Clarification request on new TOS please

3.3 Linden Lab retains ownership of the account and related data, regardless of intellectual property rights you may have in content you create or otherwise own.

You agree that even though you may retain certain copyright or other intellectual property rights with respect to Content you create while using the Service, you do not own the account you use to access the Service, nor do you own any data Linden Lab stores on Linden Lab servers (including without limitation any data representing or embodying any or all of your Content). Your intellectual property rights do not confer any rights of access to the Service or any rights to data stored by or on behalf of Linden Lab.

In the above statement, it appears to me that you are stating the data that I pass on to Sl isi therefore owned by LL. I need to clarify this information as I am a real life photographer and the owner of FD Artistry Gallery. The gallery houses the works of many artists in SL. These works are original, copyrighted works. I am trying to determine, does this statement in the TOS mean that if I am to upload one of my photographs into SL as a texture, then place it on a prim in SL, does the texture then become the property of LL?

If this is the case then i think this needs to be clarified for the artists of SL as we in no way would wish our copyrighted materials to become property of someone else. I can understand that you are essentially stating you are not resposible if I can not access my items in SL, but I in no way feel that the item itself should become the property of LL. I am in no way trying to cause any type of friction here, but I must know that this is not the case, otherwise I would no longer feel safe in displaying my works in SL and I would need to close down my gallery as I could not be responsible for other artists' work becoming the property of another without thier consent.

Thank you for your time

Hi Felowen. There is no intent in the TOS to claim ownership of your artwork. I'll get a more specific response from our general counsel, but in the meantime I believe the clause is meant to alert you to the fact that we retain the right to close accounts regardless of what's stored there. If that happens, anything you have in your inventory will be lost to you. However, as long as your account is in good standing you don't need to worry.

Felowen, thank you for your question. I am sorry for the confusion - I will try to clarify with examples from other online services. In Second Life, subject to certain licenses in the terms of service, you retain the intellectual property rights you may have in your content, including copyrights. "Intellectual property rights" are completely separate to the rights of ownership of data - the bits and bytes that reside on our servers. In order for us to provide the service of Second Life at a reasonable cost, we must retain the right to own what we physically own or control - the server infrastructure, including the data on it. But ownership of bits and bytes of data does NOT by itself give Linden Lab the right to publish or distribute your copyrighted material.

I think there is a good analogy to hosted email services, like the webmail services provided by many Internet portals. If you write an email on those services, you own the copyright to the content of that email. If you attach your copyrighted image to your email, you still own the copyright to that image. In providing the service of sending that email, the service provider hosts data that represents that email and the attached image. The service provider owns the server infrastructure, including the data on it, and stores that data for your email and attachment in the "Sent" mail folder. But they can and will delete that data anytime they need to, for service and scalability reasons. The email service is more valuable to the extent they can store more of your content, but for cost reasons they cannot guarantee that nothing will ever happen to that data. However, regardless of what happens to that data, under most terms of service for webmail that I've seen, you will still own the copyright to the content represented by that data.

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