Linden Lab just killed 50% of all content creation

[Drongle McMahon]

"you should not upload any asset to SL for which the owner has not specifically granted you the right to redistribute the asset itself."

In fact, I think it goes even further. You are also required to waive moral rights, including attribution - which means you can't upload anything with even the most open cc license which allows selling but requires attribution. Seems to me that it effectively says only explicitly public domain or self-authored stuff is cocsistent with the rquired grant of rights.

[Scooter Hollow]

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Chosen Few wrote:

Assuming that that is indeed a genuine reply from LL, great. They should have no problem backing it up by clarifying the TOS to once again appropriately limit their rights. If they're not willing to do that, then it looks awfully fishy.

 

When one is sincere about something, one can and should ALWAYS be willing to put it in writing. When one is unwilling to do that, something is very wrong.

 

Wity that in mind, I look forward to LL correcting their mistake very soon.

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Yea, when a legal document says one thing and a PR person says another, you've still gotta go by the legal document. We can't go back to uploading things because a PR guy said "oh we're totally not going to do the things we just gave ourselves permission to do".

 

[Chic Aeon]

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Drongle McMahon wrote:

"you should not upload any asset to SL for which the owner has not specifically granted you the right to redistribute the asset itself."

In fact, I think it goes even further. You are also required to waive moral rights, including attribution - which means you can't upload anything with even the most open cc license which allows selling but requires attribution. Seems to me that it effectively says only explicitly public domain or self-authored stuff is cocsistent with the rquired grant of rights.

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I agree and that is how I read it also. I originally thought I could just use attrib only creative commons mentioning the texture creator in the description field or if many in a notecard accompanying the mesh product. That is not the case.

And "why" do we need to waive all those rights. Not working for me on any level .

[Perrie Juran]

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Sassy Romano wrote:

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Perrie Juran wrote:

They are NOT a reseller and the rights they are now claiming in the TOS have nothing to do with the Marketplace. Re-SELL implies they purchased first. That is not what they do in the Marketplace.

 

SL MARKETPLACE FEES AND COMMISSIONS

FOR MARKETPLACE SELLERS:

Seller Sales Commissions

We charge SL Marketplace merchants a Commission for each sale that the seller makes...........

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/listing_guidelines?

You are the Seller, not them.

They are not re-selling, they are simply the delivery service / agent.

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Well... just for the sake of entering the argument.  I could still argue that Linden Lab are the selling agent and I provide them content under a credit arrangement.

When someone buys off MP, they pay LL and Commerce Linden pays me, less their commission.  Thus in this transaction, LL is the seller and pays me, the creator in return but i'm not sure that i'd agree that I was the one that sold it, I didn't.  LL did.  They are not the "re-seller" though, that I agree with, they did not first buy it from me but nonetheless, LL was very much the seller.

Now, if LL had removed the intermediary just as I suggested a long time ago with a corresponding JIRA and the full reasons for it, then I would very much be the seller as the funds transfer would have been direct from buyer to seller, me.

Of course UPS etc. are not re-sellers but then they didn't take the funds for the purchase of the goods.  They take a fee for the delivery of the goods, somewhat different.  LL do plonk themselves directly in the middle of the financial transaction for the case of Marketplace purchases.

All good fun semantics

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I understand the 'semantics' issues here.

But when you get into a Court of Law the question will be which are they.  A Re-Seller or an Agent? 

Do Re-Sellers have different obligations legally than Agents?  There must be if Apple is going to such lengths to point out in their TOS that they are only "Agents."

Generally speaking, when their is an ambiguity in a contract a Court will rule in favor of the 'weaker party,' which in this case would be the Consumer.  But even that is not an absolute.  A Court could find that a Consumer should have or did 'know better.'

I had fun once with a competitor who was allowing a mis-print to continue in a print ad.  When the mis-print first occurred they were not forced by law to honor the misprinted price.  But when they failed to have the newspaper correct the ad in future printings it became a case of bait and switch.  A note from me to the consumer fraud division of my local attorney general's office resulted in a warning to them to get the ad fixed.

We had a price match guarantee in our store and I had to act on their ad.

Still the primary point I was making is that they don't need this blanket permission in order for the Market Place or In World Commerce to function.  There could be something in the bigger picture here that I'm missing.  I'm not a lawyer.  This is just my opinion based upon my limited understanding.  I am in no ways an expert on this.

[namssab1nad Piers]

There is one upside to this.  Since LL now deems itself a reseller of products on MP, with all the problems of funds being transfered to creators (items purchased on MP and creator not getting paid and LL saying to talk to the purchaser and see if they will pay you directly), they now ARE COMPLETELY RESPONSIBLE FOR COLLECTION AND DISBURSEMENT of funds.  I would say they just put themselves in the bullseye.

