, a garden or a simple house or store on a small section. I can touch it, I can interact with it. I am alive within it. Excellent! yes. Wonderful even. Something I can do in real-world builds as well. Something I cant do with a book, a film, a play or a painting, except in my imagination. This is my perspective (that word again)

Perhaps it is only a scape,a painting or a simple sketch even. Perhaps I attribute more to this than what is actually there. Maybe it means more to me than to see it pigeon-holed as just a work of art, and as such thats all the protection the work is afforded. I think the builds I so much enjoy in SL are worthy of much more.

3D-building in a market economy, as exemplified in SL, is a new discipline, historically speaking. And like any new discipline we learn stuff as we go along. And in the learning we look at other disciplines, look at their best practices and adapt them to our own needs and requirements. I think many of the best practices already employed in the real-world building trade can be added to what is being practised now.

NB. I didn't mean to come across as slamming artists in my earlier posts. So I apologise for that. I think I maybe turning into something I swore as a child to never become. A grumpy old git like my father. I think I'll go surfing at my favorite isolated spot in SL and ponder on that

I've been trying to avoid those textures, too, but if the sellers actually tried to enforce that rule in court, they'd be facing years of very involved litigation. Just because they say something in a "contract" doesn't mean it's valid (leaving aside the untested enforceability of a contract to which the specific means of "agreement" has never been tested). Depending whether the use involved resale of the image itself or use in one's own builds, they're wading into "derivative works" or "fair use" territory--both far from settled law currently, especially with respect to uses in virtual worlds. There's a risk that such litigation could spectacularly backfire, effectively exempting from copyright enforcement in some jurisdiction all use of images in Second Life, for example. That's unlikely, but they'd need competent representation to prevent an outcome that could establish a precedent that would be disastrous for their whole industry.

If you ask me, they'd be a lot better off just removing that restriction.

I have a free progam I use to speed up makeing textures seamless.I use photoshop and send to the new program.The first time I used it I uploaded the texture as a png .I put it on a wall and it looked strange .Took me a while to work out that the program had put an alpha channel in it.I had to upload a tga 24 version.
If I had sold the original I would have had a red face.

*waves at Airit from Sydney...

Yes you and Qie make a point, it's just to much trouble to sue over a wall in a build on the net.

Especially if someone made it in say France, and someone else bought it and downlowed adjusted it and uploaded again it in India, then sold the new one on a build to someone in the USA.

I think this is why it's a bit hard to tax SL made income too.

I still will avoid it, I'm loath to get the little IM or LL email.. just to much trouble to worry about.

If they don't do the sticky thing or dump it entirely, I hope they at least label them clearly.

I also thought LL sort of owned all the stuff in a way as well, and we owned it in the same faux way we own our land, like not really.

Maybe we need sell to me at your own risk clauses... The first reason I started to buy full perms tex's was to make sure I wasn't going to be doing anything wrong, keep any problems like that out of my face... but I actually can't be bothered to remember every individual contract.

Don't know what the law might have to say about it in the US, but where I live, in the example given by Clarrisa, the note is not a contract. Its not even a compliance notice. Simply because the note was not made available to her prior to purchase, nor could she reasonably be expected to know what it contained before viewing it, or even that there was a note in the box.

One suggestion that is floating around that I think is good, is that when we click Buy we get a dialog, or not, as the seller optionally chooses, containing these kinds of compliance notices, (setting aside the wording of them for another time) and if we accept them, we click and go on to purchase, or not, as we choose. Similar to the kind of dialog we get already when we install the client.

It has been suggested that Linden Research create a new primtype (vendor) with a built-in popup on Buy, solely for this purpose. This primtype does nothing to prevent theft or abuse of content, thats a whole other story. Its purpose is to help facilitate the strengthening of the relationship, and understandings, between buyers and sellers. Which can only be a good thing IMO.

"Prior art" applies to patents versus copyrights, becuase, with patents, someone isn't allowed to infringe on your patent even if they came up with it themselves, and prior art means a patent isn't valid.

With copyrights, if you come up with the same idea independently, that's allowed. Prior art isn't so much of an issue, unless it can be shown that what you did was actually to copy the prior art (in which case, your IP only covers any changes you made, and not to what you copied).

But you're right that the term "art" here isn't referring to fine art, but to "something made by humans".

