Copyright single attack in SL?

That would be sweet of you.

I haven't read this whole thread and I dont plan on it. This is a reply to the original poster.

2 points:

1) if its copy right material dont sell it in sl.. It's much more creative to come up with original ideas anyway.

and

2) ppl have been pushing for months for sl business to be recognized as rl businesses. If you wouldn't sell bootleg products in rl then don't do it in sl.

BRAVO LL! and BRAVO to those who sell original ideas.

On a side not I don't see anything wrong with making that stuff as long as its given away freely to everyone.

Cat

/beginsarcasm

Nice to know how you address very ill children. I sincerely hope that no child of yours ever becomes ill, and I also hope that anyone taking care of said child doesn't have your attitude.

/endsarcasm

A couple of thoughts:

One, a different perspective:

I write something, say with 20 characters, a story, with 10 of them being minor characters. Someone comes along and writes stories about those ten characters. If they give those stories away FREELY, then it's fanfic. However, if they started putting those stories on notecards and charging 10L for them? Hell yeah, I'd be pissed off. Those are my characters. That's essentially what is being done by making obscure Hello Kitty avs. Regardless of whether others are told to knock it off by Linden, the maker was. That's like me saying, well hm, until Linden tells everyone to not be naked in a pg area, I'm going to continue being naked in a pg area (not that i was ever, except once when I took off my shirt to make sure my skin had a bellybutton *Grin*), I haven't been warned, but it's similiar. You give up certain rights when you click agree on the TOS, which if my memory serves me correctly, comes up EVERYTIME there is an update. If I'm wrong, someone please correct me. If you don't take the time to read it then, you can't say it was never provided to you.

Second, in There, every design had to be approved by There, and they were strict on copyright violations. I personally think the freedom allowed in SL to create something and give it away or sell it, is much better. If we want to raise a huge stink, I'm sure Linden could do the same. However, gone would be the days when you could build a house or a picture frame or a chair for yourself and save money. *shrugs* It's a choice.

Thanks for the comments, I do think it is an interesting stance. It is mainly "trademark" vs. "copyright" material. But the stance of the Lindens is basically more for your protection as far they don't want you to get sued. So look for this more and more because basically their lawyers are looking heavly into it. So just a heads up. Supposedly also you can make it around 25% difference. Almost parody version. But again look for stricter standards about all of this within SL.

This will more than likely effect avies more so first because they are actual representations of the characters. Then watch for designers of clothing to be warned more and more. Kinda sucks but oh well.

Unfortunately, the law does not agree with you.

"It is mainly "trademark" vs. "copyright" material."

I honestly don't understand this comment. Explain please?

As for the rest, it seems as if you've been told something directly by a Linden. Is that the case or is this something you were told by another resident?

My understanding with regards to LL policy is that they proactively police against trademark infringement, but that they will only pursue copyright infringement if they receive takedown notice. If they're now cracking down across the board, it would be news to me.

Well from ye olde TOS:

Section 5.3 - Participant Content

(B) THE PERPETUAL AND IRREVOCABLE RIGHT TO DELETE ANY OR ALL OF YOUR CONTENT FROM LINDEN'S SERVERS AND FROM THE SERVICE, WHETHER INTENTIONALLY OR UNINTENTIONALLY, AND FOR ANY REASON OR NO REASON, WITHOUT ANY LIABILITY OF ANY KIND TO YOU OR ANY OTHER PARTY;

So.. now we've established that they can delete whatever they like, when they like, and without so much as a reach-around...

Be happy that they asked you nicely to stop!

oh i guess i should close it back then

Basically, any creative work is covered by copyright. If I take a photograph, write a book, paint a picture, the resulting work is my property. Likewise, I retain the right of reproduction, copyright. In the US, copyright currently expires at 70 years past the author's death, or 95 years after being created by a corporation.

Trademarks differ from copyright in that they do not expire, unless they have become diluted through common use or infringement and thus cannot be used by the public to identify with the trademark's holder.

For instance:
Mickey Mouse is a trademark, both in name and image.
Fantasia is a copyrighted work, though the name itself is trademarked.

