Imho, one major source of confusion is still there. There is a huge difference between Legal Ramifications (ie, being sued and brought before court etc), and just having ones Second Life account banned. The difference between these two is completely lacking in the TPVP as well as in the FAQ.
While it is clear that Linden Lab can terminate anyones account (at least, that's what I think-- maybe this TPVP is needed in order to allow that?), before you can *sue* a developer is whole different ball game. It is this major difference that needs to be clarified: * You cannot legally stop anyone from making modifications, and distributing viewer code (based on LL's GPL-ed source tree). * You cannot hold anyone, with the law in hand, responsible for what others do with that source code; EVEN if the source code in question is breaking every TPV rule. The way the TPV Policy is formulated now, it's extremely unclear if Linden Lab intents to (try to) bring developers for court if their distributed viewer does not comply with the demands in the TPV. The FAQ does not clearify this. Actually, I'm not even sure if it is possible to sue users that use a viewer to break a rule of the TPV (mostly 'content theft' I'd imagine, but also griefing), much less a user that uses a viewer that allows users to do so, without that they actually do it. Basically this question needs to be added to the FAQ: * Will Linden Lab ever take legal actions against any of it's users, or even developers of Third-Party viewers, with regard to the rules in the TPV Policy document? The answer should be: No, because breaking any of the rules isn't really illegal in the sense of the Law. The only action LL will take is reserve the right to terminate accounts and withhold people from using the Second Life service anymore. -- Carlo Wood <ca...@alinoe.com> _______________________________________________ Policies and (un)subscribe information available here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/OpenSource-Dev Please read the policies before posting to keep unmoderated posting privileges
