There's an interesting post by Forseti Svarog over at SLOG regarding Linden Lab's habit of using resident IP for promotional purposes without attribution. Long story short, Linden Lab used Forseti's iVillage fashion show video, but not only did they fail to credit him, they literally edited the video to remove the existing credits!!
I actually had a conference call with Catherine Smith and former LL Marketing director David Fleck about this very issue about a year ago. At the time the problem was a series of Linden Lab press releases that not only failed to credit the residents responsible for the projects, but were easily misinterpreted as crediting Linden Lab for these projects!
The call was largely futile and consisted of Fleck feigning confused astonishment over my request that they credit residents. So, I think it's safe to say that Linden Lab's position on this issue is quite fixed and not likely to change out of respect for the artist. But to be fair, we must remember that according to the Second Life TOS, which we all agreed upon, Linden Lab is allowed to use any IP created in Second Life for promotional purposes. Section 3.2 says:
"... you understand and agree that by submitting your Content to any area of the service, you automatically grant (and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant) to Linden Lab: (a) a royalty-free, worldwide, fully paid-up, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license..."
But content creators may not be completely without leverage. The tricky part is in the wording "by submitting your Content to any area of the service." Machinima consists of various elements, many of which are produced outside of Second Life and at no time are submitted to any area of service. An original soundtrack or voiceover work, for example, is composed and recorded outside of Second Life and is the exclusive property of the artist. The act of mixing these elements into a movie with Second Life footage does NOT give Linden Lab any rights over those elements.
This tactic could give artists some leverage in compelling Linden Lab to credit them. If your uncredited work appears as a Second Life promotional, you can file or threaten to file a DMCA complaint, not about the video, but about the music and voice. Not that you would want to be a grinch about the whole thing! Your only request is that they give credit where credit is due. That's fair.
Be creative about marrying those elements for which Linden Lab has claimed rights with external elements they have no right to at all. If you have a trademark, watermark the movie with it. Include original art in cut-scenes. Or, like many real life television and movies, place the credits over the action in the opening or ending sequence. Linden Lab may endeavor to cut, blur or dub out these elements, but the idea is to make it so difficult that they give up and let you take credit for your work.
Of course, I hate to think of our community becoming a broiling mosh pit of legal strong-arm tactics. All this could be avoided with a super-quick IM to the artist asking for permission, and about 20 characters of text giving credit to that creator.
This shouldn't be such a torturous act. In fact, it should feel like the right thing to do.
1. I actually disagree on the video - when does the video you're using an exterior program to capture (FRAPS) ever get submitted to the server? It doesn't, and that video is yours. Your computer, your viewing experience, your program used to capture it. Bub was always good about giving credit and letting people know where their creations were being used (I did the same with some old SLBoutique banners); why can't LL just do what everyone else does? It is absolutely the right thing to do.
Posted at 2:59PM on Sep 6th 2007 by FlipperPA