More Copyright matters over photos in Secondlife
On Jan 3rd,2007, fellow VTOR writer TD Goodliffe published an article Taking photos of public sims copyright infringement? Um, no which asked the question is taking photo on a public accessible sim an infringement on copyright? This question was brought on by this story by Secondlife Insider writer Caliandris Pendragon. Caliandris published this story after a lead led her to the Island of Kokomo and after intense searching finially found a note card giver which gave her a note card stating
“RECORDING, FILMING AND STILL PHOTOGRAPHS are strictly prohibited
without first obtaining a written release from OKPride.Net LLC and any
such infraction of this policy will be considered copyright infringement and
pursued using all available resources in a real world court of law.”
This incident sparked an IM exchange which basically concluded with an understanding that what Kokomo sim from Okpride.net meant was they didn’t want anyone profiting by photoshopping thier textures and wanted to free themselves from legal problems from Musicians playing on their sim.
Well today Reuters broke a story about Anshe Chung Studios cracks down on griefing photos. For those who may not know Anshe Chung is the largest property developer and supposedly made the first million USDollars in real life… from Secondlife.
According to Reuters Anshe (Ailin Graef) and her real life husband Guntram Graef (aka in secondlife as Guni Greenstein) are pressing media outlets to take down photos and video of a griefing attack against which was conducted against Anshe during a public interview with CNET.
YouTube took down a video at the request of supposed copyright owner Anshe Chung Studios Ltd. Also several blogs have received emails from Anshe Chung Studios requesting the photos be removed from their blogs.
If Linden Lab (LL) allows this action it will certainly bring into play 100s of thousands photos in use all across the web. And I don’t see how there could possibly be a ruling any different than the real life paparazzi taking photo from public areas. Just cause Anshe takes offense to being attacked by giant Dicks doesn’t mean that the press and public for that matter shouldn’t have the right to photograph its occurence during a public interview. Shame on you Anshe Chung… what the hell do you think makes you more protected than any other secondlife citizen?
January 5th, 2007 • 
Weirdharold • 
comment | January 5, 2007 at 17:40 | individual comment-link
I think this is setting a terrible precedence. Who is who to start censoring images on the web in public domains such as in a MMORPG? This is truly not right.
comment | January 5, 2007 at 19:47 | individual comment-link
Crazy. I thought part of the idea of virtual worlds was to be different — not more of the same — as real life? What type of infringement will pictures of flying penises during an interview have on Anshe Chung?
You nailed it, Harold, she seems to have done this because she was humiliated by the griefing attacks, not because they are worried about any sort of actual copyright infringement.
Don’t take my picture at a public event?! I don’t get it.
comment | January 5, 2007 at 21:01 | individual comment-link
Good job Harold, this story was picked up by techmeme:
http://www.techmeme.com/070105/p65#a070105p65
pingback | January 6, 2007 at 19:16 | individual pingback-link
[...] It seems that virtual worlds are starting to bring rise to several legal questions as fellow VTOR contributors TD Goodliffe in his Jan. 3, 2007 article Taking photos of public sims copyright infringement? Um, no and Weirdharold in his Jan. 5, 2007 article More Copyright matters over photos in Secondlife point out. C|net news also reports on the issue of legality in an article by Daniel Terdiman published on Jan. 5, 2007 titled: The legal rights to your ‘Second Life’ avatar. [...]