The unofficial new permissions system discussion thread...

I know I'm fixated on this, but it basically determines my future in SL. So, once again quoting Cory:



Assuming you buy into the idea that virtual items equate to physical items - which admittedly is a big leap:



So, yes a person can resell an object but not make copies of it.

Fair Use rights simply have no place in this discussion:
Fair Use is a copyright principle based on the belief that the public is entitled to freely use portions of copyrighted materials for purposes of commentary and criticism. Fair use specifically disallows use that will deprive the copyright owner of income. Allowing people to break a wrapper and inspect details on how an object is made is NOT Fair Use.

"Modifcation & Tinkering" Copyright Holders (creators) have the specific right: To prepare derivative works. So, now we cross over into Reverse Engineering law. If someone breaks a wrapper and duplicates your efforts for any reason other than "for the purpose of enabling interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs", they are violating DMCA. But, once again LL is in the clear - they are just enabling these people to do this.

I dunno guys, after all this I see it this way. LL wants faster innovation. They are willing to sacrifice their current innovators by basically opening up thier work (except scripts) to prying eyes. This will spark pseudo-innovation in the form of people duplicating existing works. This will then stifle innovation since everyone that was making original work will not want to make any more. LL isn't breaking any laws. They are just making it impossible for content builders to protect their works since it is isn't financially worth it to pursue any copyright infringments in RL which is all we can do.

Somebody once told me "Never point out problems unless you have a solution". So:
1. Incent innovative developers - not dwellopers
2. Implement the few and small changes to the existing permission system that were suggested here (Fix what is broken, don't break what is working)
3. Offer Linden-run classes on building and scripting
4. Offer more linden based builds and scripts for new user inspection
5. Give up on the idea of forcing innovation. It can only be encouraged.

"Sometimes the situation is only a problem because it is looked at in a certain way. Looked at in another way, the right course of action may be so obvious that the problem no longer exists."

-- Edward de Bono

You know, Al makes an interesting point, Cienna...

Assuming an object is a physical object (which I reject the premise of), you absoultely have the right to tinker and sell it, but you cannot copy it. You could make an imitation of it, but it's impossible to drop a few scripts in the legs of a real-life chair and get a perfect copy of it. And even an imitation is legally dubious if you went to sell it.

Or we recognize the fact that a chair in SL is *software*, because copying it is a simple matter of a command to to the system to split off another copy of the code that represents the chair. In which case, well...

When the Lindens say they want to promote innovation via a free exchange of information, it sounds like what they want is a patent system. A patent doesn't ensure that *only* the inventor gets to sell a particular invention; by filing a patent, you reveal your idea to others. A patent allows the inventor to get, for a limited period, a royalty when other people sell products based on the invention. If you don't want other people to know how you made your product, you keep it a trade secret. For example, the recipe for Coca-Cola is a trade secret. It's not patented, because if it were, it'd be publically available, and anyone could sell an identical cola and just pay a royalty. A lot of manufacturing processes are trade secrets, because the manufacturers would rather maintain an advantage for their products. Other processes are patented, because the inventors figure they can make more money by collecting royalties.

To the extent that we have protection for the geometry of our SL creations right now, we have trade secrets. "How did he make such a cool-looking jetpack? I can't duplicate it." Trade secrets, obviously, limit the flow of information. It sounds like the Lindens want a patent system. "Wow, he came up with an ingenious technique to make cool-looking jetpacks! That technique enables me to make cool rocket boots." Ideally, you'd pay the inventor a royalty, for a while. Then, after some period of time, the technique would go into the public domain.

A patent system, if implemented properly, lets many people benefit from an innovation, while providing incentive for inventors by letting them make money off their innovations. The current Linden proposal lets others benefit from an innovation, but it seriously decreases the incentive for inventors. If they want to encourage the flow of information, they need to implement a way of ensuring royalty payments.

Jake gets it.

Right shoe - wrong foot. If you want to try to apply patent law, we would all have to be filing for patents with the USPTO. If we want to bring this all back in-world under "Linden Law", then yeah, Jakes gets it.

You all want it under "Linden Law" anyhow, with them to protect the creators (to the detriment of the owner) via permissions. How is that different?

Hey, I got no problem with that. I would prefer it. But the Lindens already opened up this can of "Copyright" worms.

