i was just reading Mo Hax’s post “caveat creatores: second inventory?” and got tickled enough by what he wrote to start a reply — which got a bit long in the end, so i’m posting my thoughts here…

what got me tickled were the following sentences:

Full permissions or not, moving any content from SL outside of SL seems unethical and probably illegal. I was sure I would find a legal statement expressly forbidding the copying of content from SL into other systems, like OpenLife or any OpenSim grid. But after rereading the entire TOS and all the SI FAQ I could not find it.

[…]

Using Second Inventory might actually be hurting OpenSim development. SI is becoming something of a defacto content migration tool for use in OpenSim grids. There is no real system for content around OpenSim grids and when pressed SI consumers usually respond, “Well I don’t think there is anything wrong with it.”

There is something wrong with it. Second Inventory combines open source libraries (that do most of the heavy lifting) with its closed code and security encryption asking buyers to just trust its copyright policies, which, according to the FAQ are ‘coming soon’ and have already made LL leery. So while Second Inventory makes money for its closed and ethically questionable product, OpenSim misses the support, even pressure, to improve.

i think we have to distinguish two cases here:

1. i create something entirely from scratch (my own textures, my own scripts, and so forht): according to the LL TOS i give LL a license to use what i upload/create (albeit a pretty broad license, agreed), but i still retain the IP

2. i buy something with full copy permissions from a vendor in-LL-world, that is i acquire a license not the IP.

in the first case, i can do whatever i want to do with my content: i can take it with me to whatever place i want, i can sell it, i can give it away for free, i can do all of that at the same time since i own the copyright (which is the IP in this case).

with the latter case we do have a problem: what exactly is the license under which i obtained the content? what does it allow?

the answer: we don’t know for sure. did the content creator own all the rights to the content parts she used in making the content she sold to me? from a (perhaps naïve) user perspective all we have are the permissions.¹ we assumed those were full copy permissions, so i can claim that i do have a license to copy the content in whatever way i want, including taking it with me to an OpenSim grid.

i can see that LL’s “permissions” system is basically a kindergarten version of a “license” system (it certainly is not a DRM system and was never intended to be that). it in no way addresses real “IP” licensing issues — and i seriously doubt that all of the content creators in SecondLife have thought about things like certificates of originality and about making sure that they do have the required licenses to actually sell (license) their content.

i argue that in the absence of a proper licensing system we cannot then complain about content being used in ways that we have not expected (i.e., full copy permission content being taken to other virtual world).

what i fail to see, however, is how this damages OpenSim. all it can do is give SecondInventory a bad name (perhaps deservedly, perhaps undeservedly) and it does point to (yet another) deficiency of SecondLife: no clear way of specifying licensing terms (how can you even express GPL licensing terms with the permissions system?).