Bill 4-29: Artisan Protection Bill

Bill 4-29: Artisan Protection Bill

To protect artisans and to promote free trade in the city, no citizen
shall participate (directly or indirectly) in the reproduction and
distribution of existing Objects (objects, scripts, textures, and
terrain) without the documented consent of the original creator. No
citizen shall be in Possession (in world, in database, or on hard
drive) of unauthorized reproductions regardless of their location (RL
country or SL sim). Reproductions are defined as the recreation of
near identical Objects either in form or function or derivative works
from near identical Objects. Objects which are trivial to create or
created independently in parallel with other objects are not subject
to this law.

Philosophy

The philosophy behind this law is to protect the investment (time,
money, emotion) that artisans put into their Objects from individuals
who seek to duplicate the work with a fraction of the effort.

Since you don't care for my comments I will keep them short, but I will comment since forum comments seem to be my only opportunity to participate in the process of bill discussion and approval anyway.

It seems to me that this bill goes further then the DMCA and would make IP rights in Nburg more restrictive than in any other venue(RL or SL).

- You seem to be making it illegal for someone to raise or lower their plot in the same way as someone else for starters (the texture of the terrain already being covered by "textures"

- You are also criminalizing mere possession of the textures, so if some poor sap bought illegal textures at a store or owned an object that had them on it they would be in violation?

- "Unauthorised reproductions" is a commercial term and I don't think it means what you think it does (I think you mean simple copies).

- You seem to have a loophole for identical objects and only outlaw "near identical" objects?

- You seem to be criminalizing derivative works which as far as I am aware are specifically *allowed* by the DMCA.

Isn't it funny that you were so against red tape when you were the GM and now you have introduced two bills that tie up the guild in it like never before?

I don't get it.
Unless this bill is really just aimed at getting us to put your old walls back.

I don't see where this bill does any of the things you claim it does.
Frankly your hostility towards me of late is becoming intrusive to my responding to you.
If you have something to say to me --do so privately.

In no way do I mention this bill to be retroactive. So it has nothing to with the walls at all, which as Ive stated clearly I wouldnt even find in violation of this particular bill.

I'm trying to put foward a simple bill that would clearly define transgressions and serve as a way to protect an indivisual's IP rights in a group owned community.

I'm sorry that you seem to think this is directed at you. It isn't.

Although this appears to be inspired by recent events (typical of most laws), I must say there's no way I would expect it to be applied retroactively, if that's what you are concerned about. It would simply provide a common-sense anti-piracy policy.

It's good for the city and it's good for artisans.

~Ulrika~

Some thoughts here.

The possession on hard drive provision is quite unenforcable, unless you plan to somehow remote snoop the contents of citizens' own machines.How do you intend to enforce anything other than in world?

There is no penalty provision. If someone does any of these things, then what?

There is no safe harbor for unknowing possession of a violating thing. How then shall citizens investigate the provenance of every texture, object etc. which comes into their possession?

Your very broad definition of reproduction, especialy "either in form or function", seems to me very much like a software patent. It seems very reasonable to read this bill as prohibiting the creation of any item which does the same thing as an existing one.


The documented consent provision also places the burden of proof on anyone possessing an object, texture etc to prove that they have permission, Rather guilty until proven innocent, IMHO.

The language of the bill is so broad that almost any content creator could bring a case against almost any item under its provisions.

Also, it would be worthwile to carefully examine how this may or may not conflict with LL policy, which of course trumps whatever we do.

It's not a criminally framed bill. It's designed more to stop usage and or sale of offending works.



cease and desist. Thats all --quite simple.



again -- the only "penalty" is cease and desist. If they don't comply with that then whatever penalty exists for a Constitutional violation comes into play.



Perhaps you can come up with some wording that narrows that down, My thoughts on bills is that they should be as broad as possible when they are introduced so that they can then be narrowed down by committee. It makes the legislation process more of a collaboration.




How would you word this differently?



Bringing a case does not promise the outcome of that case. One may in general in legal circles bring a suit against anyone for anyting. Doesnt mean the suit will be successful.




We have many such laws already. The Covenant itself conflicts with LL policy if you look at it that way. Gorean Sims flourish under policies that conflict with LL policy. If we had no policys that conflicted with LL policy we could just be a big ol' sandbox.

Laws are codified morality. To me, this bill succeeds in codifying what we are all thinking in regards to the protection of artisans. While the city cannot inspect hard drives, the bill nonetheless attempts to codify that any unauthorized content, whether it can be seen or not, should not be allowed to taint the city or harm its artisans. I like it!

None of the laws have penalties! That's why there was so much conflict (from me) concerning the arbitrary nature of the sentence I received for forum moderation. I would recommend that the inclusion of penalties be relegated to a separate discussion, which would begin with the creation of several classes of transgressions (misdemeanor, felony, etc.) and then assigning a class to the each of the preexisting laws. I'm actually working on something like this for another group right now.

