Back in the summer of 2009 a new menace appeared to be on the horizon in the shape and form of BuilderBot. The tool itself in some ways had noble aims, it was designed to assist a sim owner in making the move from Second Life to the Opensim world. Rezzable were the team wanting to make the move from Second Life to their own virtual world, they had owned some very popular sims such as Greenies and Black Swan. The problem was that initial reports suggested BuilderBot would also take with it content not owned by the sim owner. This was explained in a now archived blog post by the Rezzable team :
Our intention is to make tools for serious builders. So now someone can more easily take a copy of their build off SL and archive, keep it safe. Taking stuff linkset by linkset is really slow and painful. BuilderBot allows for a significantly better way to handle content. You can then save versions of builds to make a sorta library and then use these versions to make new iterations. It is your stuff, so now you can take care of it. The risk is that rippers can also use the tool to take unauthorized copies.
Rippers don’t seem to care much about DRM and already they can use copybot to take (and sell usually) illegal copies of content. In fact there is really no way to stop this technically. It is more about not giving content thieves safe haven to sell and benefit from their theft. I don’t think this is any different that issues with music being copied or dvd films. It is just a reality of creating digital content and virtual content creators need a better way to address rather than just filing DMCA protests.
BuilderBot will grab a copy of everything on sim–so you need to be careful on what is rezzed. You can of course delete stuff that you do not have rights to. But it is possible to grab stuff that you were not intending to have in your OAR file–and accidents do happen.
Unsurprisingly Second Life content creators were not impressed. Rezzable changed their mind and decided not to release the product as originally intended. Shopping Cart Disco reported on the issue, as did New World Notes. In the Second Life forums concerned residents were trying to get the then Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon to intervene. Eventually matters settled down, but this did open a wider discussion about virtual worlds other than Second Life and the rights people have to content. Some Second Life content creators started to stipulate their content could not be used outside of Second Life, others were happy for their content to go to other grids. This was unchartered territory because prior to this it really hadn’t been much of a concern.
Opensim worlds have grasped this nettle to a degree. Kitely’s market for example has permissions for export, which means someone can export the content outside of Kitely. Second Life is not part of the Hypergrid and so has not had a need to set such permissions. However there still seems to be some confusion as to what rights people have to their content.
The Second Life terms of service point 2.7 does try to explain the limitations :
You acknowledge that the Content of the Service is provided or made available to you under license from Linden Lab and independent Content providers, including other users of the Service (“Content Providers”). You acknowledge and agree that except as expressly provided in this Agreement, the Intellectual Property Rights of Linden Lab and other Content Providers in their respective Content are not licensed to you by your mere use of the Service. You must obtain from the applicable Content Providers any necessary license rights in Content that you desire to use or access.
Linden Lab and other Content Providers may use the normal functionality of the Service, including the permissions system and the copy, modify, and transfer settings, to indicate how you may use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, or perform their respective Content solely In-World. You acknowledge and agree that the permissions system and other functionality of the Service do not grant you any license, consent, or permission to copy, modify, transfer, or use in any manner any Content outside the Service.
The point being that the default position is that you have a licence to use content in Second Life, you don’t own said content and have no rights to move content outside of Second Life unless the EULA of the content creator stipulates this. This is a thorny area because I’ve seen many an argument over full perms content being restricted by a content creators EULA. Some feel the permissions system overwrites such restrictions, they don’t. Some content, such as textures, need to be sold full perms but the content creator isn’t giving away ownership of content, they are just using the tools available to them.
Understanding this is going to be important in years to come as more virtual worlds open, including those owned by Linden Lab. Ownership and licences to use are going to continue to be a bone of contention. People are going to want any suitable content from Second Life to Linden Lab’s new virtual world. The good news for Second Life users is that as Linden Lab will also own that world, many more content creators are likely to be amicable to a transfer, but people really should not bank on this being the case. The items bought in Second Life are intended for use in Second Life and that’s all the default situation entitles people to.
Whereas this may well mean disappointment for some, it’s important for people to understand what they are getting when they sell and receive items, not just in Second Life, but in any virtual world.