Why no Xfer to alts

Innula Zenovka · March 18, 2012

In practical terms, what I do when I want to transfer some copy transfer textures or sculptmaps to one of my alts, is contact the merchant, explain what I want to do and why, and ask if it's OK or if I have to buy another set.

I don't think anyone's ever told me to buy another set, by the way.

Madeliefste Oh · March 18, 2012

That is the best you can do, Innula, just ask. And save the chat, notecard, email or whatever you used to communicate with the merchant about permission.

Rival Destiny · March 18, 2012

Toysoldier Thor wrote:

Its too bad LL never posts here. I would love if a person from LL Legal Team would chirp in and set the record straight on what rights a person's many Alts have vs not have. How do they see Gavin's statements that LL's TOS does not hold water and that Gavin can do what he feels he is entitlted to...

I have to say, you would be terribly dissappointed in the reply from their legal team. As far as rights of alts, they hold the same LEGAL RIGHTS as any other account the actual person behind them is entitled to. An avatar is merely an agent of the real person, a tool used to represent the real person in a virtual world.

There is no debate about this aspect of the discussion.

Rival Destiny · March 18, 2012

Toysoldier Thor wrote:

Anaiya Arnold wrote:

Personally I've never needed to use a full perm item with another account, but I would not be judging someone who does so in instances where there is no indication they should not. If sellers want full perm content restricted to a single avatar, then they need to explicate this rather than expect everyone else to guess as much.

It does no one any favours to pretend otherwise and in fact risks misinforming a full perm seller who might decide to rely on such an assumption based on reading such inaccurate advice. Anyone who wants to restrict use to one avatar should explicate this clearly in their license and preferably before the sale unless they are willng to refund the purchase. It's not something that it is reasonable to expect others to guess when the expectation of non-sharing between avatars relies on a wholly inaccurate assumption to begin with.

There cannot be sales between avatars anymore than there can be sales between chairs, or bootstraps. It's very important that full perm sellers understand that they need to stipulate rather than assume non-sharing between a single persons' avatars if they wish such a restriction to limit sharing between a single person's avatars. Otherwise, even with the best will in the world, some people are going to fail to guess the intended restriction and will end up sharing between their alts contrary to the content creator's wishes, without ever realizing the content creator did not want them to do that.

Anaiya,

As has been posted earlier... the full perm sellers had and still have a reasonable cause understanding that BY DEFAULT unless otherwise stipulated, the buyer of content should not assume the buy is between HUIMANS - its between REGISTERED LL ACCOUNTS that all humans have agreed to the LL TOS before each of their registered LL accounts were allowed to log into SL with.

You and your Alts each operated independently by you. Of course you have the full rights as the human that registered each of these LL accounts, but you also agreed to the limitations that each of your accounts with LL has.

You as a buyer of the full perm content should assume that you CANNOT transfer content to your other alts based on LL agreed terms and because how can any full perm seller reasonably control use of their IP usage when he / she has absolutely no way to confirm or even validate who all your alts are? HECK even LL doesnt know that all your Alts belong to you. So, how do you or Gavin or any others think it would hold up in court when the Seller takes you to court for this poor assumption of the LL TOS and the Seller's Usage agreement?

And, last point on your content... its is really in the best interests of the BUYER of full perm content to buy this content from the seller with a 100% full agreement of the terms that the Buyer needs from the content. WHY?

Because lets say you are a buyer of a pack of full perm textures from a Seller of these textures. The deal happens and you then spend 2 months making this amazing new creation and put this new creation onto MP and make 1000's of sales from this build. Then 1 year later the Seller notices that you seem to have violated one of his conditions of use of his full perm textures. He demands you STOP selling your products based on it and also he is furious and wants compensation from you - a portion of all your sales you made from this amazing build.

He takes you to court over it.

IF he loses, other than court fees all he loses is no access to the revenue he wanted from you and nothing else.

IF he wins, courts shock you and side with the Seller (Gavin and Riven and Nef were wrong after all - ohh darn - why did I listen to them and that thread).... other than court fees you also lose your main product that was a hot seller, you also *owe the Seller actual $ penalties by paying his back a portion of the renenues that he demand.

So.... let me ask you again.... who do you think is the party between the full perm seller and buyer that should be most interested in making sure the terms of use of the full perm content.

Let me answer for you..... THE BUYER !!

Anaiya - None of this is fact but a mere interpretation so when in doubt, simply ask the creator if you ever have an issue and/or something is not stated in a license. Often if it isn't stated, it is because the creator has no problem with your intended use. User licenses tend to weight out the do not's more so than the can do's.

