'Public Domain' for items

[AntonScorpioking]

Just curious, If a creator hasn't been on SL for some time and no longer have an account, do the restrictions on what they created still apply? I.E. "do not share with others". etc. Would that still apply? 

[Ardy Lay]

We may have to wait until a creation has existed for 75 years to find out.

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

52 minutes ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

if the owner's account is closed, what could be the benefit to anyone of continuing to restrict use of the content they created?

The benefit would be to the owner of the intellectual property in as much as nobody is stealing their property and distributing it without their consent.

The notion that anyone other than the creator/owner of a piece of content should be entitled to a copy of that content simply because the original owner isn't around to protect their intellectual property seems like an excellent way to persuade the few remaining SL creators to delete their inventories and quit SL en masse.

[Rolig Loon]

Yup. Intellectual property rights don't vanish just because you have the bad luck to die or go on an extended vacation.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

On 1/8/2023 at 10:42 PM, Jennifer Boyle said:

I don't know what the law is, but it seems like a bad system when the owner of the rights to content is unavailable, e.g., account no longer exists, because there is no pathway for another person to obtain additional rights, ever. No matter how much one might be willing to offer for rights to use the content in a manner that's beneficial to the community, there is no one to offer it to. A better system would be to require owners to make themselves reasonably easily available for communications in order to retain rights.

ETA: Sorry. I didn't notice the age of the thread.

Seems a bit weird if LL would start distributing my stuff because I'm not responding to customers (possibly because I don't want to, or care to).

[Wulfie Reanimator]

24 minutes ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

It seems to me that a closed account is more significant than just not responding. If the account is closed, there is no way for anyone (who doesn't have RL contact information) to communicate with the owner. Anyway, if the owner's account is closed, what could be the benefit to anyone of continuing to restrict use of the content they created?

LL: *bans you*
Also LL: *makes your stuff full perm*

On a more serious note, where the owner has voluntarily closed their account, it doesn't seem like an open invitation to "give away my stuff." (As much as we like to joke about that on the forum when someone is quitting.) We generally don't hand out a dead person's stuff to everyone, either.

Edited January 10, 2023 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Jennifer Boyle]

On 9/23/2022 at 5:29 PM, Rolig Loon said:

Yup. Intellectual property rights don't vanish just because you have the bad luck to die or go on an extended vacation.

I don't know what the law is, but it seems like a bad system when the owner of the rights to content is unavailable, e.g., account no longer exists, because there is no pathway for another person to obtain additional rights, ever. No matter how much one might be willing to offer for rights to use the content in a manner that's beneficial to the community, there is no one to offer it to. A better system would be to require owners to make themselves reasonably easily available for communications in order to retain rights.

ETA: Sorry. I didn't notice the age of the thread.

Edited January 8, 2023 by Jennifer Boyle

[Jennifer Boyle]

6 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

Seems a bit weird if LL would start distributing my stuff because I'm not responding to customers (possibly because I don't want to, or care to).

It seems to me that a closed account is more significant than just not responding. If the account is closed, there is no way for anyone (who doesn't have RL contact information) to communicate with the owner. Anyway, if the owner's account is closed, what could be the benefit to anyone of continuing to restrict use of the content they created?

[Jennifer Boyle]

2 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

We generally don't hand out a dead person's stuff to everyone, either.

On the contrary, IRL, if a person has a will, their possessions go the the named heirs; if not, they go to relatives who are entitled to inherit under the law, if any can be identified. If no heirs can be located, their possessions go to the state for the benefit of all the state's residents. 

The SL equivalent would be their passing their possessions to one or more persons of their choice, or, if they hadn't, their possessions going to LL, which could release them to benefit SL residents in general.

Which brings a new thought to mind: Should we be able to have heirs in SL? Something like the "Pay-on-Death" designation that one can have on a financial account IRL? An account could designate (perhaps for a fee) another account to receive its inventory if it closed for any reason. It would be fair to override "No-Transfer" in this instance because its legitimate purpose is to prevent use by more than one account at a time.

[Jennifer Boyle]

1 hour ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

The benefit would be to the owner of the intellectual property in as much as nobody is stealing their property and distributing it without their consent.

The notion that anyone other than the creator/owner of a piece of content should be entitled to a copy of that content simply because the original owner isn't around to protect their intellectual property seems like an excellent way to persuade the few remaining SL creators to delete their inventories and quit SL en masse.

What benefit could the absent owner possibly gain? They are no longer here. Their products are no longer for sale. What do they gain by having the products unavailable? The RL analogy would be that after a person's death, they still owned their possessions, and no one else could use them.

[Quistess Alpha]

Devil's advocate argument:

If I know or expect something's going to be free tomorrow, I'm probably not going to buy it today. If I buy an expensive thing today and tomorrow it's free forever, with no warning, I might be a bit upset because that's not exactly fair.

If there's a sufficient abundance of high-quality free things floating around, who's going to want to buy new things that are expensive? There's a decent argument to be had that giving away too much free stuff hurts people who want to sell things, and disincentivizes them from making anything at all.

