The story of Anshe Chung, Ailin Graef’s avatar’s penile assault made the rounds a while ago, now the story of her sending people hosting images/video of the incident cease and desist emails. Groan, what a prat. It’s almost midnights (sic – see I’m tired) so I won’t write a whole heap about it now. Here are some online articles that do:
The legal rights to your ‘Second Life’ avatar:
“Since the general theory (in Second Life) is that you own what you create, she completely owns the copyright in her avatar,” said Schultz. “But that said, she absolutely has no rights under fair use to stop people from taking screenshots or screen captures of her avatar in Second Life.”
Freedom To Differ: Do you own your avatar?: “This means that there would not be a general defence for using someone else’s avatar under Australian law, it would have to be a fair dealing for research or study, criticism or review, or reporting of news. In this particular instance, the Sydney Morning Herald’s use of the avator was for reporting the news, but would be harder to rely on that exception to excuse the posting of the clip on YouTube.” Disagree, think you can view YouTube clips as news, and this was footage of an incident, albeit virtual. Don’t see it as any different if you were taking footage in Pitt St Mall.
Bogus DMCA Claims Fit Right In With Bogus Numbers In Second Life: “This is, honestly, no different than the case from a few months ago where the EFF sued some guy for using the DMCA to force sites to remove a photo of himself on Fox News. The guy didn’t own the image of his likeness, and this couple doesn’t own images of their virtual likeness in the “public” areas of Second Life. It was a news event in a public place, and they have no control over the matter whatsoever.”
Anyway, then I read this interview with Joi Ito, a pretty clued up guy who said this:
Ito: I think it’s great that Second Life allows people
to use Creative Commons licenses and has a terms-of-service (agreement) that grants ownership of content to the citizens. I think it’s a huge first step.
Right now, to get a screenshot cleared from Blizzard–which publishes World of Warcraft–for instance, I have to go through their legal department and sign an agreement that I would need a lawyer to review. But copyright is really complex, and we need to develop processes and practices that we’ll only figure out by doing. And Second Life is a perfect place.
Well I guess that grant of content ownership to citizens is now trying to bite us all on the bum. Sometimes citizens suck. While I love the concept, I personally hate playing Second Life and haven’t gone past the training ground because of glitches. I love Warcraft, maybe because hampering all that industry makes for a better gaming environment for the casual gamer (ie me). That aside, was a little worried about his experience of getting clearance for WoW screenshots but I’m wondering if it’s just his Second Life bias that overstates the case. There’s not much argument that in the US, most if not all uses of mere screenshots would be covered under fair use so I’m not sure why he’d even bother asking for their permission. Also Blizzard actively encourage you to take screenshots and the making of machinima and I haven’t heard of them trying to crack down on use so I just don’t get what he’s going on about.
Some more (unrelated) gaming links:
UK minister: We need a gaming academy: Shaun Woodward, the UK Minister for Creative Industries & Tourism [How cool would it be to be Minister of Creative Industries?] has “called for the creation of a UK games academy that could train the next generation of developers”
Girl Gamer Makes a Killing: Love this quote: Their motto: “We may have boobs, but that doesn’t make us nØØbs.”
Sony, Microsoft hit game console targets: “Sony Corp. and Microsoft Corp. said on Sunday they hit sales targets as their PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 video game consoles battle for top billing in the $30 billion game market.”