The OP of this thread has already contacted one creator who did NOT stipulate alt useage and was told that they have no issues with his alt using the textures.

And as I said in one of my earlier comments, there exists at least one texture maker that has it listed in their license that alts are allowed to use the textures.

hth

Toysoldier Thor · March 18, 2012

Innula Zenovka wrote:

In practical terms, what I do when I want to transfer some copy transfer textures or sculptmaps to one of my alts, is contact the merchant, explain what I want to do and why, and ask if it's OK or if I have to buy another set.

I don't think anyone's ever told me to buy another set, by the way.

But the key to what you just posted was...... YOU ASKED the Creator/Seller of the content if it was ok and what was his/her interpretation before you took the action that in all honesty you could have done without even asking him / her. But the right thing was that you confirmed with the Creator what his / her understanding was of the Usage Agreement and if it was ok.

Heck, even if the Creator explicitly states that the registered buying SL Account cannot transfer the content stand-alone to anyone for any reason (which is my usage agreement), it doesnt hurt for the Buyer to Ask if the Creator is willing to make an exception to his / her clearly stated Usage Agreement.

The Creator may be more than willing to make an exception but he / she just wants to maintain some sense of control in the exception.

My full perms landscape sculpty packs are popular and they continue to sell well 2+ years after I created them. My agreement - as Made pointed out - states very simply and clearly that the Buyer of my packs cannot resell or transfer any of my content in the pack as stand-alone content. My included license agreement makes this statement even more clear with common examples of what that means.

And yet on the 2.5 years of selling these packs to literally 1000+ customers in SL, I have only had a handful of my customers come back and ask me to clarify my agreement or ask to make an exception. In most of these cases it was requests if the Buyer could take my content to other virtual worlds (4 times to Inworldz, 2 to some educational virtual world, and one to a world I dont remember). In these "other worlds" requests I refused to allow them to transfer the content BUT I actually set up a new store in Inworldz where the customer agreed to buy the same content there. For the educational world I created an account and logged in and handed this user my content that they specially paid me for in SL. And I refused the request for the world that I never heard of.

I have rarely had any customer come to me and ask if they could copy my content to their other alt. It has only happened two times that I can remember. The point is that in both cases after listening to their reason I allowed it. BUT, I sent the new copy of the content to their ALT and didnt allow them to do it themselves. WHY? Because by me sending their Alt a copy of the content - it was recorded in my records.

Gnerally the point is that its always the best practice to approach the full perms creator and clarify and ask. Most of us are not OGRES but we do value our content we created and would like to protect it and get value from it. Most of my customers are Landscapers inworld and/or creators of more complex content that they get countless times more revenue from their creations using our input content then the cost our content was to them. We only ask that our rights are honored and respected and that SL residents dont try to find loopholes to violate our intent.

Play Nice - Play Fair and everyone is happy.

Toysoldier Thor · March 18, 2012

Thanks for your input on this post. It was good reading.

Sorry to hear about the risk to your RL job. RL economies still suck. Hope that the bad news doesnt happen.

Innula Zenovka · March 18, 2012

Rival Destiny wrote:

Toysoldier Thor wrote:

Its too bad LL never posts here. I would love if a person from LL Legal Team would chirp in and set the record straight on what rights a person's many Alts have vs not have. How do they see Gavin's statements that LL's TOS does not hold water and that Gavin can do what he feels he is entitlted to...

I have to say, you would be terribly dissappointed in the reply from their legal team. As far as rights of alts, they hold the same LEGAL RIGHTS as any other account the actual person behind them is entitled to. An avatar is merely an agent of the real person, a tool used to represent the real person in a virtual world.

There is no debate about this aspect of the discussion.

There's no debate about the fact I can sell you a sim I own. But neither is there any debate about the fact I have to be logged in as Innula, rather than as one of my alts, to do it, since it's as Innula I've bought all my land, and I have to sell it to "Rival Destiny" rather than to any other account you may own. And if there's not US$ 100 in the dollar balance of the Innula account, LL will take the transfer fee from my bank account rather than from any monies in any of the alts' dollar balances, even though Innula and all my alts are tied to the same RL bank account and all the US$ in all my accounts is, indisputably, my money.

Rival Destiny · March 18, 2012

Exactly - and the money that is being exchanged here comes from the real life person who is the legal entity in all cases in sl.

Paul Hexem · March 18, 2012

Wow, this is awesome, all this debate.

