@GreenLantern Excelsior

"I'm not the copyright expert, so I haven't been doing any of the DMCA notifications. The way I understand copyright is that if you write something, you have an automatic copyright. I don't think you have to run to a copyright office and register every line of text to show that you wrote it. From what I understand, JLU meeting logs would be most definitely copyrighted by the JLU, because the members are the only ones who wrote them, so to speak. I don't understand the JLU copyright on the Heinrich and Gaara "Jewtown" chat log, but I haven't studied this stuff so I don't know all the nuances"

I wasn't necessarily referring to the meeting logs on, those you could probably make some claim of copyright on, I was referring specifically to the Gaara and such log in which no JLU member took place, and I would imagine it was obtained without the knowledge of any person involved, passing out other's chat logs is against the SL ToS, so I can't imagine they can claim copyright on something that was obtained illicitly by the SL Terms of Service and was in no way their creation.

I don't think any DMCAs HAVE been submitted here. I think Kalel or whoever is sending these e-mails just goes to the site and says "I own copyright take it down", the site managers don't really care one way or another, these are mostly free hosting sites, they won't lose business if they take down some content, and probably 90% of the time they receive a take down request, it's a legitimate claim. If it's not the owner can challenge it and they can go from there.

"In fact, when Warner Brothers started several Gossip Girl sims and JLU was providing security, we specifically notified them that we were using superhero characters from DC comics in Second Life. Their response was something like "I think that's pretty cool.""

Well, I kinda doubt that any person from Warner Bros operating a Second Life sim (especially for Gossip Girl) is in any position to say whether copyright usage on a completely different section of their corporate umbrella is okay or not.

"The Green Lantern Core got pretty much the same response when they sent an inquiry letter to DC some time ago. So DC and Warner Brothers don't really care that their superheroes are alive in Second Life. In fact, they're happy about it. If I received a letter from them directing me to stop using their copyrighted material, I would comply."

I would have to wonder what the letter said (both the one sent and the response), and who it exactly went too in DC, because as I understand copyright (and by all means, I may be wrong), a company has to defend their copyright, if another group starts using copyrighted things like names or costumes from DC comics and DC Comics doesn't challenge it, they basically start losing control over the copyright. Technically by this law all fan-art, fan-fiction, etc. is a violation of copyright, companies get by this by willfully ignoring it's existence, so that they could get through a loop-hole of "Well we were never aware of it", however this means that if someone contacts them and forces them to be aware with it, they would be legally obligated to take it down or lose the copyright. So it seems to me, for your group to contact DC and say "We're using your copyright" and they say "Okay", that means they just lost control of the copyright to your group, which sounds unlikely unless you had contacted (as in the case of the Gossip Girl sims) someone who wasn't really in the authority to make that sort of decision, or the response was worded quite differently and not necessarily allowing usage.

I wonder, more over, why use copyrighted existing heroes at all? Why not create your own? I can't imagine you'll get any more or less respect showing up as your own creation of a superhero in a sim as you would showing up as someone else's creation, and from a legal stand point you'd be considerably more sound.

@Neo Citizen
"Chatlogs can certainly be copyrighted as part of a larger work. Look it up."

Can you suggest a place to look this up? It seems unlikely, referring to the Gaara chatlog, that you could take a piece of conversation from people without their knowledge, stick it in a secret wiki and distribute it, and then claim copyright when someone else distributes it. Perhaps you could claim copyright on the Wiki as a whole in everything in it, but this take down request is the chatlog specifically. As an example, the music industry has "Sampling" which is legal, the new work made out of mixing other people's music and the artist's own editing can be considered the artist who did the sampling's work. However, that artist can't claim copyright on every song they used to make those works. You could claim copyright for the wiki, but not for the individual chat logs (at least the ones not composed of JLU meetings and such) that the wiki is composed of.

In this case, the Herald had only pasted the log, which as far as you know, may have been given to them by Gaara and the others who actually wrote it. Say Gaara and them had put up a website and posted that log there, could the JLU come and claim copyright because they copy-pasted it to their wiki? No, that's absurd.

Additionally, this would go both ways, wouldn't the Second Life Herald be considered a "larger work" that could be copyrighted, and use these chat logs?

"But most importantly, if Venkman throws the switch on this, you have to lawyer up. Checked the prices on copyright lawyers lately? Three thousand bucks a day. No kidding. It's all well and good to say, "knock 'em down" when it's not your money. I can think of a lot of better scenarios than "I lost my house and my job and my career because I stole somebody's stuff and posted it on my blog.""

This goes both ways however, is "your friend" Venkman willing to lawyer up himself to defend his false copyright claims? And furthermore is it really worth it? Would Venkman be really willing to take someone's house, job, and career away (and risk it himself) over this minor-annoyance of griefing in Second Life? And what kind of person could he be, to claim the moral high ground while being ready to ruin someone's life over something so silly as this?