Mr. Philip Linden, please accept an Appeal For Stricter Enforcement Measures

Currently within SL, we have a truly talented group of creators that were drawn to SL by the lure and incentive offered by the concept of IP rights and protection. The idea of IP rights and protection over the items they created was their incentive to set up their shops and homes in SL. This is what made it worth their while to spend endless amounts of unimaginable hours laboring over the SL platform. The pretension of not only being able to retain the IP rights to the items they created, but that these items would be protected via SL’s built-in “object permissions” system.

Many of them want to continue spending hours upon hours, days upon days, stretching and twisting a prim, manipulating its dimensions into endless possibilities, advancing its limitless evolution. Many of them want to spend hours upon hours, month after month, learning how to use Photo Shop, challenging their texturing skills, mastering their designing acumen. All of them want to continue filling SL with quality content, fueling its burgeoning economy, shaping its promising future.

But with the stark reality that given the current SL model, the concept of “real” IP rights and protection will not ever be achieved....

What is now their incentive? What is their incentive to *really* excel?

That intense and determined incentive and required labor to innovate? The incentive to create that “Starax” statue? The determination to labor for days stretching and twisting dozens of prims into intricate and exotic shapes then linking them together to create something truly special and unique?

Whether for profit or artistic pride, what talented creator will now want to invest their valuable time and talent laboring over your platform, advancing its potential, filling it with quality and unique content, when without meaningful IP rights and protection all anyone has to do is right click their long labored creation, and withing seconds, not only have your creation in their possession to do with as they please, but be labeled as the creator “with full permissions.”

Do you really believe this is fair and just?

And do you really believe that given the above, you have done all you can to protect your content creator's interests? The interests of the talented content creators who for the past several years, in partnership with LL, have made SL what it is today?

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that you will not be able to retain, nor in the future successfully recruit creative talent into SL, unless strong, drastic, and meaningful IP rights and protection measures are implemented.

Ok, so it is now accepted that given the current SL model there is not much we can do to prevent the occasional introduction of these harmful codes into the SL platform. But talk of TOS violations, or DMCA, or warnings, or threat of “may be banned,” or of hovering text, watermarks, etc. et al, are meaningless if not backed by strong LL intervention and enforcement measures. Yes, it’s a beginning. It is something. But these measures alone, without the backing of strong and meaningful enforcement action by LL, simply will not do.

You may not realize it, but your talented content creators are still waiting with bated breath for you to tell them something meaningful that will protect their creations within SL. Waiting for that long post, like the ones you used to give us when things went awry and SL was still in its infancy. You reassured us to hang in there with your vision because together we were creating something special. You oooh’d and aaaah’d us with your vision of one million residents.

We need one of those posts now Mr. Linden.

And in that post we’d like to hear you talk of strong intervention and enforcement measures by LL when threats against our IP rights and protection are occasionally introduced into the SL platform. Examples of real LL intervention and enforcement action that we’d like to hear are;

* “Because the tool poses significant damage to the SL platform, we aim to introduce a counter code source into the system that will render the threat obsolete. If necessary, we will offer a $Linden refund to the owners of these objects,” or

* “Although we can not banish the threat because it has other uses and is not in and of itself against TOS, we aim to introduce a counter code source into the system that will render its ability to break your permissions, because that IS a TOS violation, and in so doing restore a reasonable degree of your IP rights and protection.” (although one would think that any item made up of any individual part contributing to a violation of the TOS should in effect render the entirety of the item a TOS violation, shouldn't it?).

Or as a last resort,

* “Although we can not do either of the above, we aim to diligently identify the owners of this tool, and monitor its every usage by identifying each and every instance that our platform flags its use. When we identify its usage, we will immediately investigate that its use was within TOS requirement.” Any investigation that results in a confirmed use of this tool that is against TOS will result in the immediate expulsion of the resident in question's entire account, including all identified alternate avatars used by the resident, from the SL platform.

“This we will do because we support and value our talented content creators, and recognize that the very future of SL is dependent on their contribution to the SL platform. This can only be achieved via the integrity and sanctity of a sound IP rights and protection policy which we are fully committed to enforcing.”

Will that long awaited post ever come, CEO Philip Linden?

Hi Cheyenne, thank you for your thoughts. Apologies I'm not Philip -- I can assure you he's been reading numerous posts and blog comments. Speaking of blog, did you read Daniel Linden's recent post on the action we'll take against CopyBot users found to be detrimentally damaging the community?

http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/11/16/copybot-action/

Similar to some of what you said, we do clearly hold the following to be true:

"... anyone detected using Copybot maliciously to target individual Resident or damage the community as a whole will be expelled from Second Life."

As you said, it's a beginning; as a content creator, I too look forward to future developments, which wouldn't be possible without the community's valuable feedback and assistance.

Related Linden Answers provide more context too; while we unfortunately can't reply to each and every question we get, we do look for main threads, aggregate the key issues, and strive to communicate -- so you aren't left in the dark!