For the remainder of your post (omitted here), I doubt anyone would disagree. We all learn from what we see and apply that. Barring patents (which are disallowed in SL), and excluding specific attempts to copy, that's totally legit.

And that's completely not what Voom's customer did.

The reason we're arguing with you is that we have the impression that you think that, sans contract, Voom's customer was within his rights to make a copy of the work Voom had done, and that he'd paid for. My position is that if he'd paid Voom to make a copiable object and had taken posession of a copiable object, he *would* be within his rights. To take that offworld is another matter -- it would require at least, transfer permissions. (According to ToS, that's not sufficient, if what someone said above is correct.)

In this case, the object was owned by Voom, and the customer used an illegal method (illegal in the US and against SL TOS regardless of where you live) to procure a copy of it in his own name, showing himself as the creator.

Are you still arguing that this is a reasonable thing for people to do (ignoring the contract)?

It isn't implicit based on your most recently expressed views.

/me waves back

Thats the great thing about markets. There is always someone willing to fill a gap in it and full perms providers fill the gap nicely in your case. And yes, them contracts like you say, its not worth bothering over for pennies. When its more than that, then thats what the lawyers are for.

~

SL is mostly about pennies at the moment, for most of us anyway. I keep an eye on Dusan Writer's blog. He knows his stuff. When he blogs, as he has recently, about where we're going I pay attention. 3D-desktop + Web-on-a-prim. Thats where we going according to Dusan and I agree with him. 3D in the 2D browser? Hmm! Its the other way around. The browser, along with all the other Net-enabled applications, will be embedded into the Grid and only be one facet of it.

When I turn on my computer I'll be on the Grid automatically, just like I'm on the Net now when I do this. When the Grid comes to my desktop then we're no longer talking about being paid pennies for building virtual stuff. Where talking about the budgets currently spent on desktop interfaces and web/net client-facing development, plus a whole lot more. Thats a lot of money. The virtual building industry is going to get a large share, if not the lions share, of this work.

That blog sounds interesting... I'm going to look at it, I've seen a few people mention him well.

Yeh, as it is online atm, I seriously can't be-bothered with the contract stuff, for me SL is to escape that r/l crap as much as possible and building is awesome fun.

That said and just to be clear, I am not against peoples right to do it... even for pennies or pride in the work... I just am more grumbling it could be be a hassle for me.

The sticky system people mentioned before might be good for now.

I never argued this. My view is that Mr Voom doesn't have a case. He never did. In the article quoted by the OP the first paragraph is:

"When Gospel Voom was approached by a client to recreate a highly detailed, three-dimensional section of the famed French Quarter in New Orleans for use in the virtual online community of Second Life, I'm sure the last thing on his mind was that he would end up fighting a battle to protect his intellectual property rights."

What Intellectual Property rights is Mr Voom claiming? He recreated (copied) a section of the French Quarter in New Orleans and ported it into SecondLife. It was a commissioned work. A job. The kind of job that carpenters do.

There is no IP in nailing prims together recreating someone else's designs. Designs in this case owned by those who own that section of the French Quarter. Perhaps Mr Voom got a signed release from them. If he didn't then he may be in a spot of bother.

If this case ever comes to court, and I doubt that it will, its not just going to be about what nawlins did. Its also going to about what Mr Voom did. And real-world architects, for one, are going to very interested in the outcome. I wouldn't be surprised if one or more of the architectural bodies, amongst quite a few other interested groups, ask the court if they could become a party to the hearing, should it proceed that far.

I don't want to beat up on Gospel Voom okay. I just think he got it wrong. Wrong only in the sense that I think he got wrapped up in what he understood to be his rights, if the article is any indication. Perhaps his legal advice was he didn't need permission to copy the Quarter, and maybe he didn't, I don't know, thats something else the Court will decide before it gets around to nawlins.

Or maybe Gospel blindsided himself, simply taking it for granted that by labelling himself a designer was enough to give his copied work an IP component. That was my argument. The designer label, the artist label, that we put on ourselves sometimes has no bearing on the work we actually do. The work itself determines that, not the labels.

I just try and put this one to bed. The build in OpenLife will get taken down should Linden Research itself file a DMCA against OpenLife. In Linden vs nawlins, nawlins is dog tucker. In Voom vs nawlins, maybe but not likely, IMO.

