So, the latest up-in-arms seems to be regarding the coming ability to travel between our virtual world and those being hosted by normal users using OpenSim. The problems seem to be arising because residents are concerned about what this is going to mean to the economy of our world and how the company plans on protecting our intellectual property rights when it comes to our assets being moved from one sim to another. I think the solution is pretty simple, honestly.
Don’t move our assets. Don’t let us access our company owned inventory anywhere but on simulators owned by the company. Don’t bother trying to figure out what we’re going to do about the economy and if there should be some sort of global currency or whatever.
I don’t see the harm in leaving things exactly how it is right now with the only change being the ability to physical move my avatar from one space to another. If I’m on a company hosted server, let me access the inventory and deal with the economy that’s stored here. If I want to teleport to a friends server, I’ll be perfectly fine having only the inventory stored there to access as well as any currency systems they have in place. If that means I’ll be stuck with a Ruthed avatar, so be it.
I don’t think this will be a serious issue for a while. As far as I know, there aren’t any groups of OpenSims that are nearly as developed as the simulators we exist on in our primary virtual world. It will be a while still until they get that far AND the user base of the company’s virtual world catches up. I’m sure the vast majority of residents don’t even know there’s a such thing as OpenSim.
If someone wants to sell their wares both in the company’s and another simulator, go for it! If a resident wants to have a product both places, they’re either going to have to buy it twice or the seller is going to have to make provisions for you to get a copy for both your primary and other inventories. To me, this seems like the only choice that’s going to matter.
With a set-up like this, the only problem I can imagine is a problem that already exists: content theft. Anyone with the know-how can steal texture or copy prims and whatnot. I don’t personally know the details as I haven’t really looked into it because I’m not planning on doing any theft any time soon. When content theft happens on the company’s grid, the terms of service we agreed to helps protect our property rights. The company has to help us deal with thieves, even if that means taking them to court. If someone decides to steal content and then display, or even sell it, on an OpenSim, there may not be much the company can do, although according to the terms of service (:clears throat:):
3.3 Looooo Loo retains ownership of the account and related data, regardless of intellectual property rights you may have in content you create or otherwise own.
You agree that even though you may retain certain copyright or other intellectual property rights with respect to Content you create while using the Service, you do not own the account you use to access the Service, nor do you own any data Looooo Loo stores on Looooo Loo servers (including without limitation any data representing or embodying any or all of your Content). Your intellectual property rights do not confer any rights of access to the Service or any rights to data stored by or on behalf of Looooo Loo.
Yes, I censored it, lol. If you didn’t know this, you might want to read it twice. It’s honestly NOT a big deal as things are now. If I understand it correctly, it means the stuff you create in-world is YOURS, but you can’t take it outside of the company.
What I’m not quite clear on is what this will mean for taking content you created in-world to other worlds. For example, I create some shoes. If I decide to take those shoes with me to my OpenSim and sell them, am I in the wrong for taking something that is technically the companies property elsewhere? If someone else steals my sculpt map and creates my shoes in their OpenSim, are they in the wrong because they took my content or because they took the company’s content? Would the company help me in this case, or would I be on my own?
Those are really the only questions that arise from this situation in regards to intellectual property. The issues of economy and inventory and whatnot are moot if everyone stays separate.
Regardless of the drama, I’m excited for the day I can teleport somewhere and check out a build hosted on someone else’s computer… even if I have to be a puffy cloud.
