Electronic Frontier Foundation's Double Standards

Over the years in Second Life and other virtual worlds and on social media, I've gone from viewing the Electronic Frontier Foundation as a leftist but still natural partner of the more moderate human rights and free speech movement, to coming to loathe them as a threat to civil rights, privacy and private property online -- and then by extension offline as well. I've come to loathe them not merely because I "don't like their ideas," but because they are duplicitious, hewing to a double standard, and they lie -- if not by blatant statement, then by omission, inference or misleading portrayal. I really view them as an enemy of my avatar freedoms -- and because I see the avatar as a natural extension of human life online rooted firmly in the real person -- a threat to my human freedoms as well.

Very few people ever take them on, because the human rights movement is usually preoccupied with other things, and bothers with the EFF only when they need them to co-sign a statement to look more like a chorus of voices -- and because the usual geek chorus available to comment on these things isn't informed about either human rights or law, but just grabs the techno zeitgist of the moment.

So you get a vigorous campaign to oppose the government's invasion of privacy with wire-tapping in which the non-electronic ACLU wages press campaigns and litigation against this illegal intrusion, but then you get somebody like Eva Galperin writing this fucked-up condescending nasty little barb like this:

if you don’t want people taking pictures of your floating city/dancing bear/epic space opera, don’t leave your floating city/dancing bear/epic space opera in a public place.

So Eva, how does that work in real life with the government's wiretapping then? Let me run it by you after reading about your latest campaign against wiretapping:

If you don't want the government wiretapping your floating Islamic aid fund/dancing defense of defensive jihadists/epic Palestinian struggle opera, don't leave your floating Islamic aid fund/dancing defense of defensive jihadists/epic Palestinian struggle opera in a public space.

Oh, you don't think that a private religious charity that may even solicit online, a human right's group campaign on Guantanamo which may enlist supporters online, or blogs defending Palestinian suicide bombers online are not in a public space?

Oh, ok, you meant the privacy of the religious group in the meat-world and a solicitation telephone call, the privacy of an individual human right's activists discussions with his cilents on the telephone, and the expression of views of one relative to another on the telephone?

Oh, oh you meant that old-fashioned walled-garden of the telephone system that isn't online, as distinct from the, er, new Electronic Frontier online where you think anything goes.

So how does that work, Eva? You think anything that isn't on the Electronic Frontier gets to have civil rights -- and by God, you'll litigate like hell for them on the non-electronic homestead but everyting on the Electronic Frontier is "anything goes"? 

The government can't wiretap me, but Linden Lab and Google can harvest and keep all my electronic data?

My dancing bear in Second Life is in my virtual living room, or in my virtual back yard. I like to keep my dancing bear performances private -- people can be so cruel! So why would the technical ability of a scripted bot or a prurient machinimist get to come in my virtual home or my virtual back yard and out my dancing bear fetish without my permission? I didn't put it in public -- I just put it in a place that has at least visual enclosures (although easily technically defeated) while still *technically* open.

Just as in the real world, people with dancing defensive jihadist views expect to discuss them in the privacy of their home, or their group, or even in a meeting to which they invite others, but don't feel that the government should come along for the ride, or any pesky reporter who might obscure their genuine beliefs expressed lawfully into some kind of pretext for a crackdown on the war on terror.

So why can't I have those rights online, Eva?

We're all online. Some people have epic space operas. Some people have epic Palestinian struggle narratives. Why is one available for exposure and even implicit ridicule, but the other gets to be endlessly shielded?

And say, why, in this world of the Internet and mobile and APIs converting text to speech and back again, are you envisioning law and policy broken into silos of "telephone wiretapping policy" and "virtual world machinima policy"?

The government can't claim "fair use" in their "war on terror" intruding into my telephone calls to check up to see if I'm making donations to radical Islamic charities. So why can reporters -- anyone -- and the government, too -- cam my dancing bear unless I physically close off my parcel to visitors?

In part, as I've noted, your eager gushing about your political agenda once again being realized in Second Life isn't informed, as in fact this policy you think is happening is all undone by its fine print, and in fact you have a far, far less lenient regime for "fair use" now in that you have to get written authorization from every single area that might appear to be open to the public.

I really don't find you so "progressive" and "cutting edge" anymore on the "Electronic Frontier" which you homesteaded 20 years ago with your amalgam of hippie/Well/geek/Silicon Valley beliefs and practices mashed up into the civil rights movement.

