Day: September 28, 2013

Upset over LL’s re-wording to their Terms of Service continues, with high-profile reports of some content creators of long standing opting to withdraw their content from SL, and another third-party content supplier forbidding the use of their items within Second Life.

Elsewhere, people are starting to point to a “Desura connection”, with Nalates Urriah speculating that the re-wording might be in connection with the Lab wishing to provide the means for SL content creators to sell content through Desura.

A possible “Desura connection” was actually first mooted in passing by Kuurus in a September 15th comment on this blog, after I obtained a statement on the ToS changes from the Lab. Kurrus’ comment in turn prompted me to take another look at Desura’s former Terms of Use (replaced at the end of August by LL’s ToS, but still available via  things like the wayback machine), to see how that handled third-party content. What was interesting here was that the wording in the Desura ToU bears remarkable similarity to that of the revised LL ToS, as I commented upon at the time. Specifically, Section 2 of the old Desura ToU stated:

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.

While the phrase “sell / resell” is notably absent from the above, the overall assignment of rights to Desura of any and all work uploaded to the Desura website (including forum comments, etc.), is actually very similar to those the Lab set-out in their revised ToS. Note in particular that Desura can reproduce and redistribute (aka give away and / or sell)  in any form, anywhere – a phrase which strongly echoes, LL’s own ToS statement that they can use content “for any purpose whatsoever”.

This clearly doesn’t negate concerns over the ToS changes or put anything to rights, nor am I suggesting it does. Rather, it suggests that the rewording of the ToS is a direct consequence of trying to merge two disparate terms of service / use, which has resulted in a clause which perhaps should have been more thoroughly considered in terms of implications rather than as an exercise in re-wording.

Following-on from my initial contact with the Lab about the ToS changes which elicited their original statement on the matter, and as a result of looking into the Desura ToU, I again wrote to the Lab on September 17th in an attempt to obtain further feedback from them on the matter. At the time this article went to press, I had yet to receive any reply.

Is the ToS Change Related to Making SL Content Available on Desura?

Determining what the Lab may or may not do isn’t easy. The company tends to hold its cards close to its chest on matter of future planning and directions. However, there are several points to consider when looking at the whole SL content / Desura angle.

For example, unless there are plans to curtail the Marketplace completely, one has to question whether such a move would actually be seen as worthwhile to merchants. The Marketplace may have its flaws, warts and issues, but at least it is directed at the audience most likely to purchase the goods on offer. As such, the effort in opening Desura to the sale SL content may not actually reap real benefit in terms of SL content creators actually using it.

Which is also not to say it shouldn’t perhaps be tried, if it doesn’t take-up too much effort. And who knows? In time, the Lab may well be looking towards moving away from a market environment which only allows content to be sold into one platform, and to one that allows them to potentially offer merchants the means to reach multiple grids. Again, not that this will happen overnight, were it to turn out to be a part of the Lab’s thinking.

Certainly, both Humble and Scott Reismanis, Desura’s founder, appear to share some grand ambitions for Desura’s future. I recently drew attention to quote from Humble on this, in an interview he gave to Gamasutra:

[We want] to make it the most open, developer- and user-friendly distribution service for all kinds of digital goods, starting out with games and mods and going from there. For us it’s a natural step… We’re about user-to-user transactions and empowering people’s creativity.

[my emphasis]

Continue reading “ToS Changes: The “Desura connection” and a personal perspective” →