International Spaceflight Museum Update: After Paying Back Tier, Lindens Require Re-Purchase of Sims to Restore SL's Longtime Aerospace Museum

Update on the status of SL's erstwhile International Spaceflight Museum, which was created and maintained by RL aerospace engineers until it disappeared from SL last month due to unpaid tier and failure to get non-profit status from the IRS: While ISM has received donations to bring it back to SL, and ISM volunteers have paid back tier owed to Linden Lab, the company now says the sims associated with the museum have been idle too long, and would have to be bought again, to return. This according to ISM volunteer Katherine Prawl (Kat Lemieux in SL), who has been with the project since its inception in 2006.

But how long were the sims idle?

"[O]nly about a month at most," Kat tells me, "and the last week or two of that was while they were diddling around trying to get our PayPal account charged... Incidentally, I never did get an e-mail from Linden Lab saying the sims were going away. I don't know why. I discovered the account was disabled by accident, when I tried to log in for something."

So as it stands, the International Spaceflight Museum is still in limbo. I'm checking with Linden Lab now. Meantime, I've included a copy of the e-mail Katherine received from Linden Lab through an alt account used to maintain ISM, after the break.

On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 2:08 PM, Linden Lab Support wrote:

A comment has been added to your Case..

Case: 01343697

Avatar: AyeEss Emms

Type: Account on Hold

Status: Waiting for Customer Acceptance

Hello AyeEss,

Unfortunately, both of those regions have been taken offline due to the long delinquency of this account. If you would like to be a land owner again, you will need to purchase land thru the land tab on your dashboard.

http://secondlife.com/land/pricing.php

If you have any further questions about this issue, please do not hesitate to contact us by responding to this ticket. For all other concerns, please file another ticket. https://secondlife.com/ and then click the help tab

Best Regards,

[Linden staffer name redacted]

Linden Lab Support

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Comments

[shockwave yareach]

ANY chance that I would consider getting any kind of land in SL ever, just got flushed down the space toilet!

Hey Rodvik!! Some of your employees are making you look extremely bad. A sim being gone for a couple of months having to be rebought? I can see a 3 month lapse as being a fair point to say that abandoned is abandoned. But a few weeks? This land has already been paid for -- let them have their sim back already!

Come on. Show us that LL has grown up in the last year and comprehends that it needs better customer service than it has provided for a few years now.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

I wonder if they just wiped them. I let my account go delinquent way back when, and when I reactivated the account (after I had paid the past due amount), I found they'd wiped my inventory.

It would be a neighborly gesture to waive the repurchase cost... and to try to restore the sims from a backup if they've been wiped.

Cultivating goodwill pays dividends. Try it sometime, LL. Here's an opportunity.

[moo Money]

Something doesn't add up here. LL removes your name from search after 7 days nonpayment of tier. At minimum, they give your sim 30 days before they remove it from the grid. A friend of mine's business partner disappeared, and it took LL something like 60-90 days to reclaim the sim.

At the point when the sim disappeared, it was already at 37+ days. I can easily see how it could be idle at least 2-3 months. In your original post about the situation, you even stated that payments lapsed for months. http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2012/02/sim-deathwatch-spaceport-alpha.html

[Stone Semyorka]

This is an incredibly stupid move on the part of Linden Lab. How shortsighted can they be over there? This is one of the biggest PR pluses that ever existed in Second Life and now they are going to hassle and mistreat those volunteers who put their blood, sweat and tears into the ISM for six years. Come on!

[Adeon Writer]

:| Yikes. This is... wow. This policy needs to be reviewed, stat. Really not fair there.

[Eric Hackathorn]

The Linden Lab business model is fairly well summarized in the following comic:
http://www.gapingvoid.com/walledgarden220.jpg
The problem with the Linden Lab model is that it focuses on user generated content and increasingly users are moving outside the walls of Second Life. Users are finding places where their content and work is actually appreciated and respected.
Linden Lab should be begging ISM to stay on their grid. The bottom line: good content (and their ever-decreasing monopoly on that content) is the only reason people keep logging into Second Life.

[KT Syakumi]

In this article: http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2012/02/sim-deathwatch-spaceport-alpha.html it is stated that when the sims went offline "...the amount due was over US$1,000,...". Assuming a ful sim, that's more than 3 months unpaid tier. LL seem to have actually left the sims live for way longer than the 30+ days they say they do. Tier is rent. I fyou don't pay rent you get evicted, regardless of the circumstance and while I can sympathise with ISM as I went through a similar situation, I would not expect to be able to reclaim my sims after such a long period of time. If LL do give them back free of charge I think it would be above and beyond what should be expected and would set an interesting precedence - who decides what builds are worthy?

[Sarge Misfit]

Perhaps they should consider OpenSim or Kitely. A lot of others have and are doing very well.

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

I wish they'd join us in OpenSim...but the builds may have multiple creators. They are not so easy to export, then.

This is yet another kick in the teeth to the nonprofit sector by LL. Hamlet, are you sure they got rid of M? I'd thought we had a new type of CEO in Rod Humble.

Most firms give those in arrears a thirty-day grace period. After my banks changed, I missed a Verizon auto-payment and was not fined at all when I paid it with my next bill. I know LL is not a behemoth like Verizon, but that is precisely why they should do more to please the customer base they retain.

