What compromises would you make to reduce Second Life copyright infringement?
Seems that most of what you hear in and about Second Life recently revolves around creator rights, copyrights, trademarks, intellectual property rights, infringement and so forth. It's not that intellectual property infringement is new – you can certainly replicate content with the official viewer if you know how – but it is in the limelight and a major feature of Second Life discussions by virtue of assorted high-profile infringements, and legalactions.
Copyright infringement can't be made to go away. Since the Statute of Anne in 1710 originally codified copyrights in law, infringement has only been somewhat quelled by various means, never practically eliminated. In these predominantly digital times, there are many new tradeoffs could be made that could reduce the incidence of infringement, but at the cost of also reducing functionality.
For example, Second Life could be restricted so that it would only operate on very restricted hardware. The rights to upload or create content in-world could be reduced or limited. The economy could be annulled outright. Upload fees could be increased, perhaps substantially. New content could be subjected to approval by a panel before becoming available to users.
While any or all of these would reduce the infringement of intellectual property rights to some degree, none of these would entirely eliminate it, though they would reduce the utility of the platform for some purposes.
What restrictions or compromises would you accept to see copyright infringement reduced and creators' rights bolstered? Any of these? All of them? Something else? Nothing at all?
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