Is LL Stealing U2′s IP??
by walkerspaight on 10/03/06 at 12:53 pm
Though they’ve been around for just about a year now, the first I heard of the musical group currently known as U2 in SL was a few weeks back, when virtual photojournalist Alex Fitzsimmons sent along some shots (which I’ll be able to add to this post as soon as I am not in an airport on my way to Texas). The group apparently plays as a U2 tribute band in SL, holding concerts each week that raise money for various charities. But as I checked out the band’s in-world listing, a couple of suspicious things caught my eye.
All four of the band members’ avatars carry the names of their real-life counterparts: Bono Vox, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen. What a fortuitous thing, thought I, that Linden Lab just happened to have those last names available, and that no one had taken the first names to go with the band members. It occurred to me, though, that this was perhaps a coincidence too far. And in fact, it was. Having nothing better to do of a weekend night some time ago, I checked the born dates of every single avatar who has any one of those four last names. Turns out all four last names were first made available at the same time (March 23 or 24, 2005), and that all four U2 avatars were born on that very same day. No other avatars with those last names have earlier born dates.
To me, this smacks of one of two things: either the Lindens created the last names specifically for the band and held the first names for them as well, or . . . U2 in SL are themselves Lindens! (shiver)
While the thought of Cory, Philip, Robin and Pathfinder posing as a mediocre and outdated Irish rock band brings chills to my soul, it seems to be of even deeper concern to SL resident Csven Concord, who sees in the tribute band a commercial violation that LL should be cracking down on. For about a week and a half now, Csven has been looking into the matter of U2 in SL and whether their presence there constitutes a violation of trademark or other intellectual property rights.
Csven argues that not only are U2 in SL guilty of a trademark or other IP rights violation (both the band name and Bono’s name are trademarked), but that they’re also crossing LL’s Terms of Service, which specifically forbids giving your avatar the name of another person or a trademarked entity. Csven’s blog entries recount the usual meaningless answers on Linden Lab’s part.
The problem here is twofold: (1) Linden Lab isn’t necessarily responsible for enforcing trademark law. I’m not sure how the law rules in this area (if it rules at all), but it seems to me that LL is not, in fact, the party that would be charged with enforcement of IP rights. But then, this isn’t what Csven’s concerned about, in the main. (2) The main problem is LL’s ToS. The company is not enforcing the rules is sets out. But then, it never does. Over and over again, as we’ve recorded in the Herald, Linden Lab pushes only the most whimsical, ad hoc interpretation of the “laws” by which it purports to govern its world. And in fact, the ToS is written so that LL doesn’t have to do anything different; it can just go do what it wants. Csven may think the ToS enjoins LL to enforce its own rules, but the fact is that the company can go along blithely ignoring any consistent governance structure and continue to make resident avatars dance to whatever tune its fancies on a given day.
The effect of such an approach to managing LL’s world cannot be encouraging to those who want to launch ambitious projects there. Whether Philip Linden claims to be constructing a “country” or a “platform,” he’s really doing neither. Second Life, at this point, remains a virtual world that’s run like a massively multiplayer online game. It is not the open development space the company so often claims it to be. Until LL steps up to some kind of consistent rule-making and enforcement — preferably a regime that’s as hands-off as possible in order to allow the kind of robust innovation and entrepreneurship that SL is actually capable of supporting — it will remain little more than only a game.
Prokofy Neva
Mar 10th, 2006
Gah, shiver is right!!!! But whether their deal with the band went south and never occurred and they were left with the names, or whether the names are in fact run by U2 in some fashion, we’ll never know I guess. I don’t think we can necessarily prove they are Lindens merely by being born on the same day. They’re born on the same day merely because whoever wanted to do this created them — the fan tribute group could be that person.
And here I tried to get the name of Marshall McLuhan and they said “sorry, taken” but he doesn’t seem to exist. Odd.
I can’t *wait* to see what all these Creative Commons freaks in SL say about this. On the one hand, they seem to out-Lessig Lessig in being for all kinds of freebies, remixtures, etc. — but want the freebies to be especially of other people’s stuff, or only dead white guys’ stuff, not any stuff of their own. Now, U2 isn’t an evil corporation like McDonald’s or Wal-Mart which they love to hate, but a band that does all these progressive help-the-poor sort of things and One World stuff, and also has music they like. So are they going to step up to the plate and protect U2′s right not to have someone feature and sell in any way their music and image, part of which is used to do good and help the poor in Africa? Or will they say, hey, we all get to mix and match whatever we feel like, All Property is Theft, etc. etc.
