Updated LL TOS Claims FULL RIGHTS to ALL CONTENT

[Drake1 Nightfire]

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Trinity Yazimoto wrote:

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There is an alternative : Join the fight !

Whether you will go on creating or not. This is your decision and no one can judge you about that. But you can also join the fight and stand up for your content creator's right.

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There is no fight. We can **bleep** and complain all we want, LL is under no obligation to change anything. I highly doubt all of the creators out there will pull their stores over this. Those that do it for fun and enjoyment will continue to do so. Those that rely on their sales for RL income will have to keep doing so.

[Trinity Yazimoto]

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Drake1 Nightfire wrote:

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Trinity Yazimoto wrote:

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There is an alternative : Join the fight !

Whether you will go on creating or not. This is your decision and no one can judge you about that. But you can also join the fight and stand up for your content creator's right.

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There is no fight. We can **bleep** and complain all we want, LL is under no obligation to change anything. I highly doubt all of the creators out there will pull their stores over this. Those that do it for fun and enjoyment will continue to do so. Those that rely on their sales for RL income will have to keep doing so.

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So yes, you think that since the tos break the law it will be easier to sue them if they steal our contents. But a class action... a fight made by a legitimate group is only fun...?

i strongly, but really strongly disagree with you. And i dont allow you to say i do this for fun and enjoyment. You are really far from the reality. 

So since SL TOS breaks the laws as you say so loud and since its so easy to make them respect the law, may i suggest them they start to steal YOUR contents for you teach me how its so easy to then sue them and win this in a court ? And please, you ll have to do it with same budget than mine and ill even propose you to invite you here in France, for you do this from my country. 

Edit : typo

[Dartagan Shepherd]

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Drake1 Nightfire wrote:

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Trinity Yazimoto wrote:

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There is an alternative : Join the fight !

Whether you will go on creating or not. This is your decision and no one can judge you about that. But you can also join the fight and stand up for your content creator's right.

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There is no fight. We can **bleep** and complain all we want, LL is under no obligation to change anything. I highly doubt all of the creators out there will pull their stores over this. Those that do it for fun and enjoyment will continue to do so. Those that rely on their sales for RL income will have to keep doing so.

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"You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged." -- The Matrix

Also, you would think a wet blanket would put out a fire, but no ... it will smother the flames and then the remaining heat will burn through the blanket and the fire will ignite once again. If you don't mind though, I need it to make smoke signals to other creators. Yes, I've done a stint as a Boy Scout.

Seriously though, it isn't a fight yet. It's awareness ... and it's working.

"We have survived by hiding from them, by running from them, but they are the gatekeepers. They are guarding all the doors, they are holding all the keys, which means that sooner or later, someone is going to have to fight them." --- Also from the Matrix

So yes, there is a fight, but there is no spoon.

[Chic Aeon]

I just wanted to say that while your English may not be "perfect" (smile) there is a certain charm to your passion.

That works big time! 

 

I honestly understand apathy and even avoidance of the issue but when folks come out "on the side" of The Lab, it does make me wonder

 

And an edit to reply to Drake. Some folks (quite a few really) have already left for friendlier climates taking their creative talents for the future with them. Some, like me, have moved to other grids for all their building enjoyment. 

I don't know that we will win a fight in the press, but there are tons of RL lawyers out there just waiting to take on Goliath. I wish them well. Count me in on the class action suit that will invariably happen if our content becomes a Linden product.

 

 

[Drake1 Nightfire]

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Chic Aeon wrote:

I just wanted to say that while your English may not be "perfect" (smile) there is a certain charm to your passion.

That works big time! 

 

I honestly understand apathy and even avoidance of the issue but when folks come out "on the side" of The Lab, it does make me wonder

 

And an edit to reply to Drake.

Some folks (quite a few really) have already left for friendlier climates taking their creative talents for the future with them. Some, like me, have moved to other grids for all their building enjoyment. 

