Six of Second Life's top brands Eros Designs, RH Designs, Le Cadre Network, Nomine, PixelDolls and DE Designs are filing suit against Thomas Simon (known as avatar Rase Kenzo), and ten other as yet unidentified avatars. The suit was filed in Brooklyn, New York by attorney Frank Taney, a partner with Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney who is representing Eros Designs against Volkov Catteneo, for similar copyright violation.

As long-time SLI readers are doubtless aware, there is no technological means that exists to guarantee prevention against copyright violation. Indeed, most such measures are usually bypassed or broken before they are even released into the wild. That leaves one forum for copyright violation - the same one that has always been there. The RL courts and the legal system.

There's an interesting post by Forseti Svarog over at SLOG regarding Linden Lab's habit of using resident IP for promotional purposes without attribution. Long story short, Linden Lab used Forseti's iVillage fashion show video, but not only did they fail to credit him, they literally edited the video to remove the existing credits!!

I actually had a conference call with Catherine Smith and former LL Marketing director David Fleck about this very issue about a year ago. At the time the problem was a series of Linden Lab press releases that not only failed to credit the residents responsible for the projects, but were easily misinterpreted as crediting Linden Lab for these projects!

Let's take this from the beginning. SCE (Sony Computer Entertainment) published the shooter Resistance: Fall of Man, in which the nave of Manchester Cathedral is used as the backdrop to a climactic gun-battle.

The Manchester Cathedral objected (this would be the cathedral clergy, not the actual edifice. Stop laughing in the back there), and SCE apologized and said they would never do it again. Well, MC thinks that wasn't enough.

Manchester Cathedral now want all game-makers (and, by extension, digital world operators - because I'm under no illusions that Joe Average can tell a serious virtual environment from a game, clergy or not) to sign up to a set of "sacred digital guidelines" to prevent "virtual desecration". And you thought sexual ageplay and capture RP was an issue.

Here is a quick follow-up on the Michael Crook case. As part of his settlement with 10 Zen Monkeys Crook was required to make a public apology for his misuse of the DMCA ... on video! Some of you may recall that Crook was the one who filed a take-down order against Cristiano Midnight because his image appeared on Snapzilla. The case lacked any merit whatsoever, but because of the flawed nature of the Safe Harbor rules, Cris was forced to comply by his ISP without any due process.

Since Crook's settlement, his image has been restored on Snapzilla and we are treated with the following video of Crooks rather defiant apology.

Michael Crook is the quintessential attention-seeker, hosting sites that deny the holocaust, disown the troops, and publicly expose private photos and e-mails from respondents of his bogus sex ads on Craigslist. Sadly, the troll profession is, in a word, viable. We see this in the Second Life community often in the form of people with little or no real skill launching themselves to fame simply by bashing others and making outrageous remarks. On the other hand, maybe "viable profession" isn't as apt a description as "circus freak-show act." Sure, people are flocking to see what you have to say, but does that really make you important?

(Thanks to David Cassel for bringing this video to our attention!)

The EFF (the Electronic Frontier Foundation) filed a lawsuit on Thursday, 1 March on behalf of Linden Lab employee Kyle Machulis. The suit was filed against Richard Silver, alleged owner of The Electric Slide dance, on copyright grounds. Say what you like about the odd things that people may do in Second Life -- what people do in the physical world is even stranger. Nonetheless, there's lessons here for us all.

Machulis took a five minute video at a concert, of the band, the stage and people dancing. In that video, for approximately ten seconds, several people dance part of a dance that appears to be The Electric Slide. Machulis posted the video to YouTube, and within a matter of days, Richard Silver issued a DMCA takedown demand, asserting his ownership over the dance. Some critics say that The Electric Slide itself is 'rip-off' of another dance that predates it by almost 20 years, but that's not the primary issue here.

As posted previously, Anshe Chung had all videos of her being pelted with prim penises taken off of YouTube, citing DMCA issues. However, apparently some legal experts have spoken with them, as Guntram Graef, Anshe's RL husband, has now retracted the complaint.

"I would like to make it clear that I regret filing DMCA claims in this case, because the real issue at hand wasn't at all about copyright," Graef said. "I didn't realize that some people would misunderstand this as a censorship attempt, which it definitely was not." Interestingly, the video hasn't returned, as YouTube now says it was removed for " ... a Terms of Service violation"

Can anyone pinpoint what, in the TOS, this might violate?

(Via ZDNet)