The reason Linden Lab tends to treat both differently is because they are different. The US DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) applies to infringing copyright, and provides a protection to ISPs in the form of the DMCA "safe harbor" provision. Essentially, a copyright holder swears that they hold the copyright to a given work and then requests that Linden remove infringing material posted by a given user. Linden then does so and thus avoids litigation or responsibility for the actions of its users.

Trademarks, on the other hand, are not covered by the DMCA. Rather, Linden Lab could actually be held liable by allowing trademark infringement. Thus, they need to police it, as Merwan correctly notes, performing due diligence in protecting the value of the company.

If the Lindens look the other way when someone sells a recreation of a trademarked work, they're not "being nice to the little guy", they're being negligent.

(See the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse for a good primer on trademark law.)

Thanks for your correction - its obviously a complicated area; for instance,

from Wikipeadia...

Licensing
Note that there are many works that are not part of the public domain, but for which the owner of some proprietary rights has chosen not to enforce those rights, or to grant some subset of those rights to the public. See, for example, the Free Software Foundation which creates copyrighted software and licenses it without charge to the public for most uses under a class of license called "copyleft", forbidding only proprietary redistribution. Wikipedia does much the same thing with its content under the GNU Free Documentation License. Sometimes such work is mistakenly referred to as "public domain" in colloquial speech.

Note also that while some works (especially musical works) may be in the public domain, U.S. law considers transcriptions or performances of those works to be derivative works, potentially subject to their own copyrights.


I certainly meant to say "public" in general, but here in the US the second paragraph points out how nettlesome this issue can sometimes be - for example, distribution of derivative works based on transcripts, images, or other original manuscripts that might be held by a library, a museum, a foundation, or an estate may still control distribution of material that has otherwise largely passed into the public domain (based on its precise legal definition).

The four principal IP rights are: (1) copy, (2) distribute, (3) perform, and (4) publicly display. Derivative works are different animals and may be assigned unequal status to original works. Many try to use "fair use" and "parody" as shield protections but these concepts are evolving in actual case law.

Bottom-line - you have to do rights clearance anyway to determine "public domain" might as well get written clearance from the earliest possible provenance in the process.

I really don't understand this at all.

I'm not saying I don't understand as a political device, I actually don't understand.

Is state funded healthcare very poor quality in your country? Is therefore saying that healthcare is state funded an attack on ill children? I'd hope that those at Great Ormond Street have my attitude as it's an NHS (British National Health Service) hospital.

It's not poor little children who don't have health insurance - nobody has health insurance. It hardly exists here - healthcare is funded from general taxation.

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

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

What I'm saying is this:

Since the hospital owns and advertises and collects fees for licensing of Peter Pan, and since it's put back into the hospital for the children, wouldn't it have been luverly if LL and SL had participated, donated and used that as a vehicle for a donation -- EVEN IF your country's health care is completely covered. Wouldn't it have been luverly if these sick children had a party on the fees donated? Wouldn't it have been a wonderful media event if a piece of medical equipment could have been purchased partily or fully by funds donated by a multinational internet community? Hell, I wouldn't have cared if each child had received a balloon -- sick children in hospitals deserve MORE than just... "it's funded by our government."

Give it a personal touch once, just once.

Sick children need more than just health insurance to revive. Hospitals need more than just "government funding" to be able to give patient care the way it should be given. If the hospital didn't need the licensing fees and if they didn't use those fees to HELP purchase additional equipment -- then they wouldn't be fighting to keep the license that they presently own.

And what's so damn wrong with paying the license fee and not hiding behind "parody" for once? I'm sure absolutely no sound effects or textures were taken from the original photo's. I'm sure everyone felt safe and comfortable under the "parody" scheme.

All I'm saying is to enforce the rules, you also have to play by the rules.

And sometimes when you do play by the rules (i.e., notifying and paying the licensing fees) -- you get MORE than you ever bargained for in the first place. Don't even think about the free publicity the hospital might have given SL on the event and the donations received, think about what it would have been like to have sponsored a PC for the teenagers in that hospital to enjoy SL during their stay. Could you have imagined if a PC could have been purchased with donations so that those children in the hospital could have seen the 3d version of Peter Pan, and the wonderful publicity it would have brought the SL community?