Unfortunately, guaranteed royalties are an impossibility in a world where something can be copied in 10 minutes in a way that can't be traced.

Reflecting on this issue a bit, I bet the problem isn't lack of innovation. I bet it is a lack of marketing. I have seen some really great things fall by the wayside because people that build them don't know how to sell them - or aren't motivated to sell them. Another suggestion to spread innovation would be a global clearinghouse for items. You pay something like a "Show in Find Places" fee and your object is now in a global tab of the Find system. Say I want to buy a plane. I open Find, go to the Objects tab, type "plane". This gives me a list of all the planes people wish to advertise ranked by total sales v.s. dwell. I now have to option to direct purchase or teleport to a store. I dunno, that is just 1 idea. It would be much better to have professional marketers for products. They could setup booths at all the malls, do promotional events, etc... All the things an innovative engineer would hate to do.

That was my thought when reading through the posts so far today. Maybe LL would have been better off puting a full permissions system proposal on hold while it was discussed how we and LL view our in world creations. Are they analagous to software? to digital media? to RL physical objects? Then once we knew what we were dealing with, a proposal can be made with that in mind. If I'm missing something and this has already been defined somewhere, then the rights creators and buyers have in the new system should be easier to define.

-Meiyo

I actually think this approach was better. If they had started with a discussion on whether or not my objects were "real" or "software", and I didn't know the implications of either, then I wouldn't have been able to understand what the difference was.

Point well taken..

Moving along... has anyone read Cory's latest post in the blog? That one just confused me. Anyone else understand what is meant that can dumb it down for me? (before I draw the wrong conclusions from that statement....)

(*hides from the inevitable onslaught of comments regardign the forums vs. blog reply*)

-Meiyo

This is what I'm understanding.

There isn't enough innovation. Why?
-Creator's objects aren't protected the way they want. So they stop creating or keep their creation to themselves.

-This isn't the beta days anymore. If someone is creating, most likely it's for money. If it's all about money, nobody is going to spend hours and hours on something because it's cool. They'll most likely spend minimal time that's good enough for a profit. Since it's about money, people only create items that will sell. Less cool and innovated items are created.

LL Solution:
- Give the creator less control of the items they are creating.
- Make it easier for people to rip off other's creations.


The logic doesn't make sense to me.

I can't believe they want to get rid of the no-transfer option. That will completely destroy the skin business. I can only speak for myself but I assume most skinners do what I do... we add tatts by third parties for people and let them have several versions of their skin with different makeups so they can change them when they want to. If the ability to restrict transfer is removed every time someone has a tatt added they'll end up with a free skin to give away to a friend. Skinners will no longer be willing to add tatts for people and as a result people will no longer want a custom skin because it will be too restrictive. Full body skins have become extremely popular and I've worked very hard to allow people the ability to have other people's tatts added to them, making it better for the skin buyer, and also keeping the tatt makers in the loop. If all the various versions people have of my skins suddenly become transferable it will be a boon for people who don't want to buy one. Lots of people will suddenly have extras to give away. This is one case where one of the newest and most innovative markets in SL will be destroyed in one fell swoop. How's that for fostering innovation? I want to be supportive of a new permissions system, but the plan as currently laid out is likely going to cause a lot of established creators to pack up and leave. Myself included.

I think more concerning to you Chip would be that they could "break the wrapper" then modify the skin however they like and wear it around. You would still be listed as the original creator with no indication as to which changes that were made were theirs.

I don't think anyone in game comes close to the quality that you put into your skins (mind you I haven't seen much of the market), but I think it is safe to say that you are at least one of the most skilled at it.

Now, someone is walking around with one of your skins with alterations on it that look like they were drawn on by a blind monkey with a crayon.

I imagine most of your business comes from word of, um, body advertising. I'd be concerned about how this could pollute your line.

I do want to note that I'm not really certain how all of this is going to work with products that are essentially just textures, but the same idea applies to anything that someone makes, as others have mentioned in this thread.

That's a concern too, Onei. I can only see these changes, in the way they've been loosely sketched out so far, stifling innovation. The more options creators have for managing permissions, including transfer, the more varied business models can be built around them. The more open our creations are to "tinkering" the less incentive there is to create. We need more options, not less.

