“And so with withered hand Mark Kingdon reached for the communicator and spoke into it…”

“Execute Order 7.8″

Now, what is Order 7.8 you ask? It is Section 7.8 of the new Second Life Terms of Service. It reads for those of you too lazy to look it up as the following.

7.8 You agree to respect the Intellectual Property Rights of other users, Linden Lab, and third parties.

You agree that you will not upload, publish, or submit to any part of the Service any Content that is protected by Intellectual Property Rights or otherwise subject to proprietary rights, including trade secret or privacy rights, unless you are the owner of such rights or have permission from the rightful owner to upload, publish, or submit the Content and to grant Linden Lab and users of the Service all of the license rights granted in these Terms of Service.

You acknowledge that the Content of the Service is provided or made available to you under license from Linden Lab and independent Content providers, including other users of the Service (“Content Providers”). You acknowledge and agree that except as expressly provided in this Agreement, the Intellectual Property Rights of Linden Lab and other Content Providers in their respective Content are not licensed to you by your mere use of the Service. You must obtain from the applicable Content Providers any necessary license rights in Content that you desire to use or access.

Linden Lab and other Content Providers may use the normal functionality of the Service, including the permissions system and the copy, modify, and transfer settings, to indicate how you may use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, or perform their respective Content solely In-World. You acknowledge and agree that the permissions system and other functionality of the Service do not grant you any license, consent, or permission to copy, modify, transfer, or use in any manner any Content outside the Service.

You agree that you will not copy, transfer, or distribute outside the Service any Content that contains any Linden In-World Content, in whole or in part or in modified or unmodified form, except as allowed by the Snapshot and Machinima Policy, or that infringes or violates any Intellectual Property Rights of Linden Lab, other Content Providers, or any third parties.

Linden Lab reserves the right, but is not obligated to use technological measures designed to prohibit the copying, transfer, or distribution of Content outside the Service when we in good faith believe that such copying, transfer, or distribution would or might violate the Intellectual Property Rights of our users, Linden Lab, or third parties.

You copy and use Content at your own risk. You are solely responsible and liable for your use, reproduction, distribution, modification, display, or performance of any Content in violation of any Intellectual Property Rights. You agree that Linden Lab will have no liability for, and you agree to defend, indemnify, and hold Linden Lab harmless for, any claims, losses or damages arising out of or in connection with your use, reproduction, distribution, modification, display, or performance of any Content.

These are interesting times in our digital playground my friends. It seems that the Lindens in their as always infinite wisdom wish to tighten down on how we show the world Second Life, and more importantly they wish to control how we use the things we have purchased with our money. In this little rant I will be breaking down 7.8 and will be sharing with you why it is the worse idea since 2.0.

You agree that you will not upload, publish, or submit to any part of the Service any Content that is protected by Intellectual Property Rights or otherwise subject to proprietary rights, including trade secret or privacy rights, unless you are the owner of such rights or have permission from the rightful owner to upload, publish, or submit the Content and to grant Linden Lab and users of the Service all of the license rights granted in these Terms of Service.

You see the Avatar above in the picture? That is the Storm Trooper avatar from Furious store. According to Section 7.8 of the ToS I am not allowed to take a picture of it.  Why am I not allowed to take a picture of it? Because in the folder that came with the purchase there was no mention whatsoever of being allowed to photograph this avatar.  Under 7.8 content creators will have to include a notecard in their items allowing for permission for their items/clothing/skin/hair to be photographed and then published for other people to look at.

You acknowledge that the Content of the Service is provided or made available to you under license from Linden Lab and independent Content providers, including other users of the Service (“Content Providers”). You acknowledge and agree that except as expressly provided in this Agreement, the Intellectual Property Rights of Linden Lab and other Content Providers in their respective Content are not licensed to you by your mere use of the Service. You must obtain from the applicable Content Providers any necessary license rights in Content that you desire to use or access.

Now, copying content and redistributing it is bad. We all know this. But what about backing it up? Should that not be my call since I am the one who purchased it? Are you next going to tell me I can not watch Football on my RL TV that I purchased? We as users of Second Life should be able to back up the things we have purchased. Real money went into these purchases, and let us all be honest here. Second Life’s inventory system has a well documented history of eating everything and anything it wants to whenever it wants to. Also, what about moving an item over to an alt? In theory, since the same PERSON bought the item should I not be allowed to move an item from one of my avatars to another avatar that I still own?

Linden Lab and other Content Providers may use the normal functionality of the Service, including the permissions system and the copy, modify, and transfer settings, to indicate how you may use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, or perform their respective Content solely In-World. You acknowledge and agree that the permissions system and other functionality of the Service do not grant you any license, consent, or permission to copy, modify, transfer, or use in any manner any Content outside the Service.

This is pretty simple. Basically what Linden Lab is saying here is that everything you’ve ever made in Second Life, is now property of sorts of Linden Lab. You may not under any circumstance bring it to another grid. I am curious though if this includes items that you have made. The wording is a bit fuzzy on that subject. But, Linden Lab does that. They love you, you know? They love you so much it will hurt you.

You agree that you will not copy, transfer, or distribute outside the Service any Content that contains any Linden In-World Content, in whole or in part or in modified or unmodified form, except as allowed by the Snapshot and Machinima Policy, or that infringes or violates any Intellectual Property Rights of Linden Lab, other Content Providers, or any third parties.

You bloggers paying attention to this one? Basically we will now need permission to photograph anywhere, anything, anytime. That will be fun won’t it? I am sure that sim owners, content creators, and everybody else involved in this process is just going to love the time taken up by countless people asking for permission. Jesus, can you imagine the notecards that are going to be pouring in back and forth on Second Life’s already fragile databases?

Linden Lab reserves the right, but is not obligated to use technological measures designed to prohibit the copying, transfer, or distribution of Content outside the Service when we in good faith believe that such copying, transfer, or distribution would or might violate the Intellectual Property Rights of our users, Linden Lab, or third parties.

HAH! That is right fuckers, I said HAH! This is Linden Lab covering their very exposed asses saying they’ll now be guarding and watching for content theft. You know, maybe they’ll increase the time it takes a copybotter to get banned from 4 days to 2 days. (Not that I am holding a grudge you fucking dicks (the lindens, not you kids). Won’t that be lovely? We’ll translate this. “Hey we said in our ToS we’re going to help content creators prevent theft, but in actuality…no”

You copy and use Content at your own risk. You are solely responsible and liable for your use, reproduction, distribution, modification, display, or performance of any Content in violation of any Intellectual Property Rights. You agree that Linden Lab will have no liability for, and you agree to defend, indemnify, and hold Linden Lab harmless for, any claims, losses or damages arising out of or in connection with your use, reproduction, distribution, modification, display, or performance of any Content.

And there it is everybody, the other shoe. While Linden Lab promises to help protect their users from Content theft they are in no way legally, morally, ethically, or financially responsible for your loses  if they fail. If they fail….seems like that is every day in Second Life that Linden Lab continuously fails their users.  Tell you what Lindens, instead of giving us false promises of content protection…go ahead and fix teleports, sim crossings, inventory loss, your servers, and the almost infinite list of issues you’ve had since the beginning. You know stuff you in theory should be competent enough to fix. Also, next time you come up with a content protection policy you may want to hire somebody who makes stuff in Second Life and not a lawyer who has probably never logged in. You have once again clearly shown how completely out of touch you are with your user base. Way to go kids!

Dimitri Out.

Tags: Failure, Linden Lab, Mark Kingdon, Second Life, The Lindens, ToS