I don't know that we will win a fight in the press, but there are tons of RL lawyers out there just waiting to take on Goliath. I wish them well. Count me in on the class action suit that will invariably happen if our content becomes a Linden product.

 

 

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I have never said LL was in the right, quite the contrary. I have said they can't enforce this ToS without getting themselves in deep legal trouble.

 I have been watching the MP numbers since the new Tos. The numbers have steadily risen. I don't see what leaveing will do. Yes, it will ease your mind, but will not hurt LL at all.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

" I have been watching the MP numbers since the new Tos. The numbers have steadily risen. I don't see what leaveing will do. Yes, it will ease your mind, but will not hurt LL at all."

Private estates are down last week by 5 times than the week prior and more than double over each week in the prior month.

One external content site has cut off SL.

Many blogs and much conversation ... priceless.

That said, no one wants to see it die or for creators to stop creating or merchants to stop selling. A boycott would be an awesome statement and one they'd surely listen to, but itt's not required.

A year or so ago, I dumped our region on principle. When you see a double digit decline in regions partway through the year,  you know iit's not all roses and business as usual. But right, they've been hurting now for quite some time.

At any rate, there's no mass exodus and was never a claim of one or a cry to. Probably some 50-200 people all told decided to halt creating or leave all told. Perhaps more.  If you want to put a dollar amount on the conjecture, feel free. It's less than all and more than nothing.

[Toysoldier Thor]

So Drake....

What do you suggest the Content Cretors do?  I am not sure what stance you are trying to promote.

So you are saying that fighting back, protesting, trying to influence LL to see the error of their ways and fix the TOS are all useless bad ideas?

Are you suggesting the best thing is to be the Passive SL Resident we often have been and let LL mske these TOS changes and just quietly wait until LL decides to leverage their pirated access to IP holders and leverage it  then start the fight?

So you believe its best business practice for a IP holder to be reactionary then proactive and force the correction?

Please tell us all what you would want all the SL creators should be doing?

[Chic Aeon]

"I" have not left. I am still here blogging each day in support of the content creators who are still producing.

We each make our choices.

MINE was not to further support an entity who strips rights from their customers in a very nefarious manner. I mean, did we get notice of this before "signing".

 

I am not leaving but I am expanding my horizons. Partly because I love to build and will no longer build here and partly because it is good to be in at the beginning of something new.  I have been here almost six years; I plan to stay until the end.

[Chic Aeon]

Not disagreeing in general but I think your number estimate is low. I personally know at least 30 people who have either stopped creating or left SL and I have seen many posts from those that I don't know stating that they were stopping or leaving. Honestly I am not that social except on the boards, so I am guessing the number may be fairly high. Then there are all the sims and mainland being abandoned.

The TOS has reportedly kept people from ENTERING SL too and that counts,  and many artists are now leaving  so the numbers will rise. Lots of folks seem to be in a holding pattern, waiting. I think we will be in for a long wait, personally, but eventually the other shoe will drop and then we'll know -- the rest of the story.

[Toysoldier Thor]

I have not uploaded any new content since the TOS.  No plans to until the TOS is fixed.

LL's recent TOS change has no additional rights to my content upoaded prior to the recent TOS.

And I dont think any of us can get a stat from LL on the change of Daily UPLOAD counts before and after the TOS.

[Drake1 Nightfire]

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

So Drake....

What do you suggest the Content Cretors do?  I am not sure what stance you are trying to promote.

The ToS is illegal, they can not enforce it in a court of law. Their ToS can not and does not supersede US law. They need a specific license agreement from each and every creator in order to say they have unlimited rights. I didn

't give them one, did you?

So you are saying that fighting back, protesting, trying to influence LL to see the error of their ways and fix the TOS are all useless bad ideas?

Because that has worked in the past, right?

Are you suggesting the best thing is to be the Passive SL Resident we often have been and let LL mske these TOS changes and just quietly wait until LL decides to leverage their pirated access to IP holders and leverage it  then start the fight?