(crosspost from the blahg)

In regards to the issue of "moral rights"... *if* end users are allowed to have some level of modify permissions for any object they own via breaking a wrapper or whatever, I suggest that there be a feature added so that when someone else comes along and clicks or hovers to see the creator, it either says "MODIFIED)" next to the creators name or there is another field between the creator and owner that says "Last Modified By: Joe Avie"

(I know this doesn't totally answer the problem but at least it's something :-/ )

-Meiyo

I guess being a high-prim builder actually paid off. It would take serious effort to copy my crap. I sell a few things, but if I start to see ripoffs, I know that I'm not going to sell anymore. That is really the bottom line here. I'm glad scripts are protected, and everyone who does script is really sitting comfortably about it, but I feel sorry for the guys making vehicles and other low-prim items.

I'd like to see some responses officially how LL is going to handle this, but since I'm hearing that 'prims don't matter' in so many words, I don't hold much optimism towards this.

My main question is, why should prims get less protection than a script? Spare me the creative commons or whatever, just tell me, plainly, why should your script, that took you effort to type and think of, take priority over my prims, which took time and effort to create and arrange.

ASCII versus Prims....why the big difference?

Or is this just one big legal cover-your-ass by LL? Then the message is (assuming no equivalent protections for prims emerges) 'eh, you don't script - so you don't matter'.

I hope I'm wrong about that.

And yet, in the real world it is completely legal to resell these products:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Sale_Doctrine

Cory replied to my post on his blog and it looks like we won't be losing no-transfer That eases my concerns a lot. They're listening.

I don't even see a link to Cory's blog anymore...

I'll be perfectly honest. I don't build. The propsed changes, as they are now, would not affect me in any percieveable negative way (except if ParticleSystems were copyable along with all the other PrimitiveParams, THEN I'd be screwed). Seriously. I realize I've been one of the more vocal detractors of this proposal, but the proposal as it is now would not affect me in the slightest as I am now. The only thing I've ever actually built that didn't consist of a single prim is the build on my land, and I've not sold that. It's also a rather primitive build that most people could probably copy by looking at it.

My issue is (and Kex pretty much brought it up earlier) that IF I wanted to suddenly go into building, even for a single product, I wouldn't if this proposed system were in place (I'd actually leave if this system were implimented, but that's not the point). And so far I've not seen a single person post to this thread saying they WOULD build and they'd LIKE building if this system is implimented. Cienna might, Kex might, but they haven't actually said they would, so I won't assume. They're more promoting this from the standpoint of customers, and quite honestly the customers can be served just as well WITHOUT gelding the creative base. Everyone else has said quite plainly they would stop building and/or leave SL.

My other issue with this is precisely the one you bring up: What makes my scripts so special? What guarantee do I have that in the future, LL won't think up this precise idiodicy for scripts as well? So my first line of defense against something like that happening to my scripts is to stop it from happening to prims. Plus we know precisely how poor LL's performance has been in securing permission systems in the past, who knows what could bleed over to my scripts? All it would take is a single bug, and POOF, not only there goes my work, but there goes the ScriptPINs and other such things too.

And I DO know that if a permission system like this is made, I -won't- build, guaranteed. I like the option of being able to build without worrying about people stealing my prims, so I'd like the option to stay open. *shrug*

====================

All that said.... I think we need to look at this from the perspective of what's going to make LL the most money. Most of us came here for the freedom to create. Us being here makes LL money. The products people can buy (or obtain for free) because of us are what keep other people here in SL. So people here are because of the ability to create, whether they're creating things for others, or buying the creations.

Now, say this change goes into effect. I'd estimate about 80% of the people who've posted to this thread have said they'd either quit SL or stop creating. I'm guessing some might decide to stick around anyway (as sometimes people don't mean stuff like that, but this IS the first time I've ever seen a large number threaten to leave like this...), and I might be guessing too low or two high, so lets just be safe and round that down to a nice 50% number.

So assume that LL loses 50% of it's content creators. Remember that this entire world would be nothing more than a bumpy height-plane with clouds and sunsets without content. LL needs content creators. It loses half of them. The customers who used to purchase from those creators no longer have things to buy. They start wondering why they're in SL any more. Builds start getting even crappier than the Xerox-Clubs we have now. Dance animators start breaking down, scripted attachments slowly stop working entirely, and people bore of their same old jetplane or dress they bought six months ago. So the customers start to leave too. That 50% number (of "just" creators) starts to become a larger portion of the actual SL public.

