{"id":4216,"date":"2014-08-22T23:59:39","date_gmt":"2014-08-22T22:59:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/?p=4216"},"modified":"2014-08-22T23:59:39","modified_gmt":"2014-08-22T22:59:39","slug":"hurricane-iris-whips-up-a-picture-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/?p=4216","title":{"rendered":"Hurricane Iris Whips Up A Picture Storm"},"content":{"rendered":"

It started innocently enough, Janine Hawkins (AKA Iris Ophelia) penned a piece for Paste Magazine :\u00a010 Best MMOs<\/a>. At number six in the list sits Second Life. However this wasn’t the villain of the piece in this article.<\/p>\n

No the villain of the piece was the initial image the editors of Paste Magazine used to represent Second Life. This was not Iris’ call, so don’t hound Iris about this. However this also raised a wider issue, one of whether Linden Lab provide news outlets with decent pictures in the first place.<\/p>\n

This is a very good question, and one that to be fair to Linden Lab, they did address. This also raised the issue of using Flickr to use images and when images are or aren’t fair game for usage. As you can see, this is far more complicated than it should be.<\/p>\n

Draxtor Despres pointed to the Second Life Flickr pool<\/a> as a repository for images the press could use. However this is the unofficial pool and those images have different rights. Draxtor realised this and then pointed people to the excellent SL Is Looking Good Flickr Pool<\/a>. However that has the same issue with regards to rights. This is why Linden Lab decided to setup their own Flickr pool<\/a>. This pool has a terms of service that spell out that LL can use these images for marketing :<\/p>\n

As a participant of the Program, you hereby grant to the Company a perpetual, worldwide, irrevocable, and cost-free right and license to use, distribute, or sublicense (through multiple levels), and otherwise exploit in any manner whatsoever, all or any portion of your Submissions, for the purposes of marketing, promotion, and\/or outreach for and about the Second Life virtual world.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That was an issue of some controversy when the group was created by the way. When you think about it, it’s strange that Linden Lab later went on to make their own terms of service for Second Life even more controversial because they had feedback on those terms that people weren’t happy, but that’s an aside.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Twitter was the place for complaints about the image in the original article.<\/p>\n

Once again, shitty image of @SecondLife<\/a> used by media, this time Paste – http:\/\/t.co\/atcjjnpiEL<\/a> @ebbealtberg<\/a> Can’t the Lab be provactive?<\/p>\n

\u2014 Ziki Questi (@zikiquesti) August 21, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n