You really seem to double up your standards depending on whether the government is doing something bad you don't like, and a private corporation is doing something bad you don't like -- and then double up that standard again if that private corporation is something "progressive" like Google or Twitter, or something regressive like, oh, Enron or Wal-Mart or something. With the scale sliding all the time and the standards creating double vision, it's hard to really understand what you are talking about. You are OUT OF DATE, even though you think you are "progressive".

Like stringy grey-haired hippies of the 1960s, you know you hate the government's wiretapping and automatically salivate. But you don't have a vision for how to get rid of Google and Twitter wiretapping, which is scraping and keeping and using and manipulating all our online data, all the time. You hate corporations -- except when you don't.

Like some right-wing junta in the old Latin America, you talk about "freedom," and talk about "fair use," and you talk about "progress" but you insist that what appears to be my private property (my electronic property) isn't really mine, and that game or world companies can intrude on them for any reason or no reason, and that I should be simply available all the time, with my dancing bears and epic space operas, for perusal, use, ridicule, whatever without any recourse -- making me in fact reach for that government you thought was such an evil wire-tapper, because I can't think of any other power that would trump the overwhelming intrusion of Google Plus Electronic Frontier Foundation, *undermining my rights*.

Of course, there's an entire critique to be had about your awful destructive views about private property, in which your REAL agenda about DMCA or fair use constantly pokes out with the "Creative Commons" shtick of Cory Doctorow and others -- we're supposed to liberate our property by default, and any effort to protect it will instantly be branded as suppression of freedom of speech.

Of course, there's little comprehension for the fact that in a virtual world, all the property, all the scenes you see, are built by people who mainly haven't been paid -- unlike that real-world street where architects and city planners have corporate and public money available to pay for themselves and their materials, before photographers "fairly use" their scenes in works that further make *them* money.

And it's no accident, comrade, because the technocommunist beliefs underpinning EFF mean that you never fashioned a way for people to get paid online -- you only fashioned a way for them to get liberated and browbeaten online if they didn't force-march to the "Creative Commons".

The "Electronic Frontier" now looks like a pretty tacky shopping mall with a grimey "head shop" selling hippie memorabilia and tattered Woodstock posters along with beeded Indian dresses. You've commodified the ideals of the hippie era into the California business model letting you steal content online in permissive regimes until you get a DMCA notice that you'll bless as being "fair use".

But the rest of us are living on a very different Electronic Frontier where bots are scraping our data, third-party viewers are stealing our content, and everything we have is really owned by a company that has no government regulation to prevent its abuses. You're all fine with that. You think it's only about a progressive company in San Francisco, and a bunch of fools with dancing bears you can ridicule.

Hey, have I got news for you. This stuff is all going to get LOTS bigger and LOTS more important very quick -- and if you zoom away from your preoccupation with Second Life, where people still have those backward notions about their private dancing bears and their intellectual property you think should be available to swipe, to the 500 plus million people on Facebook and *their* dancing bears and *their* photos and artwork, hey, it gets bigger.

Yes, it's true. We are all living now on an Electronic Frontier where you are only visible as a distant hippie cabin with a tattered tie-dyed freedom flag, irrelevant to our lives and without a vision of the horizon.

Comments

[cube inada]

Bravo.

There is no "comments" or "feedback zone" at that EFF post.

I did however send Ms. Galperin a Direct email, questioning her views and reading of the new TOS.

I have gotten no response.

I do however think about the end bumper for the televised version of TMZ.com ( a gossip site) run by Harvey Levin.

A Cartoon Snapshot/Police shot? of him with a bottle of booze and the audio tag line."I"M A LAWYER" sarcastically read out lound in a cartoon voice.

Cube3

[cube inada]

http://framedin3d.wordpress.com/2010/04/04/help-me-re-define-the-definition-of-machinima/#more-130

"here we go.. MONETIZE on ME.SIR
yes sir, can i have another....slap."

I offered areille time (for free) to chat about the animation business and since she was hoping to find work with cube3 a few weeks ago... I applauded her desire to want to do it profesionally and her actions networking to others in the biz.

well i had nothing to offer...:)she went away when she realized that:) Maybe with this post she'll understand why the meeting ended the way it did.

seems she'll wake up one day and realize that the GIFT SL has given her, OTHERS FREE WORK/TIME will be used to end her "revinvention of machinima" carreer-- before it really ever started.

sorry arielle. but youll thank me later.

c3

[melponeme_k]

I think the answer is to stop uploading anything into the LL database for SL until this is addressed. If it isn't, then it is as we suspect, they want any creators not on their team to depart.

