Sim Deathwatch: Spaceport Alpha Disappears, Victim of Unpaid Tier & IRS Refusal to Exempt Virtual Museum

Spaceport Alpha, home to a virtual aerospace museum created in great part by real aerospace industry engineers, which has existed in SL since 2006 (at right, what it looked like then), recently disappeared completely from Second Life. Yesterday I got in touch with Katherine Prawl, who's been with the project since inception, and she gave me a good summary of what happened. As is often the case with Sim Deathwatch stories, Spaceport Alpha and its sister sim Spaceport, home of the International Spaceflight Museum, were victims of Linden Lab's virtual land tier fees, but other factors were also involved. Most interesting (and tragic) to me: The IRS refused to grant non-profit tax exempt status to the virtual world museum, since it didn't have a real life physical presence. (I wonder, does the same rule apply to fees related to non-profit websites?)

After the break, read Katherine's full statement on the end of the International Spaceflight Museum. She also mentions the effort to restore the Museum to SL, but from what I can gather, that may not be feasible. I've encouraged her and the other volunteers to participate in Comments, to update us all on its status. Click to read on, and comment!

"After nearly six years, Spaceport Alpha, home of the International Spaceflight Museum, together with Spaceport Bravo (a year younger), disappeared from Second Life. These sims represented the completely volunteered efforts of over 100 talented and committed residents, as well as contributions from many more hundreds of supporters.

"What happened? How could such a highly-acclaimed and beloved destination just go black? It goes back a few years, to the decision to apply for US tax-exempt status as a 501(c)(3) corporation. After nearly a year and a half of work, incorporating, filling out forms, answering questions, and of course paying fees to the government as well as to Linden Lab, the IRS decided not to grant the tax-exemption because the museum only existed in the virtual world, without a "real life" physical presence. (This was in spite of our having a "real life" corporation!) Subsequently, Kat Lemieux (Kat Prawl IRL) resigned as president and was replaced by Paradox Olbers (SL name). Kat became Treasurer, but later resigned that position as well when she went back to grad school and didn't have time to do the job.

"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."

As to what (if anything) can be done to save the Museum now, here's where they stand:

"While a number of people have expressed regret for the loss, and some have offered to pay the fees, we are still in the process of trying to figure out what offers to accept, and how to proceed. Most of the past leaders encourage us to scale back to one sim, retiring exhibits that we don't have complete permission to copy/transfer in SL or to other grids. Some think we should move to another grid that is cheaper, keeping only a placeholder/marketing venue in SL. What we finally do probably depends on funding, but also on how many people are willing to continue volunteering, and of course, on whether Linden Lab even will restore the sims if and when we pay off the past due account. It's a sad ending, if that's what happens, but perhaps after such a long time on a shoestring budget, depending completely on volunteer workers and donations, it is inevitable, and we should simply be grateful for the time we enjoyed one of the best builds in the virtual world. We certainly have lots of photos and machinima to show for it, as well as stories and lasting friendships."

I believe there will be updates to this story soon, so please stay tuned.

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Comments

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Reincorporate as a super-PAC, string up a banner that says "Klatuu for President", and thumb your nose at the IRS.

I know that's flippant, but it would seem that organizations that exist to serve and educate the public have a much harder time of it than those that exist to launder bribes from the Robber Barons.

[zazen Manbi]

The ISM has been saved, just today.

[Rowan Derryth]

When I was with the now-defunct Frank Lloyd Wright Virtual Museum, we received non-profit status under the corporation Virtual Museums, Inc., which still exists. So I'm not sure why they didn't grant the status in this case, but the applications are very tricky and exacting. In might be worthwhile looking into a partnership with VMI, under their status?

[Katherine W Prawl]

Thanks for the beautiful write-up! There's some good news:we have accepted a donation that should bring the sims back online for now, as soon as some payment issues are settled. Of course, the question remains of funding for the future, but we have some good feelings about that, too, with offers of help from several quarters. As always, it is a matter of continuing the effort, but I think we'll survive. Maybe we will even get tax-exempt status someday, too, or partner with someone who is. Anyone who would like to support the museum can donate via PayPal to [email protected] or leave L$ in the tipjar at Science School sim, or pay AyeEss Emms (the ISM's landowning alt account). Thanks again for your help!

[Pussycat Catnap]

In a sense this is related news to the Linden Games post a bit further down.

SL may not be a video game yet, but it soon will be. Except one with no means for the game hosts to fund themselves... so that too won't last.

But the difficulties more and more places face in funding themselves are just going to keep eroding the variety of content in SL.

OpenSim might not be much today, but in time we might find ourselves in a situation where all the avatar-content is in SL, but all the places to go and use that content are in OpenSim...
- leaving them both somewhat vacant.

[Troy McLuhan]

I left the ISM management team in 2007, so I wasn't aware of the recent difficulties. I did notice that the sims had vanished, but I didn't know why.

Most of the people who built the ISM exhibits (rockets, spacecraft, etc.) have moved on to other things, in some cases many years ago.

If anonymous donors want to keep pumping money into it, then that's fine, but they should have no illusions. It's more like a relic from days gone by than the home of a living and vibrant community.

[Troy McLuhan]

Incidentally, the spaceflight museum, as a community, started at Burning Life 2005, which was in August or September of 2005. The group had a few mainland parcels where they kept their rockets etc. The first private sim (Spaceport Alpha) was purchased in April 2006 or so.

[Nyoko Salome]

;\ bah... i would have loved if it had stayed open. was one of the first places i'd visited... i hope it can be reinstated someday...

[Katherine Prawl]

ISM is coming back (as soon as we get the account straightened out). Here's a link to a PDF that includes a history of the museum's early days:

http://www.simteach.com/SLCC06/slcc2006-proceedings.pdf

[Emerald Wynn]

Hamlet, could you please start a feature called "Sim Birthwatch" about new sims? Just to counter the sad, morbidity of this one? I feel bleak whenever I see it in my Google Reader, although I appreciate the heads up if it's a sim that could possibly be saved - or at least put on life support - by donations.

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

I want our SL Spaceports to make it, but if they do not, they follow a certain poetic trajectory. Human space travel is following that now.

This began as a long reply here...so I blogged it up. http://bit.ly/ybJvK0

[Lani Global]

A shame to see such a valuable museum and engineering project be lost, and even if restarted, still be in constant peril.

It is a down side of putting everything on a walled garden where the owners and builders do not control the server.

Perhaps the project should encourage the creators of the objects in the sim to export their parts of the projects to an XML external archive. From there, the museum could live in virtual endless life, as an OpenSim *.oar file, or simply a collection of XML files on a website.

Regards,
Lani

[shockwave yareach]

It is a sad commentary on this country, that our rockets sit in Museums, not even the IRS will recognize them as being museums, and we have to bum rides to the space station that WE built and paid for with the Russians because we have no rockets anymore.

America no longer deserves a space program. America has forgotten how to lead and how to dream. But we may yet be able to visit a moon base in our lifetimes, if you can learn Chinese that is.

[Psion]

The ISM was one of the big examples I'd cite as proving the educational value of SL (and virtual worlds in general). Linden Lab is extremely short-sighted if they let a treasure like this disappear. Rather than risk letting it fail or emigrate to an OpenSim environment, they should find a way to guarantee ISM and sims like it with significant cultural value are preserved.

I propose a "historic landmark" system of (for example) ten of the best sims in SL to be used to advertise the virtues of virtual worlds supported for free each year of their existence. Of course, each year, new nominations are accepted and there'd be a bit of competition to keep landmarks worthwhile, but even former landmarks would have some room to boast and perhaps kept on an official list of valued sites.