IMO, As a broad policy, it's not in the SL community or LL's interests to give out tons of free stuff. In moderation though, freebies are awesome; no ice-cream ever is sad. ice-cream for every meal will make you sick.

Edited January 11, 2023 by Quistess Alpha

[Rowan Amore]

Also, the absent owner may decide in 1, 2, 5, 10 years to return.  Who gets to decide at what point in time all their content is given away for free?   Slink closing is a prime example and what precipitated these comments.  Who knows?  She might decide to return so what gives anyone the right to make her content free while she's away?  The RL person not the avatar, still owns the rights to Slink.  

[Wulfie Reanimator]

2 hours ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

5 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

We generally don't hand out a dead person's stuff to everyone, either.

On the contrary, IRL, if a person has a will, their possessions go the the named heirs; if not, they go to relatives who are entitled to inherit under the law, if any can be identified. If no heirs can be located, their possessions go to the state for the benefit of all the state's residents. 

Exactly. As you said, we don't hand out a dead person's stuff to everyone.

First they go to who whoever the items are willed to, and there are several steps beyond that which never lead to "anyone who wants it, gets it."

2 hours ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

The SL equivalent would be their passing their possessions to one or more persons of their choice, or, if they hadn't, their possessions going to LL, which could release them to benefit SL residents in general.

That's not at all the same thing as the state getting hold of someone's physical possessions.

2 hours ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

Which brings a new thought to mind: Should we be able to have heirs in SL? Something like the "Pay-on-Death" designation that one can have on a financial account IRL? An account could designate (perhaps for a fee) another account to receive its inventory if it closed for any reason. It would be fair to override "No-Transfer" in this instance because its legitimate purpose is to prevent use by more than one account at a time.

You can transfer ownership of your account in your will, but only the whole account.

[PekeNL]

3 hours ago, Quistess Alpha said:

If there's a sufficient abundance of high-quality free things floating around, who's going to want to buy new things that are expensive? There's a decent argument to be had that giving away too much free stuff hurts people who want to sell things, and disincentivizes them from making anything at all.

Or it makes them aware that their 1k L$ item isn't as fancy as they think and they'd actually have to.. you know, innovate and produce higher quality stuff then what's given out for free. You know, give us a reason to BUY your stuff instead of going with the free option.

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

It's interesting how quickly this question about intellectual property rights has spiralled through the topic of whether those rights should be respected or not and into a discussion about whether theft is beneficial or detrimental to the SL economy.

In a way it somewhat mirrors the current hot topic of AI art where a bunch of people thought to themselves "hey, there's a ton of cool content on the internet and nobody to stop us from taking it and doing whatever we like with it" and then started slinging around terms like "the democratization of art" to justify their actions when in reality those actions weren't so much motivated by a desire to enrich society and enable creativity as they were fuelled by an attitude of  "We don't care who it belongs to, we want it so we should be allowed to have it!"

[PekeNL]

20 minutes ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

In a way it somewhat mirrors the current hot topic of AI art

That's an entire can of worms in and of itself.

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

1 hour ago, PekeNL said:

That's an entire can of worms in and of itself.

Perhaps, but the part where artists work was taken without the artists consent and repurposed in a way which the artist never intended or agreed to seems pretty similar to this idea of claiming a creators work as public property simply because they aren't able to object.

[PekeNL]

5 hours ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

Perhaps, but the part where artists work was taken without the artists consent and repurposed in a way which the artist never intended or agreed to seems pretty similar to this idea of claiming a creators work as public property simply because they aren't able to object.

To a extend yeah. But sometimes (not always) derivative works can spark creation of better products using something else as a base. This is how innovation works, and if nobody can innovate because 'muh copyright' we wouldn't for example have the internet the way it is today.

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

23 minutes ago, PekeNL said:

To a extend yeah. But sometimes (not always) derivative works can spark creation of better products using something else as a base. This is how innovation works, and if nobody can innovate because 'muh copyright' we wouldn't for example have the internet the way it is today.

There's a huge difference between creating something derived from another persons work and outright declaring that another persons work no longer belongs to them and is instead public property.   Even in a derivative work the creator can only claim ownership of the additions, changes and new material that they added while ownership of all the original material is retained by the original creator.  As for sparking innovation and creativity I'd argue that's more likely to happen if a creator removes popular products from the marketplace leaving an unfilled niche than if those products were made available to everyone for free.

Anyway, regardless of whether you try to frame it as wanting to "democratize creativity and/or content" or just whiny content creators crying about "muh copyright" the fact remains that there is no moral grey area when it comes to taking something that doesn't belong to you without the owners permission... it's theft, it's wrong and, if that isn't enough of a deterrent for you, it's also illegal!

[PekeNL]

21 minutes ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

There's a huge difference between creating something derived from another persons work and outright declaring that another persons work no longer belongs to them and is instead public property.   Even in a derivative work the creator can only claim ownership of the additions, changes and new material that they added while ownership of all the original material is retained by the original creator.  As for sparking innovation and creativity I'd argue that's more likely to happen if a creator removes popular products from the marketplace leaving an unfilled niche than if those products were made available to everyone for free.