If only we had the numbers of FB to push our concerns. FB users can get things done when they need to be done. SL users have consistently shown that they are more apt to run off in different directions when anything important needs to be addressed.

SL is not the place for people in graphic design to use as a sandbox. And I don't see any other world as that place either. Maybe BM? We shall see.

[cube inada]

MEL.. have you gotten your M'art Collection?

Check it out!

https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=2226988

Art is always what someone else values.:)

"M'Art value you can make BANK on!" TM

[melponeme_k]

Cube, you alone won't make a difference in this problem. You need other creators behind you.

A mass takedown order for screenshots/machinima by a group of artists will get notice in the media. It will also show other companies that the free content train has run out of steam.

The majority of screenshot people just look upon their pics as souvenirs of the places they visit in world. They aren't thinking of them as commodities but vacation pics. Well some do and they sell those shots, those are the ones that should be focused upon.

[cube inada]

Did you see the images....understand the captures? Whos original IP has been revalued and resold? Who must send me and Linden a DCMA letter?

anyhow-- from small seeds...

Im beginning to formulate that the new tos.. requiring all things "previously displayed" in the open

to now be "protected by LAND rental tools" to be in affect

EXTORTION

many will now have to "rent" a private estate , in order to "claim their IP rights back" from a TOS that was not defined when they originally brought their IP into the grid.

Removal of such IP has been termed IMPOSSIBLE by LL, as to others inventories that now house IP licensed items, that can no longer be removed and have defacto been coopted into "free use" by the entire loggable world.

Pay for protection? racket....:) not so meta....

Never underestimate the power of ONE.:)

One Letter. as well.

L. Cube3.

[cube inada]

Mel,
yes.. I agree that a larger FACE needs to be shown.
BUT facebook DID claw back the grab they made for themselves... so for now.. that photo of your baby ISNT selling GERBERS BABY FOOD globally yet.... but dont be so sure you baby wont be a slave for gerbers in a few years:)--- oh maybe youll get a few bottles of foodmix for your babies face:)

LL has made the GRAB "for a better world" as they say...:) that kind of BS takes time to challenge. look how long i had to wait here on proks blog:)llol

Adobe clawed back quickly since their core market took "attention" from such a move as to claim license to all works made with Adobes online tools/storage service offer...

The power of networks may make the difference...

how else do we get Paris Hilton and the Jersey Shore kids as headliners..

[cube inada]

http://framedin3d.wordpress.com/2010/04/04/help-me-re-define-the-definition-of-machinima/#more-130

well so much for thanks;)

I believe my reply post at her blog was deleted.

I think the definition of machinima as created in the mid 90s is still fine..

MACHINE - ANIMATION

though the Selling out of "fair wage" animator/artists efforts as professionals to "cheaper" seemingly free generators of monetizable assets deliverd by the collective uploading SL Borg Drones. is hardly "new".;)

Clever Animals live in Virtual Wilds..

Until they find no more waterholes to drink at.

[John Perry Barlow]

Mr. Neva,

It strikes me that if you're going to take the Electronic Frontier Foundation so sorely to task, you might at least get our name right... But that's a minor point.

More importantly, I have a hard time figuring out what we've done that has you so pissed off. As far as I can tell, we have somehow failed to defend your dancing bear avatar from the Linden Lords who gave "him" a "place" to exist to begin with.

Unfortunately, much of what we do revolves around the law... changing it, adapting it, and seeing that it's enforced appropriately in areas of electronic ambiguity.

Thus, you placed us in a weakened position with regard to defending your "rights" on Second Life when you clicked "agree" to the long terms of service agreement you probably didn't read when you signed up. After you did that, there wasn't much we could do for you.

I'm sorry you believe that this merits screeching a lot of truly insulting things about us. For an old hippie who really doesn't think he's "like all the others," it is personally painful to read your tantrum. Indeed, it made me long for an opportunity to kick you in your tiny nuts.

To claim that there is something malignantly hypocritical about our suing the NSA to stop warrantless wiretapping in America because we don't also protect your online avatar from the rulers of the walled garden where you elected to create him traffics in a logical inconsistency that it's not worth my trouble to point out.

And to tweet that you're trying to undo what I've spent 20 years doing bespeaks a level of ingratitude that would make even my children blush.

