Protecting Intellectual Property

Intellectual Property may be broadly defined as: “..Any product of someone’s intellect that has commercial value, especially copyrighted material, patents, and trademarks.” ~(https://secure.wikimedia.org/wiktionary/en/wiki/intellectual_property).

The Permissions System in Second Life serves to protect the Intellectual Property of users by restricting how items in-world may be copied, transferred, modified, and so on. (See: https://muv601r3dakted.wordpress.com/2011/05/10/perms-system-copybot/).

The broad, arguably over-generalised term that is ‘Intellectual Property’ covers applicable copyright, trademark, and right-of-publicity laws; though all of these laws evolved differently and have fundamental differences from each other, it is becoming increasingly common for them to be lumped together and referred to as a singular amorphous entity – ‘Intellectual Property’.

Richard Stallman asserts that:

“..Another problem is that, at the broad scale implicit in the term “intellectual property”, the specific issues raised by the various laws become nearly invisible. These issues arise from the specifics of each law—precisely what the term “intellectual property” encourages people to ignore. For instance, one issue relating to copyright law is whether music sharing should be allowed; patent law has nothing to do with this. Patent law raises issues such as whether poor countries should be allowed to produce life-saving drugs and sell them cheaply to save lives; copyright law has nothing to do with such matters. ” ~ (Richard Stallman, 2008: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.xhtml).

Thomas Jefferson, principal author of the American Declaration of Independence, had this to say:

“It would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors… It would be curious… if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody… The exclusive right to invention [is] given not of natural right, but for the benefit of society.” ~(Thomas Jefferson: http://www.famguardian.org/Subjects/Politics/ThomasJefferson/jeff1550.htm)

Lock it down!

Copyright is a common form of Intellectual Property protection that is granted to the creator of an original work:

“Copyright is a form of intellectual property – which is a generic term for a range of
property rights that provide protection for “creations of the mind”. Copyright does not,
however, exist until a work is recorded, in writing or otherwise. Copyright protects the
recorded expression of a work – it does not protect the ideas or knowledge incorporated
in the work. Among other things, copyright law gives to the creator of a work the
exclusive right to do certain specified things in relation to the work, including to copy
it. But copyright is not only about copying: it includes a number of other rights
relating to a work as well – to perform, play or show the work in public, to broadcast
the work, to communicate the work, or to make an adaptation of the work, for example.
These exclusive rights of the copyright owner are, however, qualified by the provision
of certain legislative exceptions, which permit others to make use of the copyright work
under specified conditions without first getting permission. The Copyright Act 1994,
which is the New Zealand law governing copyright, calls these exceptions ‘permitted
acts’.”   ~(“Copyright Guidelines for Research Students,” http://www.waikato.ac.nz/copyright/CopyrightGuidelinesLCoNZ.pdf).

Copyright laws and regulations are at least partially standardised worldwide, with variations in form and implementation existing from country to country.

Personally, I would consider asserting Copyright when I wished to have full control over my work, for as long as (legally) possible.

Free it up!

An alternative to Copyright is ‘Copyleft’, which provides a way of making a work free, and ensuring that subsequent versions of it are free also:

“..To copyleft a program, we first state that it is copyrighted; then we add distribution terms, which are a legal instrument that gives everyone the rights to use, modify, and redistribute the program’s code, or any program derived from it, but only if the distribution terms are unchanged. Thus, the code and the freedoms become legally inseparable.

Proprietary software developers use copyright to take away the users’ freedom; we use copyright to guarantee their freedom. That’s why we reverse the name, changing ‘copyright’ into ‘copyleft.'” ~(http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/)

An alternative to the alternative of ‘Copyleft’ is to release a work under a Creative Commons license. There are six varieties of Creative Commons license, and they vary in three main areas:

• Whether or not they allow commercial use;
• Whether or not derivative works are allowed;
• Whether or not derivative works must also carry the same license.

Creative Commons licenses are used by all sorts of entities, including Wikipedia. Wikipedia uses the ‘Attribution-ShareAlike’ license, which:

“..lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.” ~(http://creativecommons.org/licenses)

It is worth noting that a Copyleft or Creative Commons license has the same ‘lifetime’ as a normal Copyright license, since Copyleft and Creative Commons licenses are both built upon Copyright law.

How does this IP stuff affect my (Second) Life??

Beyond exercising good common sense within Second Life, as guided by the Terms of Service .. well, try not to build anything that you know full well rips off someone else. Linden can and does enforce IP rights, including deleting infringing content from peoples in-world inventories – though more often than not the infringing item is something that was bought at a store, or was a ‘freebie’, and not something that the user actually created themselves.

Significant IP offenses can result in banishment from Second Life, or worse – lawyers. Be warned.

Since the laws that constitute Intellectual Property legislation are very broad and complex, it can be difficult to ascertain what actually constitutes an infringement; my advice to you would be to use your common sense, and steer clear of creating content that clearly derives from any form of licensed popular culture.

But anyway .. in the interests of making this post slightly less boring, here’s Darth Vader riding a unicorn:  (from io9.com)

"Wheeeeeeee!!!..."

If I get sued by George Lucas and 10,000 scarred-for-life little girls, I’ll be sure to let you know.