Legal Committee

Comment

Comment by Juris Amat on December 11, 2009 at 4:34am

Sorry about the delayed post...its been crazy around the office these past couple of weeks...ANYWAY!

So the Open Source Viewer ....significant. Yes. this is because the viewer contained the only security measure to protect content in world, namely the permission system.

The latest Eros lawsuit, mentioned by James some time back, involves the viewer in so far as the pleadings describe the in-world permission system as a non-effective anti-circumvention measure for managing creator rights.

Its much better to sue LR instead of suing the creators and vendors of third party viewers, with really creepy content copying capability under the DMCA, for creating and selling circumvention technology, right?

I think with a little more creativity they still could've gotten LR on the hook together with the parties who are also responsible for bringing such tools in world and actually made a bigger better statement concerning the current state of affairs for content creators in-world.

Well, maybe this is just the first reaction by members of the content creator community. Perhaps as a result of this ever so significant event, we will see some positive impact generated by the creators and greater SL community during the year to come!

Comment by Shenlei Winkler on December 8, 2009 at 12:35pm

We think the licensing contracts and language we're developing with the OpenSim legal committee we formed through our nonprofit last summer, which will be freely released in 2010 for the use of content creators and grid operators alike, will be beneficial to content developers and licensee/ers. We're not doing much marketing or even discussion about this work, but the committee meets on a biweekly basis and every week we chip away a bit more at these issues.

I'm not sure I'd qualify it as 'the most significant thing', but we are definitely moving the understanding of state of the art of OpenSim forward on all levels with our work with Intel Labs and with the soon-to-be-formed foundation for OpenSim-based education/science/research. Much of the content considerations are being derived from the management of our 20 regions of specialized and highly recognizable content which is publicly accessible on ScienceSim. This content is valuable enough that the hypergrid protocol was recently disallowed into the Sciencesim regions, because of the security issues with this protocol. This work is significant and will have lasting impact for the user classes.

This is the Wiki entry on ScienceSim for the initial talking points for thsi Foundation: http://www.sciencesim.com/wiki/doku.php/foundation/start

I'll be speaking about this at various events over the next few weeks, gathering user requirements and input. Interested parties are welcome to come and put in their two cents, toss their hat into the ring, and the rest of those hackneyed cliches. I'll be speaking at MICA in SL on December 11th at 10 am SLT for those interested in this nascent Foundation.

Comment by Juris Amat on December 8, 2009 at 10:37am

I meant the launch of the new Open Source Viewer was a significant event in 2009. I'll post more thoughts about that later. I miss-pasted!

Comment by Juris Amat on December 8, 2009 at 8:29am

I think that the initiation of the Open Grid Public Beta program was a significant event in 2009. I'll post more thoughts about that later.

Comment by Anne Pinchera on December 5, 2009 at 7:06pm

Funny thing.... I was just going to ask for an opinion on something I saw happen at a conference I recently attended. This was not a virtual world issue exclusively, but does come close. It was in education. One school gave a demo/presentation of a course they developed. Unfortunately, the course was almost an exact copy of one used by another school. The only changes made were scbool policy. Other than that, the course was an exact duplicate. The person in charge was once a developer for the other school and was handsomely paid to develop the course. Unethical? I would think so, but it made me think about how rampant such issues are and what lengths people will go to take something they really have no rights to. I wish I could say it was just an innocent mistake, but I know better. Although such issues are not as predominant right now, I can see this becoming a growing issue in the near future.

As I read the question, the second thing that came to my mind was plagiarism and how easy it is to take something from someone else – especially since the environment makes it so convenient. I really think we are going to see a great deal more popping up as this increases in popularity and use.

Comment by Jay Moffitt on December 5, 2009 at 12:06pm

I think there are two main subject that are growing in Legal importance.

The first is Second Life, and other worlds(such as Sims, etc.) that have user-created content, and their continued battle to fight user suits against other users. There are many good papers now on third-party beneficiary theories allowing a user to sue another user over an in-world issue. SL and others have been (wisely) hiding behind the idea that there is no party-to-party standing to sue within the world, yet lawyers are using older methods, plus devising new ones, to force an in-world party to defend themselves in a real-world courtroom.

The second trend is newer; members of a community suing for the right to stay part of the MMO, or the MMO bulletin board, even after being removed by the administrator. These are newer types of suits, but referencing older rights of freedom of assembly, freedom of speech - but in a virtual world setting. Some of these suits seem ill-advised, yet some are based upon solid principles and may have some validity. But seeing the vast number of participants in these worlds it is very likely that a court may view their claim more sympathetically than the game publisher's End User License Agreement. And most of all; it gives the game lawyer another arena, the class action, to have a strong negotiating position against the large corporations that run the MMOs.

Comment by James Gatto on December 5, 2009 at 9:32am

Hi everyone - as the year draws to a close i thought it might be fun and interesting to do a poll of the members of this group regarding significant legal issues, cases etc, that arose in 2009 and to get an outlook for 2010. If you are interested, please share your thoughts on the following.
1. what were the most significant virtual world legal events, cases, policies changes, etc. that happened in 2009?
2. what do you predict will be the most significant virtual world legal issues in 2010?
Assuming we get a reasonable number of responses, we will look to publish a summary of the responses and circualte to the members

Comment by Anne Pinchera on September 17, 2009 at 7:21am

From what I saw recently, there are a number of issues against SL. It will be interesting to se how the courts deal with this.

Comment by James Gatto on September 16, 2009 at 9:33am

Hi everyone. Many of you may have seen this but if not there was an interesting case just filed against. Linden. Here is a brief summary.
Eros, LLC, a seller of virtual adult products in Second
Life, filed a class action against Linden Research, Inc., in the Northern District of California. Also named as a plaintiff Shannon Grei. The Complaint alleges that Linden is infringing upon the plaintiffs¹ trademarks and Grei¹s copyrights, and is liable for contributory and vicarious trademark and copyright infringement, other state law claims were raised.
The number of lawsuits in this area is likley to increase and this is just one indication that this is happening.

Comment by Anne Pinchera on September 14, 2009 at 1:04pm

Connie -

Do you mean lawyers in general? I would think it depend on what the lawyers specialize in before determining the importance to them. Personally, I have experienced plagiarism first hand – not once, but twice. The first time was in undergrad days when a fellow student chose to copy all of my papers and submit them to the same professors I did the original work for. How dumb is that! Dumber yet was me for letting him see what I submitted never suspecting he would copy them. HA! Did you know about the legality there? I didn’t! Never let anyone see what I wrote again! The second time was a small local shopper plagiarized all my writings for a neighborhood newsletter and wrote it under a staff writer byline. What was that saying about fool me once?
This is simple plagiarism. But today with the Internet and all of the electronic media options, I think lawyers need to be well informed. There are so many things that can be stolen or copied. For me, this is a big deal. As a Prior Learning Assessment Coordinator and author for much of the coursework, there is a great deal of haggling over who owns what. I have a student in my program that just found another instructor stole his material. His question to me was what can he do about it since it was posted on the Internet through a school site. I anticipate this will soon become a big legal deal as soon as he is finished with my program.
As for your question…. Hummm… maybe this is a whole new area of law.

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