Tali Rosca

That is exactly the point. The ToS requires you to give LL the right to use the content in any manner, for any purpose, in any media (and warrant that you have the necessary rights to do so). No license allows you to pass on such extensive rights to a 3rd party. By uploading under these terms, you will be violating anything but a pure Public Domain release.

Ebbe Linden, since I know you sometimes answer questions directly here on the forum, I am reaching out to you in hopes of you addressing a question which has so far gone unanswered, despite a lot of talk about related issues. As you know, there are worries about the Terms of Service section 2.3. While you have updated some text in that section, a problematic part still grammatically reads that we are required to give LL a license to do, in essence, “this, this, this and everything else”. This turns the sentence into a list of examples, akin to the “including, but not limited to” lists you often see in such licenses. This is widely regarded as legally problematic in relation to 3rd party content libraries or commercial work for 3rd parties, since it requires us to give away rights which are simply not ours to give. I hope you will take the time to address this directly, and either 1) Give a convincing and legally binding explanation for why “and otherwise exploit in any manner whatsoever, all or any portion of your User Content (and derivative works thereof), for any purpose whatsoever in all formats” does not actually mean “and otherwise exploit in any manner whatsoever, all or any portion of your User Content (and derivative works thereof), for any purpose whatsoever in all formats”. 2a) Explain why you believe it is in SL’s best interest to block such use, or 2b) Confirm that it is LL’s official stance that content creators should violate 3rd party licenses and hope nobody protests. If there is another option I have missed, I would love to hear it, but please do not tell me that “LL is not interested in stealing your content”. I am aware of that, and that is not what I am asking about. This is purely about the legal compatibility of the terms of service with common licenses; something I find critical if SL (and SL2) is to be the platform for creation and international commerce and sharing you talked about when joining Linden Lab, and not just a toy for loyal residents who know and trust LL. Bluntly, I feel LL has dodged this specific question for long enough, and it is time to give the community an answer.

Interesting. I think you're right. A previous version of that clause said "Post, display or transmit any Content or conduct or host any activity that is explicitly sexual, intensely violent or otherwise designated as Adult under our Maturity ratings, except as set forth in those ratings." Terms of Service Archive That seems to be another casualty of the "we write something in our legal document, but don't worry, we don't mean it" 2013 update. ETA: As Therea writes, in this case the intention seems pretty clear, given how explicit and detailed the description of the maturity rating is in other places of the document. It is still curious that they chose to reword an existing clause to introduce a contradiction.

...except that they then add "and otherwise exploit in any manner whatsoever, all or any portion of your User Content (and derivative works thereof), for any purpose whatsoever in all formats, on or through any media, software, formula, or medium now known or hereafterdeveloped, and with any technology or devices now known or hereafter developed" which makes all other parts of the sentence a pretty moot point. "We can do this, this, and this. Oh, and additionally, anything we please". I have a strong suspicion that LL didn't intend to update the section 2.3 at all. They just realized how bad it would look if they could update the "Skill Games" section with a week's notice after having promised to work on the ToS for almost a year, so they threw some extra, inconsequential words into the sentence.

When it comes to content rights, there are no changes. They have kept the "and otherwise exploit in any manner whatsoever, all or any portion of your User Content (and derivative works thereof), for any purpose whatsoever in all formats, on or through any media" which overrules anything else they say about it.

Also remember that you can set the "Physics Shape Type" in the features tab of the build dialog, to have the sim physics see your prim as a simpler object than it visually appears. This can cut down a *lot* on LI.

In short, many libraries specifically do allow you to resell final items which contains parts from the library. Others would, say, allow you to upload it to SL for personal use even if they do not allow resale. Both uses will be blocked by LL claiming the right to use the textures as they please; that is exceeding the license, so you cannot allow that, and hence you cannot upload. And as you say, you were previously "allowing Linden Lab the right to resale/utilize in any way that would promote SL in any fashion". Under the new ToS, they claim the right to use it for anything, whether SL-related or not.

I still consider it simply a screw-up in wording. I really don't believe LL has any intention of invoking "the scenario", even if they claim the right to do so. (And I also think it could be challenged if they attempted, but it's a theory I really don't care for testing). My guess is that this is a cut'n'paste spillover from their work on making one ToS applicable to several services. But the incompatibility with any other license is a practical problem. I can't help but notice, though, that it mirrors LL's rules for object export: That you must have created the object; not merely have the rights to it. It would be pretty harsh to enforce that for uploads, too.