LL, has backups of these sims...they now need to do the right thing.

The Lab only ticks off the remaining educators and nonprofits, where I've noted less and less cheerleading for you since the 2010 fiasco of ending discounts in the midst of a fiscal year. We grumble, then move on to talk about the future of OpenSim, Unity 3D, and Jibe.

[Eddi Haskell]

When will Linden Lab finally realize that good content is crucial to the continued growth of Second Life, and content creators -- who earn nothing in most cases, and built some wonderful creations, should be supported.

I would bend over backwards to help the Spaceflight Museum. But Linden Lab could not care less about supporting wonderful content creators who have invested so much time and expense in pleasing others, and increasing the value of Second Life as a place to visit.

Feel like I am banging my head against the wall with this.

[Henri Beauchamp]

I'm surprise that... people are surprised that LL proves greedy !

LL always have been greedy, and it's one of the reasons why SL stopped growing.

[moo Money]

I guess no one read mine or KT's comments.

"Things went along pretty well for awhile; Paradox managed to find donors who funded the sims for over a year, but then he had some personal problems (N.B. - I don't feel comfortable explicating that without Paradox's permission, although he did tell me what was going on. It's serious), and the payments to Linden Lab lapsed for months. The first we knew about the problem was around Jan. 13th, when the sims went offline. I tried to log into the land-owning alt's account, but it was disabled for non-payment. At that time, the amount due was over US$1,000, far beyond the means of the now-defunct corporation or the willingness of any of the planning group to pay."

The owners didn't communicate with each other, the sims were at least 2 months behind for payment (2 sims at 2 months = $1180, or "over US$1000") when they disappeared, and even though they raised the funds and LL took some time to take the payment, that still put them at or over 3 months past due. You're only hearing Kat's side of the story, but at the point that they were idle "only a month at most", they were already 2 months behind.

I feel sorry for their situation, but LL isn't at fault for reclaiming sims that were not paid for. Had the person who owned them informed people he was struggling, they could have gotten the donations in time for tier being due.

[Katherine Prawl]

moo and KT -- the tier was in arrears for more than 30 days, obviously. I never said that wasn't true. What the Linden support person said was the islands were OFFLINE for too long to recover -- but they were actually offline for less than a month when I first started trying to pay the bill. LL took 10 days to finally let me know the problem, that the PayPal payment agreement was capped and they couldn't charge the full amount. Once I talked to PayPal and removed the cap, LL got their money. It was only then that they told me the islands would not be restored. Even if we bought new islands, there is no guarantee we would get our content back, which is really what we care about, not just the land. This whole mess makes me sick. I still think the museum is a worthwhile project, but I'm not sure it's worth spending additional thousands of US$'s in SL, when there are alternatives (which we are exploring).

[zazen Manbi]

The International Spaceflight Museum has returned to Second Life. Thanks Wagner.

[swarovski crystal]

On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 2:08 PM, Linden Lab Support wrote:

[Katherine Prawl]

THE ISM IS BACK!!! Thanks to Wagner, and the community response in the blogosphere, and the rational reaction of a higher-up Linden, the museum is back on previous terms. We don't need to buy new islands, the tier remains the same, and now the work begins. We need to normalize the IP issues with our builders, and we need to arrange reliable funding for the future. That crowdfunding idea Wagner mentioned early on is one option, and even beyond a one-time event, we'll be talking to long-term donors.

Thanks, everyone, for your support! Watch our blog for announcements of a "Grand RE-Opening" party soon!

[Breen Whitman]

And all these thousand could have been saved and put directly into the project if Opensim, Kitley, or one of the private grids was used.

Its great its back online and all, but we will be reading this same story (ISM needs crowd sourced funds) in another few moths.

*sigh.

[Masami Kuramoto]

The first thing I would do now is take backups.

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

I hope this latest development signals that LL is indeed listening to the community. But I'm thankful.

Katherine, maybe this will encourage those builders reluctant to share content outside of SL to get in world and start exporting the rockets. I did so with Usher as soon as we knew we'd lose our island, and now I again have the build in SL...for a while. But Plan B, with, frankly, a better build, remains in Jokaydia Grid.

Come join us.

[Pussycat Catnap]

Lower level support is often constrained to 'policy' and formulaic answers - that's typical in corporate America.

What's less typical is the hassle it takes at LLs to get something reviewed by a person with authority to make a situational judgement.

Shouldn't need to become a public affair.

That said, I've never owned a sim - I have no idea if thet have or lack a form or number to get some issue 'reviewed for exception'.

[bobo]

looks like Rodvick took some Tylenol.

[shockwave yareach]

I rent 15 parcels on an island chain. I would love a full scale sim to build in -- some of my stuff can become huge. And over and over, I keep coming to think how much fun it would be to just buy one.

And then LL repeatedly reminds me of why they are such a filthy word in so many circles. And I end up keeping my credit card in the wallet.

The lab will have to show me that it has gotten back on track and is deserving of my trust again. Charging current prices without my actually owning anything and being able (and willing) to extort MORE money on lame pretenses any chance they get, means my opinion is no different today than it was 2 years ago; LL is being run like a syndicate, not a corporation.

"Lovely sim you have there. Buy the land a second and maybe a third time, and we might even let it on the grid for you to play with."