I’m unnerved. I can’t even explain why. All I know is that it’s related to the changes made to the Terms Of Service (and the third party policy along with it). However, it seems I am not the only one. As Tateru Nino wrote in yesterday’s Virtual Whirl: “… the new Second Life TOS has to be the single most demoralizing block of text that has crossed my desk in my life.” Even she is unable to articulate what exactly would be demoralizing about it. Same goes for Nicholaz Beresford, who was upset enough to leave SL altogether, even though he couldn’t point a finger at what exactly upset him.

All that got me thinking, even prior to reading Massively, Nicholaz’ post or Prok’s usual rant. I am living in a country that states in its own constitution that “ownership commits. Its use should at the same time serve the common good.”¹ Also, our copyright law allows explicitly for copies of any work for private, non-commercial use. And I think what upset me is that all these rights are being counterfeited by ‘terms of service’ that got pressed upon the users without any prior communications or discussion.

Therefor, I had, somewhat in a haste and without taking time to voice my concerns properly, written an email to Mitch Kapor, both one of the presidents of Linden Labs and co-founder of the Electronics Frontier Foundation (whose member I am). The email is quoted here in its entirety.

Dear Mr. Kapor,

I write as a resident of Second Life, which I have been for more than 3 years now. During that time, and especially during the last few months I have witnessed several changes which have been conflicting with my beliefs in digital rights, and as I understand you’re both a director of Linden Labs, and a co-founder of the ECC, I’d like to hear your opinion on them, if possible.

From its onset, Second Life had several technical restrictions in place that made it difficult to share content in-world, and served as strong copyright tools for creators. Also, it lacked the ability to backup anything that was stored under each Second Life account. Now it is my personal impression, that this stance has become worse with time.

It seems to me that Linden Labs has been, and is increasingly catering to inworld businesses, whose interests are – just as any other person or organization profiting from selling copyrighted material – to restrict the use and distribution of that material as much as they can. For example, it is not possible to have several accounts in Second Life and share assets between them, as these are either non-transferable, or non-copyable. Or, it is not possible to make a backup or export of creations released under a Creative Commons license, such as the famous art exhibit ‘The Far Away’ by resident AM Radio.

While this issue has been around for long and was certainly discussed more thoroughly before, I am worried that with the recently updated Terms Of Service, things might go even further into the direction of a strictly copyright controlled environment. The way I understand the updated TOS, all we ‘own’ in Second Life are licenses. Either licenses granted to exchange services in return for others (like the inworld ‘currency’) or licenses to use certain content created by others, or even ourselves. We, the residents, no longer ‘own’ the world, and maybe we never did. But then, Linden Labs has been misleading us in the past by claiming that the world was not only created, but also ‘owned’ by us.

And while this direction does not only contradict Linden Labs original claims, it must certainly contradict what the EFF stands for. The way Second Life is managed now, it
1. only caters to the interests of copyright holders, not users
2. strips residents of any ownership rights, replacing them with ‘licenses’ which are revocable at any time
3. prohibits them from backing up any of the content they have acquired legally, or even made themselves.

Dear Mr. Kapor, I highly respect your work and dedication to digital rights, and therefor would be most happy if you could give the matter some consideration and maybe tell me about your take on this situation.

With kind regards,
V

I believe this, most of all, sums my personal frustration with Linden Labs and the Second Life TOS up: They are way too restrictive in regards to a fair use of copyrighted material, and cater way too much to the constant demands of ‘creators’, especially those who thrive on in-world businesses. The technical restrictions of Second Life do never allow you to make legal copies of works for yourself, unless you are the creator of these works. This especially conflicts with works that the creators themselves have set free. Many of my own creations are published under Creative Commons, and I am not the only one; the popular exhibition ‘the far away’ by AM Radio, for example, is published under Creative Commons, too. Consequently, this means that the work itself, including all parts of it, may be copied by anyone and used, at least privately, for anything. I personally distribute a notecard along with my creations, stating the allowance of these uses explicitly. Still, the copying, and more importantly, the saving and exporting of someone elses work requires the use of a copybot client, which can very well result in a ban from the Second Life service.

Now, we’ve got a Snapshot and Machinima Policy, which was hailed by the EFF, but all in all unneccessary from my (but not only my) very personal point of view, as it regulates things that fall under a fair use doctrine anyway. It would be ridiculous to ask each and every creator of anything visible on a snapshot for their permission, just as ridiculous as it would be to ask every creator of everything appearing on a photograph in RL (starting with clothes, hair dresses, buildings, furniture, you name it).

I repeat: I believe, in adherence to the constitution of this country I am living in, that ownership commits. It is not only a right, but also a duty to further the common good along with it. So far, there’s been a lot of talk about rights. I wonder when we will start talking about our duties.

1. Translation by myself. [↩]