Why would they use our badly made meshes in games? No decent game designer would use our heavy mesh in a game.

So you believe its best business practice for a IP holder to be reactionary then proactive and force the correction?

I wont hold my breath waiting for LL to admit they made a mistake.

Please tell us all what you would want all the SL creators should be doing?

Whatever they want, it's the doom and gloom that is unnecessary. Every time LL makes a change people lose their minds. We don't know why they made this change. Currently it's all speculation.

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[Toysoldier Thor]

Well more news that adds more significant pressure and symbolism to the cause to tell LL that their TOS will not be acceptable....

this big news if you know anything about LL's art community - I sure know that LL knows who Bryn Oh is...

Bryn Oh, long an avid and powerful supporter of the arts, resigns her role with the LEA (Linden Endowment for the Arts) in response to the August 2013 Terms of Service.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Sorry about that, just a quickie organic guess. I'd imagine we're not close to done getting at how many people are affected and what stands they've taken yet, word is still getting out.

Belated great job, by the way. Proclaiming the A in your forum badge to stand for Activist.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Suprising and yet not. The art community has a long and fairly standard history and set of agreements with IP on artwork. The TOS is much less suited to art than some other mediums now.

[Darrius Gothly]

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Drake1 Nightfire wrote:

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

So Drake....

What do you suggest the Content Cretors do?  I am not sure what stance you are trying to promote.

The ToS is illegal, they can not enforce it in a court of law. Their ToS can not and does not supersede US law. They need a specific license agreement from each and every creator in order to say they have unlimited rights. I didn

't give them one, did you?

So you are saying that fighting back, protesting, trying to influence LL to see the error of their ways and fix the TOS are all useless bad ideas?

Because that has worked in the past, right?

Are you suggesting the best thing is to be the Passive SL Resident we often have been and let LL mske these TOS changes and just quietly wait until LL decides to leverage their pirated access to IP holders and leverage it  then start the fight?

Why would they use our badly made meshes in games? No decent game designer would use our heavy mesh in a game.

So you believe its best business practice for a IP holder to be reactionary then proactive and force the correction?

I wont hold my breath waiting for LL to admit they made a mistake.

Please tell us all what you would want all the SL creators should be doing?

Whatever they want, it's the doom and gloom that is unnecessary. Every time LL makes a change people lose their minds. We don't know why they made this change. Currently it's all speculation.

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If I may interject here Drake1:

Regardless if you or anyone else says the ToS is "illegal", that can only be proven in a court of law. That requires mounting and paying for a lawsuit against LL that specifically challenges the ToS clauses in question. None of us are capable of determining the legal validity of the ToS .. even if a judge in the relevant court were to post an opinion here, it still would not carry any weight whatsoever.

Yes, protests have worked in the past. As Dartagan will tell you, he and I first tangled over the Freebie Tax. I joined up with many others to begin and promote a protest that rang from edge to edge of the grid. I even went so far as to organize a protest rally on Linden-owned land. Apparently it worked because they never implemented the L$99 per Freebie tax they were planning on.

Maybe you make heavy mesh. I definitely make crap mesh. But there are MANY others here with the skill, tools, capabilities to make some absolutely stunning and amazing things. Remember that LL has full access to the source files used to render AND MODIFY those models. They don't have to try and pry it loose from the Viewer like a copybotter would. They have full exact copies of the original source files on their servers. So could they take something that was really good and make it really fantastic? Sho'nuff! Will they?

Maybe you're tired of the Doom -n- Gloom crowd. Maybe you've had enough of it. But what really matters here is that LL has taken a step in absolutely the wrong direction. They have made it plain they intend to own everything we've worked hard to create for the past 10 years .. and they've made it plain they don't give a hoot what we say about it. So doom? Gloom? Maybe. But what really counts is the disrespect and dishonesty embodied in this move.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

"Yes, protests have worked in the past. As Dartagan will tell you, he and I first tangled over the Freebie Tax. I joined up with many others to begin and promote a protest that rang from edge to edge of the grid. I even went so far as to organize a protest rally on Linden-owned land. Apparently it worked because they never implemented the L$99 per Freebie tax they were planning on."

