Are you a content creator in Second Life? Understand the challenges surrounding your intellectual property rights. ROLE Magazine's May cover story helps shed some light on this complicated topic.
IP RIGHTS AND COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT: PROTECT YOURSELF!
The rapid growth of Second Life® has afforded its residents additional opportunities for creating custom, virtual content and for advertising and selling both real world and virtual products and services. But, along with these opportunities come a number of unique and potentially complex and challenging legal issues that arise in establishing and enforcing intellectual property rights, including trademark and copyright. The capability of residents, who are often anonymous, to create and sell virtual goods has led to concerns regarding the unauthorized use of copyrighted materials, unauthorized content, and trademarks. At the same time, there are numerous additional legal issues concerning the governance of the online community, the extent of the responsibilities of Linden Lab®, jurisdictional boundaries, and the laws governing us all. By Stacie Pryor
The content of this article is for general informational purposes only and is not intended to constitute legal advice.
The term Intellectual Property (IP) covers a range of legal protections for creations of the human mind. IP provides an incentive for creativity because the owner of the rights can use their IP rights to gain commercial benefit from third parties who wish to use their work. Thus, the unauthorized use of third party IP (infringement) entitles the rights-holder to sue for damages and can lead to the destruction of the offending items. Also, in certain extreme circumstances infringement of IP is a criminal act punishable by fines and/or prison.
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1 comments:
One thing to know is that the U.S.A. does not have copy rights for fashion designs. So anyone can copy a design and add a button, or a belt and such to the design, and it is not consider copy righted. Also adding a samll prim that can be seen on the design can not be consider "stolen content" in SL. I Think that is why a lot of designers are starting to sell their creations for resell. They know there is really not much that can be done.
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