THE CLOTHES OFF MY BACK

This blog represents the personal opinions of Amy Storm (J. D. Celko).   It in no way should be construed to represent the opinions, policies or position of OSgrid, Incorporated or it's management.

Missives from the Content Wars

I want you to know that I loved Linda Kellie. I had never met her, but I had read her blog, and I loved her.  This is why I loved her:

Licensing information from Linda Kellie's website dated December 22, 2012: Link

I don’t really care what you do with my creations or how you do it. I will never file a DMCA on anything I have ever made. I really just want people to have the freedom of having something with no rules, no TOS, and no fears.

Like Linda, I believed that the mass of licensing schemes, complex EULA's and lengthy Terms of Service agreements were making it really hard for the average person. Who can keep track of the separate, different licensing agreements on 20,000 inventory items. I wanted to stop worrying that I had broken the law every time I ran a script, slapped a texture on a prim or even used an item.



I joined OSgrid 62 days ago because I wanted to upload Linda's OARS and IARs for use on my home world InWorldz. Since you can't upload this type of file directly to InWorldz, I needed a Standalone world on my home computer that I could use to download the files. My plan was to export the content from the Standalone in formats that InWorldz would allow.



The Osgridians pretty much laughed at me and tried to explain that I didn't really need Linda's content. But I was determined. I hung around LBSA Plaza, an OSgrid social gathering place where some of the tech gods congregate, trying to learn enough to set up a Standalone region so I could escape back to civilization.



By my fourth day, I was hooked. I had lost interest in the Linda project and was busy helping newcomers get started. I helped new residents get their first avatar, handed out landmarks and reassurances, and mostly tried to be friendly and welcoming. In the process, I learned that this forbidding, frontier world was home to a community of hard working, brilliant, funny people who were also incredibly kind and generous.



As I settled into life on OSgrid, I continued to admire Linda Kellie. Her content was everywhere. Most of it had passed through so many hands that it was no longer possible to tell it's provenance unless you were familiar with her work. I thought that this was how it should be. I made a pilgrimage to New World and two to Metro in hopes of meeting her.



So when I was setting up the OSgrid Welcome Station, it didn't occur to me to worry when I discovered that Jamie Wright's great avatars had a lot of Linda Kellie content. I dressed the additional avatars I was making for the station in clothing from Linda Kellie even though I was warned not to. I was shocked at the response to our use of this clothing after an article on the Welcome Station was published in http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2013/03/osgrid-has-new-legal-status-welcome-region/ in Hypergrid Business. Then someone told me to look at Linda's website. 


I found it incredibly discouraging and disheartening. It was clear Linda didn't want her content on our grid even though she would honor her basically public domain license. She felt she could no longer support OSgrid or apparently it's residents.   It was a pretty angry statement.  Since I wrote this piece, but berfore I posted it, Linda has softened the wording and the dropped the wholesale condemnation of OSgrid, but her original statement was pretty vehement and directed.  Her current statement makes this all a little anti-climatic, but I am going to go with my original post because I feel this an important issue.  Here is the link to her current statement: Link

Had I been acting for myself, I would have ignored her red-lettered diatribe, but I didn't feel that it was right for OSgrid, as a company, to use content so grudgingly offered that people were accusing us of having stolen it especially when I had been told not to use it. I began to remake all 14 of our avatars with locally sourced components. I am still not finished. It takes time to put together quality avatars, photograph them, box them and test them. I would rather have spent this time helping people or working on tutorials. I might even taken some time for myself since despite one new resident's adamant assertion, I am not a bot.



I do not believe that free content should be used as a weapon or as a tool to manipulate others. People in Open Sim worlds and even the the for-profit grids depend on this content. It makes it possible for many of us to participate.



Some of us come to virtual worlds to relax, learn to script, or understand 3D content. But it's more than a game for many of us. I met a former homeless woman who survived being homeless by building mansions on a friend's computer. Virtual reality gave her hope. There are people confined to wheelchairs, people with terminal illnesses, people who can only log in for an hour occasionally because they are caring for an elderly parent or small children, and me, who didn't know how much she needed a place to belong until she found it. OSgrid gave me more than a virtual life; it gave me my real life back. We aren't playing here. Real people live on these worlds. Content creators help us build our lives one piece at a time. Their work makes our virtual lives possible.



I do not believe Linda Kellie's stance regarding her content serves any of us well. I am embarrassed for her, but to her credit, she does admit that legally we can use the content; she just hopes we won't. There are other creators who do not even reach this level of reasonableness.



This is part of a growing trend I call “take-my-marbles-and-go-home syndrome.” Alicia Stone made a long, confusing attack on Open Sim Creations  in which she insisted they take down items that she had placed in the public domain or had released with Creative Commons Licenses. She didn't have a legal right to retroactively reclaim her content, but she apparently caused such an uproar that it was removed. It is no longer on the site. Link



Commercial content providers are not immune from this syndrome. They may change licensing terms after you purchase an item. I don't know if this is legal, but the for-profit grids are supporting the creators. For this reason, I no longer purchase content in world.*



We depend on creators to honor their terms of service and licenses. We especially depend on those creators who release their products into the public domain or license them using BSD or Creative Commons to just let go, to let us use the content in the spirit you originally intended. Don't make me have to give you back my shiny new boots or the roof over my head.



Someone asked Nebadon Izumi, former president of OSgrid, if he minded that his content was being used on other worlds, and he responded that he wanted the things he built used and torn up and rebuilt into something better and used again. This should be the model. Let it go; let us, as Ms. Kellie so eloquently put it, use what you create “without fear.”

* Most content is free on OSgrid and on many OpenSim grids.  I still go on field trips to commercial grids and do my best to resist the shoe sales.

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