Fortunately, I don't give a shit about your gratitude. I'm going to go on defending your rights - in those areas where you actually have some - whether you're grateful or not.

With all due respect,

John Perry Barlow

[cube inada]

Well John.
It has been 20 years.;) And the "stock value" of so few from such a small discipline as programming code for the internet to serve up to others - is the "worlds" gratitude. ;)

As for Linden Providing a "world" for someones elses "bear"... They got their gratitude in having many pay them to "experience" the bear ( creators works), and to provide the limited agreed upon stage for those creators works. For a TOS change that liberates the bear to appear on everyones pay for dance stage without the owners ticket fee percentage-or approval, is the bear poo that the EFF has stepped into on the website via Eves post and Hamlets blog suggesting EFF "approval" of lindens new "free stage set for all"

As you know, sometimes you get the bear, but in those 20 years, the bear seems to almost always be getting you. The EFF post and its usage by many who profit on "grey" areas of others property/work efforts encouraged to be "posted online" is the current circus' act that is being watched by "many" at the first circus.

LL has seemingly "redefined its TOS" to include a broad, seemingly commercially unrestricted- claim on 2d image/moving image works that are derived from others works- originally posted to the service, and only the service as offered via previous TOS and intention of limited commercial affect for the IP owners of such properties.

And if i receive a DCMA letter or ban from the LL service, for offering for sale - derivative works, now apparently with the license of the CEO of LL by his posting his creations -2d images- in a public "sim" within the service and its new policies..opening the images via screencapture for the most typical of deritative license usage terms- a resale without any compensation for the original creators works...

Ill be the first to call the EFF for assistance.:)

cube3

when we live in STAR TREK times, call me:) Until them.

[AnnOtooleInSL]

Since when does the NSA perform operations inside the conus? That is FBI and CIA turf. NSA people are supposed to sign a document annually confirming they know it is illegal to perform surveillance on US citizens inside the conus. Me thinks some wannabee famous left wing suckers have been duped into drinking the yellow koolaid their favorite democrat congressnuts have been pouring on them lmao. As for non citizens they have no rights here. If they call home overseas then tough shit they get wiretapped all nice and legal by every agency under the sun from every country. Since the internet is always international then if you don't want surveillance then don't log on. Internet is optional. Use at own risk.

When is the last time any EFF people worked for the NSA? never? They have no clue how the system works? All they have are tin foil hat conspiracy stories fed them by left wing terrorists like weather underground lobbyists?

One would think certain types of people would understand that when the wind changes direction in DC again they are going to be back on the nasty side of the stick again and would know how to behave at all times. Then again the EFF "lawyers" don't even know that machinima is a series of snapshots so the LL policies are diametrically opposed and thus cancel each other out and could never stand in court. Good job making LL look like dorks there mr. EFF lmao.

Whatever.

[Ariella]

Hey Cube..

I read through your comments thoroughly and am sorry you feel that way. Everyone is entitled to their opinion so I respect yours. I have a few responses I'd like to say back to your thoughts and prefer to chat with you in private Re: the monetization of machinima.

Also it's not that I deleted your comment-- It's just that due to Easter and the Holiday I actually didn't even get a chance to read it because I was away. I have my blog set to monitor comments and I have to manually approve each one. Just wanted to clarify :D

Talk to you soon, man!

[Marc Woebegone]

It's so typical of you to finally realize the tyranny I fought against when it starts to affect you, ignoring any previous effect on anyone else.

[Prokofy Neva]

Funny you should show up after years of me saying that the "unconscionable" ruling is a positive thing to have come out of the Bragg v. Linden circus, big guy. I've been saying this for ages, and of course -- it's only theoretical because we didn't get a judicial decision, and that's because you settled out of court, and didn't wage what you led everyone to believe was a valiant crusade for all our rights *cough*. So -- no sale.

I've been fighting tyrannt in SL likely before you were born and long after you lost interest, so I'm not here to express any "appreciation" to you, I'm merely focusing, as I have done 100 times before, on a narrow point.

So -- I don't recognize anything of the sort, big guy. I view you as a cynical criminal, and you know it. Your manipulative self-serving behaviour on this case lets us know that. Your repeated harassment of me over the ages, even making a parody blog of me, lets me know just how much you care about *really* fighting tyranny as well. You are a total asshole.