[isabellalecour]

What bothers me the most is the way I read the TOS section 2.3 fifth paragraph....to mean that uploading content means we the creators have granted LL total rights to the asset to do with and to dedend by court of law. That LL could do whatever they want with those assets, including reselling those assets in any form from whatever platform they may choose. 

For the the thing to remember is that LL isn't Second Life but a company that happens to run Second Life. LL could choose to take all user sumbited assects and create an asset libary without informing the orgination uploader of such actions or even in transerfing access to another gaming world or even to build LL content using Second Life user uploaded assets.

The TOS as it stands takes too broad a sweep of licenes rights. 

[Aethelwine]

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Drongle McMahon wrote:

"you should not upload any asset to SL for which the owner has not specifically granted you the right to redistribute the asset itself."

In fact, I think it goes even further. You are also required to waive moral rights, including attribution - which means you can't upload anything with even the most open cc license which allows selling but requires attribution. Seems to me that it effectively says only explicitly public domain or self-authored stuff is cocsistent with the rquired grant of rights.

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That highlighted section would seem to make it no longer possible to use textures files provided in world or on marketplace with a product for editting externally and bringing back in world unless those textures are provided with full rights... which virtually none of them are.

Retexturing vehicles and clothes from the textures provided is now a breach of these stupid terms and conditions.

All the full perm clothes sellers, all the vehicle parts shops, all the building supply shops in world and marketplace are now mostly unusable without breaking the terms and conditions Linden Labs have set.

I expect by now the majority of people that actually customise their clothes or builds have now breached the TOS.

Surely a TOS that over stretches itself to the point that it makes such a large proportion of building activities a breach of its own policies has to be unenforceable, especially when the TOS was not explained in anything but legalese and they have never explained the impact to anyone publically.

[Dresden Ceriano]

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Aethelwine wrote:

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Drongle McMahon wrote:

"you should not upload any asset to SL for which the owner has not specifically granted you the right to redistribute the asset itself."

In fact, I think it goes even further. You are also required to waive moral rights, including attribution - which means you can't upload anything with even the most open cc license which allows selling but requires attribution. Seems to me that it effectively says only explicitly public domain or self-authored stuff is cocsistent with the rquired grant of rights.

---

That highlighted section would seem to make it no longer possible to use textures files provided in world or on marketplace with a product for editting externally and bringing back in world unless those textures are provided with full rights... which virtually none of them are.

Retexturing vehicles and clothes from the textures provided is now a breach of these stupid terms and conditions.

All the full perm clothes sellers, all the vehicle parts shops, all the building supply shops in world and marketplace are now mostly unusable without breaking the terms and conditions Linden Labs have set.

I expect by now the majority of people that actually customise their clothes or builds have now breached the TOS.

Surely a TOS that over stretches itself to the point that it makes such a large proportion of building activities a breach of its own policies has to be unenforceable, especially when the TOS was not explained in anything but legalese and they have never explained the impact to anyone publically.

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I've been following this whole TOS debacle since the very beginning, but I've remained rather silent about it.  Simply because I was having a hard time wrapping my mind around what it would really mean to me as a creator, who has yet to start selling anything I've created.  And here you've made the ramifications of LL's actions crystal clear in my mind.  I have to say, I'm terrified by the implications.

I've just started building houses again, with the hopes of seeing how they might do on the open market.  While I can certainly make textures from scratch, I find it rather tedious and I'm just not that great at it.  As such, I rely on the textures which I purchase from more competent texture artists in SL (mostly, since I believe in supporting my fellow residents).  But, rarely do I use their textures as is... I'm constantly downloading them, manipulating them in some sort of way to make them more unique or more suited to the purpose in which I'm using them, then reuploading them into SL.  This is crucial to my creative process.

I greatly admire those creators who craft every last part of their creations themselves.  Their dedication, initiative and drive are some things at which I truly marvel.  I wish I had the wherewithal to do what they do, but I simply don't.  That doesn't mean that I don't have a unique vision and there are lots of creators that fall into that category in SL.

I kind of equate it to the music scene at the advent of synthesizers in the late 70's, early 80's.  Surely, before that time, there were lots of people with brilliant musical ideas, who lacked the musical expertise with which to produce something palatable.  Then, all of a sudden, synthesizers made it possible for someone to take their ideas and produce music in their basement that was suitable for radio play.  It opened up a whole new era of creativity.

For me, one of the most incredible aspects of SL is that people with very little graphic design knowledge have the opportunity to express their creative vision.  I'm truly amused at how some creators are able to pull together content from a variety of sources and cobble them together into something wonderful and distinct.  This new TOS is basically cutting the legs out from under them and me as well.