The great thing about SL is it throws all those idealogues contortions like this and they don’t know which way to jump.
I’d also like to take this opportunity to challenge Csven on why he keeps up this pestery, hectoring barrage of questions on copyright to the Lindens? I’m all for raising public issues. But is there anything driving this besides idle curiosity or good citizenship? Are you promising your clients, Csven, that you will secure their IP 100 percent in SL, and therefore you want to badger the Lindens with making this promise airtight? I sense something driving this constant zealous interest of yours, and I don’t get it. The answer the Lindens have given seem adequate. There’s a lot of new territory, and nobody knows. I don’t think anybody ever made a 3-d world that had IP rights in it before in quite this way. Is the freedom it enjoys now for creativity served by backing them up against the wall and forcing them to make a definitive answer on this issue?
Of course, Reuben Linden, flakking SLURL, doesn’t help by putting a jpeg made out of a Ford Mustang ad into SLURL and saying “check out Mustang replicas” in SL. Surely Ford wasn’t consulted about this little hurl-a-slurl.
I agree with Walker that like tripod.com or any number of sites challenged with take-down notice requests, they aren’t responsible for enforcing, but are responsible for making sure the request gets communicated and trying to avoid consequences for themselves if it is not acted upon. Seems to me their liability is limited on this matter.
Walker is spot-on with this comment: “Csven may think the ToS enjoins LL to enforce its own rules, but the fact is that the company can go along blithely ignoring any consistent governance structure and continue to make resident avatars dance to whatever tune its fancies on a given day.”
The Lindens don’t enforce their own rules — just look at the forums if you want a taste of that. They don’t really grasp the concept of the rule of law because they believe themselves to be revolutionary exceptions, above the law. They put in language like “any reason or no reason” to give themselves the maximum of what Lenin called “revolutionary sweep”.
But…do we want them to have more government? Because if they did this tomorrow, we’d be talking to Secretary of State Hiro Pendragon and National Security Adviser Adam Zaius and Dept. of Commerce Chief Flipper Peregrine and trust me, in this set-up, you and I aren’t even going to get to head up some lousy PAC or think tank, let alone get a government portfolio.
So Walker, you’ve finally belled the cat with this comment, that’s it’s neither a country or a game. I’m leaning more to saying it’s a country, though one of these really messed-up, dependent, slagged out countries like a Trashcanistan, still dependent on Russian oil and loans, etc. It’s not a game, because you can’t consistently have fun in it, despite a lot of playing of all kinds you can do in it.
So what is your take on the Creative Commons thing? Did you put YOUR book up on Creative Commons? I hope not. I hope you sell it normally like a greedy grasping capitalist on amazon.com for as much as you can get it. That’s what life’s about. Getting paid for your work. Otherwise you’ll be waiting for your tip jar at the SL Blarney Stone to fill up to support your writing. Bleh.
And if you DO put it in Creative Commons and somebody within SL grabs it and sells it as some kind of fan tribute, well???
I’m actually hoping the Lindens do NOT jump one way or another on the country or platform thing but keep it open. Not until the last scene, when Marlon Brando lies dying, and he tells Martin Sheen, ‘You’re neither…you’re an errand boy sent by grocery clerks to collect the bill” and we realize the country merely existed as an ad for the platform to be sold to Sony, with many executions at dawn along the way and skulls spiked on the fence.
Or wait. No, the last scene with Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway, where he keeps slapping her and finally she says “She’s my sister AND my daughter” and we realize that the country was merely the platformists’ incestuous bastard child.
No wait. Remember that scene in the Fly? Where that guy like crawls out of the transformer and he’s like half-plastic, half bug? No wait. It’s like this scene in the Fly:
Seth: “You have to leave now, and never come back here. Have you ever heard of insect politics? Neither have I. Insects… don’t have politics. They’re very… brutal. No compassion, no compromise. We can’t trust the insect. I’d like to become the first… insect politician. Y’all see, I’d like to, but… I’m afraid…”
Veronica:”I don’t know what you’re trying to say.”