What if he hand made all the texturing?

No. Gospel Voom did not recreate buildings in New Orleans, he created an original work that is (at least) a painting using digital modeling (pixels). It might be that his work can be legally considered a sculpture or something else, but it's definitely one (or more) of the types of works that are specifically protected under Copyright law. I quoted that portion of the law earlier. And the law also says that a contract work such as this is the property of the author, not the compnay who commissioned it. Also under the law, the copyrights to this work can only be transferred by a written contract; absent that, they belong exclusively to Gospel Voom.

I have not read his contract and I don't know exactly what he is suing for. I only know what some of his rights are under the law; and that according to the news articles, he did not sign a contract that re-assigned those rights to the person who hired him.

Does he "have a case"? If it's about having his work copied without his permission, which he says he did not give, he obviously and definitely has a very good case!

I have no knowledge of the law in New Zeland where you live, but this case will presumably be in the United States. Anyway, most countries are signatories to the Berne treaty which is the basis of the laws I am citing. And in those other countries, I have heard that their laws are actually stronger (in favor of Voom) than in the US, which is a relative latecomer to the international conventions for copyright. You have not provided any legal citations to back up your assertions about the law in your country, so frankly my suspicion is that you are simpy ignorant of them and terribly confused.

I've explained this at least three times here, and quoted the law.. Ignoring the law and simply asserting that "he has no case" and telling stories about your experience in an unrelated industry (confusing a real-life house repair or whatever with Second Life) does not change the law. My intent was to provide information about law, and I think I've done that, so I'm done here.

That doesn't necessarily help.

The thing about copyrighted works is that there are implicit limits are what you are or are not allowed to do with them. When you buy movies on DVDs at the local mall, you're not allowed to then rent a hall, charge admission, and start showing them commercially. It doesn't matter whether they say so on the outside of the box, or at the beginning of the film, or wherever; they only do that so that you can't argue you didn't know. It's illegal even without them telling you (because the copyright law explicit says that the performance rights are separate from the rights in the physical copy).

So if you argue that the note is not a contract, you're still stuck trying to prove what the rights were. The starting point for that argument is that you had the right to rez exactly one copy of whatever it was that was purchased. Anything beyond that will have to be proved to the court unless the copyright owner concedes it. Sure, in this case, you'll have an excellent chance of proving that you had the license to make multiple copies, but the burden of that proof remains with the person making the copies, not the copyright owner.

Proving that you had the right to download the textures and tweak them will be a more difficult argument. Perhaps winnable, but I wouldn't bet a lot of money on it.

(As a practical matter, it's highly unlikely that such a case would ever come to trial.)

In the US, a commissioned work might be a work for hire, but only if all the other requirements are met. Here's one lucid article on the subject: http://www.copylaw.com/new_articles/wfh.html , though judging from the copyright notice on that page, it could be outdated by now.


This argument passes the snicker test with me. In other words, remembering that IANAL, I believe that a court would allow the defendant to make such as argument. Whether it would actually succeed is another matter. From everything I've read, court decisions on debatable issues such as this almost always favor the copyright owner. See the secition on originality in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_in_architecture_in_the_United_States .

Linden can't file the DMCA. Only the copyright owner can, and they've pretty consistently said that content creators own the copyrights to their works (if the work qualifies for copyright at all).

I don't understand what you mean by patents being "disallowed in SL". Second Life is subject to all the same laws as the real world -- SL is part of the real world, a computer system. I am not sure what things people would attempt to patent in SL. I am even less sure about what things in Second Life are patentable at all, because (unlike Copyrights) patent law varies considerably among countries and is lately in flux.

I can't think of anything that I would like to see patented in SL. I think it would probably be terrible for society, because the things I can imagine are business process patents and software patents.

On the other hand, if someone were to use SL like any other CAD tool and design an actual machine that they physically built in real-life, that would certainly be patentable and I have no problem with that. But I don't think people should be able to patent, for example, an SL computer program (prims + scripts + physics engine) that has pixels that happen to look like a real world machine. I don't think you should be able to patent software simulations - they are just computer programs. And it is not to the benefit of society to patent software as though it were hardware.

