How then will we define copyright here?

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Welcome! Thank you very much for stopping by; I am very excited for this blog release.

Allow me to introduce myself. I am Tarasia Ashbourne and I rezzed on August 14, 2007 with a different account. This was borne out of seeing a technical magazine talking about Second Life®, and- with the exception of a period of time at which I was blocked from using the viewer- I’ve been hooked ever since!

In real life, I am a college senior studying political science at Seton Hall University in South Orange, NJ, USA and have a background of some German blood mixed into Filipino blood. I am twenty-one and I currently reside under my mother’s household as I finish my studies and look ahead. We are a family of four: my mother, myself, my younger sister, and my younger brother. I was born in the Philippines and baptized a Roman Catholic. We resided in its capital for five years; and then my father’s employment agency whirled us to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia where we resided until I was nine; and then my father obtained a working visa and we headed to Long Island, New York.

From there, for varying reasons, we went from New York to Daly City, San Francisco (six months) and returned to the East Coast to New Jersey where my family currently resides. The town we reside in is a rich town with a majority population of my Jewish brothers and sisters; but there is a great number of Protestants and Roman Catholics as well, with Hindus and Muslims also residing here.

On my own, for my freshman year of college, I spent a year in Manchester, New Hampshire. Since then, my dealings with people have been multi-faceted with my involvements in a few university political debates (yes, universities also have their politics) as well as involvement in some student governing associations and co-management of a society of roleplayers (which, if you know how roleplayers are like, can become prickly at times and I have become skilled in conflict resolution in the process).

Why am I telling you all of this? I am sharing you all this because my tastes and point of view has been affected by the places I have been immersed in. I appreciate diversity and have been friends with people of different points of view; therefore if I disagree with someone respect and cordiality is a rule I follow and in general I try to demonstrate patience, kindness and generosity. I acknowledge that there are variations of ethics world-wide and that some may differ with mine.

However, I will also argue that, despite some variations, I believe that all people – who are good at the root—expect to be well treated and respected and follow the Confucian Golden Rule within their culture: treat others as you would expect to be treated. I believe this applies to property, especially to intellectual property, though ideas I know of how “rights” to intellectual property are defined differently in certain places where it is looser.

I believe, moroever, that there is a general agreement of what copyright and property is and that it include intellectual property in the digital format. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization , a branch of the United Nations, “The term intellectual property broadly refers to the creations of the human mind. Intellectual property rights protect the interests of creators by giving them the property rights over their creations” (“Understanding Copyright”, p ). Several pages further, it goes on to say that,

“While no acceptable legal definition has been developed, there is a consensus that the combination of sound, text and images in a digital format, which is made accessible by a computer program, embodies an original expression of authorship sufficient to justify the protection of multimedia productions under the umbrella of copyright” (p.8)

Not all countries belong to the U.N. and that politics alone is complex. However, I will argue that a majority of our content creators reside in countries that do.

Generally, as according to WIPO, “copyright is a legal term describing rights given to creators for their literary and artistic works.” .

I’ve told you what I wanted to do with this blog, or wiki (as it may turn out): Create a forum of discussion about and awareness of piracy and gather together all the strategies we can use to fight against it. Make it a newbie-friendly resource to consult. Promote a positive appreciation for the creators who made Second Life® the place we love. For these purposes, I will define the rights of content creators as follows:

1- Content Creators have exclusive right to their prim designs, textures, and scripts. This means that they have exclusive right to grant others to resell, share, or modify a given object.

2- Exclusivity also means that, even if an item is set to “ok transfer” or “ok copy”, only the original content creator, unless designated by contract may profit from it. In other words, any transfers without the permission of the content creator, should be for free. I believe re-selling should be governed by a contract between the reseller and the original content creator. The content creator must be informed of any re-selling.

3- Exclusivity also means that, if an object is “ok modify”, you may NOT modify it to sell and you may NOT replicate the object so that it becomes full perm ….Modify rights to you, the customer, the owner by purchase, is only permitted as far as modification for your own personal, noncommercial use…in other words, if you want to tint a jacket so it matches another designer’s shirt or pants to make an outfit for yourself and only for yourself . Nothing more. In regards to Demos: exclusivity also means that you may not attempt to circumvent a Demo to use it as you would with a non-demo product. With Demos, you HAVE NOT BOUGHT THE RIGHTS TO USE THE PRODUCT NORMALLY. Purchasing the non-demo product means you are compensating the creator fully for their work and therefore rightfully obtain the permission to use their creation.

4- For scripts, exclusivity means you CANNOT copy manually or automatically a script and commercially sell it without license from the scripter. You cannot, without the knowledge and permission of the scripter, freely distribute, even for free, a modified version of the script. This is not only because doing so would infringe upon his code, but that distributing a modified script still places him as the creator, whereas any faults or bugs in the script may be yours. Permissions may come in given licenses such as the GPU or Creative Commons license.

Open-source, CC, and GPU- licensed products are obviously governed by their own criteria and rules and must be abided by.

Myself, and my associates will, unless change is called for in extraordinary circumstances, be writing articles and fashioning guides for New Residents, from this point of view.

But, again, I am open to Designers’ input regarding this…If strong arguments and voices are raised against any part of the above definition, of course I will revise it.

