[MUD-Dev] Second Life's customers own the IP of their creatio ns

Corpheous Andrakin corpheous at yahoo.com
Thu Nov 20 12:49:08 CET 2003


--- "Christer Enfors XW (TN/PAC)" <christer.xw.enfors at ericsson.com>
wrote:
> Mike Shaver wrote:

>> The Creative Commons element is interesting too, but the key
>> issue is clearly that they're leaving (giving?) the players' IP
>> with them.

> I'm most likely wrong on this, but I always thought that the
> author of something (say, an object in Second Life) always own
> copyright (IP == copyright?) on it. Just because the terms of
> service may say otherwise, that doesn't supercede copyright law,
> does it?

> So if I'm right, this doesn't really change anything. Authors have
> always owned their work, even if the producers of the authors'
> tools don't realise this.

Your response leads heavily back to the discussion that I started
about "Who owns my sword?". Unlike many of the other topics that
have arisen, I don't believe this one was actually closed (was it?),
it just kind of died off.  A topic like that one can't really ever
end until a law is made though, perhaps it will even start with one
of us :)

Our discussion, indepth though it was, didn't reveal much but here's
what I think the general consenses was:

  Players should be able to sell items gained in-game -Game
  companies should not be able to be liable for said in-game items
  real world value -Players selling their "time" to obtain an item
  or to power-level is legal (I believe this was proven in court)
  -Whether or not the game companies like it, players WILL find a
  way to sell/trade items outside of their economy and game
  structure, so someone should make a law setting some ground rules

I think MUD-Dev has some archives on their page where you can look
that huge thread up too :)

-MOo MoO Cow of Death
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