Hamlet Au has an article up on New World Notes about longtime creators removing their products from Second Life. This is because of the change in the terms of service. See: Longtime Second Life Content Creators Remove SL Work in Protest Over Linden Lab’s New Draconian Terms of Service.
Removing content is one of the actions I pointed out in my article: Second Life ToS Change. Now we’ll see how many people follow the Odd Fellows.
Is the new TOS having any effect on you?
If your merchant are you still uploading new content?
Hamlet quotes Nerad Oddball saying, “‘Oh, but we wouldn’t really [take your content]!’ doesn’t rate.” There’s some tricky quotes there.
Nerad makes the same point I did in my article. What happens if Second Life is sold for some reason? The new buyer will see all the stuff in SL as there’s. And they can do with it whatever they want to court in this current TOS.
So the BIG question is; why won’t the lab put back in the clause that makes this a limited license? Hamlet says he’s asking. I doubt were going to hear real answer, at least one we want to hear.
There are now 15 screens of entries in the SL forum thread: Updated LL TOS Claims FULL RIGHTS to ALL CONTENT.
Just a heads-up: Renderosity also banned its content from SL because of the new TOS.
http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2013/09/renderosity-bans-second-life-over-tos.html
A lot of the discussion has been about textures and scripts and objects and such… literally getting a lot of mesh panties in a bind. But for a writer, the change to the ToS is even worse.
When a publisher asks if my work has appeared anywhere else or anyone has license/right to it, ToS 2.3 makes things… uncomfortable.
Worst-case scenario, the Lab’s got claim to my work, and if they go under, anyone who buys their assets can try to claim it. All there in easy-to-plunder text format.
Baaaaaaaaaaad.
I don’t have the resources or the patience for such a hassle… well, besides a sawed-off shotgun… and prospective publishers don’t have much patience with it either when there’s so much unencumbered material available to them.
So, I have deleted all notecards and textures that contain my original stories, and I do not copy-paste them into open chat for folks who have a hard time hearing voice at my storytelling sessions.
I strongly suggest that writers of original content look over that section and think carefully about putting anything of theirs in open chat or a notecard or a texture.
-ls/cm