For the past few weeks, I’ve been idly keeping an eye on some little bits of news about Second Life and There.com. Seems that as the metaverse becomes more active, little earthquakes happen which affect everyone.
Take, for example, the news that Linden Labs, the creators of Second Life, are aggressively shutting down gambling enterprises within the world. Overnight, a cottage industry of campers (people who idle their avatars at various spots where they earn Linden Dollars just for sitting there), casino owners, and some nightclubs vanished. Some residents cited a visit by the FBI to Linden Labs as a probable reason for the action, and Linden Labs notes that they are complying with federal US law which prohibits online gambling if a credit card is used to facilitate the transaction. Because of this, and because of some earlier problems with illegal sexual content, the in-game escort and prostitution industry is also starting to look nervous.
Gambling and sex are (or were) big business within Second Life. No doubt these industries will take root elsewhere on another virtual world. But because these industries are so prevalent within the world, Second Life has seemed to have some problems attracting a number of cultural institutions. At least with many of the conversations I’ve had with museum professionals at various conferences, the perception that gambling and sex were rampant was a commonly-expressed one. Not that it’s an incorrect perception, but it may be that Second Life may become more attractive to institutions who have been turned off by the sleaze factor.
Another concern I’ve seen has had to do with There’s Terms of Service. It hasn’t been as big an issue as the above, but I’ve heard murmurings here and there from the museum community. Basically, There.com’s TOS specified that any content uploaded to their servers automatically fell under There.com’s copyright. A couple of weeks ago, one of my friends pointed out that There.com recently changed its TOS to change the copyright to a license:
You hereby grant to Company a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty free, worldwide license to use, publicly display, distribute, modify and otherwise fully exploit any Developer Submissions that you submit to Company for any purpose necessary or relating to the Services
So maybe the big players might be more attractive to other institutions now? There will still be sex and bad clothing and architecture in Second Life and There.com will still be targeted to a limited demographic, but these recent developments might make the metaverse feel a little safer.
August 19th, 2007 01:45
Perian,
I am not so sure *this* license is any better than There.com’s original demand that users transfer their copyright. It essentially grants all the rights of copyright to There.com (display, modify, reproduce, perform, …), and even goes one better (or worse, depending on your perspective) by claiming these rights in *perpetuity* (something you don’t get with copyright, although we seem headed in that direction…).
Licenses can be useful tools in the copyright game (witness Creative Commons licenses) or they can be used to subvert copyright law. This one seems like the latter to me…
Diane
August 30th, 2007 04:34
I agree with Diane. The license is, if anything, worse than the original claim of copyright.
Amalyah Keshet
August 30th, 2007 10:50
What’s interesting is that the new license was sent to me by someone with a rather close connection to the There.com staff, including Jessica Koeppel, who commented here before. My understanding is that the license was changed specifically as a protective measure.
In other social networking forums I’ve been involved with over the past several years, that language has become somewhat standard. It comes about in response from users who are enraged that the service is taking their copyright and imposing hard rules about user’s content. As a result, the TOU changes to give the service a license to show the content which has been uploaded by the user. The “in perpetuity” bit is intended to give the users flexibility to keep their content on the service, use it as they will, and not expect that it’s going to be automatically pulled at the end of the license or copyright term.
Actually, I’d be very interested to know if anyone has studied Web 2.0 licenses vs. standard copyright licenses? After being involved in two or three social networking/online gaming TOU working groups and having almost no experience in traditional copyright law, I have to admit that my perspective is somewhat… quirky!