[cube inada]

Ariella,
got you email. will chat whenever you like. Blog indicated message uploaded, but not posted..
I dont think it indicated "a moderated review" etc,,,

another marvel of digital media made by another, sold as a human to human interface.:)

anyhow.
thanks for letting me know. and ill be around:)

cube3

[Failed Inventor]

Wow.. the OP ( Original Poster) Is off to see the wizard...

[Prokofy Neva]

I thought the problem with EFF is that on this particular round with SL that they were facile and glib and hadn't read all the way through the text, or that Mitch just told them what to do, to set them up to say something to spin negative press about the Machinima law -- with Hamlet's help. The entire thing looks cooked up, but one can never tell.

Now I see that in response to an SL resident who complained to her, Eva is writing back this awful technocommunist mash-up crap that is the hallmark of the addled hippie brain at the end of the century. Here it is, see the thread here:
https://blogs.secondlife.com/message/166143#166143

Having reviewed the TOS in detail, I see that it land owners can decide whether or not to allow the new license to apply on their land by saying so in their land covenant. It appears that if there is nothing in the covenant, the new Snapshot and Machinima license is assumed to apply.

You are correct to point out that recognizable avatars need to sign a release for machinima, but not for snapshots. It sounds as if you might be concerned with the possibility that someone might take a screenshot of your artwork on land where the Snapshot and Machinima license applies and then sell it as their own -- is that correct? If that is the case, I would be happy to discuss the terms that this new license appears to grant. There appear to be Second Life players who believe that the terms of this license means that they are signing away the rights to their artwork.

Intellectual property is law is often a morass of legal-ese, leading to the construction of licenses that few people bother to read or fully understand. In that sense, Second Life is no exception. But unlike the movie and music industries, Second Life is not trying to pretend that all uses of copyrighted content are infringing uses. They are trying to create a legal space in which remixes, mash-ups, and other fair use of copyrighted content has room to grow and flourish, while still allowing Second Life artists the power to protect their work.

I hope that this addresses some of your concerns.

Regards,

Eva Galperin

1. A tacit admission that she didn't read it in detail before writing her post -- good.

2. A wrongheaded spin on it nevertheless focusing not on the Linden's sleight-of-hand appearing to grant "fair use" (although it's not quite said that way) but then doing a claw-back. I hate to make her arguments for her, but that's what she needs to look at to be consistent with her own bad point of view -- the Lindens' curbs on free machinima filming by requiring every single film to obtain permission from every single land owner and avatar through a specific covenant on the land.

It also doesn't "appear" as she said that if there is no covenant, it doesn't apply.

Are people no longer able to read in this day and age?

The TOS says very clearly that if NOTHING is said YOU HAVE TO ASK. You do NOT have to ask if it is a) mainland b) screenshots. But for machinima, on islands, YOU MUST ASK if there is a) no covenant b) a covenant telling you to.

Honestly, this sort of picky remedial reading work shouldn't have to be done with something that claims to be a litigating organization, it's outrageous.

She's going to inform you of the terms this appears to grant, when she can't even fucking READ?!

"There appear to be Second Life players who believe that the terms of this license means that they are signing away the rights to their artwork."

I love how Mitch keeps his henchmen ready to aggressively pursue the California business model. Pretty breath-takingly ballsy, eh?

What this license *does* and doesn't "appear" to do is force you, if you care about your content, to do one of three things:

1. Lock down your land to the public -- never advisable for business.
2. Write a complicated covenant in your land that orders people to get consent from you -- which they may or may not do
3. Suffer people filming anyway because there is no mechanical way to stop them; suffer scraper bots that automatically film from scripted agents; suffer first stealing and then efforts to claim your rights.

THAT is what it does.

I'm describing this from cube3 or a content maker's perspective.

Here's what I felt I was forced to write as my own covenant, which isn't at all what I'd like to have, but the best that I can do, for a sim where I have no commissioned build from an artist whose rights I'd like to protect, and with tenants whose privacy I have to protect:

MACHINIMA AND PHOTOGRAPHY POLICY:

Written permission must be obtained from Prokofy Neva, the owner of this sim, for all machinima and screenshots of this sim UNLESS such media is captured by paid tenants and their room mates on this sim, in which case they do not require permission from Prokofy Neva for the recording by any media and transmission by any media to third-party sites of any content or communication. This policy is not intended to violate the reasonable privacy requests of fellow tenants so that you are advised to use common sense and courtesy in recording or transmitting any content or communication of fellow tenants.