There is no burden of proof stated that I could see. I do however see the breadth of the bill. I think the bill has it right by painting in broad strokes to prevent the kind of creative interpretation we've seen with law lately (from you nonetheless) combined with an easy-to-understand philosophy at the end. It's loop-hole free and ready to be amended with exceptions.

Start amending it here. I'm sure Kendra will roll good suggestions into right now as you post.

~Ulrika~

I told myself I won't log on to the forums today, so I can do actual RL work, but this bill has been bothering me, so I will post some of my concerns here.

1. No time limit, no provision for "dead" authors -- this is not very important, as we all plan to live forever. But what happens when the original author of the work dies, or is otherwise permanently removed from SL? There is no way to get written consent anymore.

2. Writers, musicians, and animators are not given the same protection.

3. No provision for fair use. Something like:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00000107----000-.html
would be nice.

4. Potential conflict with the nburg TOS renders it useless vs. government


and


This can be construed to mean that the content creator already *has* given prior written permission to all their content published in nburg ("providing support services" is very broad, and can encompass almost anything). Thus this bill would restrict citizens from copyng other citizens' work, but not restrict the government from copying any citizen's work.

1) Then I suppose there would be nobody upset enough to ask for a cease and desist would there.

2) By all means --write up a rider to this bill that does that.

3) see above. I have no problems with Fair Use.

4) Presumably works sold to Neualtenburg become Neualtenburg IP Property. Works not sold to Neualtenburg do not become Neualtenburg IP Property. Nothing in Altenburg belongs to Neualtenburg. Nothing in Aliasi's Tower belongs to Neualtenburg. I sold the rights to the Rathaus --it would be Neualtenburg's IP rights be protected in that case.

5) It would restrict the Government from doing so. The City may not copy The Neuspa scooter for example and sell it --thus depriving a citizen from free enterprise.

As to your point 5, there may be language in the local ToS (Section 5.3) that runs counter to this notion. I would personally read "submitting your content to the service" as not requiring payment by the city for that content, but of course that's for the SC to sort out at some point. I also understood the Neualtenburg ToS (a founding document) as being above an act of the RA.

So it may be that if #5 is what you want, you'll need a (local) ToS change to get it. Of course that raises the question of how such a change might happen, since the constitution only mentions procedures to amend itself, not the local ToS or base covenant.

None of the merchandise I sell has been "submitted to the city". If Neualtenburg thinks that's the case --that it owns the rights to my merchandise for sale--then I would declare that the to be the most absurd law imaginable and a distinct barrier to commerce in the City.

Sorry --I could take every stick of furniture in Altenburg with me at anytime of my choosing and NEUaltenburg wouldn't have a damned thing to say about it.

If you are maintaing that the City has the rights to claim things on my own private property, then please do me a favor and let me out of this once noble Government turned Fascist Totalitarian Nightamre at once.

I must give some credit to Ulrika here. Here description of legislation as codification of morality got me thinking. You can take the phrase (legislation codifies morality) in two ways.

1. Legislation codifies morality with the goal of expressing those beliefs in writing and making everyone aware of assent to those beliefs.

or

2. Because some things are very important, legislation codifies morality by creating incentives or (more often) punishments to encourage/compel people to behave in accordance with that moral code.

The two goals are, of course, not mutually exclusive. They do, however, lend themselves to different types of legislation. The first invites 'broad strokes' as Ulrika put it, since its essence is to be a credum. You want that statement of collective belief, after all, to cover as many possible situations as it can.

If, on the other hand, you are more interested in goal two, you want to be very detailed as to what is and isn't a violation, what safe harbors exist, and what the penalties are. Otherwise, you invite a flood of litigation and keep the judiciary occupied for a long time sorting it out.

There is also the bigger issue here. Gwyn explained (in another thread, perhaps) why Linden Labs handles things as it does, and the difference between a carrier and a content provider. This is consistent with other discussions of IP issues that I've seen anyway.

Essentially by agreeing to be hands off on content, and agreeing to take down things upon request, LL (or NBurg) is protected from liability in an IP dispute. If on the other hand the city 'referees' disputes between others (citizens or citizen v. non citizen) it becomes a content provider and thus RL legally responsible for the decisions it makes regarding IP.

DISCLAIMER _ I am not an attornry . Nothing I say should ever be construed as RL legal advice.

Even Ulrika, who worked on it, suggests in another thread that the ToS is incomplete/inadequate. I imagine that might be something she and Dianne agree upon.

I do not claim to offer an authoritative interpretation of what 'submitted to the service' means. That is the responsibility of the SC. I was merely suggesting that whatever alterations are required to protect citizen IP from the city might need to be done to the NBurg ToS or whatever replaces it.