Thinking this a bit further, it just occurred to me that the "may resell" part may be independent of that. My current gripe with most purchases is the limitation of rights, like I recently saw a freebie store which made items "no transfer" or not being able to reuse parts of purchased objects.

Personally I would not mind someone reselling stuff, e.g. a freebie depot charging a nominal fee for the efforts or sorting out or paying the tier or even making something new out of open parts and earn some money with it, as long as the result isn't limited in end user rights.

A "license field" on an asset.

The license field would contain the UUID of a notecard (this detail would be hidden... the creator would simply drag the license to the permissions window). The notecard would contain the license terms for that asset.

You would be able to see the license terms on an asset (or its contents if it's an object, or its component assets if it's a compound asset like a gesture, skin, or clothing) when you accept it or buy it, or when you look at the permissions on it or inspect it.

You would not be able to remove or replace the license terms on any asset that you did not yourself put there.

The license notecard would pretty much be a regular notecard, you could even copy it to your inventory... but 'no mod' permission would be automatically applied to the notecard itself if you did.

This, combined with the 'may not remove permissions' flag, should cover pretty much everything that 'no resell' covers, and be a lot cleaner, have less effect on existing content, and provide all kinds of new capabilities. The cost would be an extra 128 bits per asset.

The most common AO script is GPL, and yet it's routinely distributed in modified form in avatars that are no-mod without notice. This violates the GPL three ways:

• The COPYING file or equivalent is not included.
• The modifications are not available to the recipient.
• The recipient could not use the modified script even if it was available, because you can't replace a script in a no-mod object.

And so far as I have been able to tell, the people doing this honestly do not know they're violating the GPL, and the author of the script doesn't care. It might as well have 'This script is public domain' at the top.

The most common flight script also used to be distributed in violation of the expressed wishes of the creator, even by Linden Labs, until I kicked up a fuss about it.

My own flight script has been distributed in violation of my license (BSD2), completely innocently. All but one of the people I have discovered doing it have been happy to comply once they knew the terms... they just hadn't ever noticed them. One person never responded, but he's also no longer distributing the script.

Seriously. Notices inside scripts might as well not be there, in SL. You need a 'street sign' that you can't miss.

Not that anything will stop people from copy and pasting scripts and whatnot into a new script with whatever permission flags they want.

DRM is fundamentally broken, people. The permission system will not survive on an open grid. Get over it.

I think that permissions in an open grid should be "license based" and only nominally enforced by the system. This will bring SL into line with the rest of the net in terms of the legal situation, and also doesn't put the intractable problem of client-DRM onto our plate as part of the architecture design.

That said, I'm also personally opposed to a "no-resale" flag. It brings all the DRM-ey kind of problems back into the picture.

Here's what I'd like to see:

Inherent support for Creative Commons on objects/textures, as a set of flags that would be nominally enforced by the system (with no attempt to make circumvention harder, i.e. no DRM)
A way to choose GPL, BSD, or MIT (or "other"?) license on scripts.

Creative commons was designed for non-code creative work, and the GPL/BSD/MIT were designed for code. We should use these the way they were intended. Using GPL and such for non-code work has serious problems, and using CC for code has some problems too.

-Jason

I was using GPL/CC et al just loosely in the description to outline the general direction/intent. I didn't mean to imply that these actual licenses are used.

Regarding resale. I would like to see a non-resale flag, even if it's not strongly enforcable, but an addition to an object like it's currently for "no mod", "no copy" and the inablilty to set it for sale with a price would go some way.

But I'd like to unlink "no sell" from "copyleft" because they are different things, i.e. I could allow people to resell an object (giving vendors an incentive to sort through the stuff and make it available) as long as the result is still full perm and not crippled for the end user.

many people don't actually use the, set sale price, on an object, instead using vendors that distribute objects after being paid. how would you stop this because the object has no knowledge that it has been transfered between two people for money, to the system it looks like you just handed them a copy.

Few more comments:

1. This is misfiled, should be SVC.
2. I still do not see that "no resale" is useful, but an option to prevent the recipient from removing next-user permissions is a different matter. that seems useful.
3. An asset with forced permission could be put in the inventory of a more restricted object, but it must always be able to be moved, removed, or copied from that inventory.
4. For more complex permission cases, something like SVC-701 would be best.

But as the law has changed to keep up with technology, so should virtual worlds. The more options the better. I would like to see a lot more options on the perms system. Perhaps another level, the owner after the next one for instance. That would allow full perms stuff like textures to go to a creator, but automatically customers of that creator would be restricted in the perms they have. I'd also like to see a no resell option, in addition to copyleft.

It would also be necessary to ensure that anyone who creates or modifies the object is credited. i.e. A new owner shouldn't just be able to delete the attribution text.

It would be nice to split out "No Resale" from "Give Away" because the Creative Commons Attribution-No Commercial Use-Share Alike licence (which seems to be the most popular CC Licence) allows redistribution but not resale. Having that option would enable us to reuse by-nc-sa content in Second Life.

But that's not a dealbreaker and should probably be considered separately. The most important thing is to be able to lock the permissions open for the object and all its descendants.