How does “CONCLUSIONS by Tarasia” define itself in regards to real- life knock-offs or real life replications?

This is a sensitive issue and one that I know I will have to address from the get-go. A website advocating for real-life copyright respect for digital artists and creators in the Metaverse– or anywhere, really: I argue that copyright is applicable across all worlds, whether on IMVU.com, There, WoW, etc.– should not we be consistent with the idea and respect real-life product copyrights/designs as well?

The reason why I present this counter- argument against ourselves is due to the fact that: 1) Many designers draw “inspiration” for products; 2) It will likely be brought up eventually; 3) Honestly addressing it from the beginning should stem any problems with credibility that may come up later on, and what we hope is that from the beginning we will have readers that trust us.

I will be honest with you and say that, in my thought process about this, I had a lot of difficulty with this issue.

When I thought about this problem, I knew that first, of all, I needed to define what “inspiration” meant for designers. I have not interviewed any designers on this, but I knew that “inspiration” could range from seeing a design in a real-life publication, ad, or T.V. show and attempting to replicate it digitally, to minorly influencing the designer’s ideas or having merely been amongst a range of influences on the designer. I knew that a distinction needed to be made between the two….the former clearly, in my view, interfering in real life copyright, the latter being an acceptable way of inspiration and a good way for designers to grow.

I strongly prefer that Designers be as creative as is possible. I knew that I could not usually and conscientiously personally endorse, or loudly promote, on my person or land (if one day I should own any!) products that are knock-off’s or near replicas of real-life designs due to, indeed, the contradiction it would present as well as how it could reflect on this blog/wiki magazine’s mission. The only exception to this is if the content creator has license from the RL designer to do this. But, then, how do we address non-commercial builds that do this? We know of sims that attempt to be faithful to books or movies: roleplay or fan-based sims paying homage to great plots, scenes, writers; We also know of possible infringements in regards to music streams in certain music venues. If we oppose copyright violation of real-life products in digital designs, should we not also clearly oppose other things that possibly fall outside the scope of the commercial markets, which clearly replicate after art still copyrighted in real-life to this day?

My mind, essentially, wandered through different channels and I knew then that answer that question is complex. However, I knew clearly that what is clearly applicable and of direct concern for us would be any commercial activity that had to do with the art. If the art- whether with books, actual paintings, or other artwork– is represented *and then sold* in Second Life by a person who does NOT have copyrights to them, then we would consider it an infringement of the real-life designer’s copyright.

Again, how will this blog magazine address these issues?

Below is thus outlined what I think will be the policy for now. It is imperfect:/, but I have tried. I welcome, however, anybody who could suggest things to make it more ethically sound. Please IM me in-world and I’ll get in touch asap!

The overall goal of this magazine is to help the content creators of Second Life ™ by promoting IP rights and educating Residents of the importance of respecting and advocating Creators’ copyrights to their creations. It is, therefore, NOT in the blog’s prerogative to directly promote products of any sort; therefore I, and others I will invite to come on board with me, will not be actively writing about such products, unless it somehow ties into our overall mission. Direct links on our “Blogroll” may be the only sort of advertisement out there, but I will ask my partners to refrain from being overzealous in their posting of direct links…I will also ask them to refrain, on this blog, to not place direct links to creators who have many designs that feature too many design details of a real-life counter-part, or are exact replicas .

Will we help those type of designers? I have not encountered designers that make the majority of their income copying unique designs from RL, but if there are, then we would not directly do so. However, in general, if a designer in Second Life ™ is infringed upon, we will not hesitate to publish or publicly protest about it.

Of course, if a Designer does have license to imitate or interpret a real-life design directly– such as, if I understand correctly, the dresses of the EFA First Fusion Show — then it is acceptable.

We will additionally DEFINITELY NOT endorse the use of the following:

- the usage of logos, symbols, artwork, signs, etc, that are CLEARLY, wholly, copyrighted by RL corporations, businesses, and inventors. In regards to logos, signs and symbols I have in mind digital products with the brand trademarks of NIKE, BMW, MITSUBISHI, etc….Regardless of whether or not historically those symbols appeared before:). Lay consumers will not have the historical background of the symbols foremost in their minds when they buy;it will still raise in lay consumers’ minds associations with said products, and they therefore buy those products because they think it’s just “in” and “cool” to have. Such purchasing and selling using those products is unethical because they take advantage of the RL brand’s reputations so that one may make money off them.

~ The usage of trademark phrases copyrighted to RL corporations and businesses.

~ Anything else in that vain:)

Well, I hope the above is helpful to clearing up what this blog will do. I consider this endeavor a partnership… I dream that you and I can protect Creator’s rights *together*. I therefore value all productive input and accept disagreements. Commentators are as important to any discussion as the writers of the articles.

Are you with me? Come with me on this journey!

Sources:

“Understanding Copyright and Related Rights”, compiled by World Intellectual Property Organization.
Shortcutted under “Understanding Copyright”: http://www.wipo.int/ip-outreach/en/publications.html

Direct URL (if fails use above link): http://www.wipo.int/export/sites/www/freepublications/en/intproperty/909/wipo_pub_909.pdf