Annyka Bekkers

Personally, I think this move was intended primarily to push small hobbyist merchants off Xstreet, and its working. Its all part of the newlook pro-level SL 2.0 that's gonna wow the masses

Ironically, they could be opening up a door for Blue Mars as they shift toward that direction. As SL gets increasingly restrictive in what kinds of content can be made and seen, Blue Mars in the meantime has been doing their homework and will open with their policies already in place, and without being saddled with a legacy of disappointing their base. And there are indications that their content policies may turn out to be more open and liberal than expected.

It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

@ Jacek.
That's a bizarre rule. I wonder what the reasoning behind that is? How is it considered anti-competitive to raise your prices?

You left out that he is also the founder of Chuck E. Cheese. So, yeah, I'd say he knows a little bit about creating social spaces.

Thank you, Ordinal. That's exactly what this is all about.

What bothers me about this article and most of the comments here is the suggestion that the creators are naive whiners who dont understand how the big bad modern world works. "Suck it up, crybabies, better people than you have been dealing with this" seems to be the sentiment here.

But this isn't just about run of the mill content theft. Creators arent idiots. We all realize that our stuff will get stolen eventually and that there could be stray copies floating around anywhere. But this is not just a case of some thieves selling stolen goods in back-alleys.

Instead, what we have is a situation where the #1 classified ad is for a store that is selling stolen skins right out in the open. In case you haven't checked the classified ads recently, that's L$ 242,000 or almost US$900 per week to advertise stolen content. You tell me, "Content Creator", how are you going to outmarket THAT.

This isnt people selling out of the back of a van, and its definitely not a "purse party." Its the SL equivalent of someone robbing your house and then running a Superbowl ad to promote the sale.

The reason these thieves can operate so brazenly is because the Lindens have demonstrated again and again that they will do absolutely nothing to stop it. All of the burden is placed on the creators. Just today, LL finally banned the accounts of the thief who was at the center of this weekend's protests. But they left all of the stolen content in place where it can still be bought by anybody. Why? Because they wont delete them unless each and every OBJECT is AR'd as "Content from a banned avatar." That's how Linden Lab protects its creators.

What's most frustrating is that it might be the creators getting screwed right now, but at the end of the day, if LL continues to allow SL to turn into a hostile business environment for the independent businesspeople who fill this world with everything in it, its Second Life and Linden Lab itself that have the most to lose.