SLUniverse Forums

Ten · 04-02-2008, 08:15 PM

I'll help you create content.

Phoenix Psaltery · 04-02-2008, 08:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fox Stirling

Josh, I can't imagine how you'd expect to be able to properly regulate and administer this punishment for referring to you as Josh. Honestly Josh, I just don't think you'll be able to keep up. But I guess thats really the point though isn't it Josh?

By the way Josh, are the terms of punishment compounded by the amount of times I refer to you as Josh?

*crosses fingers*

Thanks Josh!
josh josh josh josh josh josh josh josh josh

Holy shit. <Calls broker and buys stock in Astroglide>

P2

Ten · 04-02-2008, 08:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phoenix Psaltery

Holy shit. <Calls broker and buys stock in Astroglide>

P2

Um, was that post even from this thread? I swear I've seen it two weeks ago in a totally unrelated thread.

Looks like the weed might be making its rounds.

Joshua Nightshade · 04-02-2008, 08:52 PM

Tenshi see that little arrow next to Phoenix's name? Click it. Takes you to the quoted post.

LL to enforce brand name

Ten · 04-02-2008, 08:53 PM

*gigglesnort* Whut?

Pretty birds?

nadir · 04-03-2008, 12:08 PM

I just waded through all 12 pages and let me just say, "wow."'

I am really surprised at LL's response to the email that was sent to them ... "unlikely" and have 90 days to remove. Now that communities like these have helped sustain the SL community, they're grown large (and most probably shaping up for an acquirer), they're just shafting us.

I totally understand their need to enforce their brand name (that article that was posted earlier by Flip was excellent) and see no problem in that, really. However, to deny special exceptions to prominent sites that were previously allowed to use it, is absurd.

I have a feeling that in 90 days, they will start the cease and desist letters. Linden's really don't have to enforce this, just their ravaging lawyers they'll unleash upon us.

Personally, I know I have to do a lot of website cleanup to become compliant. But hell, I'm probably not even eligible for their "inSL" logo because of their "PG" standards required (the in-game content is definitely mature, but the website isn't).

Dnate Mars · 04-04-2008, 01:55 AM

Quote:

Dear Linden Lab®,

Your recent change of policy regarding the usage of your trademarks — Second Life®, Linden Lab®, and others registered by Linden Research Inc. — will effectively prevent the operation of the very vibrant community of bloggers, forum posters, websites, community portals, and even 3rd party services, that have provided Linden Lab® with links and driving traffic to your blog, and raising brand awareness for free for your product Second Life®.

Probably thousands — if not dozens of thousands — of sites include (now illegitimately) the name “Second Life®” or “SL®” somewhere in their names. From sites like Reuters (which has a Second Life® channel) to whole companies that have a “Second Life® Division” (and promotes your product by the explicit naming of it), a plethora of online communities, products, and services — some free, other commercial, many in the limbo between both extremes — include, in some way, your registered trademarks.

Your previous policy, established in May 2004 (”Second Life® Fansite Tolkit”), and later reinforced with referral programmes like “Viva La Evolution”, positively encouraged the widespread use of your trademarks, so long as it was quite clearly displayed that no infringement was intended. To requote your own terms of agreement for the usage of your trademarks:

Quote:

USE OF SECOND LIFE MARKS

While you are in full compliance with the usage guidelines described here, you may use the “Second Life” name on your website, as well as the related logos and graphics available at Toolkit, solely in the form described there. Additionally, you may use screenshots from Second Life to the extent that Linden Lab has the right to authorize use of the content within such screenshot, including screenshots of Linden in-world objects and Linden avatars, subject to these usage guidelines.

Under those very friendly terms, a plethora of fansites of all sorts popped up, driving traffic to Second Life®’s main website, its blogs, forums, and other related sites — making SL®’s own ranking quite high on Google, Alexa, and other systems — while at the same time, in a period of a little less than four years, allowing the number of registered users to skyrocket from 10,000 to 13 million.

Fansites, blogs, 3rd party sites, Second Life®-related online communities, 3rd party sites that create products and services related to Second Life® are the “off-world” counterpart of the dynamic and enthusiastic community that made Second Life®, as a brand, get world-wide recognition — without the need for Linden Lab® to spend millions in advertising and campaigns on the media. We worked for free on the promotion, brand awareness, and market recognition of your products — while, at the same time, we also worked for free creating the fantastic content of the 3D environment that makes Second Life® a place worth to visit, to enjoy, to chat, to socially connect, to do business, and launch the pillars of the upcoming metaverse — fulfilling Philip ‘Linden®’ Rosedale’s dream of having more users in Second Life® than on the Web.