Seth: “I’m saying… I’m saying I – I’m an insect who dreamed he was a man and loved it. But now the dream is over… and the insect is awake.”
Veronica: “No. No, Seth…”
Seth: “I’m saying… I’ll hurt you if you stay.”
I think I’m losing my train of thought here.
Urizenus
Mar 10th, 2006
well, far from merely tolerating IP infringement, by creating the last names specifically for the band, Linden Lab quite directly participated in it, and presumably for economic gain.
On the other hand, U2 are among the biggest hippocrites on the matter of IP infingement, and I really don’t like the way csven is being such a boyscout about this.
Cocoanut
Mar 10th, 2006
Seth: “I’m saying… I’m saying I – I’m an insect who dreamed he was a man and loved it. But now the dream is over… and the insect is awake.”
That is one of my all-time favorite lines from movies.
coco
Joe AV
Mar 10th, 2006
There is also a Linden Lab rule that forbids you to intentionally create an avatar that has the name of a real person. Having said that, csven does need to stfu and mind his own business; if U2 were going to do something about U2 in SL they would have by now. How does he know that U2 in SL isn’t actually the members of U2 themselves?
Prokofy Neva
Mar 11th, 2006
Well, I don’t *get* Csven’s being a Boy Scout, so I want to keep asking him what is really driving this. People hate it when I question their motives and create hypotheses around their motives, but it must be done, when you see someone THIS obsessive and zealous.
I wonder about the Lindens’ policies on these names. They obviously put them in. They seemed to recognize that Anshe Chung has a name that is so identified with her and her business that others trying to parody it could be reasonably asked to stop. We saw this happen when somebody made a name like “Anshe Trenchmouth” (gah where do the Lindens *get* some of these last names!) and anshechung.com immediately dashed a letter off to LL’s lawyers and the person, who was already griefing events and doing other bad things, was removed, evidently banned or at least getting their name forcibly removed.
Meanwhile, “Prokofy Noodle” created by some asswipe remains, but that’s because I don’t care about things like that and I don’t consider my name in a game something I can trademark in that fashion.
I’ve seen some names in that list, and seen people take them obliviously, who don’t even know that they are famous names of past history or current events. I’ve been surprised that even some of them actually are available and used, knowing of the litigious nature of some of the people whose names are now used in SL. What’s going to happen when the real Solzhenitsyn, for example, surfaces and demands that not only Alexander be removed, but every single possible Russian diminutive and variation of his name, and his son’s names, and his other relatives’ names — indeed the entire last name is sort of “his” because nobody else in history or current events has it.
U2inSL
Mar 11th, 2006
Whoever is the author of this article should do some actual RESEARCH about the inworld U2inSL roleplaying band and what it exists for. Next time, before posting some journalistic fluff, ask the people involved with the project what it entails. This is a prime example of ‘tabloid’ journalism that doesn’t touch upon the truth. No one involved in the project was contacted before this irresponsible article was written.
whatever
Mar 11th, 2006
“How does he know that U2 in SL isn’t actually the members of U2 themselves?”
You are either being sarcastic or are really ignorant. Anyone who thinks the real U2 is in fact in SL needs to log off and get a real life.
Prokofy Neva
Mar 11th, 2006
I remain puzzled by this. There’s a new sim called “Dublin” with kick-ass builds still under construction. They’re planning an event for — you guessed it — St. Paddy’s day, with U2 featured. I can’t believe this could still be going on if the real U2 cared. If anything, they might be involved in some way?
Yes, I’m aware of that rule, it’s in the TOS. But it’s selectively enforced.
Tony Walsh
Mar 11th, 2006
I few weeks ago I interviewed U2 in SL’s DarkDharma Daguerre for an article on her team’s project. I’m posting the URL here because the Herald wouldn’t accept my trackback–
http://www.secretlair.com/index.php?/clickableculture/entry/u2_unwittingly_gives_second_life_concert/
There might be some additional material of interest in the article with regards to the rationale and mandate of the U2 in SL team.
Plastic Duck
Mar 11th, 2006
I know of people who have gotten 1 week suspensions just for rezzing UPS trucks in the sandbox. As Prok said, this rule (and most SL rules) are selectively enforced.
I decided to prove just how much the rules differ between Lindens a while back when I found this huge cock shooting spurt into the sky (cleverly disguised as a “club”) in the sim of Bella, clearly visible from the nearby PG sim Colona with a draw distance of what I believe was 256m (still much higher than most residents have it set I suspect).