However, if you do a little research, you'll see there's two sides to this coin. It's all in the wording. If the EULA on the full perms item specifies it can only be used with that account, then that will hold up and the buyer has to abide by it.

If the EULA does not specifiy "only the purchasing account", and simply says "you" or "purchaser", then legally, it defaults to the real person- who can then use it on all of his or her accounts.

Madeliefste Oh · March 18, 2012

Toysoldier Thor wrote:

In most of these cases it was requests if the Buyer could take my content to other virtual worlds (4 times to Inworldz, 2 to some educational virtual world, and one to a world I dont remember). In these "other worlds" requests I refused to allow them to transfer the content BUT I actually set up a new store in Inworldz where the customer agreed to buy the same content there. For the educational world I created an account and logged in and handed this user my content that they specially paid me for in SL. And I refused the request for the world that I never heard of.

For other virtual worlds we have a whole different model. We sell additional licenses for use of our products in other worlds (for a reasonable price). When we are asked permission for a grid we do not know yet, we go there, investigate it and read that part about copyrights in the TOS of that grid, and then decide yes or no. The worlds that we do sell licenses for so far are InWorldz, AviNation and SpotON3D.

We don't have shops in those grids, we don't want another world to take care of advertising, customer service, hanging new products in the shop and so on, let alone sóme other worlds. These worlds are all small, they might be a nice market for people who sell to the end user, but the for a B2B kind of business like ours, I think they are still too small to make the possible sales worth the time investment. I rather spend my time on a new product then on running a shop in whatever third party grid.

But we do have a growing number of customers who are active as a merchant in one of these worlds. We started with selling those licenses merely as an additional service to our existing customers in SL who want to expand their business to other worlds. In het mean time we have sold over 100 licenses for the several grids.

Other then in SL, people on those grids get a personalised license for use in that grid. It is a bit of work to make them, and it is a bit of work to keep a license administration, but still not much work compared to running a shop.

Anaiya Arnold · March 19, 2012

Toysoldier Thor wrote:

Anaiya Arnold wrote:

Personally I've never needed to use a full perm item with another account, but I would not be judging someone who does so in instances where there is no indication they should not. If sellers want full perm content restricted to a single avatar, then they need to explicate this rather than expect everyone else to guess as much.

It does no one any favours to pretend otherwise and in fact risks misinforming a full perm seller who might decide to rely on such an assumption based on reading such inaccurate advice. Anyone who wants to restrict use to one avatar should explicate this clearly in their license and preferably before the sale unless they are willng to refund the purchase. It's not something that it is reasonable to expect others to guess when the expectation of non-sharing between avatars relies on a wholly inaccurate assumption to begin with.

There cannot be sales between avatars anymore than there can be sales between chairs, or bootstraps. It's very important that full perm sellers understand that they need to stipulate rather than assume non-sharing between a single persons' avatars if they wish such a restriction to limit sharing between a single person's avatars. Otherwise, even with the best will in the world, some people are going to fail to guess the intended restriction and will end up sharing between their alts contrary to the content creator's wishes, without ever realizing the content creator did not want them to do that.

Anaiya,

As has been posted earlier... the full perm sellers had and still have a reasonable cause understanding that BY DEFAULT unless otherwise stipulated, the buyer of content should not assume the buy is between HUIMANS - its between REGISTERED LL ACCOUNTS that all humans have agreed to the LL TOS before each of their registered LL accounts were allowed to log into SL with.

You and your Alts each operated independently by you. Of course you have the full rights as the human that registered each of these LL accounts, but you also agreed to the limitations that each of your accounts with LL has.

You as a buyer of the full perm content should assume that you CANNOT transfer content to your other alts based on LL agreed terms and because how can any full perm seller reasonably control use of their IP usage when he / she has absolutely no way to confirm or even validate who all your alts are? HECK even LL doesnt know that all your Alts belong to you. So, how do you or Gavin or any others think it would hold up in court when the Seller takes you to court for this poor assumption of the LL TOS and the Seller's Usage agreement?

And, last point on your content... its is really in the best interests of the BUYER of full perm content to buy this content from the seller with a 100% full agreement of the terms that the Buyer needs from the content. WHY?

Because lets say you are a buyer of a pack of full perm textures from a Seller of these textures. The deal happens and you then spend 2 months making this amazing new creation and put this new creation onto MP and make 1000's of sales from this build. Then 1 year later the Seller notices that you seem to have violated one of his conditions of use of his full perm textures. He demands you STOP selling your products based on it and also he is furious and wants compensation from you - a portion of all your sales you made from this amazing build.