What new creators come into SL and actually stick around in the new socialist economy have fewer people to draw upon to learn, and have to entirely teach themselves by pulling apart the old objects and trying to figure out how they worked. Content quality keeps dropping. More people give up and leave, and the fewer customers for content creators to create for, the less of a reason to create things.

LL, seeing that innovation and productivity has dropped even further, panicks and starts trying to reinvent other things in an attempt to seal the hemmoraging of players and decent content. These changes drive more customers away.

I think you can see where I'm going with this. Do I really need to finish it? LL loses a majority of its customers, and disappears.

Anyway, everyone needs to stop thinking of SL in RL terms. I realize that there are certain things people want to coincide somehow with RL laws or such, but attempting to do so at the cost of losing a large portion of your creative base simply doesn't make sense. Stop trying to compare this to RL for a while and think of what's good for SL first, THEN try to match that with RL.



http://secondlife.blogs.com/prompt

To which he's apparently posted that he sees the reason for keeping no-transfer around. Which, if I understand the propsal correctly, simply makes the propsal an identical copy of what we have now with a few CreativeCommons licences added on.

I just wish he'd keep the discussion in the right place. The discussion forums. They said to give blogs a chance AFTER they change the formatting, and they haven't yet.

Regarding Cory's "carefully considering copy/notrans" post in the blog:

I still haven't seen an explanation on how such a thing is harmful. Say I buy Doom3. I can install it in as many different places as I'd like on my machine, no problem. But the moment I start giving copies away? Bad shit happens. I sell people firefly swarms (give for donations is more like it, since some people HAVE gotten them for free, and I've never asked for a specific amount from anyone else) in SL. One purchase lets them place as many swarm-objects as they want, yet they can't transfer any swarms to someone else. If I wanted that capability under your new system, I would have to make them nocopy/notrans, at which point I would need to give them a copy for every single swarm they wanted to make. Considering sixty eight or so exist in Seacliff alone (and I have no idea how many are on the two private sims that other people own), that's a lot of freakin' objects. If I were to be stupid and give them copy/trans versions, whooops, there goes my entire market. I'm giving them away for free, so someone turns around and starts selling them for L$100!

Your HTML example is non-sequitor. No one can just go to the SL website, copy all the code, and turn around and try to sell it to someone else. They're FORCED to make their own changes, simply because an exact copy would not work for another customer. However, I see no such limitation in the proposed permissions system. Exact copies would be valuable to someone, somewhere, within SL.

If you want to make an "improved" permissions system, make one that keeps all the options we have now, and gives us more. Do not take options away from the creators. We -will- leave. (If you don't believe me, read the real discussion thread. I'd estimate about 80% of posters have said very plainly they'll stop creating and/or leave. And the only ones that haven't said as much haven't said they would stick around, either.) We've been asking for MORE options. Why are you taking them away? This proposal is not in response to anything the community needs. It seems like "market research" that simply hasn't ever been tested in a virtual digital environment.

Do you really think so? Namssor Daguerre's Second Skin technique involves distributing raw .tga's. No copy protection whatsoever. They're quite popular.

Last time I checked, she was making quite a good living (whee, the leaderboards have such fun information)

I was very pleased to know that someone that someone could run quite a successful business model that depended solely on the honesty of others.

No doubt she's been ripped off a few times, but she's still succesful in the end. I have a different view of software piracy - I think it only really becomes a problem when other people have made more off your work than you have.

What LL here is doing may not be "modifying" the letter of the licenses of CC, but they are altering the intent of the license. The license is supposed to be a voluntary thing that people CHOOSE so that others might benefit. By FORCING everyone to adopt these licenses, they are altering the intent of the licenses themselves, and I don't feel LL has any right to even associate the proposed licensing scheme with the CreativeCommons.

I understand that LL doesn't necessarily work on weekends, so I'll give them till the end of Monday to offer a revised version of this proposal (or at least guarantee creators in very simple and plain English that their rights and abilities as they are now will not be diminished in any capacity), or I'm contacting the people at CreativeCommons and letting them know that someone is attempting to pervert their name. I may get told that there is nothing CC can do about it, but there is a chance that CC will turn around and insist that LL cease using their name until they give people the choice that was intended by CC.