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Replacing of NL 7-10 IP Licensing and Content Archivist Act

Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2015 8:12 pm
by Callipygian

This is proposed to replace or amend NL 7-10

Rationale: to update the licensing and CA laws to reflect current licensing practises within SL and define the CA's role and to establish who is authorized to have access to the avatars holding CDS content.

A. License Agreements and License Budget

1. Where content is given or sold to the CDS for use as part of its infrastructure, there will be a Licensing Agreement put in place, acknowledged as in-force by both the builder and the CDS Chancellor, acting on behalf of the CDS.

2. Where a content provider has an existing Licensing agreement, the Chancellor shall review that document and agree to it on behalf of the CDS, or may negotiate different wording acceptable to the content provider. Where no agreement is provided by the creator, the standard agreement appended here will be used.

3. Licensing Agreements will be published on the Forums and the Portal and a notecard of the Agreement will be held in the CA content avatar's inventory.

4. The Chancellor will negotiate costs and any special terms of any Licensing Agreement.

5. Purchase costs of content must be identified in the budget for a term, or may be authorized by the RA as a special expenditure.

B. Content Archivist

The Content Archivist (also referred to as “CA”) is responsible for conserving and managing backup copies of public CDS content. Details of this are outlined in section C.

1. The CA is prohibited from holding any other elected or appointed office in the sim government, unless a waiver is granted, on a case by case basis, by the SC.

2. The CA shall be one of the Estate Managers of CDS, to ensure his or her ability to rez content as needed.

Appointment:

1.The CA is appointed by simple majority vote of the SC, with confirmation by a simple majority in the RA.

2. By a super majority vote in the RA, the SC may be directed to appoint a new CA. In such an event, the current CA shall transfer all CDS archived content to a new CA appointed by the SC.

3. The CA will sign a Content Archivist Agreement with the Chancellor, who represents the CDS. The Content Archivist Agreement in section C. defines the duties of the CA.

4. The CA will share the passwords of CA-dedicated avatars (as spelled out in section C.) with the Chancellor, the LRA and Dean of the SC.

5. An audit of all archived objects in the the CA avatar’s inventory shall be conducted by each new CA, in the form of snapshots taken of the inventory windows of the content holding avatars. The RA may request, once per term, that an audit be conducted by the CA or the Chancellor.

C. Content Archivist Agreement

The following agreement between the CA and the CDS must be signed by each new Content Archivist:

This agreement concerns the archival and handling of objects, scripts, textures, terrain files, animations and audio in Second Life, which will be referred to as the “Content”. This agreement begins on ___ and ends upon the resignation of the CA, or the appointment of a new Content Archivist by the SC.
You, the Content Archivist, agree to the following:

1. You agree to maintain three avatars named CDSArchie, CDSPrinter and CDSContent that will be used to store content objects that the CDS has purchased or licensed from each object’s owner or creator. Other than a small number of appearance-related items (clothes, hair, etc) you agree that the inventory of the archival avatars will be used only to store items that are given to you for storage during the duration of this agreement.

*CDSArchie will contain CDS property that is used on a regular basis for the general upkeep of the estate, or for special events. Any non-transferable items owned by the CDS should be held by CDSArchie.

*CDSPrinter holds the printer and will be available to all citizens for use in publishing books.

*CDSContent will hold all licensed content or purchased items related to sim construction and permanent infrastructure.

2. You agree to provide the password for these three accounts to the designated representatives of the CDS: Chancellor, LRA and Dean of the SC. You may change the password to protect the security of any archival avatar at any time, but if you do, you agree to immediately transmit the new password to these designated representatives. You understand that the designated representatives will have the right to audit the inventory and accounts of the archival avatar at any time.

3. When given Content items for storage under this agreement, you will ensure that a notecard of the Licensing Agreement for the content is placed in the CDS Content avatar's inventory.

4. You understand that for all Content that is given to you under this agreement, the license to display or use it has been granted to the CDS only, and you agree that you will not claim any rights or financial interest in that Content arising from this agreement.

5. You agree not to transfer any Content given to you for storage to other avatars under your control. You also agree not to give any of the Content given to you for storage to any avatar controlled by any other person, except to authorized representatives of the CDS using the procedure described in this agreement.

6. You agree to provide any content requested by authorized CDS representatives within a reasonable timeframe.

7. You agree not to intentionally delete any Content given to you for storage under this agreement without a request from an authorized CDS representative. At the termination of this agreement you will provide access to and transfer all Content to an authorized CDS representative.

8. If requested in writing by an authorized CDS representative you agree to permanently delete all copies of specified and/or stored Content within two weeks of notification. You must delete all visible “rezzed” copies that are not in use by the CDS, as well as any copies from any inventory of any avatar you control.

D:PASSWORD ACCESS

CDSArchie: the CA will only provide the password to the designated representatives. The Chancellor may share that password with members of the Executive team or Estate Managers as he or she chooses, for the maintenance of the estate or for holding events.