He takes you to court over it.

IF he loses, other than court fees all he loses is no access to the revenue he wanted from you and nothing else.

IF he wins, courts shock you and side with the Seller (Gavin and Riven and Nef were wrong after all - ohh darn - why did I listen to them and that thread).... other than court fees you also lose your main product that was a hot seller, you also *owe the Seller actual $ penalties by paying his back a portion of the renenues that he demand.

So.... let me ask you again.... who do you think is the party between the full perm seller and buyer that should be most interested in making sure the terms of use of the full perm content.

Let me answer for you..... THE BUYER !!

Toy they might be reasonable to make that error, but it is an error, and it's just as reasonable to not make that error.

Full perm creators who want to limit full perm licenses to one account are not helped by being told their errors are reasonable nearly so much as they are helped by being informed of the need to explicate the limitations they intend, very specifically in their license.

The fact is Toy you are legally wrong. I can absolutely assure you that without the stipuation of a limitation the license held by a human being is applicable to other SL accounts just as if I buy software that fails to stipulate I may only install it on one computer at a time, legally I may install it on as many of my computers as I please.

However reasonable the error involved you describe, it is an error.

The limitations we agree to, to access SL, do not restrict use of full perm items to one account. None of the obligations contracted into by agreeing to the TOS oblige end users to mind read, or to make guesses about what end user limitations were intended but not mentioned in any end user license. That would be an absurd requirement and you will not find it anywhere in the Secondlife TOS.

The agreed terms do not entail any obligation to ensure anyone knows who a user's alts are before they use content in ways that do not contravene eiyher the specified end user license, or LL's permissions systems.

Your odd court vigenette is no help to full perm sellers who need to know the realities of the situation and how they can best exercise control over their content and IP, rather than hear fairy tales that never will fly. I have every confidence that if someone tested a case the court would rule firstly that the parties to the contract are the legal persons operating the avatars, and secondly that in the absence of any explicit limitation to use content with a single avatar forming part of the contract, that no such limitation is a term of the contract.

I have no idea why this would be less than obvious actually.

The courts do not go about granting disposal of property, possession of property, and the right to contract to things that lack legal personhood Toy. They just don't. The courts are additionally very loathe to interpret contracts as entailing anything not specified as a term of the contract.

In reality your fairy tale is fantastically far fetched, and it's not as though someone in the thread has not confirmed that they have sought legal advice on exactly this issue and had a lawyer confirm as much.

Why on earth do you not want full perm creators who want to limit their content to be as best protected as possible? The reality and how to best protect their creations is what they need, not far-fetched fairy tales.

Anaiya Arnold · March 19, 2012

Rival Destiny wrote:

Toysoldier Thor wrote:

Anaiya Arnold wrote:

Personally I've never needed to use a full perm item with another account, but I would not be judging someone who does so in instances where there is no indication they should not. If sellers want full perm content restricted to a single avatar, then they need to explicate this rather than expect everyone else to guess as much.

It does no one any favours to pretend otherwise and in fact risks misinforming a full perm seller who might decide to rely on such an assumption based on reading such inaccurate advice. Anyone who wants to restrict use to one avatar should explicate this clearly in their license and preferably before the sale unless they are willng to refund the purchase. It's not something that it is reasonable to expect others to guess when the expectation of non-sharing between avatars relies on a wholly inaccurate assumption to begin with.

There cannot be sales between avatars anymore than there can be sales between chairs, or bootstraps. It's very important that full perm sellers understand that they need to stipulate rather than assume non-sharing between a single persons' avatars if they wish such a restriction to limit sharing between a single person's avatars. Otherwise, even with the best will in the world, some people are going to fail to guess the intended restriction and will end up sharing between their alts contrary to the content creator's wishes, without ever realizing the content creator did not want them to do that.

Anaiya,

As has been posted earlier... the full perm sellers had and still have a reasonable cause understanding that BY DEFAULT unless otherwise stipulated, the buyer of content should not assume the buy is between HUIMANS - its between REGISTERED LL ACCOUNTS that all humans have agreed to the LL TOS before each of their registered LL accounts were allowed to log into SL with.

You and your Alts each operated independently by you. Of course you have the full rights as the human that registered each of these LL accounts, but you also agreed to the limitations that each of your accounts with LL has.

