Draxtor Despres is on holiday, a very busy holiday by the looks of it. However he’s been involved in a documentary for SPIEGEL TV regarding Second Life that will air later in the year, Madpea Games and Frau Yardley may be in it too.
As well as this, Draxtor has added show 30 of The Drax Files Radio Hour and a new Drax Files World Makers : Editorial Clarity. I’ll hopefully get to both of them during the next week! However I’m going to talk about last week’s Drax Files Radio Hour – Show 29 : terms, terms, terms AGAIN [rerun]. This is a repeat …. ok ok international audience, I’ll call it a bloody rerun, this is a rerun of part of show #13: terms, terms, terms…., it’s a very relevant part, it’s the interview with Richard A Goldberg who has a long history of experience when it comes to TOS for content creators. Richard is also a creator for Madpea games.
This is the show that Ebbe Altberg and the people drawing up Linden Lab’s controversial and still extremely disappointing TOS, should listen to, this way they may get a far better understanding of just why the TOS remains a major disappointment.
Richard starts off in positive fashion : “The old terms of service was a very reasonable document for content creators.” This is very true, the old terms of service gave Linden Lab the rights to run and promote the Second Life service and that was pretty much it. In all reality, that’s all they should really need.
Richard points out that the terms Linden Lab have unveiled are not unique to Linden Lab, he points out that these terms are more and more common and are beneficial to companies like Linden Lab. However they are not good for freelance creators. Richard does not believe that Linden Lab want to sell his content, and this is something I also agree with. I do not believe that Linden Lab want to sell anyone’s content. However, like Richard, I also agree that in the future if Linden Lab is sold, the new company may decide it’s a great opportunity to sell that content. This may be a far fetched scenario, but the new TOS allows for that scenario and that’s why some of us remain unhappy.
I still believe that part of the problem here is that Linden Lab want a one size fits all TOS and that by claiming as many rights as they can, it reduces the prospect of problems for Linden Lab. However this is a somewhat lazy approach and is unfriendly to content creators.
Linden Lab should not need the right to exploit content in any way they want. They should not need rights in perpetuity. They should be able to bring in limitations that are friendly to content creators, I mean after all, the old TOS for Second Life had limitations and those limitations were sensible and friendly to content creators.
I should point out of course that this interview was recorded before Linden Lab’s TOS change. I do not know if Richard has changed his mind after the changes, but I would hazard a guess he hasn’t from the points he raises in this interview.
This episode gets right to the point regarding the problematic TOS, it runs for around half an hour but for anyone concerned about the TOS, this is well worth listening to. I should also point out that the SLBA have a scheduled discussion regarding the new TOS on August 2nd.
In the blurb for the episode Drax also links to the excellent documentary : Terms And Conditions May Apply. The documentary goes into areas of terms of service that are far more chilling than the Second Life terms of service, it’s about privacy being undermined and much more. The Second Life terms of service isn’t that bad in comparison, but it does overreach and that’s something that Linden Lab really should be able to rectify.
I’ll end this post with a trailer for Terms And Conditions May Apply.