Exhibit A: http://www.sapinski.com/sl/slnew/PGdong.jpg
At that time, the Something Awful splinter group known as SADC/Moon Pesos owned land in the sim Gallii, a sim FULLY enclosed by either mature sims or the void. Any mature content here couldn’t be viewed from a PG sim even with a maxed out draw distance. I went ahead and built a large and slightly phallic looking house. At this point we were already pretty much under constant Linden supervision. I had built the house a day after our whole plot had its objects returned by Guy Linden because they deemed our fetus processing facility innapropriate (and also suspended a few people who didn’t even OWN a single object on that land I may add, way to go LL!).
Exhibit B: http://www.sapinski.com/sl/sl3/cyn_dong.jpg
Within less than half an hour, Cyn Linden had shown up and asked me to remove my highly offensive “house” immediately. After mentioning the awesome club in Bella, Cyn told me she didn’t care and that I should abuse report the penis club if I thought it was innapropriate.
A week or two later, they permabanned the person paying our tier (Sausage Turner) taking over $600USD worth of lindens in the process. Around the same time they also permabanned two more of our officers, claiming Stinky Queso had messed up some private island using land edit (it wasn’t him and I had called them confessing that I did it, they didn’t care, so I fucked up a few more sims and called them again claiming I had proof that the notorious land editer was not infact Stinky, no dice). And then they permabanned Biscuit Beckenbauer, claiming he was an alt for Ol Fitzcarraldo, the guy famous for the first griefsphere grid crash, also an untrue claim considering Biscuit had been playing SL long before Ol and they’ve played the game simultaneously from different locations which I’m sure LL could prove if they’d look into things (they don’t).
Now this was more of a rant and doesn’t have much to do with the IP issue, but it does prove that the way rules are followed and enforced over at LL basically depends on whatever mood a Liaison is in. And this also goes to show that any rules they do have are generally ignored unless enough people bitch at them. They don’t strictly follow the TOS, or maybe they do, considering how vague some of the TOS rules are.
Want to finally settle this whole U2 issue? Contact Interscope Records. I imagine if they don’t already know about it, they’d go pretty insane considering how rabid some music labels go over smaller shit.
csven
Mar 11th, 2006
“But then, this isn’t what Csven’s concerned about, in the main.”
Not true. There are more than two issues wrapped up in this from my pov.
“I’d also like to take this opportunity to challenge Csven on why he keeps up this pestery, hectoring barrage of questions on copyright to the Lindens?”
Challenge not accepted. Figure it out.
“But is there anything driving this besides idle curiosity or good citizenship?”
Yes.
“Are you promising your clients, Csven, that you will secure their IP 100 percent in SL, and therefore you want to badger the Lindens with making this promise airtight?”
Once again, you suggest I have “clients” involved in Second Life or other online activities. And once again I’ll correct you. I have no such clients. End of story.
“I don’t get it.”
And you once had me so clearly figured out and labeled. So much for that.
“…and I really don’t like the way csven is being such a boyscout about this.”
Boyscout? Curious. Wish I could claim it. I’m too selfishly motivated, however.
“How does he know that U2 in SL isn’t actually the members of U2 themselves?”
I’ve already suggested this possibility. Too bad you didn’t bother reading up before volunteering your suggestions.
Later folks.
Prokofy Neva
Mar 13th, 2006
“‘But is there anything driving this besides idle curiosity or good citizenship?”
Yes.”"
Um…so…if it’s not a client…then let’s guess. It’s connected to a RL job? RL university? Something? Er could you enlighten us?
I’m well aware of your usual technique, Csven. It always involves trying to trip up an opponent by either harping on some tangential literalist point, or trying to skewer him on some real — or imagined in this case — “non-reading” of your post.
Please. We’re not children here.
Even Uri said he didn’t like the Boy Scout stuff. So what’s up with all this pestery stuff?
And even if you discussed it or somebody else discussed it, so what? It’s worth asking the question AGAIN: does the real U2 perhaps have something to do with this???
dildo baggins
Mar 14th, 2006
>>Please. We’re not children here.
or toxic biatches desperate to become an online celeb for her 15 minutes of fame by posting inflammatory BS rants designed to provoke opinion…well, most of us are not anyways.