Second Life Recognizes IP Of User-Created Objects

Thanks to TerraNova for pointing to a Yahoo press release revealing that "online world" Second Life now recognizes the ownership of in-world content made by subscribers. According to the press release, "The revised TOS allows subscribers to retain full intellectual property protection for the digital content they create, including characters, clothing, scripts, textures, objects and designs." As well as this, "Second Life has committed to exploring technologies to make it easy for creators to license their content under Creative Commons licenses", but, while these CC licenses are still being discussed, questions about the just-implemented IP issues are addressed at an official FAQ page on the Second Life site.

Comments

Re:As a Second Life player, I applaud this.

[katsushiro]

Question: have you ever played Second Life or done any modelling in it? The controls are actually quite simple, and after a couple of hours goofing around with it you can become quite proficient. Case in point: My fiancee recently began to play it as well, since she found it really interesting. She has only basic computer skills, and she's a psychology major, so she's never touched a 3D Cad program in her life. However, within a couple of days in the game she was cranking out truly interesting items, houses, dolls, wings, clothing, hats, just about anything she can imagine, she can create with surprisingly little effort and no previous 3D skills.

It's not perfect, of course: she can't code her way out of a wet paper bag, so she isn't able to assign complex actions to those objects, and usually depends on me to do the coding for her. But the actual object creation is very straightforward and intuitive, easy for someone with absolutely no 3D modeling experience to pick up and create with, but still deep enough for those with the inclination to do so to create some very complex objects. Basically, don't think Belnder or 3D Studio Max, think more along the lines of Legos and you get a better idea of what the 3D modeling system in game is like and why it's much easier to pick up for an average person.