Mortal Online plagiarizes EVE Online's terms of service originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 09 Nov 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

RuneScape is losing the war on bots originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 11 Oct 2011 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Storyboard: Red light

Storyboard: Red light originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 22 Jul 2011 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Ask Massively: I am happy when I get to talk about Transformers edition

Ask Massively: I am happy when I get to talk about Transformers edition originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 18 Nov 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This week, we cover the final installment of our summarized history of Second Life and Linden Lab (check out the first installment or the second, if you missed them). It's only possible to cover a tiny fraction of the events that took place in the space we have here, but the highlights paint an interesting picture.

We'll be working our way from 2008 to June 2010, and looking at what future directions we expect from there.

Continue reading The Virtual Whirl: A brief history of Second Life, 2008-2010 and beyond

The Virtual Whirl: A brief history of Second Life, 2008-2010 and beyond originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 10 Jul 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This week The Virtual Whirl virtual mailbag is stuffed to overflowing with queries about the new Second Life Terms Of Service (TOS) that launched slightly behind the new Second Life 2.0 viewer. The new version has grown from 7,500 words to more than 30,000 words across no less than 18 separate documents, all of which you must agree to in order to use the service - and golly, it has raised some questions.

Continue reading The Virtual Whirl: The emperor's new terms

The Virtual Whirl: The emperor's new terms originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 03 Apr 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

When we're logged into Second Life and discussing various products, items, goods and clothing, we'll often refer to owning something that we've purchased. It's a very natural sort of metaphor. We're not, however, under any actual illusion that we own the items in question.

We read the Second Life Terms of Service when we signed up, and we're well-aware that we haven't been given ownership of the virtual goods we paid for, nor has any purchase taken place in the legal sense.

Continue reading Property, Second Life, backups and you

Property, Second Life, backups and you originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 15 Dec 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

'I cannot read the fiery letters,' said Frodo in a quavering voice.

'No,' said Gandalf, 'but I can. The letters are English, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Lawyers, which I will not utter here. But this in the Common Tongue is what is said, close enough:

'You agree to review and adhere to the guidelines on using "Second Life," "SL," "Linden," the Eye-in-Hand logo, and Linden Lab's other trademarks, service marks, trade names, logos, domain names, taglines, and trade dress..'

He paused, and then said slowly in a deep voice: 'These are the Master Rules, the Terms of Service that rule all accounts.'

Continue reading A video guide to the Second Life Terms of Service

A video guide to the Second Life Terms of Service originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

There are several sets of rules for users of Second Life. The Terms of Service (TOS) and Community Standards (CS) which combined form your explicit service-contract with Linden Lab, and assorted implicit ones, like following any additional conditions the owner of whatever land-parcel that you are currently on may have chosen to impose.

Well, the Linden Lab have updated the Community Standards for the first time in, well, perhaps forever. While the Lab has said that it has updated them in the past, the document has remained unaltered since at least 2005. What's new, however, isn't necessarily as interesting as what's missing.

Continue reading Second Life community standards updated

Second Life community standards updated originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 27 Jun 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Games and fan art go together like mashed potatoes and gravy -- you just don't have one with out the other. But how would you feel if you found a legal disclaimer in your favorite game's website terms of service that claimed that any fan art you produce, regardless of your intentions, is owned by the game company just because you depicted the IP?

That's what Woody Hearn from GU Comics found inside of the Bioware Tems of Service on the Star Wars: The Old Republic website. The paragraph in question (found in section 7 of the terms) essentially states that all fan art derived from any intellectual property of LucasArts and/or Bioware is explicitly the property of LucasArts and/or Bioware. So that stormtrooper picture that you drew? Yeah, it belongs to LucasArts.

Hearn has already explicitly stated that GU Comics won't be featuring any more Star Wars: The Old Republic or other LucasArts / Bioware titles until the policy changes. While he is covered under the fair use law for satire, any other pieces drawn by other artists may not be.

Bioware owns you... or at least your fan art originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 31 May 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

What the heck is an EULA? In theory, it is an End User Licensing Agreement. A legally binding contract between you and the provider of a product and/or service to indicate the rights and protections each of you has. As a user of software, or as a user of virtual environments and MMOGs, you've seen and indicated your agreement to many of these.

Well, they're really kind of rubbish. Some sort of agreement of terms, rights and protections is clearly necessary, but these do not serve those purposes, for a number of reasons.

Continue reading EULAs: The game outside the game

EULAs: The game outside the game originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 09 Feb 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

EVE Online trojan warning originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 27 Sep 2008 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Picking apart the MetaPlace Bill of Rights

Picking apart the MetaPlace Bill of Rights originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 18 Sep 2008 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

End-User-License-Agreements, Terms-of-Use, Terms-of-Service. Some MMOGs and virtual environments get you to agree to them on first-use. Some get you to agree on every load and/or every login. In all cases, proceeding to click through indicates that you have (a) read it, (b) understand it, and (c) agree to abide by it. It is a legal contract between you and the operators and developers of the service.

