On Tuesday 29th October, Designing Worlds will be recording a special panel show about the Terms of Service introduced for Second Life by Linden Lab in August 2013.
This has raised huge questions about Creators’ Rights, with some people leaving Second Life, and some feeling that they can no longer encourage other people (such as artists) to bring their work to Second Life.
But others see the new Terms of Service as opening the doors to potential new markets for their digital creations, and believe that the Terms of Service (possibly in an amended form) are the way forward.
What do you think? What do you need to know about this? What questions do you have about the new Terms of Service?
Send us your questions – either by commenting below or by email here – and we will try to see that these questions are raised and discussed by our panel – who will include representatives of
- the United Content Creators of Second Life (an active Second Life group that has been working to redress widely perceived problems in the changed Terms of Service)
- the art community
- the design community
- the writers’ community
- the fashion community
- the legal community
For your information, here are some posts that are informative, and reflect different sides of the debate currently under way:
Inara Pey – Living in a Modem World:
One ToS to rule the all: Linden Lab issue new Terms of Service
ToS change and content rights: Lab provides statement
ToS Changes: The “Desura connection” and a personal perspective
ToS in-world meeting, September 29th: a personal perspective
ToS changes: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by short-sightedness”
ToS changes: Legal panel discussion – audio recordings and notes
Aview TV – Legal Panel Discussion (warning – three hours long; you might want to take it in sections!)
Sim Street Journal
Ten Ways to Defend Creators’ Rights by Eleanor Medier
Digital Property Rights in Second Life: Times have changed by Kylie Sabra
SL Newser
“United Content Creators of SL” Group Formed in Response to ToS Changes
Interview with Will Burns (Aeonix Aeon) About The ToS Controversy
Songs from the Nightingale – Gabrielle Riel
The Tale of Chicken Linden: Mass Hysteria, Copyright, TOS and Self-Empowerment
Chicken Linden Follow Up: Texture Resources
Andromeda – Will Burns
Modus Operandi
Your World? Your Imagination.
Prim Perfect 
Linden Lab does not need to be granted any blanket IP property or reseller license, their platform needs to be rid of vendor lock-in, then they can have a margin on their marketplace on a case-by-case base, as long as their marketplace provides the competition to other virtual world marketplaces.
It’s about consumer satisfaction + power over platform satisfaction + power. For them in the value-chain, it’s a Buyer’s market, and not a Seller’s market.
Now assume you run a Barber Shop, where you provide creative Haircuts to people, that’s your Use Case – once that happens you put those people on a Barber Chair, the Tool…
The Barber Chair does not run your creative Barber Shop, the Barber Chair has no voice in this. I don’t want the Barber Chair (tool platform) to run my Barber Shop (use case).
The Barber Chair is merely a backseat utility platform for my frontseat Barber Shop.
Since its first announcement in 03/2011, Kitely/Opensim has always accepted its value-chain role as ““We are a behind-the-scenes utility,” Tochner said.” “our utility model” “backend utility”
http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2011/03/kitely-brings-facebook-instant-regions-to-opensim/
Please report Your International Complaint at eConsumer.gov http://www.econsumer.gov/english/ in 28 countries
– If you are in the USA… here’s the link for anybody else that wants to lodge a complaint. https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/GettingStarted
International Debarment (Blacklisting) & Scam Alerts: The following sites from around the world have useful information about scams and how to avoid them http://icpen.org/for-consumers/scam-alerts