Now that’s an attention grabber! At least it got my attention! I got this email with this headline a couple of days ago from a web 3D content creator.
Basically, and I quote; “Renderosity products are NOT allowed to be used there (Secondlife) for ANY reason.” This means that any textures, objects, and/or anything else you might have purchased from Renderosity in the past and used to create inworld SL designs, can now not be used in Secondlife at all.., period. This came about solely due to LL’s new universal irrevocable TOS wording. (Universal and irrevocable a couple of the words in the new TOS.) I must say that this shocked me because this is the first time as far as I know, that the strange arbitrary decisions by LL have affected an online business that has no affiliation or presence inside of a virtual world whatsoever.
How incredible is that!
As you may have heard the new Linden Labs Terms Of Service for Secondlife users basically gives them the right to do everything and anything they please with anything and everything you create or upload into SL, and I mean anything! Now I partially, kind of sort of.., in a way.., er.., understand why they’ve changed their wording, their intent so to speak, and I won’t go into why I get it here, but I seriously doubt they’d change their wording to screw over their customer base by taking their work and selling or re-selling (their words again) it themselves. However, the original wording was more than adequate to cover their interests for their completely user generated world that relies on it’s content creators to make it viable. As a creator myself, I see a unhappy future for SL. LL literally holds your content hostage. You cannot log in until you click the agree box and once signed, it totally strips away the ownership rights of content creators. And therein lies the problem and not just for Secondlife residents. In theory, if by default, Linden Labs owns the rights to that awesome chair you put together inworld, than by default they also own the rights to the textures you used to make that chair look awesome. But you didn’t create the texture, instead you bought it from that texture vendor on Renderosity! Renderosity normally protects it’s artists ownership rights but thanks to LL’s new TOS wording, for all extents and purposes, this TOS renders protection impossible. Rendorosity knows this so instead of getting embroiled in possible legal issues down the road with their own vendors, They opt instead to simply ban their items in Secondlife. So why would anyone continue to create anything in Secondlife?
Of course plenty of Renderosity’s customers are SL content creators as well and they are pissed at Renderosity and their own new TOS. One of the comments following Renderosity’s announcement of their policy change was written by one very upset: breZsea on 10/22/13, it reads:
“I use the textures to create clothing hats jewelry etc in second life, Ive never “stolen” anything in my life, nor have I ever resold textures I purchased here, there. But now as I read, all the hundred of dollars Ive put into your content here to use, and I abide by the rules..as I understand it. So now, I am out hundreds of dollars and I cant do a thing with them because you ban it?? I understand your concerns with SL, I guess I wont be buying anything on renderocity anymore.”
Like I said.., incredible!
NEXT
How do I personally feel about all of this as a SL content creator myself?
Here is the 3D training blog that broke the news, again no affiliation to SL. [rollinglinks]3DTraining.com.[/rollinglinks]
You can read the Renderosity statement here: [rollinglinks]Renderosity.[/rollinglinks] Pay attention to the comments underneath. Lots of folks going “huh? What the hell is SL anyway?!”
[rollinglinks]United Content Creators Of SL[/rollinglinks] [rollinglinks]Survey Of Content Creators After LLs Action[/rollinglinks] [rollinglinks]Testing The New Terms Of Service[/rollinglinks][rollinglinks]Designing Worlds Part 1 Discussing The New TOS Aview TV
Yup, I have to sit back and think about this awhile……sigh…..,