Taking photos of public sims copyright infringement? Um, no

Some things only happen in the virtual world, like this story from one of my friends and SLI writer Caliandris Pendragon:

After I took the photograph, I stumbled out onto a piece of decking and was hit with a notecard, which included the following information:

“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.”

The sim in question is the Kokomo sim from Okpride.net. I had to stop by and visit.

Curious, I searched for the sim (pictured at top of post) and looked around for somebody to ask for “written permission” to take a photo. Didn’t see an avatar on the map in the sim nor any signs/objects that said anything about picture taking being prohibited. In the comments of Caliandris’ post, Jesse said he talked to the estate owner Cavecub Milk (profile shown below):

Cavecub is a veteran by SL standards having been a resident since 8/31/2004. The profile has the following text: “If you want to know more just ask, I don’t bite anyone.”

Cavecub wasn’t online so I could ask whether there were any teeth behind this message. Jesse in the SLI comments showed an IM log where Cavecub Milk allegedly said Caliandris’ picture of the sim was “fine” because she wasn’t selling the picture. Only she was being paid for the post by Weblogs, Inc / AOL and the picture is on a page with ads. AOL is making money from the content and indirectly from the content including the picture of the Kokomo sim.

I’m not trying to get my buddy Caliandris or AOL in trouble, because I think this so called policy of no picture taking in Cavecub Milk’s sim is completely bogus and unenforceable. I’m not an attorney, but I think any such claim would be laughed out of court. Perhaps this is a marketing deal to get people to visit and take pictures in Kokomo and test Cavecub’s sim policy? If he wants to keep his sim out of public, then why not make it a private sim so only those Cavecub deems worthy can visit?

Wait, I’ve been at the sim for 30 minutes and now three people are here, including me. The traffic rating for the sim? 953. Hardly anybody, cameras flashing and Cavecub worthy or not, are visiting anyway.

Update 9:41am PST (and again 9:52am PST): oops, before publishing I should have added that Cavecub did stop by in the comments of Caliandris post and say that she misunderstood that they weren’t trying to say picture taking was copyright infringement. Apparently the two of them had a detailed conversation about the subject. She hasn’t posted the conversation that he gave her permission to do yet (yes, she has here and he’s heavy drama alert). Cavecub also says:

We cannot stop people from taking photos and will not.. take as many as you wish. However ripping off textures will not be tolerated by Duran Duran, Dell, Microsoft, Sony or any other entity who chooses to enter “our game”. So this is not only new but will become the norm. Get used to it.

It’s the textures he’s concerned about, not scenic picture taking in the sim. If any of our VTOR group actually speak to Cavecub, please update in the comments below or via an update post.