Petition
From 4freedom
Petition about Second Life's copy restrictions set by default.
Right now any author in Second Life, whether he makes objects, scripts, textures or animations, can chose for himself which copy restrictions he wants to put on his work, and we want it to stay this way. What we do not want, and that's what this petition is about, are the following 4 restrictions that come by default on every prim that you rez:
1) Allow nobody to copy
2) Next owner can not copy
3) Next owner can not modify
4) Next owner can not resell/give away
This causes new builders to unintentionally build proprietary objects. Experienced builders know very well how to put copy restrictions on their objects, so if they want to make their objects proprietary they can do so anytime. For newbie's however things are different. Newbie's have no intention at all to put restrictions on the simple objects they build, they just want to find out how things work, so therefore we think it is more logical not to put copy restrictions on every prim by default.
In order to not build proprietary objects by default, we would like to ask the Lindens headquarters to let creators make an active choice about restrictions. To make this not annoying, I propose to add the option that people can set the rights in the way they want as their default choice.
Also, we would like to ask Linden to respect residents that do not want their free creations taken and then protected under IP by others. So they should have the option to spread things with the restriction that if others take them and spread them it should be under the same freedom (conditions) as they gave them. A good example of this is the GPL(2 or 3) used for much of GNU/Linux software.
Grunt's reaction
Firstly I'd like to suggest to not delete articles or responses written by other 4freedom members, like has been done with my original version of the petition. There's room on the wiki to add any comments or whatever at the bottom of the any page.
I'll show the right example by giving a response to this petition rather than deleting it.
This petition is a lot more ambitious than mine, due to the suggestion of introducing a GPL-like license. Although I would be happy with such possibility I think that it will be only too easy for the Lindens to respond that this will be too complicated. And they would also justly claim that it would not be realistic. I am not sure about objects but if you are able to read and modify a script then you can copy it, GPL-like permissions or not.
My petition was simpler and easier to understand since it only asked the Lindens to check 4 well known checkboxes by default and this suggestion can technically be implemented within just one minute.
Furthermore I'd like to see words like 'creation' and 'creator' be removed. They are on Stallman's list of 'words to be avoided'. Someone who writes software, or builds in SL is an author, not a creator. The creator is the Lord above.
I hope this petition will be changed a little, but if it won't, I will sign it anyway, since I fully support its intention.
Toga's Reply
Crap!! Remember to log in before doing an edit. All is lost if you log in after you started. :-(
I recall only making punctuation and spelling corrections besides the addition of the GPL comments. Sorry if I stepped on any toes. I only used the GPL as an example in the hope of trying to make the petition more clear as what our intention is.
Grunt, thanks for the feedback to help us understand how the process is supposed to work.
Cath´s reply
On second thoughts it might be better to leave out the GPL part, because I agree with Grunt that that would make it probably more complicated to deal with from Lindens part.
So the petition would then become:
Petition about Second Life's copy restrictions set by default.
Right now any author in Second Life, whether he makes objects, scripts, textures or animations, can chose for himself which copy restrictions he wants to put on his work, and we want it to stay this way. What we do not want, and that's what this petition is about, are the following 4 restrictions that come by default on every prim that you rez:
1) Allow nobody to copy
2) Next owner can not copy
3) Next owner can not modify
4) Next owner can not resell/give away
This causes new builders to unintentionally build proprietary objects. Experienced builders know very well how to put copy restrictions on their objects, so if they want to make their objects proprietary they can do so anytime. For newbie's however things are different. Newbie's have no intention at all to put restrictions on the simple objects they build, they just want to find out how things work, so therefore we think it is more logical not to put copy restrictions on every prim by default.
In order to not build proprietary objects by default, we would like to ask the Lindens headquarters to let authors make an active choice about restrictions. To make this not annoying, we propose to add the option that people can set the rights in the way they want as their default choice.
