Last week, on Thursday 8 April, Corey Fahy in Philadelphia filed a lawsuit against Linden Lab and more than 25 others, in the Pennsylvania East District Court (case number 2:2010cv01561, assigned to judge Joel Harvey Slomsky). Fahy alleges that an algorithm in one of his Second Life products has been subjected to copyright infringement, accompanied by the usual requests for damages, statutory damages, ten times damages, attorney's fees and all that.

Where do we even begin? We'll spare you most of the cruft and go straight to the heart of the problems that we can see with this particular lawsuit.

Continue reading Fahy vs Linden Lab: No case to answer?

Fahy vs Linden Lab: No case to answer? originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 14 Apr 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Last week, the promised update of Linden Lab's Third-Party Viewer (TPV) policies crept out onto the Second Life Web-site with little fanfare. After the fuss caused by the tangle of legal incompatibilities, muddled terminology and ambiguous phrasing in the first version, the Lab said it would go back and address the problems, and get the policy document fixed.

So, you'd think they'd have gotten it right this time around, right? We certainly did. We were wrong.

Continue reading Second Life third-party viewer policies get an update but still fail to do the job

Second Life third-party viewer policies get an update but still fail to do the job originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 22 Mar 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The hallmark of a good license is that it is clear, easy to understand and unambiguous. The gold-standard for a good contract is that it is all of the above and provides all parties with equal amounts of protection. There are bonus points for not conflicting with rights guaranteed by law, or with other prerequisite licenses or agreements.

Linden Lab's Third Party Viewer (TPV) policies, as published on Tuesday, regrettably reflect none of these ideals. We'd go so far as to say that it's the worst day's work that we've seen come out of the Lab to-date. So much so that almost immediately after publishing them the Lab has sent them back to legal for both clarification and rewriting.

Continue reading Second Life third-party viewer policies not well received

Second Life third-party viewer policies not well received originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 26 Feb 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The Imprudence project has reached the end of the second release cycle for their Second Life viewer. Imprudence is now in official release. Imprudence is one of our favorite Second Life viewers.

Context (pie) menus have been reorganized again, there's improved support for sound and streaming media through gstreamer, some backported fixes from the official 1.22 viewer, and confirmation popups have been added for a number of operations. There's also a Mac version, which last year's 1.0 release lacked due to hardware and development constraints (though only for Intel-based Macs, unless there's significant demand for a universal binary.

Continue reading Imprudence 1.1.0 for Second Life

Imprudence 1.1.0 for Second Life originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 07 Jun 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Over the last few months, there's been an increasing amount of talk about the modified Second Life viewer being used with Open Life Grid (a third-party virtual environment based on reverse-engineered and open-source systems and protocols). Most of the talk centers around copyright infringement -- or license violations, if you prefer.

It's claimed that the operators of Open Life Grid are failing to comply with the source-code licenses (the GPL with FLOSS exceptions) under which the Second Life source code has been made available. Now, while the issue has been reported to Linden Lab's license-infringement hotline, the issue is actually a bit trickier for the Lab than it would first appear.

You see, the viewer code contains contributions from a number of third-party contributors, each of which retains their copyright, intellectual property and rights to their contributions under the terms of the contribution agreement. All of whom have the right to commence their own actions.

Continue reading Linden Lab's collective copyright conundrum

Linden Lab's collective copyright conundrum originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 22 Mar 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In the last several months, we've had numerous tips from readers that one or another of the available third-party Second Life viewers that are in distribution are in breach of the license agreements under which Linden Lab makes the source-code available. As the sole copyright holder (contributor's copyrights are assigned to Linden Lab via a contribution agreement), Linden Lab is the only party that can do more than apply limited verbal or social pressure for compliance [as it turns out, contributors remain full copyright holders - thanks for clearing that up, Gigs]. We've gotten quite a few readers asking how to report license violations, and if Linden Lab would seriously investigate those reports.

"We take copyright matters seriously," a Linden Lab spokesperson told us yesterday, "and people are welcome to report what they believe to be violations of the GPL terms under which we've made the viewer source code available."

Continue reading Linden Lab invites reports of viewer license violations

Linden Lab invites reports of viewer license violations originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 21 Feb 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The RealXtend team has released the latest version of their extended, viewer and opensim-based system code. This brings realXtend up to version 0.3.

The viewer sports new basic avatars (three), attachments direct to the avatar (rather than to a bone-based attachment point), prim sizes increased to 128 metres in any dimension, fixed assorted crash bugs and more.

The server code handles the support for these features, along with a bunch of bug-fixes, Skype support, inverse kinematics and variable avatar walk-speeds.

Continue reading RealXtend 0.3 released

RealXtend 0.3 released originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Sourceforge - billed as the largest open source website in the world -- is now host to the source code project for the RealXTend viewer (rexviewer) for Second Life. RealXtend claims to have replaced all of the license encumbered portions of the viewer with GPL-friendly alternatives, though they are still having some issues decoupling FMOD from their VoIP solution.

The project website remains at rexviewer.org, while the project page and source code (available via subversion) is now on Sourceforge. Rexviewer is only in alpha at present, but has a number of distinctly interesting technological features, and more planned.

RealXtend viewer now on Sourceforge originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 17 Mar 2008 09:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Lalinda Lovell, the person behind the Wonderland site that was the focus of the Sky News virtual child sex scandal is apparently promoting a new grid, called litesim. The server software apparently is under development and due to be released under GPL Free Software licenses at some future date, so it isn't exactly clear if the code is based on Open Simulator or some other backend.

The system sports three tiers of users: Free, Basic and Premium, the latter two both having a monthly fee and cashout options. Lovell's advertising for this grid emphasizes "Freedom and privacy guaranteed" however the litesim terms of service specifically state that a number of things (like child pornography, and anything that violates either US or UK laws - that would include simulations of underage sexuality) are not permitted.

Continue reading Wonderland creator promoting new grid

Wonderland creator promoting new grid originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 06 Mar 2008 21:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

According to Chris Carella and Giff Constable, both of the Electric Sheep Company, have indicated today that the Electric Sheep Company is looking to contribute bug-fixes and some modifications back to the open source Second Life viewer.

While the Second Life viewer source code is mostly under the GNU Public License (version 2), however the viewer is actually dual-licensed, with proceeds from the commercial license being used to help fund further development.

Continue reading Electric Sheep looking to contribute portions of OnRez viewer

Electric Sheep looking to contribute portions of OnRez viewer originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 08 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.