But on another sim where I do have a build from an artist whose rights I'd like to protect, I'm forced to write it differently:

MACHINIMA AND PHOTOGRAPHY POLICY:

Written permission must be obtained from Prokofy Neva, the owner of this sim, for all machinima and screenshots of this sim from the public commons parcel area with the barn labelled "Belarus Free Range Chicken Farms" UNLESS such media is captured by paid tenants and their room mates on this sim, in which case they do not require permission from Prokofy Neva for the recording by any media and transmission by any media to third-party sites of any content or communication. This policy is not intended to violate the reasonable privacy requests of fellow tenants so that you are advised to use common sense and courtesy in recording or transmitting any content or communication of fellow tenants.

See what I had to do?
o figure out a way to enable tenants to take normal casual screenshots and machinima of the land where they lived without getting permission from me every time
o figure out how to ensure the privacy of one tenant from another without making every tenant get written permission from every other tenant
o figure out how to prevent my sim from being cammed by Paparazzi Artful's cousins, who I couldn't possibly manage to ban -- I can only ban what I know about
o figure out how to have some fine print on the land to protect my builder's art rights so that if she was copied or cammed or whatever, I could point to a covenant violation.

So *even if* I'd like to put my best freedom of journalism foot forward, and encourage lots of people to take pictures especially of the sim meant as a public project, I'm forced to think of others whose rights need protection too, and absent the granularity I need to get free of scripted bots which are my biggest concern, and copyright thefts which are a lesser concern in actuality, i.e. I don't see them as often, but still a valid issue.

I don't want to be in a situation where a smarmy Linden tells me I have no DMCA case or no right to file an AR because I didn't put up a covenant barring filming without written permission. See what they've done?

Before, I could assume the right to journalism was inherent and the right to file a DMCA on inherent copyright was explicit. Now I can't assume that, as the Lindens have created this awful regime.

I see now that they've essentially forced us into a Creative Communism type license. I'm forced to a) curb journalism b) curb inherency of a creator's content rights by this crap, and that's no accident comrade. That's how Comrade Larry likes it, as it undermines property and undermines rights inherent in property and makes everything an expression of will on a case by case basis, and not inherent.

As for this line, "They are trying to create a legal space in which remixes, mash-ups, and other fair use of copyrighted content has room to grow and flourish"

Nothing could be further from the truth. They are making a contradictory muddle to make sure they win. They are making a licentious libertarian environment for big companies to scrape like Google Earth's little brother Peek360.

And with the covenant nickle and dime garbage, they've forced us in fact to diminish journalism to save some shred of privacy from data scrapers, and they've forced us to diminish content makers rights by implying that we write them into being in a covenant, intsead of embrace them as inherent and operate on that basis.

I find it a profoundly ugly act of bad faith.

[cube inada]

the above link into the sl blogs tells me im "unauthorized" to see it?
seems im signed ..odd.

I still dont see how "usage" as defined by the new TOS seperates commerical from noncomerical(as in fair use)

it dosent, and for COMMERCIAL makers of CONTENT used in SL, this new policy devalues all still and moving images across many media.

land owners should not decide the fate of my licensed contents use.
nor should an ISP.... which is what LL was supposed to be..to hide behind DCMA...?

creativity does not come from freedoms, it comes from restrictions... thats what 30 years of design has taught me...

placating to amatuers now with "free" stuff will not give us the value of more "avatar family movies" for personal usage...
but only the taken value of commercial data scrapes of visual media for another CORBIS, GOOGLE TUBE, or FACEBOOK endorsed corporate overlord of tomorrow to resell to another buyer.

so my take isnt about "privacy" in a company town... its about "property" values... and the affect in every town, company run or not- on the new frontier....

wheres JPB's EFF to protect MY right NOT to have others PROFIT from my work without MY permission, not that of a lord who happens to "own" a sim, rented by the king dom.

[AnnOtooleInSL]

Most residents are renting and cannot change the covenant. The test would fail in court. EFF's and LL's lawyers are not worth a dime.

Sorry but that is just the cold reality of SL that Linden Lab and EFF don't know. Even though LL owns SL they have no clue how it works inside.

[melponeme_k]

Its upsetting that since I have mainland, I can't do a thing to protect any of the items I have out on display. All those nice things that creators have made, houses, plants etc.

[cube inada]

http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2010/04/07/photographers-file-copyright-claims-over-google-book-search

MANY who VALUE others visual images take action against GOOGLE and soon companies like SL.

yes mel. thyre work is subject to an unethically written and considered TOS from LL. May thye get the reaction Google is now getting from these groups.