As far as education is concerned, it is probably dangerous to generalise but driving freebies out of xstreetsl will almost certainly encourage educators to migrate elsewhere for many of their specific needs. Again, there are already inworld sites for this but I expect web sites with a specific education focus will also emerge, if only because the content will be deemed appropriate for students to search on campus.

It is also important not to see SL in isolation: educators can often see benefits in going with non-SL virtual worlds and, indeed, just this week I was at a conference where one of the major selling points of an alternative was that certain aspects of SL ("silly avatars") were absent.

Like Iggy, I spend on xstreet, inworld and with developers. I also use my blog to promote commercial products that I feel have value or potential. I think many educators pay their way in this regard.

My apologies: I have spoken too generally when in fact I had some very specific cases in my mind.
Rest assured that I do believe that you don't use free unattributed content in your academic projects!

Cheers, and good luck on those!

@Ignatius, yes, you're right about the "freebie culture"… I believe it's actually related to the way our society thinks that educational institutions are worthy of our respect and of special rules, because our civilisation is strongly grounded on universal, very high education levels (comparing, of course, to all other civilisations before the European Enlightenment in the 18th century).

That's why students, teachers and academic researchers get discounts on most of their purchases; why they get public grants, and so on. If education weren't the most important thing that our societies had, we would not be so eager to be so "helpful" towards them.

And this means that you can copy content — if it's for educational purposes. Or at least, you can do it to a degree. In return, almost all work researched is released (for free) to the public: this includes all papers and thesis, often describing highly advanced technology with quite a lot of detail, as well as, on the computer programming side, a lot of applications. All for free.

Nevertheless, I understand Moon's point of view. This "pushing for free content" is a very strong streak of the academic world, and this gets complex when this attitude is passed along to students, who then get this idea that our society is supposed to provide them with free things, at the same time encouraging this same society to pay their bills (via grants and similar methods). I'm also guilty as charged; my own father insists with me all the time that I should abandon my own business endeavours and just get a grant and a job at a university "like everybody else does"…

"it was indeed curious to observe that academia – fiercely protective of their own IP and copyrights – apparently is rather unconcerned about those in other situations"

Perhaps you can provide an example of our protectionism in the Ivory Tower?

Don't confuse universities' heavy-handed "branding" of mascots or university-held research trademarks with academia's "gift economy" for scholarship. These are two completely different enterprises.

Faculty exist in a "Freebie culture" in our scholarly lives: you work with others' ideas, but you cite and help recognize good work. If you get caught plagiarizing scholarship, that's another matter. I think it can even lead to revocation of tenure at my university.

This is very different from being "fiercely protective," isn't it?

As for SL? I'll keep giving away whatever content I make in-world. I really don't need XstreetSL to do that. I also pay out-of-pocket for great content to creators I support, and I give them credit in our builds and at my blog. I encourage others to shop with them.

So for those who wish to make money in SL, I wish you all success. I don't think we academics are competing for Linden Dollars, however, if I release tools or other content to help educators and students.

Finally, a red-herring argument at play in this debate over freebies, one of a few such claims, is that we eggheads are big supporters of freebies. It clouds a more ominous development that has not gotten so much ink spilled: the monthly listing fee per item is going to hurt the hobbyist content-creator and just enrich the Lab. And that really does tick me off, as an educator and a lover of the creative work I see on display in SL.