Ann Otoole

@Little - I am always mystified at the Lab's reluctance to bring in code from the third party viewers. I have pretty much gone over to using Kirstens full time. It has it's SL2 type annoyances that impede work but the fact is that viewer is a "game changer" for anyone willing to upgrade to a modern day video card (nVidia GT2xx or higher). You can see a little in the latest vids I posted at http://www.youtube.com/user/annotoole .

I would really be disappointed if LL threw in the towel on this thing right now but it just seems like LL has issues with getting things done. Whether it is the people doing the work that can't deliver or they are hobbled by management that is trying to drive SL into the ground or what I don't know. But the search fiasco *IS* what is causing the steady decline of SL because businesses are closing and people are heartbroken and leaving because LL just doesn't care and they have made it clear as day through Sea Linden's arrogance that shows in blog posts and the LL staff responses to concerns. If LL wants to improve SL they need to get rid of the search team and hire a consulting firm that knows what they are doing and listen to the consultants if the consultants inform them that GSA is not suitable for Second Life. For now we at least still have the places search which does, in fact, work and is not busily deleting locations from search as the GSA is doing. I mean removing locations. not just "deranked" Gone. No longer there at all. Or, as some suspect, there is intentional code involved. What is really odd is that these issues pertain only to certain businesses that involve certain keywords and not other keywords that the new search is vastly improved for. Something is wrong. And either the management of LL is behind it or the management of LL needs to bring in external assistance and allow them to correct it.

And it would greatly improve the outlook if LL demonstrated they were working on something because right now it just looks like they are treading water and slowly scaling everything back as the place is prepped for closing. LL needs to return to it's core success factors or sell it to someone that cares and wants an entertainment business niche sector cash cow that can support a bunch of happy employees and millions of happy players. And grow along those lines instead of getting upset because they didn't produce a tech bubble to bail out of before it pops. Which is probably all the investors care about.

What really bugs me is Microsoft Kinect. SL needs that technology. Big time. Literally building with your hands? Yea. Total game changer. Sadly SL is not on xbox. Will someone else produce the equivalent of Kinect for the PC/Mac/Linux? We can only hope. Those investors need to be working on that. I'd love to help with such an effort myself.

When is the last time Linden Lab asked it's customers what they wanted and then acted on it instead of laughing at what was said and throwing it in the bit bucket? This has been how LL is since before Kingdon. Maybe the layoffs will help by wiping out the fiefdom that has been controlling all customer interaction with LL for years.

Under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, companies with more than 100 employees are typically required to give a 60-day notice of a pending mass layoff or closure. Failure to do so is grounds for a... you guessed it.. class action lawsuit.

And no ethereal, the incompetence in virtual world business that has been exhibited with such fisacos as have lined up since Kingdon took over have no bearing on content creation. In fact there is no outward appearance that SL is doing anything but growing unless Linden Lab has been outright lying with it's metrics and reports to the public. So if LL is planning to close up suddenly then it would likely be a failed attempt to escape 2 pending class action lawsuits.

In the meantime there are alternatives to SL getting going. Inworldz looks promising. some new thing called 3dchat.com is there for the real lifer homophobes that want to be sure the person they are pixelating with used actual real life identity data at sign up. Doesn't mean it is not a poser using fake real info but there you go.

Things do not point at a sudden closure with the observed grid growth going on. So it is interesting indeed. Oh and what about the entire US Air Force was going to be using Second Life Enterprise? Wouldn't it be nuts to shut down with such lucrative contracts in play?

Perhaps LL has something else to run from we have not heard about yet. Makes no sense.

OK well with 16 million of accounts and the number 5 million in damages that amounts to LL giving all accounts around L$10 each. Similar to other suits that gave a coupon for a free hamburger or something of value as portrayed during the suit. The L$ is being portrayed as having value so everyone gets L$10 each. woo hoo!

So basically the "class" is every single person that has ever been banned for cause. Somehow I don't think this one is going to go the way some think when all the griefers and PN pile in as class members and then LL commences to paint all the plaintiffs as greasy perverted insane ethug cyberbullies in front of a jury. With endless reams of documented evidence.

Babbage are you saying there is a limit of just 10 mono scripts to some certain parcel size or 10 to an avatar? I hope not. We need tools to evaluate our needs against your arbitrary decisions on what we pay for will be so we can evaluate whether or not to continue paying you $300 a month for a simulator on a web host. My sim runs fine right now. If you cripple my sim then decisions have to be made about how best to proceed with the damages.