CDSPrinter: the CA will share the password with any citizen requesting use of the printer. You may choose to change the password after each access.

CDSContent: the CA will only provide the password to the designated representatives. As much of the content of this avatar's inventory is licensed and may be full permissions, the password to this avatar must be strictly controlled.

In an emergency, (eg: extended absence of the Chancellor and content must be accessible) the Dean of the SC may authorize you to provide a password to additional avatars.

When the Chancellor provides a password for CDSArchie to staff or EMs, he or she will notify the CA of those given access.

Standard licensing agreement:

License is given to the Confederation of Democratic Simulators (CDS), by (insert creator name) to use the product (insert product name)with the following limitations:

1.The product is strictly for use in the virtual world of Second Life, within the estate of CDS, or in other land locations temporarily or permanently controlled by the CDS. Exports and uploads to all other grids are strictly prohibited, unless an additional license for a specific grid is issued.

2. This product may not be resold, given away, or otherwise distributed to avatars other than citizens of the CDS under any circumstance.

3.This product is provided with the following permissions:

(insert permissions)

All copies of this product rezzed or distributed to citizens of the CDS shall have the following permissions set:

(insert permissions, or specify 'no restriction on permissions')

Signed by:

________________ Chancellor, on behalf of the CDS

________________ Creator of product


Re: Replacing of NL 7-10 IP Licensing and Content Archivist

Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2015 10:11 pm
by Han Held
Callipygian wrote:

Standard licensing agreement:
[snip]

1.The product is strictly for use in the virtual world of Second Life, within the estate of CDS, or in other land locations temporarily or permanently controlled by the CDS. Exports and uploads to all other grids are strictly prohibited, unless an additional license for a specific grid is issued.

I object to that, and would not vote for it as it's worded now.
Second life is winding down; I won't vote for language specifically limiting content to SL. This would interfere with immigrating to other grids or virtual world platforms.

If the language is changed to allow for coverage on other grids or platforms which have or are cultivating a CDS presence, that I would vote for. I'd suggest changing it to something along the lines of: "strictly for use in platforms where the CDS has an established and official presence, Exports and uploads to grids or platforms where there is no official CDS presence shall be prohibited unless permission has been specifically granted" or similar.

SL is not the future, we need to future-proof our legislation.


Re: Replacing of NL 7-10 IP Licensing and Content Archivist

Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2015 10:26 pm
by Han Held

Other items to think over, these are seperate from my objection and while I would love to see the license changed to address these, I won't withhold my vote because these items aren't addressed.

Nothing in this license shall supersede the SL Terms of Service or confer additional rights. Items forbidden to be copied out of SL by the TOS will remain forbidden, acting in the name of the CDS shall not be an excuse to make unauthorised copies of assets out of SL. Items shall be copied out of their originating grid only by their original creator, in the event the original creator cannot perform this function the item in question will need to be re-created and the re-creation used instead.

When working with other grids, we don't want a grid's TOS to grant someone the right to copy our stuff willy-nilly.

OXP and XML backups lose creator information, and for that reason should only be used by the original creator.

"Inventory Archives" (inventory) and "Opensim Archives" (regions) preserve creator info, and don't require the original creator to make, but the preservation of creator information needs to be verified, preferably by multiple people.


Re: Replacing of NL 7-10 IP Licensing and Content Archivist

Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2015 10:08 am
by Callipygian
Han Held wrote:
Callipygian wrote:

Standard licensing agreement:
[snip]

1.The product is strictly for use in the virtual world of Second Life, within the estate of CDS, or in other land locations temporarily or permanently controlled by the CDS. Exports and uploads to all other grids are strictly prohibited, unless an additional license for a specific grid is issued.

I object to that, and would not vote for it as it's worded now.
Second life is winding down; I won't vote for language specifically limiting content to SL. This would interfere with immigrating to other grids or virtual world platforms.

If the language is changed to allow for coverage on other grids or platforms which have or are cultivating a CDS presence, that I would vote for. I'd suggest changing it to something along the lines of: "strictly for use in platforms where the CDS has an established and official presence, Exports and uploads to grids or platforms where there is no official CDS presence shall be prohibited unless permission has been specifically granted" or similar.

SL is not the future, we need to future-proof our legislation.

Well the wording can as easily say, 'total freedom to export anywhere' - the main concern is that some sort of licensing agreement *always* be put in place, especially with the appearance of new grids and the growth of alternate existing ones.

Since whether or not to allow export is a choice of the creator of an item, any creator who objects to the wording, and the freedom it does or doesn't give, is likely to provide their own license agreement.

Han, you said 'if the language is changed' - the purpose of posting here is for that sort of input, so feel free to write the specific wording you support here so that others can consider it, and if desired, it can become the wording of the bill when it goes to the whole RA :)

Calli