It’ll definitely put Linden labs in their place.

Yes, this leads to all sorts of hard to manage scenarios. For example, the company that hires 50 avatars to do a job in a virtual environment may indeed be subject to all of the obligations of the laws of 50 different countries.

I suggest that the only reason why we question this (when we don’t if we substitute ‘in a virtual environment’ with ‘on the telephone’) is because of the incredibly rich and immersive nature of virtual worlds. We are, in a sense, fooled into thinking of the virtual world as a ‘place’ when in fact, for employment purposes currently, they are just a ‘tool’ of the real world.

p.s. it’s Elchoness, not Echloness.

well not really

given the nature of animation this is not the case – how often does the dance being performed actually match the music being played ?

the dance being performed remains the same regardless of the music

All it has done is put the Linden in a position of being a nanny for whiny artsy fartsy types and not a service provider of game software and technology.

Now with the opensource standard on the horizon this IP issue will be a mute point soon enough though.

The little artsy fartsy things created on Lindens grids will be all over the new 3d web with no Linden Labs nannyism protections at all.

Once the change starts it will happen fast, and the artsy fartsy community whinning now will then be faced with three simple choices.
—————————————————————————————-
1.They can either spend a ton of money trying to protect their so called pixel dust art works in the real world (very expensive compared to what you can get out of it).

2.Quite creating and find another hobby!

3.Or create, sell, make a profit and move on to the next project (the most profitable).
—————————————————————————————-

Thats the real world folks, not one created by a flawed and seriously defective Linden Labs business model!

Yes i agree with Elaine Barthelmess, theres no need to get offensive here Ann!

Yes, on the employment issue, there isn’t an Attorney General known to be looking at enforcing employment law in SL. (Other than the IRS saying that the CSI:NY greeters are employees and not independant contractors for tax purposes.) What the Ech

Now on the music side, I’m sure the EMI lawyer who was at the conference looking into this very issue would disagree. For those following at home, that’s a lawyer with a client stating that the Lindens, and the residents, are just asking for trouble streaming music into the Grid. And he admitted that if you sit there and listen to music, its ok, but once the avatar starts moving in time with the music, its a film. Even if you don’t record the images, its a film.

http://secondlife.typepad.com

MW

Ann is often way too harsh for even my lidless eye but this comment is spot on: there is no client here.

No client.

Lawyers who are untethered, who are not serving the real needs of real clients spout a lot of nonsense.

In real-life, sometimes they are called “ambulance chasers” — looking for victims, trying to drum up victims from anywhere just to have something to litigate.

WHEN there is a client — when some interested party tries to prosecute something like this somewhere — THEN one can begin to worry about it.

WHEN there is some actual real copyright to protect and a theft case from one of these ostensibly interested parties THEN we can look at it. SL has been running an awfully long time. Not a single record company or licenser of this sort of content has stepped forward.

SL is like a radio.