LL Says No To UCCSL

Linden Lab has declined an invitation to meet with the leaders of the UCCSL (United Content Creators of Second Life) to discuss the issue of intellectual property rights as it is covered in the Terms of Service for Second Life.

LL says it is considering ways to make it clear that content creators’ rights are protected but will do so without changing the current wording in the TOS.

In an email, Peter Gray, Director of Global Communications for Linden Lab, says, “We believe that it would be more fruitful to avoid further debate…and instead focus on whether there may be an approach to address the concerns that have arisen in the community, while also ensuring that our policy remains applicable to our other products and services, and without reverting to the prior wording….To that end, we are currently reviewing what changes could be made that would resolve the concerns of Second Life content creators…”

The email is in response to the October 22nd letter from Kylie Sabra of the UCCSL to LL CEO Rod Humble and Gray requesting they meet with the group’s Council to discuss the August changes to the TOS. Gray’s email was posted on Google+ today by Trinity Yazimoto of the UCCSL Council.

 

The full Peter Gray email follows…

Dear Kylie, et al,

Thank you for your email. We appreciate your group’s concerns and have seen others express similar concerns as well.

We greatly value Second Life’s content creators, whose collective contributions help make the virtual world the vibrant experience that it is today. We remain committed to providing Second Life as a platform on which residents can create and profit from their creations. This philosophy is central to Linden Lab, and is something that we are ultimately seeking  to extend to all of our products and platforms. Accordingly, the revision to our Terms of Service was made in order to further extend the ability for content creators to commercially exploit their intellectual property through user-to-user transactions across Linden Lab’s other products and services (including our distribution platform, Desura), not just within Second Life.

We believe that it would be more fruitful to avoid further debate of the assertions made to date regarding the intent and effect of our updated Terms of Service, and instead focus on whether there may be an approach to address the concerns that have arisen in the community, while also ensuring that our policy remains applicable to our other products and services, and without reverting to the prior wording.

To that end, we are currently reviewing what changes could be made that would resolve the concerns of Second Life content creators, specifically protecting content creators’ intellectual property ownership while permitting Linden Lab to, among other things, act as an agent of content creators (such as yourselves), licensed to sell and re-sell such content.

We are optimistic that we will be able to arrive at a mutually agreeable and beneficial way forward, and ask for your group’s continued patience as we work to do so.

Best

Peter