i was reading a post talking about a professor’s move from Second Life to OpenSim and about the woes of cooperative building. in his case, students make different buildings and sometimes he has to wait for them to log in to make changes to doors and so on (he is on a grid that does not have groups implemented, yet another reason to have your own dedicated server and truly your own grid)
his post got me thinking about this whole copyright thing and virtual worlds. i am all for copyright, i even paid $1,800 USD for a font family for a project once, but . . . there are times when the virtual world should emulate the real world. buildings are an example of this and his issue would be solved if you treated buildings like you do in the real world
do you know who built your house in real life? or who built your school or work building?
so maybe when doing a cooperative project, you create agreements as to what will happen with those buildings. in the professor’s case, his students will eventually move on. what i would do (because i am sooo all knowing and smart) is to create either a flickr set or a web page featuring that student’s build, write a little about it like: “Ariel LaPoutine created this wonderful . . . .” and leave it online so that the student could point to it as their work in their resume or what have you. credit is important and should be honoured
then once the build was completed, take an OAR backup of the sim, then load that OAR and voila, the building is now yours to edit as your needs change. this is like real life, i buy a house and i paint it or make additions or whatever
as long as this is known up front then this is a good way to work for the long term. many people are losing great tools and builds when moving from Second Life because of ownership. these are still the rules we are using; in that one person creates and their name stays on that object forever
that is dumb and only a paradigm created by the walled garden of Second Life
with the ability to give items as complete regions, or even discreetly as an inventory item, this paradigm can be changed to reflect something that is a normal and real and legal concept in real life
smaller items, like my in-stream water turbine or a helicopter, can be exported as an IAR file and sold, given, traded, or whatever to someone else. they then upload that IAR and it shows as theirs and they can edit it. it’s a great way to give items, especially scripted ones because the scripts stay intact (as opposed to an XML export of it)
crediting the creator of something is important, but so is the ability to buy something and be able to edit it as times change. i have a 60 year old home, imagine that if i wanted to add more insulation or change the furnace that i had to contact the builder?
rethinking ownership is one of many things moving to OpenSim is doing and also pointing to everyone having their own grid (as far as educators and business). it is easy to imagine the professor above having his own grid and not being subject to someone else’s control (i doubt he can hit the server). that is as full a freedom as you can achieve so far
freedom can be scary and that is why many people gravitate to other grids rather than being on their own (we did), but time will change that
This is just me reading tea leaves, but it would be very useful if someone came up with a web service and a associated Opensim addon which allowed for players to enter into IP contracts (example: such and such object will become MOD after X conditions) and then allowed for said contract to be linked to the perms of the object(s) in question. When the correct conditions are met, the service automatically negotiates the change in permissions across all the affected objects in, regardless of grid.
That way you could get content agreements which are binding on a pan-grid level and also get a method for making it feasible to deploy content over several grids.
Echelon
24 Nov 10 at 3:39 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Mal Burns and Ener Hax, Rocky Constantine. Rocky Constantine said: RT @iliveisl OpenSim object ownership & copyright at i live in science land http://bit.ly/eFBD2k [...]
Tweets that mention OpenSim object ownership & copyright at i live in science land -- Topsy.com
24 Nov 10 at 4:01 pm
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
“Ownership” in SL is a completely artificial set of rules, not based on how ownership works in the real world. This is primarily because you do not truly *own* anything in SL. Linden Lab grants you a “limited use license” for all objects and services. And in many ways, it really hurts collaborators and legitimate owners of content.
So let’s make a better system.
Great post, Ener.
Pathfinder Lester
24 Nov 10 at 4:18 pm
A License IS as good as “owning” something when it comes to intangble items. You cant resell the usage fo a song or movie, or any piece of creative product you dont own but license- unless your licensed to resell.
that HOME you live in, dsigned by a real architect- who you can name if you tried or cared… was paid a fair market value most likely for his efforts…as were the contractors and builders…
so maybe youll be prepared to pay 30k for a virtual house for your avatar to live in. Or 100k for that “school” you now “use for your consutling -training buisness” that bills out out 125 usd/hr to teach people how to be “whatevers”.?
theres a need for relative worth and effort. The fact that web2.0 companies like LL ignore all of that, is why they are now dying. If i choose to license a creative IP spaceship for entertainemnt purposes and price it like a “toy” that is not the same its value” to another who will ue it as a commercial “rental service” or “film prop” in another medium. Plus its brand value is then “changed” by such usage..and its value as a specific “artifact” changes.
http://www.choosecreativecommerce.wordpress.com
c3.
if we continue to beleive that “digital” mean “almost free” for all content, and we dont then offset “realife costs of living” to those “providing” such work.. then the entire virtualization of humanity will end up as an owner/slave system as bad as the ceo to worker ratio we now have in the USA. OR. it will end in violence and a dark ages… you choose. because that is where the choice is to be made now. eithre of those worlds – or one of a properly “balanced” digital media society.
c3
24 Nov 10 at 4:40 pm
great points Pathfinder and C3
C3 has a great point about paying real cost of work. SL led to many people making goods for dirt cheap and not reflective of real world freelance rates
some people did get real world rates, like the aloft build (one sim and over $100k) and our subQuark is looking at a $220k project using OpenSim. so realistic value is out there, just a matter of people realizing that making great hair and selling it for $1.50 is pretty nutty
that’s one reason i like PayPal for virtual worlds – it’s real dollars and not funny money, or the way that artificial currency can sometimes feel
Ener Hax
24 Nov 10 at 5:41 pm
btw, awesome site C3!
