DMCA notices in Second Life: A practical example

Earlier this year, we made a number of attempts to determine how Linden Lab handled DMCA notices on content in their virtual environment, Second Life. Linden Lab declined to answer at the time, however, the owners of a clothing and accessories store ~*Fresh Baked Goods*~ (whom we will call FBG for brevity) were recently the recipient of one such DMCA action, and have documented the whole process from their end of things.

It all started on Tuesday, 19 August 2008, when an email arrived from the Removals Department at Linden Research Inc (the proper name for Linden Lab). Citing three sets of necklaces as the offending articles, the owners of FBG were asked to disable or remove access to the content and were given two days to fax a formal DMCA counter-notice to Linden Lab, including their physical identities and contact information, which Linden Lab would then pass on to the person or organization who filed the original DMCA notice.

The owners of FBG disabled the vending and availability of the content as Linden Lab requested, and began the process of filing the counter-notification.

While the counter-notification was being arranged, the two owners both had their accounts temporarily disabled for 'testing' — a process where a Linden Lab staff member or agent, temporarily logs in as the user. This is often used as a tool for bug-testing and fault-reproduction. It is unknown why this action was taken in this case.

On Friday 22 August, Linden Lab acknowledged receipt of the counter-notification, and while the FBG owners had disabled the vending and availability of the indicated content, Linden Lab then removed all the items from inventory, as well as vendors and other in-world containers containing copies of the items. This included the OnRez and SLexchange boxes that were configured to deliver other products.

At this point, the unknown filer of the original DMCA notice was given ten days to commence further legal action against FBG, in accordance with DMCA guidelines. FBG wanted to know who had filed the original DMCA notice, and what the specifics of the infringement listed in it were. Linden Lab declined to divulge the information, citing the privacy clauses of the Second Life Terms of Service.

Eleven days passed without notification from Linden Lab, so the FBG owners sent another email to the removal team requesting that their content be returned. On Wednesday, 10 September, absent any legal action filed against FBG, that finally happened.

Unfortunately, whoever was driving CopyrightAgent Linden (the in-world account used by the Removals Department at Linden Lab) was apparently either ignorant of, or heedless of the Second Life permissions system. The transfer of ownership messed up the permissions of the objects, such that the owners/creators of those objects no longer had sufficient working permissions for all of the content that was returned (which was, as you may recall from above, rather more content than was actually targeted by the notice). Not all of the content that was removed from FBG was returned to them.

Additionally, with the change of object UUIDs, a variety of scripts and notecards required updating at considerable time and expense to FBG — who, as far as we know (since no further action took place) are apparently blameless.

By the terms of the DMCA, Linden Lab is held blameless and free of any liability for any actions, damages or costs resulting from their compliance with the DMCA process.

The basic lessons here seem to be:

• The regulations governing DMCA notices are heavily in favor of the issuer. That's a matter of US law, and if that bothers you, you should speak with your United States federal representative.
• Act quickly, if a DMCA notice is filed against you and you wish to contest it. You have no time to dither. If someone files a notice against you, you have only two days to have a complete, correct and satisfactory counter-notification faxed to Linden Lab.
• Someone may file a DMCA notice against you with complete anonymity as far as you're concerned. While they have to give an identity to Linden Lab, that information is never available to you, unless they chose to pursue additional legal actions above and beyond DMCA notices.
• Once a DMCA notice has been filed, your identity is held hostage to whatever content has been nominated in the notice. You must divulge your identity to the person who filed the notice, via Linden Lab, in order to have your content returned to you.
• If your content should be returned to you by Linden Lab, the odds are that not all of it will be returned, and that some of it will be returned in an unusable form, or in a state that requires additional time and cost from you to restore it to original condition.
• The people utilizing the CopyrightAgent Linden account apparently need some training (or retraining) in the mechanics of the Second Life permissions system. While the Lab may be exempt from liability, it seems improper to carelessly damage or destroy a user's content in the act of restoring it.