We’ve been the ones ultimately promoting that vision, spreading it around, and making sure that the world noticed your product and your brand. We were very successful — thanks to your gentle and encouraging former policies.

And for four years, you have been thankful enough to allow us to do that promotion, by establishing very reasonable and clear guidelines of the terms of usage of your trademarks.

Your sudden reversal of position — effectively limiting the display of the name “Second Life®” on most sites, domain names, products, and services, through a mechanism of explicit approval that you fully admit “can take long and might never finish” and will only be available to a very limited number of sites — means that suddenly all the off-world promotion of Second Life® will necessarily have to stop; or face a lawsuit in court; or, at the very least, receive a Cease & Desist letter from your lawyers and be forced to shut down.

The current terms can be aggressively enforced or not. According to your blog, we are supposed to have a 90-day grace period to remove all mentioning of Second Life® and its logo from our fansites, blogs, forums, or 3rd party sites offering products and services related to Second Life®. In fact, what this means is that we are forced not to talk about Second Life® any more — or, if we do, we cannot explicitly name the product at all.

This is, obviously, absurd.

The compromise between Linden Research Inc. (owners of the registered trademarks) and the community of volunteers that have so faithfully promoted your product, Second Life®, was quite clear for the past four years. We had clear guidelines of what we could do and what we couldn’t. Abuses could still be effectively dealt with by your legal department; to the world’s knowledge, these cases were few and scattered, if any. They were not significative to prevent a vast number of dozens of thousands of sites of all sorts to draw traffic to your own site; to reach out the huge audience on the Internet; and to drive new users to register. The numbers fortunately speak for themselves: with almost zero promotional costs, you managed to grow a thousand times in four years, thanks to crowdsourcing the promotion of Second Life®.

The “inSL” programme is definitely interesting, but a small new logo, worthless to an audience of hundreds of millions of users that are familiar with the eye-on-hand logo, without a massive campaign of promotion behind it to reflect the logo change, is not enough. “inSL” doesn’t say much, and it cannot be expanded to talk and promote Second Life® directly. And, anyway, the same restrictions apply to the usage of “inSL” as with all your other trademarks. We appreciate the grant to use that new logo, but we also feel it will be unable to gather the same support and promotional effort as the old logo and the product name did in the past four years.

We would thus kindly request that you clarify your position regarding the usage of the trademarks Second Life® and the logo on all fansites, blogs, forums, or other 3rd party websites offering products and services related to Second Life®. This clarification should be as easy to follow as your previous policies on the usage of those trademarks. They should make clear that all people intending to promote your product and raise your brand awareness are not facing lawsuits because they have faithfully used your trademarks using the old policy, and wish to continue to do so in the future.

We consider that an appropriate response should be forthcoming in the next few days, or we will be forced to shut down our own blogs, websites, forums, community portals, and other 3rd party sites to avoid litigation — and thus deprieving Linden Lab® from the traffic generated by millions of direct links and millions of viewers that learn first about Second Life® through all those sites.

Gwyn’s Home » Second LifeÂ® Bloggers Require Clarification

Cristiano · 04-04-2008, 04:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cubey Terra

If LL takes legal action against SLU for the sluniverse.com domain name that not only complied with previous rules, but also had the blessing of Linden Lab, I will shut down all of my activities in SL, close my Cubey Terra account, and use all of my spare time to convince anyone who will listen to go anywhere but SL for a metaverse presence. I can't believe they would use threats against the very people who promoted SL the most. This is inexcusable. I'm disgusted that they would turn on their user base with a 90 day ultimatum.

Cubey,

Thank you for saying this - I am incredibly touched by it. The more I read about what they are demanding, the angrier I get about it. I am hoping that enough negative response will cause them to back off, but they have shown such blatant disregard for their users that I doubt anything will get through to them, especially since this particular action seems targeted to punish the very people who have stupidly supported them all along.

jacqueline trudeau · 04-04-2008, 10:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cubey Terra

If LL takes legal action against SLU for the sluniverse.com domain name that not only complied with previous rules, but also had the blessing of Linden Lab, I will shut down all of my activities in SL, close my Cubey Terra account, and use all of my spare time to convince anyone who will listen to go anywhere but SL for a metaverse presence. I can't believe they would use threats against the very people who promoted SL the most. This is inexcusable. I'm disgusted that they would turn on their user base with a 90 day ultimatum.

Cubey and Cris, I will do exactly the same. A line has to be drawn here.

WarKirby Magojiro · 04-04-2008, 11:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cocoanut Koala

Well then they will just kick you out of SL, so what good will that do?