Maybe this is exactly what LL wants to do.  I can almost see Rodvik sitting in his office at LL headquarters, rubbing his hands together like some over-the-top Bond villain, scheming up ways to eradicate these riff raff, so-called creators from the grid.

"Oh yes, first lets introduce mesh to pull in the more professional graphic artists... charge more to upload it, in order to weed out the ones who aren't that serious... make them take tests and set prerequisites to cut down on even more... then we'll introduce materials to make it even more attractive... oh, and wait, here's a brilliant idea that could possible put the nail in the coffin of all these insignificant, unprofessional, designer wannabes... let's write the TOS in a way that only the most knowledgeable, high-end designer will be able to upload content... yeah, that's the ticket."

I'm not adverse to being virtually screwed, but this is not quite what I had in mind.

...Dres

[Rya Nitely]

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Dresden Ceriano wrote:

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Maybe this is exactly what LL wants to do.  I can almost see Rodvik sitting in his office at LL headquarters, rubbing his hands together like some over-the-top Bond villain, scheming up ways to eradicate these riff raff, so-called creators from the grid.

"Oh yes, first lets introduce mesh to pull in the more professional graphic artists... charge more to upload it, in order to weed out the ones who aren't that serious... make them take tests and set prerequisites to cut down on even more... then we'll introduce materials to make it even more attractive... oh, and wait, here's a brilliant idea that could possible put the nail in the coffin of all these insignificant, unprofessional, designer wannabes... let's write the TOS in a way that only the most knowledgeable, high-end designer will be able to upload content... yeah, that's the ticket."

I'm not adverse to being virtually screwed, but this is not quite what I had in mind.

...Dres

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So LL introduced mesh, materials etc to get rid of the amateur creators :matte-motes-confused:. They must realize that a large percentage of the mesh on MP is uploaded by people who are not creators at all.

Another thing I'm confused about (I raised it in another thread) is this - how would LL get around 'owning' new creations that are using full perm builder tools like animations, scripts, textures, builder kits etc, where the original creators never gave unlimited useage and may never have logged in since the new ToS. LL couldn't claim full rights to these new creations.

The new ToS applies to new uploads, but not to anything within SL that creators may use in their build but do not have the right to redistribute with full permissions.

So, for example, if I was to add an animation to an item and the creator of the animation never logged in to accept the new ToS then LL cannot claim unlimited rights to this item - unless they remove the animation :matte-motes-confused:.

Edit to add: If it's true that anything uploaded or created before the new ToS is exempt from the changes then it follows that any new creation containing components that existed before the new ToS would also be exempt.

[Darrius Gothly]

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Dresden Ceriano wrote:

[...]

I greatly admire those creators who craft every last part of their creations themselves.  Their dedication, initiative and drive are some things at which I truly marvel.  I wish I had the wherewithal to do what they do, but I simply don't.  That doesn't mean that I don't have a unique vision and there are lots of creators that fall into that category in SL.

I kind of equate it to the music scene at the advent of synthesizers in the late 70's, early 80's.  Surely, before that time, there were lots of people with brilliant musical ideas, who lacked the musical expertise with which to produce something palatable.  Then, all of a sudden, synthesizers made it possible for someone to take their ideas and produce music in their basement that was suitable for radio play.  It opened up a whole new era of creativity.

For me, one of the most incredible aspects of SL is that people with very little graphic design knowledge have the opportunity to express their creative vision.  I'm truly amused at how some creators are able to pull together content from a variety of sources and cobble them together into something wonderful and distinct.  This new TOS is basically cutting the legs out from under them and me as well.

Maybe this is exactly what LL wants to do.  I can almost see Rodvik sitting in his office at LL headquarters, rubbing his hands together like some over-the-top Bond villain, scheming up ways to eradicate these riff raff, so-called creators from the grid.

"Oh yes, first lets introduce mesh to pull in the more professional graphic artists... charge more to upload it, in order to weed out the ones who aren't that serious... make them take tests and set prerequisites to cut down on even more... then we'll introduce materials to make it even more attractive... oh, and wait, here's a brilliant idea that could possible put the nail in the coffin of all these insignificant, unprofessional, designer wannabes... let's write the TOS in a way that only the most knowledgeable, high-end designer will be able to upload content... yeah, that's the ticket."

I'm not adverse to being virtually screwed, but this is not quite what I had in mind.

...Dres

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Not that long ago there was some rather intense internal pressure to switch the Scripting language in SL to a C++ derivative. (For those without computer programming electrons orbiting their skulls, C++ is a rather obtuse, deep-thinking-required programming language that very few know well but quite a few pretend they know.)

Sadly for the employees, those pushing hard for this "improvement" were let go in the "Great Deadwood Purge". (Which is to say LL considered them "dead wood" .. but very VERY few of us paying customers felt that way!) However for the benefit of SL in general, it was a good thing that their intentions were derailed.

