ACRL-VWIG & ALA Virtual Communities in Libraries Program 

May 17, 2015

"Here's Where Copyright, Intellectual Property, and Ownership

Gets Reeaaalllly Hinky in Virtual Worlds"

 

Presented by Herndon Bluebird

CVL Auditorium in Second Life
 





Herndon Bluebird led the program on copyright in Second Life

For Mays' joint ACRL-VWIG program, Herndon Bluebird, a one-time lawyer working in federal litigation and professor of law, shared her insights, knowledge and experiences dealing with copyright in virtual worlds.  Herndon was instrumental in helping the Seanchai and Winterfall libraries in Second Life draw up their copyright statements for live spoken word events.

Twenty librarians and educators attended the session making it one of the most well attended of the ACRL-VWIG programs.  Herndon first provided a brief history of copyright, tracing its origins dealing with pirated books in the 17th century all the way to the present.  Most of the presentation was on how Linden Labs' Terms of Service agreement deals with copyright issues

 

Herndon’s' was the first cogent discussion of Linden Labs Terms of Service as applied to copyright that I've yet heard.  Her program focused on what the TOS actually mean for SL content creators in regards to copyright.  Her main point was that content creators, are NOT giving up ownership of works they create and import into Second Life to Linden Labs.  Instead, according to the TOS, content creators are agreeing to give Linden Labs a non-exclusive license to use those works.  

 

While in theory this gives Linden Labs the right to copy, distribute or license content created in SL to others, in practice, these terms are really set up to give Linden Labs the leeway necessary for running a 3D virtual world. This includes dealing with griefers, running the SL Marketplace, handling abandoned land and moving content to newer versions of SL.  The broad licensing rights granted to LL in the TOS are there to help it do the day-to-day things necessary for running Second Life and are not for the purpose of taking over the intellectual property rights of content creators.

 

Consider a chair

Using the example of a chair created and uploaded into SL by a content creator, Herndon detailed one of the known issues with the Linden Lab TOS. 

In her example, she pointed out that a chair created by a user which incorporates textures created by another user inherently violates the LL TOS, even if the texture creator has granted permission to the chair creator to use and sell those textures in their own original creations.

When a content creator brings something into SL, they are agreeing to the TOS.  The issue arises because by agreeing to the LL TOS, the furniture maker is warranting that they own everything they bring into SL and they are also granting full permissions to Linden Lab to license, distribute, copy etc. the item.  However, the chair creator does not "own" the textures used on the chair. He's only been granted a license by the texture creator to use them.  The texture maker has not transferred his ownership of the textures; he has retained his property rights to them.  This is one of many copyright concerns with the Linden Labs Terms of Service in regards to copyright.

Herndon said that in the short term, it might be possible to tweak the TOS if users show Linden Labs concrete problems that arise because of them along with suggestions for concrete solutions to them.   This might be a good approach to take short term, but in the long term, what's really needed is some sort of ”Avatar Bill of Rights" built into the Terms of Service.