picture rights

[LadyDaja Fairywren]

can pictures taken on secondlife be posted online as my own work?

[Peggy Paperdoll]

You can take pictures and post them anywhere as long as you don't make claim to any object or subject represented in the picture as your own unless those objects or subjects are actually your own.  You also cannot take a picture of anything in SL and claim it's a picture taken in another "world"...........such as Inworldz.  It's the same as if you walk down your real life street and take a picture of the tree lined lane.  You can do that as long as you don't misrepresent what is in that picture.  It gets sticky if you take a picture on private property that is not viewable from public or non-private property.  Basically the same rules apply for SL as they apply for real life.

[Shockwave Yareach]

While the picture is yours, in the same vein that any machinima made in SL is yours, what you do with the photo dominates matters. 

 

If you are taking a picture for yourself and friends to see and showing someone elses build on Flickr, very few will be upset.

If you are taking a picture of someplace you didn't build and making money off your blog by showing it, some will become annoyed that you make money off their work.

If you take pictures of people and places in SL that you didn't create and start selling a wildly popular book, raking in the dough, most will be very annoyed that you are profiting from their work without permission.

 

My personal view is that if it's just pictures for yourself and friends, anything you can see on public thoroughfares is okay.  But if you plan to turn your private photos into personal financial gain then you require the permission of those whose work makes your gain possible.  Consider if you will some high paid supermodel -- I take a picture of her for myself, nobody cares, but if I sell a book with said photos, I'll be sued for profiting off of her likeness.  The same will hold true in SL.  In short, if you want to make money with the photos, you need the permission of the person who owns the setting. 

[Rolig Loon]

Read this >>> http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Snapshot_and_machinima_policy

[Chic Aeon]

I did  a lot of research on this a couple of months ago when I was thinking about working on machinima. What I found (then) was that officially you can take STILL photos anywhere in Second Life as long as there is not a "Do not take pictures in the sim" statement in the About Land description. The rules are very differnt for machinima. For those you need to get permission from the landowner before publishing.

 

Here is an OLD Forum post which doesn't answer any questions but does give you things to think about. I believe that the BRAND name thought there seem valid. Of course we have creators overlooking RL brand rights all the time.

http://forums-archive.secondlife.com/327/1a/146081/1.html

AH HA!!! I FOUND IT

 

7.4 You also grant Linden Lab and other users of Second Life a license to use in snapshots and machinima your Content that is displayed In-World in publicly accessible areas of the Service.

You agree that by uploading, publishing, or submitting any Content to or through the Servers for display In-World in any publicly accessible area of the Service, you hereby grant each user of Second Life and Linden Lab a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to photograph, capture an image of, film, and record a video of the Content, and to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the resulting photograph, image, film, or video in any current or future media as provided in and subject to the restrictions and requirements of our Snapshot and Machinima Policy. The foregoing license is referred to as the "Snapshot and Machinima Content License."



And here is the link to the SL wikie on the Snapshot and Machinima Policy.

 

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Snapshot_and_machinima_policy

 

 

[Peggy Paperdoll]

I understand what you are saying but I think you are wrong. If what you say is true then the picture I'm linking could not be sold by the photographer........and it certainly can be since there's no claim to ownership and nothing is misrepresented.

 

http://decoarchitecture.tumblr.com/post/1672617436/pennsylvania-railroad-suburban-station