Anyway, regardless of whether you try to frame it as wanting to "democratize creativity and/or content" or just whiny content creators crying about "muh copyright" the fact remains that there is no moral grey area when it comes to taking something that doesn't belong to you without the owners permission... it's theft, it's wrong and, if that isn't enough of a deterrent for you, it's also illegal!

I stand corrected. You are correct that it isn't a legal course of action. Tho, When something isn't supported anymore by it's creator, and we can't reach them.. They should, in my opinion, fall under 'Orphan work'. Now i'm not saying someone should use this clause to hunt down items and resell them, I'm saying that if you decide to stop developing/supporting your product, people who own it should have full rights to do whatever they want with it; Which in SL's context means they get full perm access.

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

19 minutes ago, PekeNL said:

I stand corrected. You are correct that it isn't a legal course of action. Tho, When something isn't supported anymore by it's creator, and we can't reach them.. They should, in my opinion, fall under 'Orphan work'. Now i'm not saying someone should use this clause to hunt down items and resell them, I'm saying that if you decide to stop developing/supporting your product, people who own it should have full rights to do whatever they want with it; Which in SL's context means they get full perm access.

I'm sorry if I seem a little unwavering in my stance but I just don't see how a creator no longer being around should somehow grant their customers more rights than they were granted when they originally bought the product(s).  That would be the equivalent of me saying that because I paid Autodesk $800 for a commercial license for Sketchbook Designer shortly before they discontinued it and announced there would be no further updates or support they should provide me with the full source code and allow me to do whatever I like with it.  The reality is that the software still works and I can continue to use it for as long as I have an operating system which supports it, I have the same rights regarding use of the software that I had when I purchased it, just as I would have if they'd continued supporting the product.

I will admit that my perspective regarding this issue is quite likely skewed by the fact that I'm relatively well-versed in both scripting and 3D modelling (along with most other forms of SL content creation) to the extent that if I really want something badly enough and can't find it for sale then I'm probably capable of creating it myself, so perhaps when content occasionally disappears along with its creator the loss of the content impacts me far less than the loss of its creator.

[Rowan Amore]

No.  You can't have the Slink body for free!  Lordy, the entitlement is heavy with some folks.

[PekeNL]

12 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

No.  You can't have the Slink body for free!  Lordy, the entitlement is heavy with some folks.

If this was all about slink closing and not a generic discussion item.. Mygod. :')

[Love Zhaoying]

On 9/23/2022 at 6:26 PM, AntonScorpioking said:

Just curious, If a creator hasn't been on SL for some time and no longer have an account, do the restrictions on what they created still apply? I.E. "do not share with others". etc. Would that still apply? 

Yes.

[Jennifer Boyle]

2 hours ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

...declaring that another persons work no longer belongs to them and is instead public property.  

Actually, it is generally accepted that content should enter the public domain eventually. (The earliest version of Mickey Mouse will fall into the public domain in 2023.) All the disagreement is about when and under what circumstances, and practically no one holds that copyright should be for all of eternity. Until the 18th Century, there was no copyright. It is an invented concept that was introduced to incentivize creation because that was seen as a social good. The correct amount and duration of protection is whatever produces the most good, in terms of quantity and quality of content. It is not plausible that extending protection after the creator has stopped selling, supporting, developing, or doing anything else with content incentivizes creation. At that point, the creator loses nothing if the content becomes accessible to all to do with as they please.

It is interesting that the SL permission system has permanent restrictions on what users may do with content even though RL restrictions are not permanent. Perhaps restrictive permissions should expire after some interval, e.g., ten years. Certainly, they should expire after the account that created the item is closed.

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

59 minutes ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

Actually, it is generally accepted that content should enter the public domain eventually. (The earliest version of Mickey Mouse will fall into the public domain in 2023.) All the disagreement is about when and under what circumstances, and practically no one holds that copyright should be for all of eternity. Until the 18th Century, there was no copyright. It is an invented concept that was introduced to incentivize creation because that was seen as a social good. The correct amount and duration of protection is whatever produces the most good, in terms of quantity and quality of content. It is not plausible that extending protection after the creator has stopped selling, supporting, developing, or doing anything else with content incentivizes creation. At that point, the creator loses nothing if the content becomes accessible to all to do with as they please.

It is interesting that the SL permission system has permanent restrictions on what users may do with content even though RL restrictions are not permanent. Perhaps restrictive permissions should expire after some interval, e.g., ten years. Certainly, they should expire after the account that created the item is closed.

 

4 hours ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

Anyway, regardless of whether you try to frame it as wanting to "democratize creativity and/or content" or just whiny content creators crying about "muh copyright" the fact remains that there is no moral grey area when it comes to taking something that doesn't belong to you without the owners permission... it's theft, it's wrong and, if that isn't enough of a deterrent for you, it's also illegal!