You as a buyer of the full perm content should assume that you CANNOT transfer content to your other alts based on LL agreed terms and because how can any full perm seller reasonably control use of their IP usage when he / she has absolutely no way to confirm or even validate who all your alts are? HECK even LL doesnt know that all your Alts belong to you. So, how do you or Gavin or any others think it would hold up in court when the Seller takes you to court for this poor assumption of the LL TOS and the Seller's Usage agreement?

And, last point on your content... its is really in the best interests of the BUYER of full perm content to buy this content from the seller with a 100% full agreement of the terms that the Buyer needs from the content. WHY?

Because lets say you are a buyer of a pack of full perm textures from a Seller of these textures. The deal happens and you then spend 2 months making this amazing new creation and put this new creation onto MP and make 1000's of sales from this build. Then 1 year later the Seller notices that you seem to have violated one of his conditions of use of his full perm textures. He demands you STOP selling your products based on it and also he is furious and wants compensation from you - a portion of all your sales you made from this amazing build.

He takes you to court over it.

IF he loses, other than court fees all he loses is no access to the revenue he wanted from you and nothing else.

IF he wins, courts shock you and side with the Seller (Gavin and Riven and Nef were wrong after all - ohh darn - why did I listen to them and that thread).... other than court fees you also lose your main product that was a hot seller, you also *owe the Seller actual $ penalties by paying his back a portion of the renenues that he demand.

So.... let me ask you again.... who do you think is the party between the full perm seller and buyer that should be most interested in making sure the terms of use of the full perm content.

Let me answer for you..... THE BUYER !!

Anaiya - None of this is fact but a mere interpretation so when in doubt, simply ask the creator if you ever have an issue and/or something is not stated in a license. Often if it isn't stated, it is because the creator has no problem with your intended use. User licenses tend to weight out the do not's more so than the can do's.

The OP of this thread has already contacted one creator who did NOT stipulate alt useage and was told that they have no issues with his alt using the textures.

And as I said in one of my earlier comments, there exists at least one texture maker that has it listed in their license that alts are allowed to use the textures.

hth

No it's a fact that avatars cannot contract, and it's a fact that contracts do not contain clauses they do not contain.

I have no doubt about those two facts.

Nor do I need to contact any creators about how I am using content since regardless what any particular creator intends so far as alt sharing is concerned, I'm not in any danger whatsoever of frustrating their intent. That much is clear in my first post.

My concern is that on the basis of baseless assumption, some posters are giving an impression that full perm creators have some protection in an imagined "default" limitation.

It's important for full perm content sellers to understand the reality so they are best prepared to control their content as they intend.

I have no doubt that there are people who will never guess such a limitation is intended if it's not in the license, but would abide by the restriction if it is there in the license. That's more than enough reason to ensure full perm creators who intend this limitation are appraised of the need to explicitly include it in their licenses.

Toysoldier Thor · March 19, 2012

Anaiya,

I am not going to debate your logic or that of Rivens or Gavins.

If you feel so confident in your beliefs enough that you cannot and/or do not even want to take the time to confirm your belief with the intent of the Creator.... that is completely your call.

If some day a creator - rightly or wrongly - takes you to court for creating content with his / her input content in a way not intended because of LL TOS that your registered LL account agreed to or interpretation of the Creator's License to Use then that is great.

I guess you like going to court just for the fun of it and like risking your resold goods on your "beliefs" as opposed to the facts as well as the Creator's intent.

There is nothing to discuss with you or riven or gavin. Do what you want.

My position still stands to those that want to avoid conflict and future potential court actions and costs....

DONT ASSUME YOU KNOW THE LAW or KNOW HOW A COURT WILL DECIDE.

Do what the OP did.... confirm your standing with the Creator before spending time, $, effort on making a creation that you plan to resell.

Smart Merchants would do that.

Rival Destiny · March 19, 2012

Amalya said: No it's a fact that avatars cannot contract, and it's a fact that contracts do not contain clauses they do not contain.

Perhaps I misspoke somewhere but an avatar as agent to the owner of that account may contract but in the end, the legal entity is yourself or the human being. The other statement is redundant. Of course if a clause is not contained in a contract, it's not there. Perhaps I read that wrong but I dont' recall stating that specifically, although sometimes my grammar isn't up to par.

Bottom line is that I couldn't agree with you more & have stateed much the same in this thread.

Truth is, and in all fairness to sl players, a lot of people are here for the simple pleasure of expressing themselves. A lot and learing the logistics and legalities as they go. So in order to be a polite, law abiding, getalong type citizen, it surely doesn't h urt to give the creator the courtesy of asking should they not be knowledgable etc.