Ugg, right. Was on the wrong side of that one, but thankfully the majority spoke. In hindsight that path may have led us here that much sooner.

Also true that it's not so gloomy and doomy. I used to feel the same way about it, but there's bound to be a bit of puppy kicking when you feel wronged.

[Chic Aeon]

LOL.

I am SO not an activist. If you want a great smile, check my blog on this coming Op Ed Sunday. You will find me in camo with a flamethrower - LOL. I have calmed down since I wrote that post (I schedule these days), but it is a good one.

Not really sure how I managed to get on the front lines but I am here so that's the way it is.

Yes, I do think the numbers are pretty big as I keep running into folks who proclaim they are no longer uploading. While many of "my designers" (mostly the mover and shaker types in the fashion and design of SL) are still working, a few have quietly left the party. Others are just not doing anything -- presumably waiting to see what happens.

Aren't we all.

 

[RobertEroicaDupea]

Trying to get the message out there to SL users of Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/roberteroicadupea/10050438835/

[Darrius Gothly]

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Dartagan Shepherd wrote:

"Yes, protests have worked in the past. As Dartagan will tell you, he and I first tangled over the Freebie Tax. I joined up with many others to begin and promote a protest that rang from edge to edge of the grid. I even went so far as to organize a protest rally on Linden-owned land. Apparently it worked because they never implemented the L$99 per Freebie tax they were planning on."

Ugg, right. Was on the wrong side of that one, but thankfully the majority spoke. In hindsight that path may have led us here that much sooner.

Also true that it's not so gloomy and doomy. I used to feel the same way about it, but there's bound to be a bit of puppy kicking when you feel wronged.

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I would not say you were on the "wrong" side Dart. Even though we fought with each other, long and hard and very passionately. Through it all, I tried very hard to keep in my thoughts the belief that you were on the "opposing" side .. which at the time was the "right" side for you. I didn't always succeed in thinking that way, I will admit. But in my calmer more rational moments, it was the basis for my arguments. And yes indeed, had LL implemented that L$99 per Freebie per month tax, we would be looking at an entirely different landscape today.

Linden Lab DID also learn a lot from that debacle. They learned not to let anyone know BEFORE they unleash one of their totally brain-dead, utterly stupid ideas on the customer base. Now they drop the hammer without any advance warning, because as they found out in the Freebie Roadmap case .. advance warning might lead to them NOT being able to bend us over the barrel.

ETA: fix typo

[Toysoldier Thor]

Yes I know full well that Protests against poor LL policies do work - if they are both intense and persistent.

The Freebie Tax fiasco started in November and LL Commerce Team finally conceded defeat in late May.  Although I believe this victory was more so accomplished because all the Technical warning on it it not being feasible were finally realized internally.

We have also had successes only a few months ago when the Commerce Team changed MP transaction processing & reporting system with all its not-surprising bugs.  One of them was that the LL Developers figured there was no value in recording $0L Sale transaction in MP onto the main SL Transaction log.  Myself, Darrius and several others took on the public charge to "INFLUENCE" the LL Commerce Team how poorly thought out this decision was since these $0L transaction are used for transaction auditing and problem diagnostics.  After a lot of Merchant Forum pressure, they agreed to restore $0L transactions.

Remember the REDZONE fiasco?  LL finally got off their butts and took decisive action ONLY AFTER a hugeeeeee outcry from the majority of SL residents on how this was an invasion of privacy using a technical loophole / weakness in the Audio Streaming service.

So Drake.... for anyone to say that LL never takes action when a lot of pressure is applied to them and their reputation / credibility / operation.... its simply not true.  LL has a long standing history of many enormous bonehead moves and then fixing it "kicking and screaming".