Who has the money or motivation to then sue them to get back in?

coco

A friend of mine got permabanned for a minor infraction once. She just threatened to sue LL, and they backed down, and reinstated her account.

I'm guessing they'd consider if it's worth fighting you. As I understand, they lost the Bragg case. Not officially, but settling and reinstating his account is pretty akin to waving the white flag.

Archer Braun · 04-04-2008, 11:15 AM

I will fully admit to feeling a bit trollish as of late, but I can't say I find any of this very surprising.
LL is taking steps to protect its trademark and IP rights for the strategic health of its business, and everyone's up in arms.
For a number of reasons I just have to shake my head. You pin your star to someone else's product, refer to it by name, begin making an income, and then get upset with the creator of that product decides to start flexing its own IP muscles?
This may have been inevitable. And it may actually not turn out to be as bad as some people think. But it is the result of inviting RL legal scrutiny into SL.
You'll never be able to stuff that genie back inside the bottle. Not ever.
And as far as this being cruel? A 90 day minimum is hellagenerous...especially considering they could have gone the true bastard route and started sending out C&D letters, instead.

Beebo Brink · 04-04-2008, 11:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Archer Braun

IYou pin your star to someone else's product, refer to it by name, begin making an income, and then get upset with the creator of that product decides to start flexing its own IP muscles?

Since LL has given explicit permission to use their name then, yes, I'd say getting upset is fullly justified. Changing their minds after several years creates more than just a transitory inconvenience for all the sites and companies that have developed along these approved lines.

Dnate Mars · 04-04-2008, 11:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Archer Braun

I will fully admit to feeling a bit trollish as of late, but I can't say I find any of this very surprising.
LL is taking steps to protect its trademark and IP rights for the strategic health of its business, and everyone's up in arms.
For a number of reasons I just have to shake my head. You pin your star to someone else's product, refer to it by name, begin making an income, and then get upset with the creator of that product decides to start flexing its own IP muscles?
This may have been inevitable. And it may actually not turn out to be as bad as some people think. But it is the result of inviting RL legal scrutiny into SL.
You'll never be able to stuff that genie back inside the bottle. Not ever.
And as far as this being cruel? A 90 day minimum is hellagenerous...especially considering they could have gone the true bastard route and started sending out C&D letters, instead.

You are completely missing the point. They did allow, and encouraged, us to create fansites using these terms. Let me quote the policy again,

Quote:

USE OF SECOND LIFE MARKS

While you are in full compliance with the usage guidelines described here, you may use the “Second Life” name on your website, as well as the related logos and graphics available at Toolkit, solely in the form described there. Additionally, you may use screenshots from Second Life to the extent that Linden Lab has the right to authorize use of the content within such screenshot, including screenshots of Linden in-world objects and Linden avatars, subject to these usage guidelines.

They told us to do this. This is what they wanted. Now all of a sudden for whatever reasons, they are going to tell us differently. They are the ones that let the genie out of the bottle by letting us use it for so long. It is not like they didn't know, they have used the outside sites.

Ingrid · 04-04-2008, 11:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Archer Braun

For a number of reasons I just have to shake my head. You pin your star to someone else's product, refer to it by name, begin making an income, and then get upset with the creator of that product decides to start flexing its own IP muscles?

This is my feeling as well EXCEPT that I personally don't think they should come after "SL". I could see people being able to anticipate the words "Second Life" becoming a potential problem down the road if you use it for your own business but i think that "SL" is far enough away from the original name that it should be considered fair game.

It really doesn't matter what i think though.

jacqueline trudeau · 04-04-2008, 11:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Archer Braun

IYou pin your star to someone else's product, refer to it by name, begin making an income, and then get upset with the creator of that product decides to start flexing its own IP muscles?.

This is a two way street. LL gave us the platform to "pin our stars on", but without the user advocates, the user content created, what would SL be? If this were a divorce preceeding, the users would likely be awarded 1/2 of the assets.

Archer Braun · 04-04-2008, 01:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dnate Mars

You are completely missing the point. They did allow, and encouraged, us to create fansites using these terms. Let me quote the policy again,
They told us to do this. This is what they wanted. Now all of a sudden for whatever reasons, they are going to tell us differently. They are the ones that let the genie out of the bottle by letting us use it for so long. It is not like they didn't know, they have used the outside sites.

I always keep returning to the same tired TOS that basically states this company can do any damn thing it wants at any damn time it wants, and it doesn't owe you anything.

They put that there for a reason. But for some unfathomable reason no one thinks they really meant it.

