Update October 28th: Transcripts from the panel are now available on this blog.
Update: The slides for Agenda’s presentation are now of a much higher quality (with thanks to Agenda in making them available outside of SL), and there is a link to a higher-quality video now included in the Related Links.
On Saturday October 19th, a panel of legal experts – real-life attorneys – sat down at the Rose Theatre, Angel Manor in Second Life to discuss the August 15th changes to the Second Life Terms of Service, address questions on the matter and remove some of the FUD which has built-up around the subject.
In attendance were Agenda Faromet, who in real life is an attorney specialising in privacy and internet law operating out of San Francisco, Tim Faith (SL: Yoss Kamachi), a Maryland attorney with a strong background in IT and who deals with matters related to copyright, IP, trademark, etc., and Juris Amat, a Massachusetts bar member who runs the Virtual Intellectual Property Organisation (VIPO). All three are members of the SL Bar Association, based in-world at Justitia.
In all, the session lasted just under three hours, with initial presentations by Agenda Faromet and Tim Faith (Juris Amat had difficulties attending the first part of the session). Tis was followed by a question-and-answer session moderated by Maxwell Graf, with Kylie Sabra relaying Juris Amat’s replies via voice.
A video of the session is available on-line, and there will be transcripts made available through other channels. What follows here are a series of audio files, which have been broken down from the main meeting for ease of listening, together with accompanying notes.
Agenda Faromet – Presentation (14 minutes)
Slideshow created from images courtesy of Agenda Faromet
Tim Faith (26 minutes)
Tim provides an overview of the SL Bar Association, before going on to talk about his own background. He then discusses copyright law and the concept of moral rights, both with regards to the United States and the rest of the world, providing an overview of terms such as “original work” and “exclusive rights” in terms of copyright, some of the general limitations on copyright exclusivity, how creativity itself can generate exclusive rights. He explains some of the natural and unavoidable complications of dealing with copyright in Second Life due to the nature of the platform, where almost every interaction impinges on matters of copyright, and why both Second Life could not exist if exclusive rights were absolute and why exclusive rights are limited through the likes of fair use / natural expiration.
He then covers why most licences used within Internet-based services are two-way, and need to be, and how Second Life might be said to differ from other on-line services such as Facebook, due to the ability of users to conduct user-to-user business. Finally he explains why people need to understand what their rights under copyright are, and to understand what might be being signed-away in accepting any contract; statements like “I clicked without reading” aren’t a defence – the legal system isn’t going to coddle people for not knowing their rights.
Looking at the Law (8 minutes)
Agenda and Tim discuss concerns arising from the Section 2.3 call by Linden Lab to “otherwise exploit in any manner whatsoever, all or any portion of your User Content (and derivative works thereof”, and the concerns that people have that this might allow the Lab to claim rights over such derivative works, whether or not they have been uploaded to Second Life. Includes a discussion unconscionability (procedural and substantive) and contracts of adhesion, and how they might apply to the ToS, together with and overview of changes to Californian law relating to arbitration agreements which may limit legal recourse.
Question and Answer Session
This has been broken into four parts for ease-of-listening. Questions for each part are given in text together with a times stamp for when they are asked / answered. Kylie Sabra substitutes for Juris Amat (who was unable to use voice) during the answers.
The Q&A session is split into four recordings, again for ease-of-listening. Each is given with the questions asked in the recording (and as entered into local chat during the meeting), so that readers can ascertain the order in which they’d like to listen to proceedings, should that have particular questions to which they’d like to hear answers.
Questions – Part 1 (23 minutes)
- If the licence to LL stops being perpetual and irrevocable, wouldn’t that break people’s inventories and even content?
- Is the ToS an attempt to place all of LL’s services under one document? Is this wise, given Google’s failure to do the same?
- Has anyone talked directly to Linden Lab about its desire to expand licensure to other virtual worlds explicitly?
- Does this not seem like a preparatory move prior to some kind of large-scale shift, either part of an exit strategy, a selloff or transfer of content (such as from marketplace to Desura)?
- Are these current terms not technically illegal from a federal and international perspective, if for no other reason than the agreement was done under a certain amount of duress?
- [11:10] Why shouldn’t creators be freaked-out by the “sell / resell”? – Includes discussion of the Visual Artists Rights Act.
- [21:12] Does the new TOS apply only to items uploaded after you agreed to it? Or all your items from before also?
Continue reading “ToS changes: Legal panel discussion – audio recordings and notes”
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 