"If you take the time to copyright anything you create and import to SL, nothing in the TOS can override your copyright." While technically true, it is beside the point. For one, you do not need to "take the time to copyright" anything. You automatically have copyright of your creations. (Berne Convention, since 1886 in most of the world; 1989 in the US, though in the US, registering it allows for higher damages on infringement). And you already grant some rights to LL, since you allow them to distribute your items to other users. You can't suddenly say "I have copyright in this texture; LL has to pay me royalties for showing it to other SL users". -It is exactly this the clause we're talking about here is written to provide and protect against, and it is common amongst all hosting providers. Elle is right in the sense that this does not mean that the ToS "overrides your copyright". You still hold that. You have just granted LL the unlimited and irrevocable right to use your work, but you can still decide how others are allowed to use your work. (Though, of course, since LL also claims the right to sub-license, that could get out of your hands, too). Now, whether the new ToS is so over-broad as to be unenforceable is an open question, and I lean towards believing so. It’s a general principle that the law provides a minimum baseline, and you can’t go below that in a contract, and I think that’s what Elle alludes to when saying that the ToS “can’t override”. It is simply not reasonable to hand all commercial rights away simply by uploading to a hosting provider.

ImaTest, if you've always believed that LL could take your textures and, say, sell them on Shutterstock as they please, then no, nothing has changed for you. That is, however, a pretty big change. Previously, the ToS allowed them to use your textures to run SL, not to make a business elsewhere. This is what people are concerned about. This change also effectively prevents almost all use of 3rd party textures, whether from CG Textures or any other library, paid or free, since those libraries almost never allow resale; something LL now demands that you give them the right to. (Credit to you for doing your textures 100% by yourself, but the use of a - often commercial - texture library is common in 3D modeling). This is not the same as LL "also has free use of those same textures they didn't create". They would have to obey the license of the library, just like everybody else.

Just to make it clear: CG Textures did not change any rules. Their license is still the same. They merely pointed out that SL changed the ToS to something which is now incompatible, now demanding that you hand over rights (to sublicense) which you do not have (and never had) according to CG Texture's license.

If LL doubles down on this wording, it is actually a pretty big problem. It has little to do with CG Textures; they just spotted the change. I must admit it had gone under my radar as "just the usual legalese for "we can actually send the content we host"." But as it stands now, LL can take anything you do and, say, sell it to other companies. Wouldn't it be interesting to see your landscaping models show up in other games, as "stock art"? I can hardly imagine that is what LL actually means (and I doubt it would hold up in court if challenged, especially given the non-announcement of such a substantial license change), but it is what they say currently.

Vick is not entirely correct. I dug out the May version of the ToS from one of the earlier rounds of comparison, and the parallel clause there states: "You agree that by uploading, publishing, or submitting any Content to or through the Servers, Websites, or other areas of the Service, you hereby automatically grant Linden Lab a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, sublicenseable, and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the Content solely for the purposes of providing and promoting the Service." Notice the "solely for the purposes of providing and promoting the Service". That is the critical part.

It seems CG Textures is right. They highlight the problematic sentence here: http://www.cgtextures.com/content.php?action=secondlife_licensechange Almost all hosting services have a similar scary-looking clause which essentially amounts to "we need to be allowed to send copies over the wire to the users, possibly in another file format than what you uploaded". The problem is that the wording here does not include a "...for the purpose of delivering the Second Life service" which such clauses need to limit the use. LL does, indeed, claim the right to do it for "any purpose whatsoever".

I'm seeing something like this as well. After a while, my usually-decent framerate drops to below 2. If I ride it out (for several minutes), it *may* recover somewhat, but not all the way to previous levels. It can even hit the general performance of other programs (sound stuttering in a media player, for example), but that is not consistent. I am pretty sure it's an issue with one of the later viewer versions, somewhere in the 3.5 line; it started happening without any other changes to my configuration. I too am on nVidia (a Quadro 3000M), but on Win7. I'll see if I can coax some diagnostics out of the graphics driver. ETA: Ok, I just realized I totally necro'ed this thread. I checked the date and saw "April; that sounds around the time it started for me", and for some reason didn't see the *year*.