The Portable Data Problem

In ‘Data Bill of Rights’ vs. ‘Avatar Bill of Rights’, Tony Walsh raises an interesting point:

...I'd be happier with virtual worlds and video games if user data was actually, completely owned by the user--portability and longevity being of primary interest. How about a mashup between Wesabe's Data Bill of Rights and Raph Koster's Avatar Bill of Rights? I realize there are numerous technical and security issues involved in packing up one's data and moving from one service to another, but I'm hoping for a more portable future. Currently, it's generally tricky to move from one "realm" in an MMOG to another server in the same MMOG (exceptions include EVE Online), and it's (probably) impossible to move from one MMO to another. The virtual world of Second Life at least has permeable server boundaries, but while its residents own the IP rights to content they create, creators don't own the data that permits their content to exist.

If I'm paying for the privilege of inhabiting a game or virtual world for dozens of hours weekly, I want to be able to take away more than just an enjoyable experience--I want my cake and its portable data, too. This is particularly true in online spaces that facilitate user-created content. Such spaces could be viewed as tools that facilitate the creation of work products...

Makes sense to me. If I design a cool building, I'd love to be able to export the data in a way I can use it - perhaps in Autocad¹, as Kitten Lulu hinted at. Especially considering the recent changes to the terms of service, specifically Section 3.3:

...Your intellectual property rights do not confer any rights of access to the Service or any rights to data stored by or on behalf of Linden Lab...

Now, the reason that change in there is pretty obvious, and there's nothing that keeps us from moving the data out except ways of moving the data out so that the average person can use it. It also demonstrates a potential need for people to back up their copyrighted stuff; bad things can happen to good people and insurance isn't a bad idea. Kitten, I think, had mentioned some things to me related to 3d exports and/or imports, but I don't recall (and shall have to do some pestering).

The idea of portable data, though, fits well with the requests for HTML ability on prims. Personally, I think HTML in notecards and notecards on prims is the way to go, but the text to image conversion would increase overhead. And still, all of the feature requests along these lines are not as worthwhile unless there's a way to use the data outside of SecondLife.

The inherent problem with this is that once stuff leaves the copyright sandbox of SecondLife, things can get messy. Still, it's worth solving those problems. If money can pass through the virtual world barrier, entering and leaving a virtual economy, it only makes sense that the things produced can as well.

This stuff keeps coming up. Maybe it's time to revisit Tao Takashi's 'Dreaming about a better life'. Given the community's education through the [t:copybod] debacle... maybe more people would be interested in revisiting the problems of scaling SecondLife beyond Linden Lab. It might be required for another level of growth.

¹ Umm. Do they have an Autocad for Linux yet? Come on, it started on Unix...