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Linden Lab supports an open platform with opportunity for all. The flexibility of the content creation tools and open viewer allow for great creativity and innovation, but that openness also carries a responsibility for those developing on our platform and those using third party tools with our platform.

In our recent blog post Our Content Management Roadmap we addressed the responsibility Residents have to respect the intellectual property rights of others inside or outside of Second Life, and we urged developers of third party copying tools to adopt standard industry practices that protect intellectual property. Similarly, developers of third party Second Life viewers must act responsibly in how they develop and distribute their viewers. We are currently working on revisions to our policies regarding the use and management of third party viewers. To support those policy revisions, we will be implementing tools and programs to help us protect our Residents and their content, and enable them to have better, more predictable Second Life experiences.

Resident Responsibilities

There are currently many third parties who create and distribute viewers. Most of these viewers are useful because they are innovative and many enable a more customized Second Life experience for those who use them; however, it appears that some of those third party viewers also contain functionality that is being used to copy content without the right to do so, facilitate griefing, enable phishing, collect user data without clear disclosure of such practices, and distribute software that contains harmful elements. When our revised policy goes into effect, any viewer containing functionality that can be used to impede our efforts to manage Second Life will not be tolerated. We will collaborate with developers to work towards a clear set of expectations and guidelines; however, we will also, if necessary, take action against those who actively seek to disrupt our service or violate out Terms of Service.

Residents who use third party viewers with the functionality described above to violate out Terms of Service or Community Standards, will be warned and then suspended from the service.

What will Linden Lab do?

We will create new guidelines and policies outlining the standards that third party viewers must meet in order to connect to our platform, as well as tools and programs to help the developers of third party viewers and the wider community learn about and comply with those guideline. One of the tools will be a "viewer registry" that will allow developers to list their viewer in a third party viewer directory maintained by Linden Lab, identify the features of their viewer, and represent to the Second Life community that it complies with Linden Lab's guidelines for third party viewers. Over the next few weeks we will be holding a series of 'brown bag' meetings designed as working groups to help us with these challenging issues. In addition we will have a forum for feedback to help all of us make good choices going forward.

We're sure we will get many great ideas, more probably than we are able to implement, and we may not be able to use them all right away, but we will evaluate and incorporate Resident input. Please participate and make your voice heard! Watch this blog for more information on how you can get involved.








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Couldbe Yue

wow!

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Khamon

not really, FULL employees are gonna actually process these registrations and maintain the list after a few months? FULL employees are gonna regularly research and approve each release of the viewers on their approved list? Warning and suspensions are gonna have any effect at all on thieves and vagabonds using anonymizers and hundreds of free, throw away accounts?

wow what?

wow! PR

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Couldbe Yue

yep.. This is a firm statement outlining a plan and suggests they're taking it seriously. Almost unheard of by LL. The word out on the street on the real world must be worrying them. I can only assume the corporates have expressed concern.

It's fabulous PR fodder since we all know that the rippers can usually fake whatever viewer they chose. lol

I give it 10/10 for wow factor. I doubt anything will change inworld.

Lucifer Baphomet

Considering that current copying clients can spoof other viewers,...

this is nothing but a platitude from LL to placate the uninformed masses.

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Khamon

Psyke Phaeton

The good people will have authorised viewers and the bad people will have hacked ones. Same as now.

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Ann Launay

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Khamon

NOT SAME AS NOW!

The Lindens will pretend to be doing something constructive about it.

NOT SAME!

Psyke Phaeton

There are no technical solutions but I would hope they would investigate and then send the police for the serious cases.

Nimrod Yaffle

It'll be the same employees that fight traffic bots and police the events list.

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Nimrod Yaffle

I got ahold of the RL information (name, address, email, myspace, facebook, IP, database details, and phone number) of the neillife creator. I submitted a ticket to LL and told them I had this if they wanted it. They said they would forward it to their legal department if they wanted the info (I doubt they care). I will admit I think this (a "registry") is a very good idea for LL, but I just don't think they would be devoted to keeping it up to date.

Hypatia Callisto

crossposting this... as its directly important to this issue.

This letter was posted over AWGroupies

pastebin - Stuff - post number 1634472

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"Call it what you like," said the Cat.

Khamon

I wonder if the registry will replace this wiki page.

Psyke Phaeton

OMG its against the standards to have a encrypted chat?!?!?! :O
Well that will make some people happy to use a unofficial viewer. It also implies they spy and maybe record chats. Perhaps keeping a few weeks worth?

Couldbe Yue

and how is that any different to the myriad of other things that LL has paid lip service to?

Cristiano

Please continue this discussion in this thread:

LL Enacting 3rd Party Viewer Policy

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