(Unfortunately, the law in the US currently disagrees with me, probably. Software and Business patents are expressly allowed. As we speak, there are cases and recent rulings that may begin to change that situation. It will be a big surprise if it does, though. I think most of Europe is also trending towards allowing these kinds of patents, so things seem to be heading in the wrong direction.)

I believe that article is current. To sum it up: a commissioned work might be a "work for hire" if there is a written contract before the work is begun that explicitly says that it's a "work for hire". Otherwise it's not.

Here is an update on the issue:
http://archive.treet.tv/designing-worlds-content-roadmap

Just a clarification:

"Works for Hire" is the default, regardless of whether there is a contract or not. The contract agreed to by both parties must SPECIFICALLY state that it is NOT a "work for hire", and that the creator retains authorship of the work. If that right is not reclaimed, it is considered a "work for hire", and authorship belongs to the entity who commissioned the work. Hence:

Your explanation here is exactly backwards and totally incorrect.

I am beginning to appreciate that this stuff is complex enough that it is hard for people to understand. Some of us have been studying it for many years and forget that.

No, you're misreading that.

What it says is that IF it is a work for hire THEN the hiring party owns all copyrights unless otherwise specified.

But it doesn't say what a "work for hire' is. For that, you need to go to section 101, which says that a work for hire is either something made by an employee in the scope of his employment, or (http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#101)

There are more details, but that's the basic point.

In other words:

1. I hire you as an employee, pay FICA, give you a W-2. I own everything you create as part of the job.
2. I contract with you to create a sim for me in SL, and if necessary, issue a 1099-MISC, but there's nothing else in writing. You own all the copyrights.
3. I contract with you to create a sim for me in SL, we sign a contract that says a) I'll pay you $X; b) you'll create Y; c) we agree this is a work for hire. I own everything (assuming I pay you). Once the contract says it's work for hire, it doesn't have to say that I get the copyrights.
4. I contract with you to create a sim for me in SL, we sign a contract that says a, b, and c above, but also says that you keep some set of copyright interests. Then we each own what the contract says we own.

I'm sorry, but I did not misread or misunderstand it at all.

Go back and re-read the law, please. It says EXACTLY (in legalese, but still) what I did.

ETA- The definition of a "work for hire" and its applicability to this particular case was not part of the context of what I said. The point is that a "work for hire" is the default assumption UNLESS EXPRESSLY STATED OTHERWISE IN A SIGNED INSTRUMENT BETWEEN THE PARTIES (in simpler words, a "contract".

The point was that just having a contract between the parties is not sufficient by itself to make something not a "work for hire"; in fact, it MAKES it a "work for hire". The difference, both in the case of a contractor, AND as an employee, is whether the contract (in EITHER case) SPECIFICALLY spells out that 1) it is NOT a "work for hire", and 2) all ownership remains with the creator.

I don't think I can clarify it any more.

As for its applicability to this case, either in definition or terms of contract, who knows? We don't have a copy of the contract to examine, and claims of ownership are pointless until such is produced. Either party can claim they have the rights, but if one or the other failed to properly spell out those rights in the contract, it is their own fault.

Actually, and amazingly, I don't think you can get it any more incorrect.

OK, I'm outta here!

Not all of the images contained in the textures, even if painstakingly hand-painted by Gospel, in this build are going to be owned by Gospel. Shop signs that maybe trademarks, real-world logos and such-like. And given that the section recreated is quite famous, any number of other objects painted may be subject to various caveats, possibly even the paintwork on some the buildings recreated. Fair use? maybe, but those who own those images may see it differently.

On the build in its entirety, I can't see that Gospel has a case. And thats what he asked OpenLife to do, to give him credit for the whole thing and / or take the whole thing down. Something he has no grounds for in my opinion.

On parts of the build maybe, as you point out. He will need to prove this though unequivocally for each and every part that he claims. Thats how that goes. As I must on the odd occasion when I've been challenged and have had to haul out my sketches, blueprints, permits and consents and show unequivocally that I didn't take something from someone else. When I do, I have all my consents lined up properly, before I even bother thinking about what conditions, if any, I may impose on the buyer. As does just about everyone else in the real-world building trade. It gets bloody expensive ripping stuff down otherwise.

And even after going through all of this, any action by Gospel on his own, may not be enough to get the whole build taken down should nawlins and/or OpenLife decide otherwise. According to the article, there's been some repainting and new woodwork already.