In other words, sometimes if you're honest and up-front, the paybacks are worth more than you could ever have imagined.

But back to the topic at hand. Mommy and Daddy Linden have to be very careful now not to do the "Do as I say, not as I do" routine when it comes to trademarks and copyrights in the future.

Thank you both, but the comment still says nothing to me. This was originally reported as being a copyright violation. I've not read anything from bingbangboom that specifically corrects this claim. And this comment doesn't really correct it (if I'm being nit-picky, it's because the subject requires more precision than the run-of-the-mill post). All I can do is assume that the original claim of copyright infringement was incorrect (as I originally posted) and that most likely the other comments (the dire warnings) are equally misrepresented.

The point I'm making is that it appears as if the people raising these issues on the forum aren't the people who understand the legalities; it's those who use terms interchangeably, report hearsay as fact, and make comments that exist outside the discussion (as above). This suggests to me that somewhere... somehow... people need to be educated at least in some small measure wrt IP law; especially since SL is rather unique in how it handles IP.

I wonder if LL shouldn't create something like a test. They could make it part of the introduction and it could be something as simple as having people read the definitions of Copyright and Trademark and then having them answer a couple of simple questions before they can move on. It's not very "fun", but then neither is reading the ToS (which doubtlessly many people never read). The challenge would be making it enjoyable learning. The benefits of doing this could be worthwhile.

we need a "SL TOS for dummies" -


"Linden Labs Owns the game - what we say goes, if you dont like it take your toys and go home."

cuase that basically the deal -

We can SUGGEST changes , but they are in no way bound to do anything we suggest.

Nor should they be.

Ah, but many have moved on once they realized that "your creation! your world!" wasn't as true as the advertising.

LL's own TOS is so contradictory to it's advertising that I don't think they even know which is what or should be.

So until they "get it right" and are able to truly define the role they are playing as either a host, hostess, policeman, guard, or public servant -- no one knows for sure. Until the first virtual lawsuit is filed over a copyright/trademark infringement -- no one knows for sure.

See, raising kids is hard enough. But it's even harder when Mommy and Daddy have different opinions on what should be and what shouldn't be.

Till then, it's simply a circus. It's the wild wild west at it's best.

as I said yesterday while discussing my own personal brush with the TOS, I dont like the way they police the trademark issues, but I understand it. What I dont want is a company taking notice. Once a corporation decides to bring pressure in any form on LL, the whole terms of the game change. So I will re-tool my products, and check twice for trademarked images, and live happily in a world with really very little Big Brother.

As I understand it, characters and situations introduced in the Peter Pan books published before the 1928 play have passed into the public domain in the United States, and thus the Olde London and Neverland sims were not infringing.

If LL didn't research this issue before the sims went live, their own lawyers would have pilloried them -- not so much for fear of the legitimate rights holder, but for fear of the frothing, hyperactive litigation team from The Happiest Sweatshop on Earth.

It wouldn't kill them to make a donation to the hospital anyway, but there's no blatant hipocracy here, which seems to be the implication.

If you read up on the hospital, they are pushing for the licensing as well in the U.S., which is still pending.

Yes, there is hipocracy there -- sorry to disappoint you. Original work, or hell, even a true parody (look up parody) -- would have been much better than to have hidden under the parody excuse for a total reproduction (as advertised). There is a huge difference in the legal world of "parody" versus a reproduction of an original piece of work. The hipocracy, of course, is that LL who advertises "use your imagination!" really didn't in this instance. They relied on a reproduction instead of a truely new creation. So while Mommy and Daddy Linden advertise... "your world, your imagination" -- what they really mean is "copy from something so well-known that people will recognize it and we'll hide under the parody excuse." Peter Pun -- it's actually fitting.

well at least the HK ones...cleaning them outta my stores as we speak....and no I wasnt' asked...just doing it....