I suspect this will eventually be the case with the TOS Change.  The pressure LL sees now within their SL customer base and in the public virtual world media / gaming industry is continuing to grow.  And now that there is a very formalized UCCSL group being formed to orchestrate the effort of carrying the LL TOS Hi-Jacking message out onto the open industry media even further.... LL will have to bow to this pressure.

If LL's intent for hi-jacking our IP rights is to use our SL content for their new Indie Game Development business model, it likely will not be an attractive model for LL to promote when all the potential customers to this new gaming development platform are reading in all the gaming press how LL's platform is based on content that has been illegally (based on the assumption that the TOS wording is proven to be a violation of IP rights holders) hi-jacked from its SL user base.

If you were an Indie Game developer looking to develop a cool new low cost game and were reading all over the net that the LL Desura platform uses ill-gotten questionable content that could potentially be ripped away from you because of court challenges.... would you develop a business based on this risk?

So.... I figure that Rodvik is currently nervously fidgeting in his little office as he watches this LL TOS CHANGE protest grow in strength and breath.... and saying.... "OMG... I thought we would get away with this ... now where are we going to get the needed content from to offer these Indie Game Developers on our new platform?  These darn SL Content Owners are poisoning our idea before it even gets out of the gate!"

That is my guess.... we will soon hear from LL Corp on TOS wording changes.

[Toysoldier Thor]

Hey Rodvik.....  Related to my last posting....

If you are really nervous on how you are going to explain to your Corp Board members that your new business model for Desura was based on getting critical content that LL would hi-jack from the SL Content Creators, let me provide you a solution to keep your business model more viable (so you dont have to tell the board that your idea has a major flaw).....

 

Why don't you consider OPEN NEGOTIATIONS with all the SecondLife Content Creators.... offer thing a VALUE PROPOSITION to be actually a willing and engaging partner to your new Desura Indie Game Developer business model. 

Develop an OPT-IN Content Licensing model for all SL Content Creators whereby LL will compesate / pay us content creators for LL to be ALLOWED to offer our content to these Game Developers?  Us content creators would have to meet certain criteria - i.e. it is our IP and not a license from another external IP owner.  We would have to agree to what ever terms set up for our content to be transferred into the Desura platform.  AND, LL would develop fair compensation to all us participating content creators.

How is that for a radical idea Rodvik.....  Ask Us To Participate.... Set Up The Terms To Participate.... and Pay Us Fairly To Participate.

 

[RobertEroicaDupea]

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

Bryn Oh, long an avid and powerful supporter of the arts, resigns her role with the LEA (Linden Endowment for the Arts) in response to the August 2013 Terms of Service.

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Do you have a link for that?

[Toysoldier Thor]

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RobertEroicaDupea wrote:

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

Bryn Oh, long an avid and powerful supporter of the arts, resigns her role with the LEA (Linden Endowment for the Arts) in response to the August 2013 Terms of Service.

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Do you have a link for that?

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Kylie from the UCCSL group talked to Bryn directly and Bryn gave her permission to post this announcement.  So I cannot post you a link to the Internal group notice.  This was posted in the UCCSL group notices.  I asked Kylie if Bryn will be officially post this herself and she mentioned yes she would be announcing this as well.

I personally would like it if Bryn would post a response here in this thread to re-validate this announcement.

[Spica Inventor]

 

:smileywink:

[Drake1 Nightfire]

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Spica Inventor wrote:

 

:smileywink:

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I'm going to add my post you are calling a troll..

"I have never said LL was in the right, quite the contrary. I have said they can't enforce this ToS without getting themselves in deep legal trouble.

 I have been watching the MP numbers since the new Tos. The numbers have steadily risen. I don't see what leaveing will do. Yes, it will ease your mind, but will not hurt LL at all."

So, in your opinion if someone doesn't follow blindly they are a troll. 

I don't think LL was listening to their law staff when they made a blanket ToS to cover all of their platforms. Do i think they will change it, I hope so. But I wont stop creating things. That's my choice.