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The latest episode of SecondCast, our podcast about all things Second Life, is now on the air. In episode #32, we hear from SecondCast cast member Torrid Midnight, who reports that she’s leaving Second Life (and SecondCast, unfortunately) for an indefinite amount of time. Her exit was precipitated by a nasty conflict over IP rights in Second Life, during which Torrid was pretty badly abused, by people who didn’t really have a leg to stand on. More after the jump.

It seems Torrid bought a skin, ripped its texture using a third-party application, added some eyeliner to it, and simply wore it around town. The creator of the product reacted with a smear campaign, which then blew up out of all proportion. Very sadly, it worked.

The skin’s creator apparently felt that since the skin was sold as a “no modification” product, Torrid’s alteration of it amounted to an IP rights violation. But two things argue against this: One, Torrid did nothing with the IP rights of the product. Nothing was sold or even given away by her. And two, despite the rhetoric and advertising, it looks like IP rights don’t actually enjoy the protections you think they do in Second Life.

Peter Ludlow and I wrote about this issue in our book, Only A Game, which should come out next year, but it hasn’t made its way onto this blog. SecondCast producer Johnny Ming (aka John Swords) has posted about it on his own blog, though. A close reading of the Second Life Terms of Service reveals that your creation of an object implies that you’ve licensed it without reservation to the entire community:

You also understand and agree that by submitting your Content to any area of the Service, you automatically grant (or you warrant that the owner of such Content has expressly granted) to Linden Lab and to all other users of the Service a non-exclusive, worldwide, fully paid-up, transferable, irrevocable, royalty-free and perpetual License, under any and all patent rights you may have or obtain with respect to your Content, to use your Content for all purposes within the Service.

In other words, you can do what you like with the stuff on the Grid. It actually looks to be quite a bit different from the “we grant you the IP rights in your creations” that is advertised, but we’re not legal experts here at 3pointD.

In any case, as Cristiano points out, the whole thing really comes down to a dispute among friends which blew up into a conflict that grew truly ugly and vile. One unfortunate aspect of the situation is how defensive the Second Life community has proved in the face of an event which actually cost no one any money or lost sales, which presumably was the basis for the dispute. The situation was made worse by the new open enrollment regime, which allowed people to create alts with which to attack each other. It’s sad that hurt feelings couldn’t be smoothed over without resorting to what amounts to a national incident, and sadder still that Torrid felt the need to get out.

We miss you, Torrid, and we await your return.