If I have a gaggle of 100 programmers all roped into a cohesive mass and I throw a stuffed Cookie Monster® plush toy at that mass, I have a good chance of hitting only one programmer. That just happens to be the same quantity of programmers truly capable of "grokking" C++ at the level required to make viable, dependable programs for SL Gadgets. Thus the internal initiative to implement C++ as "The Scripting Language" for SL would have been ...

A Very Bad Thing!

But any way, back to the topic at hand: If indeed Linden Lab is counting on their initiatives and upgrades over the past few months to filter content on SL down to a very high level of professional-quality items, then they are pulling the pin on the grenade way too early. While I have no problem assigning such destructive motives to Linden Lab, I have come to expect better patience from the current management staff than this. So I'd give it a 35% to 45% chance of being "The Reason". But even so, it IS a possibility that needs consideration IMHO.

[Dresden Ceriano]

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Rya Nitely wrote:

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Dresden Ceriano wrote:

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Maybe this is exactly what LL wants to do.  I can almost see Rodvik sitting in his office at LL headquarters, rubbing his hands together like some over-the-top Bond villain, scheming up ways to eradicate these riff raff, so-called creators from the grid.

"Oh yes, first lets introduce mesh to pull in the more professional graphic artists... charge more to upload it, in order to weed out the ones who aren't that serious... make them take tests and set prerequisites to cut down on even more... then we'll introduce materials to make it even more attractive... oh, and wait, here's a brilliant idea that could possible put the nail in the coffin of all these insignificant, unprofessional, designer wannabes... let's write the TOS in a way that only the most knowledgeable, high-end designer will be able to upload content... yeah, that's the ticket."

I'm not adverse to being virtually screwed, but this is not quite what I had in mind.

...Dres

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So LL introduced mesh, materials etc to get rid of the amateur creators :matte-motes-confused:. They must realize that a large percentage of the mesh on MP is uploaded by people who are not creators at all.

Another thing I'm confused about (I raised it in another thread) is this - how would LL get around 'owning' new creations that are using full perm builder tools like animations, scripts, textures, builder kits etc, where the original creators never gave unlimited useage and may never have logged in since the new ToS. LL couldn't claim full rights to these new creations.

The new ToS applies to new uploads, but not to anything within SL that creators may use in their build but do not have the right to redistribute with full permissions.

So, for example, if I was to add an animation to an item and the creator of the animation never logged in to accept the new ToS then LL cannot claim unlimited rights to this item - unless they remove the animation

 

:matte-motes-confused:.

Edit to add: If it's true that anything uploaded or created before the new ToS is exempt from the changes then it follows that any new creation containing components that existed before the new ToS would also be exempt.

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I thought that anyone reading this would realise right away that my assersion about Rodvik was merely a strange construct of my bizarre imagination.  Nevertheless, if I used a texture from years ago, I wouldn't be concerned about the consequences in doing so... but, if I were to download a texture that I bought years ago, modify it, than upload it back into SL, I'd be violating the TOS, because the texture I'm uploading would be considered new and yet I wouldn't have the license needed to give LL full rights as they require.  I'd think that this would be an issue.

...Dres

[Dresden Ceriano]

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

But any way, back to the topic at hand: If indeed Linden Lab is counting on their initiatives and upgrades over the past few months to filter content on SL down to a very high level of professional-quality items, then they are pulling the pin on the grenade way too early. While I have no problem assigning such destructive motives to Linden Lab, 

I have come to expect better patience from the current management staff than this. So I'd give it a 35% to 45% chance of being "The Reason". But even so, it IS a possibility that needs consideration IMHO.

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I was kind of joking when I wrote it, but honestly... it's no more far fetched than some of the other reasons I've seen speculated during this dicussion.

...Dres

[Rya Nitely]

Dres, sorry for my confusion. The confused smiley :matte-motes-confused: was me considering your theory, not dismissing it. I was thinking ' could LL possibly be so naive?'

I understood what you were saying about saving a texture you bought and then uploading it after work - I do did it all the time. But I was simply using your post as an opportunity to introduce my own thoughts - expanding on your thoughts you might say.

I fully consider and respect your views, just as I hope others will consider and respect mine :smileyhappy:

 

[Anaiya Ahren]

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Dresden Ceriano wrote:

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For me, one of the most incredible aspects of SL is that people with very little graphic design knowledge have the opportunity to express their creative vision.

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Exactly.  Compartmentalizing makes content creation much more accessible and enables people to build skills and confidence and get finished results they can feel satisfied with and inspired to learn more by much faster than if everyone had to do everything from scratch themselves to get a finished item.