Free to post your avatar pic?
A couple of weeks ago, I attended the Second Life Best Practices in Education conference, which was informative, educational and a major undertaking. Hats off to the people who organized this conference: Marlene Brooks (SL Zana Kohime), Chris Collins (SL Fleep Tuque), Doreen Pugh (SL Veritas Variscan), Beth Ritter-Guth (SL Desideria Stockton). They did a phenomenal job as evidenced by the 1,000 educators and distinguished keynote speakers from all over the world who attended this 24-hour event! Tell me Second Life isn’t a powerful collaboration and distance education tool! Remarkably, I really felt like I was at a regular conference. It was surreal but at the same time, it was just as educational and valuable as any other well planned conference I’ve attended in real life.
While there, I took a lot of pics to post online and for the dedicated Flickr page. As I was getting ready to do so, I stopped. When you photograph groups of people in RL, it isn’t necessary to gather model release forms. It is necessary if you use an individual’s image for a particular purpose. Can you post pictures of avatars without previous consent from the person behind the avatar? This issue has me wondering especially after hearing of a builder getting upset about someone posting pics of her builds.
I think it’s a good practice to ask permission or at least inform that individual that their image will be used in an ad, editorial, or promotional piece.
I am curious if it’s a big deal or not.
4 comments:
This issue has been addressed before after a well known griefer attack against avatar Anshe Chung resulted in a video being pulled from YouTube at her request. See http://news.com.com/The+legal+rights+to+your+Second+Life+avatar/2100-1047_3-6147700.html for more, but to quote from the article for convenience:
Fair use and creativity
"Copyright law is applicable to works created in Second Life. Copyright law includes fair use and it includes provisions regarding infringement," Linden Lab wrote to CNET News.com in a statement Friday. "Anyone may assert copyright claims, and anyone may assert fair use claims. Linden Lab generally doesn't take a position on disputes to which we are not a party. However, it would be correct to point out that the laws of fair use are consistent with the culture of creativity and collaboration that forms a large part of Second Life."
YouTube did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and Guntram Graef would not respond on the record to a request for comment for this story.
While the video had been removed from YouTube, which is owned by Google, another version of it was currently being hosted on Google's other video service, Google Video.
To Jason Schultz, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the issues surrounding the DMCA complaint are pretty cut and dried.
"Since the general theory (in Second Life) is that you own what you create, she completely owns the copyright in her avatar," said Schultz. "But that said, she absolutely has no rights under fair use to stop people from taking screenshots or screen captures of her avatar in Second Life."
Schultz also drew a comparison between this situation and a real-life hypothetical.
"The analogy I would draw is if there was a car accident in downtown New York," he said, "and the driver happened to be wearing an Armani suit, and there was a photographer who took photos and published them. That photographer couldn't be sued by Armani. News is news. And fair use gives news reporters and others the right to report what they see and hear, even if it includes your copyrighted work."
Of course, fair use doctrine, regardless of how well established it might be, has not been fully tested when it comes to a virtual world like Second Life. But to some observers, the issues surrounding the doctrine are the same, regardless of whether the medium is real life or a digital environment.
End quote from article. Hope that's helpful and so glad to hear you enjoyed the conference!
-Fleep
Montse,
This, for me, is a non-issue for two reasons - we're talking public venue here (SL) and we're talking pixels/bits not atoms/flesh.
Fleep said it pretty well and the EFF is very much where you are in relation to the newest, best and FAIR use of electornic media; that's at the heart of your concern I think - fair use.
If the EFF and Linden Labs are happy with it, so am I.
That all having been said, it will not preclude the serious consideration of what could / should happen between concenting avatars - married or unmarried.
Here is a link to post at www.StevenGroves.com that was made when a SL friend brought to my attention a much more sinistr aspect of SL image privacy - RL blackmail for SL indiscrestion. You cannot make this stuff up...
http://stevengroves.typepad.com/stevengrovescom/2007/05/second_life_ava.html
So happy to see your blog up and running - I will not miss a minute... give Oque my best...
It seems to me (as a co-owner of highly crafted, hand painted skin/shape shop in sl) that the people who should have copyright protection in sl should be the creators of the avatars...skin/shape makers. If their avatars are use in rl media the creators of these images should be asked for permission and given due credit and compensation, just as the works of photographers and painters are protected in rl. Everything is copyrighted in sl..therefore the true copyright to Anshe Chung's avatar belongs to the skin/shape maker. She did not create her avatar I am sure. Just as the creators of builds should have their works of art protected under the copyright laws.
Btw the name of the skin shop in Second Life to which I refer is Luscious & Lords. We make ultra realistic windlight designed avatars. They take literally weeks in photoshop and many many uploads (paid for by us to the Lindens) to design and make. They are works of art and I wonder who would tell me that they should not be protected under present US copyright laws.
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