Of course they encouraged you to promote their product! Hell...if I had a bunch of people not only beta-testing my product...but PAYING me to do so...I'd be daft not to try and get as much mileage out of them as possible.

This is what businesses do. If they can get away with it, they will. If they believe you won't really tier down, and move away to some other platform that allows you to do what you do in SL, then whatever action you propose is essentially meaningless. Court battles cost money - more money, I'd wager than its worth for any website owner to pursue.

Since dazzle-eyed Phil is leaving the scene as CEO, I'd be very concerned that the lead-pipe mentality toward SL's users will continue...it'll just happen with a more "professional" touch.

Dnate Mars · 04-04-2008, 02:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Archer Braun

I always keep returning to the same tired TOS that basically states this company can do any damn thing it wants at any damn time it wants, and it doesn't owe you anything.

They put that there for a reason. But for some unfathomable reason no one thinks they really meant it.

Of course they encouraged you to promote their product! Hell...if I had a bunch of people not only beta-testing my product...but PAYING me to do so...I'd be daft not to try and get as much mileage out of them as possible.

This is what businesses do. If they can get away with it, they will. If they believe you won't really tier down, and move away to some other platform that allows you to do what you do in SL, then whatever action you propose is essentially meaningless. Court battles cost money - more money, I'd wager than its worth for any website owner to pursue.

Since dazzle-eyed Phil is leaving the scene as CEO, I'd be very concerned that the lead-pipe mentality toward SL's users will continue...it'll just happen with a more "professional" touch.

The TOS only applies to logging in and using LL resources. This has nothing to do with it.

Cocoanut Koala · 04-04-2008, 02:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dnate Mars

Gwyn’s Home » Second LifeÂ® Bloggers Require Clarification

Best thing I ever saw Gwyneth write. And very helpful, too, with the history of things she has provided.

Unfortunately, her letter was probably the reason we received the "Clarification" blog post a couple of days ago.

Which was nothing more but the reiteration of the same things they said earlier.

coco

04-02-2008, 08:52 PM	#279 (permalink)
Joshua Nightshade Slept my way to the top I HATE MAYA Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: NYC Posts: 19,594 SL Join Date: 10-11-2004 Business: abstract avatars! SLShopper Ads: 13 My Mood:	Tenshi see that little arrow next to Phoenix's name? Click it. Takes you to the quoted post. LL to enforce brand name __________________

04-03-2008, 12:08 PM	#281 (permalink)
nadir newb on crack Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: California Posts: 87 SL Join Date: 12/4/06	I just waded through all 12 pages and let me just say, "wow."' I am really surprised at LL's response to the email that was sent to them ... "unlikely" and have 90 days to remove. Now that communities like these have helped sustain the SL community, they're grown large (and most probably shaping up for an acquirer), they're just shafting us. I totally understand their need to enforce their brand name (that article that was posted earlier by Flip was excellent) and see no problem in that, really. However, to deny special exceptions to prominent sites that were previously allowed to use it, is absurd. I have a feeling that in 90 days, they will start the cease and desist letters. Linden's really don't have to enforce this, just their ravaging lawyers they'll unleash upon us. Personally, I know I have to do a lot of website cleanup to become compliant. But hell, I'm probably not even eligible for their "inSL" logo because of their "PG" standards required (the in-game content is definitely mature, but the website isn't). __________________ http://www.thecrackden.com; http://www.secondtrek.com

04-02-2008, 08:53 PM	#280 (permalink)
Ten Baby FIC Suck it. Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 5,350 SL Join Date: 10/7/2006 My Mood: Awards: 1	gigglesnort Whut? Pretty birds?

04-04-2008, 11:15 AM	#286 (permalink)
Archer Braun Solipsistic Megalomaniac Join Date: Oct 2007 Posts: 341 My Mood:	I will fully admit to feeling a bit trollish as of late, but I can't say I find any of this very surprising. LL is taking steps to protect its trademark and IP rights for the strategic health of its business, and everyone's up in arms. For a number of reasons I just have to shake my head. You pin your star to someone else's product, refer to it by name, begin making an income, and then get upset with the creator of that product decides to start flexing its own IP muscles? This may have been inevitable. And it may actually not turn out to be as bad as some people think. But it is the result of inviting RL legal scrutiny into SL. You'll never be able to stuff that genie back inside the bottle. Not ever. And as far as this being cruel? A 90 day minimum is hellagenerous...especially considering they could have gone the true bastard route and started sending out C&D letters, instead.

04-04-2008, 02:58 PM	#294 (permalink)
Cocoanut Koala Coco's Cottages scrapbooking Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 4,756 Business: Coco's Cottages SLShopper Ads: 2 My Mood: Awards: 1