The Content Liberation Front

(This post was updated on October 24, 2014 to reflect the changes that were announced here: Kitely Market to Support High Fidelity).

Are you a content creator in Second Life who’s concerned about the latest TOS changes? Are you worried about what will happen to your content? If so, then have we got a deal for you! You can now use Kitely to create a perfect backup of your content so that you’ll never be at anyone’s mercy again.

What does this mean? Well, you probably feel that due to Second Life’s new policies you’re losing control over your content. You want to reclaim control, which means first of all that you have your own copy of your content on your hard disk. In addition, you want to have the flexibility to move this content wherever you want: to any grid, with any company, or even just for your own personal use.

Here’s what we’re offering: copy your content to Kitely, and we will give you full control over it. You’ll get a full, perfect copy of your objects and assets on your hard disk. Having your own personal copy of this data means that no company will ever be able to hold your content hostage again.

How does it work? There are three steps:

  1. Upload your content to Kitely and add it to Kitely Market.
  2. Use our Content Analyzer to fix problems.
  3. Export the content to another grid or to your hard disk.

To be clear, you don’t have to make your content available for purchase on Kitely Market.  You can keep selling only on the Second Life Marketplace, while making your products in Kitely Market Inactive, which means that you’re the only one who will see them. The reason Kitely Market is involved in this process at all is that it contains two powerful features: first, the Content Analyzer which allows you to find and fix problems; and second, Kitely Market can be used to deliver your content to other grids.

Let’s go over these steps in more detail:

Step 1 – Upload Content to Kitely Market

You can add your content to Kitely Market for free:

  • Asset uploads – FREE
  • Land – FREE (by building in the Kitely Merchants Sandbox)
  • Listing fees – FREE (we’ve eliminated all listing fees!)

You may have heard that Kitely uses per-minute charges, and you’re wondering if it’s really free. We do have such charges in some places, but not in the Kitely Merchants Sandbox. So adding content to Kitely Market costs you zero, nada, zilch.

There are well known Second Life Merchants already listing their items in Kitely Market - read one testimonial here: http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2013/10/merchant-earns-200-on-kitely/
There are well known Second Life merchants already listing their items in Kitely Market. Here’s one testimonial: http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2013/10/merchant-earns-200-on-kitely/

Step 2 – Use the Content Analyzer to fix problems

You will probably use a program such as Second Inventory or Imprudence to copy your content from Second Life to Kitely. These tools save a lot of time, but they often have some problems in the content that they create. We have an awesome tool to help you find and fix these problems: the Content Analyzer. When you add a product to Kitely Market, the Content Analyzer checks it for missing or invalid assets, and shows you what needs to be fixed. For more information, see this blog post.

Kitely Market Content Analyzer

Step 3 – Export to Another Grid or to Your Hard Disk

If you’ve been burned by Second Life then you don’t want to lock yourself into another company. Even if you think Kitely is a great company run by swell guys (we really are!), you want to control your content. We understand, and that is why we enable you to export your content to your hard disk or have it delivered to another grid.

Kitely Market can deliver content to other grids, so you’ll be able to deliver the items you list to any Hypergrid-enabled grid or even deliver to closed grids if they are properly set up.

Another option is to send your items directly from your avatar to avatars on other Hypergrid-enabled grids (export controls will apply to help protect other people’s content).

Finally, if you own a Kitely World, you can rez your items in that world and export it to a standard OpenSim Archive (OAR) file. You’ll be able to use that file to restore your content on any OpenSim-based grid or standalone simulator (including on your personal computer).

You Have Rights

We respect your rights and we don’t claim ownership over your creations. You retain sole copyright over your content, and the only license that you give to Kitely is to allow us to handle your content as required by the services that you choose to use. If you’re up to reading legalese, here are our terms of service; note in particular the rights that you have, which are listed in the section “Proprietary Rights”. We’ve updated our terms of service today to clarify how your content may be used.

You can control the use of your content by setting the Export permission in Kitely Market. If you make a product Exportable then it can be sold to other grids, and backed-up by users. If you make a product No-Export then it can only be used in Kitely: we will not allow it to be accessed by other grids, or saved in OAR files (except by you). This last part means that if your No-Export product is used as a component in someone else’s product then that other person won’t be able to export his or her product to an OAR file unless they first remove your No-Export component.

No Strings Attached

As we’ve explained, you don’t have to actually make your products available for sale in Kitely Market in order to take advantage of this offer. If you wish, you can make the products Inactive or delete them. But we hope that you will choose to make your products available for sale. If you do so then you’ll be able to sell to all Kitely users, and to users in hundreds of hypergrid-connected grids. You’ll be able to do this from a single online store, and without having to re-upload your content to each grid. You’ll even be able to sell to non-hypergrid connected grids, by exporting your products to an OAR file and then uploading it to those grids.

If you want to learn more about Kitely Market then you may be interested in the presentation I gave in the OpenSim Community Conference 2013.

Published by

Ilan Tochner

Ilan Tochner is the Co-Founder and CEO of Kitely.