Being a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes, it doesn’t take me long to don a deerstalker and a pipe. However for this modern day version, I require a couple of Watsons, namely Nalates Urriah and Inara Pey. The TOS debate rolls on, it’s getting ugly in some quarters. There has been much speculation about what it all means. Quite frankly I’m now coming to the conclusion that it means very little, but a window of opportunity may have been opened for content creators and Linden Lab.
Now let’s get into speculation mode, the first person I saw making the Desura link was Nalates Urriah. In that post Nalates makes the point that the terms of service change is a Linden Lab terms of service change, not just a Second Life terms of service change. For example the same terms of service apply to both products, although there are a couple of sections in the TOS that are product specific, it’s a one size fits all TOS.
Nalates also speculates that this TOS change could be a means to eventually allowing Second Life content creators to sell on Desura. This speculation has been growing as the debate has rumbled on. Some have said that it’s not likely because Second Life content is specific to Second Life, but if the opportunity to sell to the Desura market was there, that would change. Others have welcomed the idea of extending the markets in the Linden Lab product catalogue, one person even said the concept was “Freaking awesome“. That’s where opportunity knocks.
I do think there’s potential in this area and that plenty of content creators would find the idea of selling content to other markets “Freaking awesome“. However the wording of the TOS would mean some content creators would be reluctant to participate. Then there’s the damp squib part, that’s brought to us by Inara Pey who in her own post on The Desura connection points out that sections of the TOS that many find objectionable, are actually pretty much taken from the old Desura TOS.
This is why it’s important to remember that this is a Linden Lab TOS. Personally I don’t think the one size fits all TOS works, but that’s another issue. For now let’s use the wayback machine as Inara advises and find the old Desura TOS:
“2. Use and ownership of user provided content
If you send to Desura, or upload to the System, any content of any type (“Content”), including forum posts, commentary, ideas or suggestions whether or not solicited, then: by uploading the Content you license the Content to Desura as set out in this clause 2; and you must ensure that you are the owner or creator of that content or have received permission from the owner or creator to make such submissions and to licence that content as set out in this clause 2.
You expressly authorise and permit Desura to exercise and to authorise others to exercise all of the rights comprised in copyright and all other intellectual property rights which subsist in the Content and you irrevocably consent to all such exercises. Desura is not required to compensate you or any other person in any manner for any such exercise or authorisation. In particular, Desura may use, reproduce, modify, create derivative works from, distribute, transmit, broadcast, and otherwise communicate, and publicly display and perform the Content and other works which are based on them (including by way of adaptation or derivative works) in any form, anywhere, with or without attribution to you, whether or not such use would otherwise be a breach of any person’s moral rights, and without any notice or compensation to you of any kind. This clause does not limit Desura’s privacy obligations under clause 10.
All Content and Applications added and managed by Publishers is governed by the terms and conditions agreement which they must accept prior to publishing their Applications on the System.”
In another recent post I actually said that I had seen nothing in way of complaints from the Desura crowd regarding the Linden Lab TOS and this explains why, the Desura users were already signed up with these terms. This is why all the speculation about where this is heading may well be a damp squib.
Linden Lab seem to have mixed the TOS recipes from Second Life and Desura and cooked up a dog’s dinner for many Second Life users and a standard business lunch for many Desura users. As Inara pointed out, there’s no mention of the sell/resell part in the old Desura TOS, but the parts about doing pretty much what they wanted with your content were there.
So what does this mean going forward? Quite frankly who knows, there’s certainly potential for Linden Lab to embrace content creators and widen their scope, but whether that opportunity will ever be realised or was ever part of their thinking remains a mystery, it may well be that Linden Lab have no intention of changing anything in this area.
However, the new wording in the new TOS continues to cause anguish for Second Life content creators, who have been raising some very legitimate concerns.
One TOS to rule them all simply does not work.
Actually, and being picky. I pointed to the revised Terms of Service as being a blanket to cover all of LL’s products and services the day they appeared.
Also, in terms of the Desura connection, I also pointed out that the wording found in the LL ToS appears to have been lifted without any changes whatsoever from a boilerplate ToS document which is in widespread use. While I don’t specifically point to it in my article, said boilerplate also includes the moral rights waiver.
See: http://modemworld.wordpress.com/2013/10/08/tos-changes-never-attribute-to-malice-that-which-is-adequately-explained-by-short-sightedness/
Obviously, neither the pre-existing Desura language nor the language as currently found in the ToS excuse the fact that the terms, as given, are far too broad in respect of granted rights.
Yes you did point out that it was a blanket cover Delicia Whipsnaps, all the way back on August 16th, I ended with one TOS to rule them all :p
I agree that this doesn’t excuse the fact that the terms are too broad, they have understandably gone for terms that won’t undermine the terms already agreed on Desura, but those terms aren’t really suitable for SL.
For the first time I’ve noticed a direct link to Desura on the login screen, so I clicked around a little, read the “About” page, and so on.
What sort of content might be useful to Desura users? High-quality and correctly sized textures, and efficient low-poly meshes with materials and textures I suppose – no market for silly hats or walking sticks. Ah, well.
Oh I don’t know, I was going to go wildly off the speculation spectrum and suggest LL may release a SL version of a game engine for Desura devs to use, then silly hat and walking sticks would have plenty of potential.