Gavin Hird · March 19, 2012

You still don't seem to understand or accept that a SecondLife account can't breach IP – only persons can. ...and the person already obtained a licence to the material with the initial purchase.

So the court could only evaluate the case based on financial loss by the merchant. A loss that for most full perm items traded in SecondLife amounts to a few dollars at most. You would be hard pressed to find any creator that operates with so many alts that the loss adds up to something. Such a case would be thrown out of court immediately. Even the petty court would not bother.

Technically, it is impossible not to breach IP accoring to your twisted logic, unless main and alts operated on completely different computers. The minute you view the item in question on your computer, it is stored in your viewer's cache. So already there you have technically shared it with your alts on the same computer.

Further, most creators at some stage store full perm textures on their machines to be able to modify them in a graphics application one way or the other before they are applied to a product. How is that not sharing with your alts? – They see the same file system as your primary.

Or they use an alt to test their final product with end-user permissions before the product is put to the market. Which is nothing but fair use of the full perm material by any legal standard. Do you really suggest the tester should have to purchase another full perm set and apply to the product being tested?

In my view a "licence" such as this is completely absurd, both because it is in violation of all established IP and fair use legislation, but also because it is virtually impossible to implement from a technical standpoint unless you have one computer per SecondLife account.

Toysoldier Thor · March 19, 2012

Gavin Hird wrote:

You still don't seem to understand or accept that a SecondLife account can't breach IP – only persons can. ...and the person already obtained a licence to the material with the initial purchase.

So the court could only evaluate the case based on financial loss by the merchant. A loss that for most full perm items traded in SecondLife amounts to a few dollars at most. You would be hard pressed to find any creator that operates with so many alts that the loss adds up to something. Such a case would be thrown out of court immediately. Even the petty court would not bother.

Technically, it is impossible not to breach IP accoring to your twisted logic, unless main and alts operated on completely different computers. The minute you view the item in question on your computer, it is stored in your viewer's cache. So already there you have technically shared it with your alts on the same computer.

Further, most creators at some stage store full perm textures on their machines to be able to modify them in a graphics application one way or the other before they are applied to a product. How is that not sharing with your alts? – They see the same file system as your primary.

Or they use an alt to test their final product with end-user permissions before the product is put to the market. Which is nothing but fair use of the full perm material by any legal standard. Do you really suggest the tester should have to purchase another full perm set and apply to the product being tested?

In my view a "licence" such as this is completely absurd, both because it is in violation of all established IP and fair use legislation, but also because it is virtually impossible to implement from a technical standpoint unless you have one computer per SecondLife account.

Gavin,

Like I said to you and the others that are looking for legal loopholes to violate a Creator's IP intent and rights.

Its very clear from all your postings that your style is to operate business on the edge and take advantages of any legal / cotnractual weakness you can find. Must be part of the "apple" way - who knows. If you truly feel comfortable in oprating this way in SL and recommending to other to do the same thing in a micro-economy where most creators are too small to be protected from players like you and a few other here in this thread....

no one is stopping you.

Its sad that you and a couple others here are actually prmoting this practice on trying to take advantage of full perm creators in SL that are simply happy to make a few bucks / lindens in this micro-economy. But again, there is no stopping Bullies in the sandbox if they want to be bullies - especially in this SL economy where many creators on the MP are very new and not familiar with being a selling creator. Bullies will find these targets and are more than happy to take advantage of them.

I do actually agree with Riven's last posting as she is finally saying what I (and a few others) have been saying....

- Play Fair - Play Nice

- Dont assume your legal rights.... simply contact the full perms creator and ask and confirm his/her intent

Enjoy your day Gavin - you have a lot of targets in SL to go after.

Gavin Hird · March 19, 2012

Toysoldier Thor wrote:

Like I said to you and the others that are looking for legal loopholes to violate a Creator's IP intent and rights.

This has nothing to do with looking for loopholes, but everything to do with clearing up the landscape for what the actual legal picture looks like.

Lulling people into thinking they will get legal protection by declaring a "licence" that has no root in the law serves nobody any purpose. It only creates noise, misunderstandings and frustration, and will at the end of the day hurt the issuer's own business.

Paul Hexem · March 19, 2012

Toysoldier Thor wrote:

Gavin Hird wrote:

You still don't seem to understand or accept that a SecondLife account can't breach IP – only persons can. ...and the person already obtained a licence to the material with the initial purchase.

