Ten

*gigglesnort* Whut?

Pretty birds?

__________________

nadir

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).

__________________
ALTERSCAPE -- The immersive living experience in SL
Urban, Industrial, Futuristic Land or Housing Available



Crack Den | Dead End | Hitokai Island | Shipyard

Dnate Mars

Gwyn’s Home » Second Life® Bloggers Require Clarification

__________________
SLU Clubhouse - Open 24/7
Visit at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Tan/138/25/25

Cristiano

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.

__________________
"At least he died doing what he loved most - blogging on the Huffington Post" - 30 Rock

* slu stuff *

jacqueline trudeau

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

__________________
Trudeau Classic Sailing Yachts

WarKirby Magojiro

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.

__________________
Wounds, both physical and mental, heal in time. bones reknit, therapy and drugs make you forget. Life goes on.
But nothing cures death. Please remember this.

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.

Beebo Brink

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

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.

Ingrid

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.

__________________
"You know how this thread is going to end? I'll tell you how it's gonna end. It's going to end well." - Aimee Weber

jacqueline trudeau

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

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

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

Cocoanut Koala

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

__________________

Cocoanut Koala

Well, no. The "star" that was pinned was not something having nothing to do with SL, and then "pinned" to the SL product, thereby affording the pinner an income which it is implied he doesn't particularly deserve.

The "star" that was pinned to SL . . . in fact . . . IS . . .SL. It exists only within or because of SL; it has to do only with SL; and without many such stars SL itself would not exist.

The whole thing is sort of like inviting a bunch of people to participate in a trade fair convention.

So they do, and indeed, without their booths, there would be no such convention.

And indeed, without the convention, the products ("stars") would not even exist, as they are sold only INSIDE the convention!

For years, they were told that they could make fan sites about the convention, refer to the convention, and so on and so forth, considering that the products only ever appear IN the convention itself, and considering that without the products ("stars") there would BE no convention.

So it's not a matter of people saying, well, hey, now I'm going to use SL to promote my new kitchen slice-and-dice-o-matic machine, which I am also selling on QVC and in supermarkets everywhere, for use in real-life kitchens.

To heck with the analogies. Point is, nobody has been taking advantage of SL, in building fan sites, shopping sites, or anything else. None of that could exist WITHOUT SL; none of it is being sold OUTSIDE of SL; and SL couldn't exist (at least not as it does now and has all this time) without the people making the fan sites, etc., and their products.

Point is, LL has been taking advantage of its residents all this long while - getting them to make stuff and sell it; charging them for exchanging currency in selling it (GOM, anyone?); and getting the windfall of promotion from the residents and their web sites.

Now they are taking it all back - at a late stage - as if to say, "OK, we got a lot of good out of them, but we don't need those people any longer." And then threatens to sue anyone who doesn't go along with the new rules.

I'd say the "taking advantage of" thing goes in quite the opposite direction, actually, and it is they who have been pinning their star to us.

coco

P.S. The divorce analogy is really just a heck of a whole lot better. (Not to mention shorter.)

Archer Braun

My fault for not making it clear I was being analogous.

LL is a business. It's got trademarks to protect. In spite of whatever it's done in the past, it can still do whatever it wants with those trademarks.

And of course, they'll encourage you to promote their product. As long as it suits them to do so.

Linden Lab is not your friend. They don't give a hoot about a single person on this, or any other, forum/board/website. They own the technology lock, stock and barrel. They care about generating a profit...and it looks like they're about to start changing their approach.

Brenda Archer

But what about:

There

Red Light District

Metaplace

WoW (let's face it, it is used by many as a social platform)

Sociolotron (giggle yes, but we pick up their refugees)

and most of all

OpenSim

not to mention every other virtual world I have spaced the name of at the moment. Then there's all the Web 2.0 and even older technologies that are still quite serviceable for many of the purposes for which SL is leveraged. The genesis of the idea for my large SL group was a Usenet group I started posting to, in 1993!!!!!!!!!!!

Almost everything that I have done with my group I could have done equally as well with a combination of forums and chat sessions, plus user blogs. This covers the three necessary points of allowing users to define a persona, meet informally and interact in real time. A MUD would also work.

LL (tm, bs, stfu) does NOT have a lock on the user community and needs to compete for our attention and money not only with virtual worlds, but also with other forms of virtual community, some of them quite old.

If things got crazy, we could go back. I seem to have gone to forums and the blogosphere. Goreans could go back to IRC or ActiveWorlds, and other genre fans could go to MMORPGs specific to their interests. Seriously many of us could just go to WoW.

BEARintheMorning

I'm sorry. I didn't get much sleep last night and that just struck me as incredibly funny.

__________________


You know you're addicted to drag racing when:

During the winter, you roll the windows down just to smell the tire smoke from skidding tires.

Khamon

This is the crux. LL believe, honestly, whole-heartedly that they've developed *THE* online collaborative community killer app. They further believe that they've built and fostered *THE COMMUNITY* that we users belong to and absolutely cannot live without.

They really, honestly, whole-heartedly believe these things.

__________________
But of bliss and glad life there is little to be said, before it ends; as works fair and wonderful, while still they endure for eyes to see, are their own record, and only when they are in peril or broken for ever do they pass into song. - Quenta Silmarillion

Please Visit Our Gardens and Our Website

BEARintheMorning

Linden Research - Our Lab, Our Delusion.

Archer Braun

I think this is the thrust of what I'd been nibbling at for a while. The arrogance of LL in making the above assumption is only beggared by the number of people who enable that behavior.

I'm thinking the addiction to SL can happen in more subtle and nefarious ways than the obvious "glued-my-ass-to-the-computer-chair-while-the-kids-all-starved-and-my-personal-hygiene-dissolved" caricature.

Khamon

I'm far more addicted to SLU than I am SL.

Archer Braun

I think I agree with you. But I think the management of SL simply doesn't (or didn't, as the case may be...) grok that.

I've also developed some serious doubts and concerns surrounding the efficacy of a platform like SL ever becoming a standard for online experience...which was one of the major aspirations for SL from the get-go.

Brenda Archer

I feel so much cognitive dissonance around this. On the one hand I can see there is still a community and it's what keeps me here. On the other hand, the way LL talks to that community astonishes me. To build a community and drive it away would be absurd, but it's very possible.

I don't know the mind of LL, but I can easily see the dynamics in the cliques that make up the SL community. The impression I get is that LL doesn't have the correct model for predicting what this community really desires.

They certainly can't do it based on technology. They can never keep up with change just using one product, no one could. The concept of SL as a destination can still be salvaged separate from any marriage with a particular form of software. If open standards for the idea of the virtual world as a pervasive network are ever to succeed, I can't see any way for LL to leverage that except on the basis of what they've done so far to create a destination, including the user base they've built up and the resulting culture and society.

So there's this huge cognitive dissonance going on with the residents as they look at an LL who seem to want community, and an LL who treat that community as something disposable that they enabled only long enough to be able to start chasing the vertical markets.

The absurdity in this is trying to market what's left of SL-as-a-technology to verticals. IBM took matters into its own hands, and that's fine but it doesn't change impressions much.

Ordinary users have other concerns. The virtual community I've worked to help create is an end-in-itself and exists across a number of different platforms. Before I jump back into working on it, I have to give some thought to which way the weathervane is pointing.

I'm not well and I hope that what I'm saying here makes coherent sense. Thanks to both of you for your posts; you've given me much food for thought.

Malachi

Minor correction applied.