Linden Lab responds to DMCA concerns

After taking a working day to mull over and polish a response, Linden Lab has posted it to their official blog.

The net result of the post unfortunately, judging by responses and discussion elsewhere appears to inflame and annoy involved consumers and creators, as users claim that the response is tangential and evasive.

To sum up the incident that kicked this all off, content with two listed creator names was blacklisted. Apparently all content, including some public-domain/relaxed-license content, damaging large quantities of legitimate Second Life content. When Linden Lab attempted to restore the legitimate content, things didn't work out, leaving swathes of user-creations broken. The public JIRA item still exists to address this.

Now, let's see how this is addressed by today's blog post, since we're still waiting on their PR people to respond to queries about it:

Linden Lab inadvertently disabled some inworld content this past weekend.

Was all the content that was disabled taken down in error? Was only part of it? Was some of it related to a DMCA action? Could I myself be missing content that I am not aware of yet as a result? None of these questions are addressed.

The problem should be fixed now, and we apologize for the inconvenience it caused.

According to users, no, nothing seems to have changed.

If you believe your content was inadvertently disabled, please try re-rezzing it. If that doesn't work, please contact Support at http://secondlife.com/support.

It looks like it might be a busy time for Support. We wonder just how long they might be at it. As yet, we haven't been notified of a case where they've succeeded in restoration of broken content — if you know of a case related to this incident where they were able to help, please do let us know.

As for the rest of the post? It doesn't seem to be a follow-on from the first paragraph, and looks like a tangential discussion of the DMCA.

Summary:

• Linden Lab policy on DMCA handling hasn't changed (but has not ever actually been revealed. Linden Lab's DMCA policy page does not actually describe any policy).
• No indication is given as to whether the above material has anything to do with Linden Lab's DMCA policy.
• You can get fined for false takedown notices, under some circumstances.

Perhaps the biggest standout item in the remaining text is this: For privacy reasons, we don't discuss the specifics of DMCA notifications with third parties.

That's great, of course, but we don't actually think anyone is asking for the specifics of a DMCA notification — not that Linden Lab is admitting to the existence of any such notification in this particular case — but variations of that sentence seem to be the stock answers to all general, non-specific and non-notification-related questions regarding policy.

In the end, while the post is entitled "Responding to questions about the DMCA process", the post doesn't actually discuss anything about Linden Lab's DMCA process.

Just what is Linden Lab's DMCA process? We've asked Linden Lab, and they have so far declined to discuss it.

Update: Linden Lab has responded to our queries, and declined to add to or clarify the matter.