So the court could only evaluate the case based on financial loss by the merchant. A loss that for most full perm items traded in SecondLife amounts to a few dollars at most. You would be hard pressed to find any creator that operates with so many alts that the loss adds up to something. Such a case would be thrown out of court immediately. Even the petty court would not bother.

Technically, it is impossible not to breach IP accoring to your twisted logic, unless main and alts operated on completely different computers. The minute you view the item in question on your computer, it is stored in your viewer's cache. So already there you have technically shared it with your alts on the same computer.

Further, most creators at some stage store full perm textures on their machines to be able to modify them in a graphics application one way or the other before they are applied to a product. How is that not sharing with your alts? – They see the same file system as your primary.

Or they use an alt to test their final product with end-user permissions before the product is put to the market. Which is nothing but fair use of the full perm material by any legal standard. Do you really suggest the tester should have to purchase another full perm set and apply to the product being tested?

In my view a "licence" such as this is completely absurd, both because it is in violation of all established IP and fair use legislation, but also because it is virtually impossible to implement from a technical standpoint unless you have one computer per SecondLife account.

Gavin,

Like I said to you and the others that are looking for legal loopholes to violate a Creator's IP intent and rights.

Its very clear from all your postings that your style is to operate business on the edge and take advantages of any legal / cotnractual weakness you can find. Must be part of the "apple" way - who knows. If you truly feel comfortable in oprating this way in SL and recommending to other to do the same thing in a micro-economy where most creators are too small to be protected from players like you and a few other here in this thread....

no one is stopping you.

Its sad that you and a couple others here are actually prmoting this practice on trying to take advantage of full perm creators in SL that are simply happy to make a few bucks / lindens in this micro-economy. But again, there is no stopping Bullies in the sandbox if they want to be bullies - especially in this SL economy where many creators on the MP are very new and not familiar with being a selling creator. Bullies will find these targets and are more than happy to take advantage of them.

I do actually agree with Riven's last posting as she is finally saying what I (and a few others) have been saying....

- Play Fair - Play Nice

- Dont assume your legal rights.... simply contact the full perms creator and ask and confirm his/her intent

Enjoy your day Gavin - you have a lot of targets in SL to go after.

Toy, you're still not getting it. It's not about wanting to take advantage of full perms creators. Nobody here has said that.

What they have said is, if you do not want your full perms creations shared between a user's alts, you have to specify that or it's your own fault, legally.

Yes, morally, a buyer should ask first. It's the nice thing to do. But if they don't, the courts will not help you. You won't have a case.

EDIT: And accusing people of wanting to violate IP is petty, and I'm pretty sure against posting guidelines.

Toysoldier Thor · March 19, 2012

No Gadget,

You dont get it and thats not what was being said and implied by some like Nef and Gavin.

Nef's post - you can read yourself. She basically said that she is the legal human behind all her alts and it dont matter what the Creator says or doesnt say.... She has the right to transfer the content to any alts if she wants.

Gavin is saying that LL TOS that all his registered Alts have been created under and that Gavin himself agreed to the LL TOS terms dont hold water to protect the creator and so its a free-for-all that nothing is protecting the content creator even if the creator does stipulate a EULA. That LL TOS should be challenged just like Apple's and Microsoft's are. As if us 100s of whopping $ SL businesses are in the same league as these $billion companies.

So, Gavin, you, and others are all saying that in order for us full perm creators to protect our micro-income IP's we need to seek $1000's in legal advice, write up multi-page EULA contracted buying agreements, and also get all our REAL LIFE CUSTOMERS behind all these countless SL Alts to formally agree to these EULA prior to them making a purchase (something we cannot even do since MP has no such mechanism), and we should get all our customers to formally register and dsiclose all their alts as well as themselves to us prior to them having access to our IP content.

If we dont, loophole seeking hawks like Nef and Gavin and others will take advantage of us micro-income generating full perm creators because we didnt protect all aspects of our IP rights agreement.

I know what you will say... "No thats not what we are saying... we are just saying ...." but once the full perm creators are all smart enough to protect ourselves from this one weakness that you all can take advantage of us with... Gavin will find 10 more missing statements to point out.

YOU DONT GET IT...

This is SL and most SL Creators dont even earn enough income from their customers to pay for 1 hour of lawyer time.

Get a grip of reality here.... remember where our economy is.

