[opensource-dev] FAQ posted for Third Party Viewer Policy

Zha Ewry zha.ewry at gmail.com
Sat Feb 27 12:24:57 PST 2010


Usual I am not a lawyer comments apply.

One thing to keep in mind is that if you own the content, nothing requires
you to distribute it exclusively via Linden Lab's service. If you have a
set of textures which you hold rights to, putting them on Second Life
doesn't remove your rights to use and distribute those textures as you
see fit.

While it would be nice if Second Life could distinguish between
free use within Second Life and Free use globally, at the moment
such mechanisms are absent. It's pretty straight forward to place
textures on standard web servers and make them available under the
appropriate license. I think the terms as written don't prohibit you from
downloading things you created, so again, it should be fine for you
to distribute them via other channels.


~ Zha



On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 3:02 PM, Morgaine
<morgaine.dinova at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Fleep, you give an excellent example highlighting the needs of Education in
> this area.
>
> Given the huge interest in educational content both in SL and in
> Opensim-based grids such as Science Sim, this is certain to be of major and
> growing interest.
>
> Perhaps the FAQ could add a new clause FAQ.16 (renumbering the old FAQ.16
> and all subsequent ones down) which reads something like this:
>
> Q16: Are the rights of open source or open content providers respected?
> A16: Yes.  To further protect the rights of content creators beyond FAQ.15,
> Linden Lab also respects the wishes of creators who release their content
> under open source or open content licenses to make their content freely
> exportable.  (Typical licenses are GPL, BSD, or Creative Commons.)  The
> responsibility for ensuring that such content does not contravene FAQ.15
> rests entirely with the licensor, who must ensure that all parts either
> comply with FAQ.15 or have been released under an open license by their
> respective creators.
>
> That works remarkably well in conjunction with FAQ.15, because 15 covers
> everything that is not open content, and so neatly dumps the responsibility
> for full compliance in the lap of each licensor in 16.
>
> And I particularly like the word "Yes", and the phrasing "Linden Lab also
> respects the wishes of creators who release their content under open source
> or open content licenses to make their content freely exportable."  It would
> show good intentions directly, and without any fudging.
>
>
>
> Morgaine.
>
>
>
>
>
> ==================================
>
> On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 4:32 PM, Fleep Tuque <fleep513 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> (Sending for like the 4th time I hope this one gets through and sorry if
>> I've spammed)
>> Regarding Morgaine's comments about FAQ 15 - I fully agree that this must
>> be the case:
>>
>> On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 1:47 AM,
>> Morgaine <morgaine.dinova at googlemail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> And finally, FAQ.15 (in the context of licenses permitting free
>>> distribution):
>>>
>>> Q15: Do the limitations of section 2.b on content export apply to content
>>> that is full permissions?
>>> A15: Yes, they do.  Residents retain intellectual property rights in the
>>> content they create in Second Life and it is important for you to respect
>>> those rights.  By setting content to "full permissions" using the Second
>>> Life permissions system, a content creator merely indicates that the content
>>> may be copied, modified, and transferred within Second Life.  Setting
>>> content to "full permissions" does not provide any permission to use the
>>> content outside of Second Life.
>>>
>>> This is fine (surprise, surprise :P), but incomplete.  It doesn't address
>>> the quite common scenario of full-perm content created by Open Source or
>>> Creative Commons developers using 100% personal textures, and accompanied by
>>> a GPL, BSD, CC or other open source license which declares that the content
>>> may be freely copied, modified, and transferred anywhere, not only within
>>> Second Life.
>>>
>>> As is written in the answer A15, "Residents retain intellectual property
>>> rights in the content they create in Second Life and it is important for you
>>> to respect those rights."  Respecting their rights in this case requires you
>>> to to allow that content to be exported as its creator desires.  Therefore
>>> you either need to extend A15 with this additional case, or add another FAQ
>>> Q+A (preferably immediately after #15) to address it.
>>>
>>
>>
>> The free content I create for education is intended to be fully free,
>> fully permissioned, and fully exportable to other grids.  Beyond the Second
>> Life permissions, I keep hoping for checkboxes on the Edit menu with common
>> licenses or a space to put a link to the user's specified license that is
>> kept with the object info just like creator name.
>> In any case, when I include Creative Commons licensing with my educational
>> tools, and explicitly say users have my permission to explore the content to
>> other grids, then I expect that to be respected by Linden Lab as well!
>> Sincerely,
>> - Chris/Fleep
>>
>> Chris M. Collins (SL: Fleep Tuque)
>> Project Manager, UC Second Life
>> Second Life Ambassador, Ohio Learning Network
>> UCit Instructional & Research Computing
>> University of Cincinnati
>> 406E Zimmer Hall
>> PO Box 210088
>> Cincinnati, OH 45221-0088
>> (513)556-3018
>> chris.collins at uc.edu
>> UC Second Life:   http://homepages.uc.edu/secondlife
>> OLN Second Life: http://www.oln.org/emerging_technologies/emtech.php
>>
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