But frankly, did you? Do you? If the agreement contains specialist legal terms, it is technically not even possible for the average user to proceed with any level of informed consent without considerable research. It is even possible that many of these agreements may fail to stand up in court -- there's certainly precedent for that, depending on how finely you slice it.

Do you read these manifestly lengthy and fearsomely involuted tracts? Do you understand them? Or do you just click on through and don't care what it actually says?

The Daily Grind: Read and understood originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 16 Sep 2008 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

On 14 November, 2003 Linden Lab caused quite a stir by announcing that users who created or published content via the Second Life service would "retain full intellectual property protection for the digital content they create, including characters, clothing, scripts, textures, objects and designs."

Essentially, the same rights that they'd have anywhere else (barring assorted terms of use/service to the contrary). It seems obvious, in many ways, but ultimately it's actually very rare. Terms of use/service which express a contradictory position are in the majority. In fact, go to the filing cabinet and pull out the contract for your current RL job. Odds are, there are a whole slew of creator rights that you've already signed away that have little or nothing to do with your job.

That, unfortunately, is the normal condition. When it comes to the new, novel, or creative -- almost everyone wants a piece of your pie, and few want to leave a slice for you, if they can avoid it. Even taking Sturgeon's (second) Law into account, competition for the remaining portion of human content and pop-culture is quite stiff.

Continue reading Peering Inside: The rights of creators

Peering Inside: The rights of creators originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Well, sort of -- it is hard to be precise in the scant space that a headline provides. University of Southern Queensland (Australia) has a patent in the pipe at the moment that covers the extraction and avatar expression of avatar emotions -- at least if we're reading this right.

The idea is that the system is supposed to work out emotional content based on input text or voice, generate an overall emotion plot in a multidimensional coordinate system, and then express that emotion through your avatar. Essentially your avatar is animated and expressive according to your detected mood in order to communicate the non-verbal cues normally associated with that mood.

Will you see this in (say) Second Life, for example? Probably not. The Second Life Terms of Service grant an "a non-exclusive, worldwide, fully paid-up, transferable, irrevocable, royalty-free and perpetual License, under any and all patent rights you may have" to Linden Lab and all Second Life users as a part of pushing content in or through the virtual world.

That scares the pants off of enough IP-lawyers right there, so it isn't very likely we'll see this show up in Linden Lab's virtual domain.

USQ patenting avatar emotional body-language originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 09 Jun 2008 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Starting today, a number of prominent Second Life bloggers are on strike for three full days in protest at Linden Lab's sudden detrimental change of position on the use of current and new trademarks.

These bloggers feel snubbed and threatened by the new brand guidelines, which they find contradictory, excessive and potentially restrictive to free speech, and are going on a symbolic three-day strike as a gesture to show that they do not find Linden Lab's answers to these concerns sufficient.

Continue reading Linden Lab sparks bloggers strike

Linden Lab sparks bloggers strike originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The inclusion of section 4.4 of the Second Life Terms of Service has caused considerable fear, uncertainty and doubt among the users, even leading some to refuse to log in, so that they do not accept those terms in their current form.

On the face of them, the clause essentially makes any breach of the Brand Center guidelines a breach of the Terms of Service. Linden Lab's representatives say that they would not treat external breaches of those guidelines as a Terms of Service breach -- however, legally their statements to that effect fail to hold water.

Continue reading Linden Lab says no bans, TOS disavows

Linden Lab says no bans, TOS disavows originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 09 Apr 2008 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

At any time that a Second Life user feels that someone in their vicinity (or objects in their vicinity) violates Linden Lab's Terms of Service, or the Second Life Community Standards, that user can file an abuse report, which is then forwarded to Linden Lab's abuse team for processing via a request tracker.

Each report, we are told, is examined and action taken where appropriate. Every account has a record which is to be assessed to determine ongoing abuse. An established resource and record of actions apparently exists to determine consistency of judgment.

But that can't be the whole story.

Continue reading Peering Inside: Massively abusive

Peering Inside: Massively abusive originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 31 Mar 2008 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Real thefts occur in the real world all the time - we know that, and our respective justice systems have long since evolved to deal with them.

When it comes down to virtual theft (characters, gold, or items) whether actually taken from an account or replicated by use of an exploit - most people don't really think it matters. It's not happening in the physical world, right? So it shouldn't, right? Well, it does, and here's why.

Continue reading Why virtual thefts matter

Why virtual thefts matter originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 19 Nov 2007 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.