The full perm creators - no matter how big or small / rich or poor will always be exposed by those that want to take advantage of them. Since they are full perm to allow other creator / merchants to use their content .... they do not have any technical tools to limit improper use of their content. They have to simply trust that most of their customers are honest fair-playing customers. They know this is not always the case and Loophole Leveraging customers as well as theives will always be a part of doing business.

Anyway.... this is a losing battle with you all.

Toysoldier Thor · March 19, 2012

Hmmm....

Based on what Gavin has been posting... saying that LL TOS is invalid and wont hold water in the eyes of the court and that because of all these stated LL TOS and EULA.... a customer is still entitled to make copies of content ...

that to me in all I know about the definition of "LOOPHOLES" is what Gavin is clearlly suggesting.

And when someone is suggesting that these loopholes render the IP Creator's rights useless and Customers can do what they want regardless.... that is violation.

I dont see anything that goes again any posting violation.

BUT Gadget... know how LL Mods work.... if you file an AR against me... I am sure they will be more than happy to fully find the correct interpretation in the guidelines to agree with you. Has happened before since I am not a friend of LL.

So do what you must Gadget. If my postings disappear... at least I know why.

Paul Hexem · March 19, 2012

Don't be so defensive. I'm not going to report you. I meant, doing it doesn't really help your side of the debate.

Gavin is wrong about the TOS being invalid, you're correct. Only parts of it are invalid in certain countries.

Customers do have to abide by the TOS and by a creator's EULA. But if the creator does not specify "no alts", it's not a loophole to share it with your alt. It's allowed. It may not be in line with what the creator wants, but if it's not specified, it's legally allowed.

Unfortunately, that's the society we live in. We have to spell out everything we want/don't want when we make a contract or a TOS or a EULA.

The permissions system in SL covers most bases, but for things like full perms objects for creators, you really do need to write up everything.

Madeliefste Oh · March 20, 2012

Toysoldier Thor wrote:

The full perm creators - no matter how big or small / rich or poor will always be exposed by those that want to take advantage of them. Since they are full perm to allow other creator / merchants to use their content .... they do not have any technical tools to limit improper use of their content. They have to simply trust that most of their customers are honest fair-playing customers. They know this is not always the case and Loophole Leveraging customers as well as theives will always be a part of doing business.

Yes, that is the consequense of operation on the market we chose for, an offering the kind of product we do.

But actually I don't have the idea that the people who take part in this discussion are after finding loopholes to take advantage of them. I think in general that you don't have much to fear from people who take part in discussions like this one. They are in general well aware of the rights of a creator and act respectfully to them.

I think your content will more often be abused by people who are not aware of any copyrights issues, people who never read notecards, people who simply forget that they are not allowed to share your content when someone in a group for example askes 'does anybody have a full perms sculpted fence to share?', or people who think 'full perms is full perms, the SL system goes above a creators license, so I don't have to stick to those'.

There is no such thing as a common user lisence, that every SL creator uses and that has loopholes. Everybody allows different use of his products. What this creator allows, is a no-go for another creator.

For example the license that comes with my products limits the use of the product to SL. People are not allowed to take my content to another grid, without my permission. But there are enough full perm sellers who don't limit the use to SL. Maybe their intent is to limit the use to SL or maybe they are perfectly fine with their content moving to another grid then SL. People who care about copyright and think it is important for their business to have this arranged properly, will often ask for permission, though the license itself does not forbit it. People who think it is my full perms pack, I paid for it so I can do what I want with it,will probably just upload their content to another grid, without contacting the creator.

I know there are a quiet some full perms creators who make their sculpty maps 'no mod', because they don't want people to download the map to their computer. I for example have no problem at all when people upload my sculpt map to their computer. Some people work in 3D with Photoshop Extended. When they are not able to download my sculpt map, it cuts off this possibility for them.

Now there might also be creators who don't sell their maps 'no mod', but still don't want people to download the sculpt map to their computer. Then the eula is the perfect place to make this clear to the customer.

When the creator does not make clear in his eula that he doesn't allow saving the file to the buyers computer, and someone buys the product and save the sculpt map to his computer, then he did not find a loop hole to abuse the creators rights. The creator has simply not made full use of its rights, and forget to exclude as kind of use he does not want to allow. So this creator must make up his mind how importent it is to him to prevend that people can not download this content. Importent enough to rewrite his eula? Or is he going to make all his maps 'no mod', or will he leave it like it is and allow it after all?

It are the rights of the creator, he is the one who must make up his mind about what kind of use he allows. And tell the customer, and the best place for telling is... in the license.

Anaiya Arnold · March 20, 2012