Linden Lab have recently found themselves in a user permissions pickle over their use of pictures for their pic of the day blog posts. Wizard Gynoid pointed this out to me in a recent comment, whereby Whiskey Monday surprisingly found that her picture had been used.
The main issue is a lack of communication, nobody from Linden Lab told Whiskey that her picture had been selected. Photos submitted to the Second Life group pool on flickr were being used on sites such as Facebook, Tumblr and Google +, no matter which rights had been selected by the author on flickr. There are two problems here, one is ignoring permissions but probably the larger issue is not informing the author. Most people would be happy to allow Linden Lab to use their photos for promotional purposes, as long as there’s attribution and communication.
However in this case, Linden Lab have decided to make some changes, as Whiskey Monday outlines here and create a new Flickr Group, with new terms and conditions.
The new terms and conditions read:
Submit your Second Life images for a chance at Second Life Pic of the Day as well as share your Second Life images and photos with other Second Life communities.
By submitting your photos or other materials to our Flickr feed you acknowledge and agree to the following terms:
By submitting my photos or other materials to the Flickr feed of Linden Research, Inc. (the “Company”) I agree to participate in the Photo of The Day program (the “Program”). As a participant of the Program I hereby grant a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free license to the Company to the images, snapshots, screenshots, photos and other materials I submit to the Program. Further, I understand that I have no right to any royalties or other compensation in connection with the rights granted above and waive any and all claims based on any such rights.
I have read the above release and waiver and fully understand the content thereof.
If you would like your photo(s) to be considered for use as a “Photo of the Day,” please select the “Attribution” or “Share Alike” license in Flickr menu then submit the photo to the Second Life Official Flickr feed.
If you do not agree to the terms above, please do not submit your photos to our feed.
Now these terms are probably pretty standard, it gives Linden Lab permission to use pictures submitted to the group as they see fit but it seems a little over the top. I guess one good thing about the new Group pool is that people can still happily submit their photos to the older and more popular group pool on Flickr. In some ways this hoo-ha has ironed out some issues, but really, Linden Lab should inform someone that their picture is on pic of the day, even if they submit the pic to this new group pool, it doesn’t take long to add a link to a comment on someone’s pic.
There is however one issue with the new official group pool, it’s an 18+ pool, meaning that minors who can legally enter Second Life, aren’t allowed to submit their pictures to the pool for consideration of pic of the day. The rules for pictures are safe level, but the group itself is set as 18+. I don’t know if this is an oversight or if it’s due to legal reasons.
This whole episode reeks to me of oversight, rather than Linden Lab being underhanded, I would imagine the pictures were being used in the right spirit, but it was ultimately an oversight not to respect permissions and it was certainly a little off not to at the very least, inform an author. I hope they will now consider informing authors that their pictures are being use, not least because it also gives the author the opportunity to promote the picture and therefore Second Life itself.
Pic of the day is a good idea, however Linden Lab may want to look at how World Of Warcraft do these things, they have a media section on their website whereby you will find Videos, Comics, Fan Art, Screenshots, Wallpaper etc. There are a lot of resources out their promoting Second Life, Linden Lab should be trying to harness them.
The use of the pictures probably falls under 7.2 of the terms and conditions. Although it’s not directly uploaded to SL servers, I presume it’s still part of the service that LL set up on Flickr… The service of an “official SL Flickr page”.
7.2 You grant certain Content licenses to Linden Lab by submitting your Content to the Service.
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.
You understand that this license enables Linden Lab to display, distribute, promote, and improve the Service. You agree that the license includes the right to copy, analyze and use any of your Content as Linden Lab may deem necessary or desirable for purposes of debugging, testing, or providing support or development services in connection with the Service and future improvements to the Service. The license granted in this Section 7.2 is referred to as the “Service Content License.”
Good point, I think you’re right, they considered those pictures to be submitted to their service.They’ve now made this official by setting their Flickr group rules with that TOS in mind.
Extract above taken from Second Life’s Terms of Service. Full terms for anyone interested can be found here http://secondlife.com/corporate/tos.php
Interesting subject. There is another off-shoot issue from this as well. Are pictures posted to mysecondlife.com (the SL feed) similarly protected by CCL etc or is there a hidden away smallprint somewhere in the ToS that allows LL or any SL users to copy, sell, distribute or otherwise use other users’ pictures posted there?
I’d imagine that pictures submitted to mysecondlife.com are subject to the ToS that Paul points out above and are therefore LL property.
Yeah would agree on a quick reread of Paul’s ToS link re. LL’s rights, but it doesn’t state that other users may use the images. Therefore I presume, bar LL, any poster of a picture retains all IP rights.
Hmm that’s a really good point that I hadn’t even considered, that might be a right can of worms.
Hmm…I had a photo chosen once for “Pic of the Day”, and was notified in the comments that it had been. I didn’t realize that they’d stopped leaving those comments. I thought it was a fun thing to have happen, and didn’t care that they’d done it, but I guess there are some that take their work a little more seriously than I do. (And probably should!) :o)
I think it’s the lack of notification that was the issue, most people would be happy their pic was featured. Maybe it was an oversight that day.