Ener Hax
24 Nov 10 at 5:42 pm
Lots of valid points Ener and you are brave to take on a complex subject. I agree It is important to give credit to contributors. Sharing and the ability to build on what someone else has done is also important so a generous exchange of ideas and tools are highly desirable (look at kinect at the moment). If left open by design or not who knows and in the end not important.
I do not often send good vibes in the direction of Microsoft but kinect is most probably one of the more important products this year so well done MS.
I see Diva is working on a way to preserve global names that will be a big improvement.
Copyright and I shudder every time I see that word mainly because to me it conjure up all sorts of hindrance from sharing and building on other people work. I like Creative commons licensing in my way of thinking CC is brilliant, guiding us in the right direction. Creative commons can be used in Virtual Worlds successfully.
You are right building in a Virtual environment is (should) not be much different from “real life” both at times use lots of components that together form a product. Builders contractors and subcontractors all get paid for services or materials that goes in to the product. The big difference in a 3D digital environment is obviously the easy way to copy.
We need to be precise in what permissions are included with products we sell or give away. I feel the SL permission system can be developed a lot further than it is now. I am sure the talented people involved in opensim together with our help will get to this in due time.
Happy thanksgiving US friends
Per Eriksson
24 Nov 10 at 9:18 pm
wow! all great and contemplative comments, thank you so much – you have stretched my perspective
so many moral and ethical issues to consider. in some ways it seems so simple (copy real life) but in others it becomes more complex (too easy to copy and steal)
indeed Per, copyright and patents can kill some of the best ideas
Creative Commons is very good and reflective of the times. rather than pretend no one can copy our work, CC gives us a way to share it and allow our work to actually improve. i am always amazed at the music mashups that teenagers do online and see many of those as ways to bring different music styles together and create something that i may not have listened to otherwise
fortunately, the OpenSim core developers are working on better permissions and protection. with someone like Justin Clark-Casey as a core developer, you can rest assured that hypergrid transport and inventory are a true concern of his (based on his graduate work)
Ener Hax
25 Nov 10 at 1:10 am
Ener –
A couple of quick notes: first, Crista Lopes (Diva Canto) is now working on changing the creator name to be the full avatar name — including the grid — so that it can be preserved through OAR and IAR exports and imports.
Second, for the folks talking about the costs of production — buildings in OpenSim don’t require that you have a trained architect making the drawings, and complying with all sorts of safety regulations. A physical building, after all, can fall down and kill everyone in it. Meanwhile, the marginal costs of construction are zero in virtual worlds. In the physical world, buildings costs a lot of money. With marginal costs at zero, all you’ve got is the original fixed design costs — and the more buildings you sell, the less you can charge for each one, so that, over time, the price of virtual buildings will approach zero. (This, is, of course true for all virtual goods – not just 3d objects, but videos, music, and e-books. We already have free, ad-supported versions available for many types of virtual goods.)
Basically, the one thing that people need for virtual world content is the same thing they need for all other kinds of content — a simple one-page contract.
I recommend that students be asked to give their schools non-exclusive rights to all content they develop for the schools. (Employees should already have work-for-hire contracts in place that turn over all rights to their employers — so no new contract should be needed.)
– Maria
Maria Korolov
25 Nov 10 at 1:30 am
maria, the entire “cost will be zero” riff is just not reality. eventually all “free” items are lost, since “storing” them has no value. Heres how “zero value” content gets lost….Avalon appears one server away from deletion. Ill bet it gets “value” and priced again if that server closes down. -or its gone. for good for most .
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.graphics.rendering.misc/browse_thread/thread/e03cd1172f1fe2e7
and design costs are not “fixed”. design takes TIME = money. As to damage, Interface has caused much. and the inability to read a dial has killed as many or more than a single roof falling in.
youll get what you pay for… and anyone who went through the Desktop Publishing “revolution” knows how well younger folk do with “written, reading, thinking ” skills- values today in the US.
25 years after the “idea” of the cult of the amatuer actualy began… an idea..completely virtual..has done actual damage. and that is a “cost”
as for contracts and one pagers. yes. because they SIGNIFY that BOTH parties are CONTRIBUTING VALUE. and that VALUE has worth.
anyhow- thanks ener for the build comment. and yes. ive used paypal, and a license that predates CC by years to sell virtual items online for entertainment, non resell, personal purposes.
c3
25 Nov 10 at 9:40 am
I’ve been posting about copyrights in regard to building materials for some time, and I’m adding my links here, so maybe we can get a more serious discussion going on copyright in general:
http://fanciful-muse.livejournal.com/tag/copyright%20law
http://fanciful-muse.livejournal.com/tag/copyright
http://fanciful-muse.livejournal.com/tag/copyrights
Marie
Marie Wonka
27 Nov 10 at 3:25 pm
thanks for the links Marie =)
i have had many serious discussions on copyright and that is one reason i am no longer inSL (since LL can claim your work as their own as they see fit)
Ener Hax
27 Nov 10 at 6:18 pm