Surreal IP Rights Issues at SLBoutique
No sooner did the Electric Sheep Company (sponsors of this blog) re-launch SLBoutique, the shopping site for items created in the virtual world of Second Life, than they find themselves stumbling over the kind of intellectual property issues that crop up in SL every day. Apparently, an SL resident had listed a virtual reproduction of the surrealist artist Salvador Dali painting Landscape With Butterflies on the site. But when the Salvador Dali Museum got wind of this, they sent a letter to the Sheep, asking them to remove the IP-rights violating reproduction from the site — which the Sheep, quite properly, promptly did. Dali’s rights-holders have been notoriously tight about this kind of thing, as I recall (though I can’t find the link at the moment), as have the rights-holders of Joan Miro’s work. What the episode indicates, though, is that SL, the Sheep and SLBoutique are getting a higher profile, and that the many other IP violations in SL may soon come in for similar treatment.
I’ve fired off an email to Linden Lab to see whether they too were contacted by the Dali Museum, but I haven’t heard back from them yet. One issue remains: Many residents complain that Linden Lab is often non-responsive to reports of their own IP rights being infringed on the Grid, despite the company’s stated policies. It will be interesting to track how that develops, and whether it has any effect on SL’s broad adoption.
Feeds
Joan Miro’s rights holders objected to Google modifying their logo in Miro’s style to celebrate the artists birthday. Mercury News Story
We’re anticipating similar problems with Second411 where right now there are items listed that I’m fairly confident have not been cleared with their rights holders.
I’ve been waiting for this to happen for some time. It’s been discussed on the forum of course… that external sites carrying IP-infringing property would eventually have to deal with these issues. This is the first I’ve heard of it happening (any previous ones?).
This one is cut and dried. I’ll be interested to see what happens when “fan art” collides with “fan art on sale in bulk inside SL”.
Good.
“homes by rem koolhaus”
http://www.slboutique.com/index.php?p=buy&user_avatar_id=3495
http://architecture.about.com/library/weekly/aa042200a.htm
this is the type of thing that will be rampid as vr worlds continue…but is already common ip infringement in real world or even html based web..
as someone getting ready to possibly offer my IP from Starbase C3 into SL, via the boutique very soon, i suggest some googling at Electric sheep…:) itll help keep prospective “partners” - ” users” happy.
larryr
c3
[…] I know when the Dali Museum was upset that people on SLBoutique were infringing on IP they sent a take down request and they weren’t even contacted by MTV News about it. […]