It is time for Linden Research Inc. to explain what these limits will be.

Ever looked at all the other stuff Havok sells? We wants the cloth, AI, and destructibles too :P. But the cloth would really change the "game" if LL could pull that in.

I saw some sldev list traffic suggesting the client side scripting would effectively make SL a windows only client. That would be worth further investigation.

Just one fly in your ointment there Ari. The *obviously copybotted* items are sold as no mod with resizer scripts. So do please explain how no mod items are replicated? No they don't have a license to export/import for the purpose of having a backup and if they did they had to be using a counterfeiting client to override permissions and can be banned for TOS violations. I could throw an insult at you as you did me but I won't.

BTW at the rate things are going this is a moot discussion because by the end of the year everyone in SL will have switched to an "illegal" viewer anyway to take their stuff to open sim (or wherever it can be taken) at the rate Kingdon is screwing SL up. So I'm on the fence now. I see why people need to be pulling out of SL. And all that money spent is a bummer to lose.

So to me the discussion needs to stop focusing on copybot (impossible to stop, usage growing by leaps and bounds daily) and turn to examining the current content sales based SL economy that is clearly unsustainable. We either find a different way to monetize our content creation efforts or this thing is going to crash and burn. Personally I'm thinking we need the export routines to include the texture binary data so content can be sold in import packages directly from our own web sites or from a renderosity style marketplace. What do you think Ari? Tateru? Is it time to forget copybot and begin working on the next generation of 3D content economies that are sustainable? Or just let the kids keep fiddling while their rome sims burn? This thing is dead pretty soon if we don't deal with it soon.

Issac the Death misses the irony of "false disinformation".

Tatero identifies the not exactly desirable situation of each Linden being allowed to interpret policy and law on a personal level and take actions based on personal opinion.

However if someone is using a trademark and they have not made available their license then of course LL might take action to mitigate liability. It is possible for trademark use to be licensed and/or authorized. However there appears to be no way to publish the license/authorization because the metatdata fields available on SL content are inadequate. Because of these inadequacies LL is unable to expeditiously query to acquire and review licensing information that needs to be published. (LL should be engaged in coding and data architecture efforts to remedy these glaring metadata deficiencies but there appears to be little interest in making these liability mitigating enhancements) Be this as it may it is quite rare for trademark use to be authorized and most trademark decorated content is just someone "getting away with it". Usually when asked about it the response from the typical infringer has something to do with the trademark owner should be appreciative of the "free advertising" even though the trademark owner did not ask for nor contract for said "free advertising" on content that may not meet the specifications for proper representation of the trademark.

Since it is literally impossible to police the entire grid it leaves us with Safe Harbor sanction of the DMCA. However DMCA generally addresses copyrights and the applicable trademark portion of the Lanham Act does not make make much reference to the internet other than definitions and appears to cover domain names. This leaves us with LL having to act on it's own under interpretation of available law to cover itself. Thus why xstreet has the ambiguous rules it has and said rules should also be applied to Second Life in general. However LL doesn't seem to keep up with clarifications on policies and instead uses the TOS as written that gives LL sole discretion in what content is allowed to remain in Second Life.

So a wise person will simply not use a trademark without a license. Could it get any easier than that? If you use someone's trademark without a license and LL removes it then you have nothing to complain about. As for "mobs" if said "mob" is engaging in behavior that is disallowed under the community standards then file abuse reports. It doesn't get any more simple than that.

This article is an interesting and relative read on the topic of Trademark Infringement law has no "Safe Harbor" protections for service providers: http://www.desktopnexus.com/blog/2009/05/dmca-trademark-claim/

Sounds like the exceedingly rare cases you mention. The vast majority of the "vigilantism" you decry that I see involve people actively looking for people wearing obviously copybotted items. They are not hard to spot. Wearing an obvious dev kitties wig yet the wearer is the creator of all the prims. There are organizations active in identifying these people and sharing the information so these people can be banned from regions across the grid. But no DMCAs are filed unless the actual creator is notified and the actual creator files the DMCA. And that is where your story breaks down. Linden Lab doesn't go around removing content without a DMCA like that unless there is a trademark violation. So there seems to be something vastly wrong with your article and I wonder why you would publish such misleading patently false disinformation.

Again: Linden Lab does not remove content without a DMCA unless it involves a trademark. If Linden Lab did then they would be liable for lawsuits. But don't take my word for it. You are a journalist. Go interview Marty at LL and get the same information I just stated from him.