New World Notes

Want Scalable Megaprims in Second Life Estate Regions? Vote JIRA MISC-3450!

Megaprims, a Second Life building exploit that's led to amazing content like this Light Waves statue at left, has been banned by the Lindens for nearly two years. The concern with megaprims, programmer Qarl Linden explains on NPIRL's blog, is griefing on the mainland. "With the current code, a Resident with a 1x1 parcel could erect a sim-wide banner." However, he also offers a solution: "[A] VERY easy way to solve this problem is to make mega-prims an estate option. Estate managers can chose whether to turn them on/off -- and then can personally deal with any issues that may arise."

Quick as a wink, Dirk Talamasca created this JIRA MISC-3450 feature request, which you can vote on if you see fit. Image via npirl.blogspot.com

Survey Suggests New Second Life Trademark Policies Still Provoke Wide Concerns

On April 18th, the Lindens provided a detailed update to the company's new trademark and brand use policies.  In my first survey, 75% of respondents said it still provoked concerns; after the 4/18 follow-up (disregard the 4/8 date typo above), I took another survey. This time, 63% of respondents report lingering questions.  A significant leap in clarity, but a large majority remains unsatisfied by the  Lindens' explanations.  Why?

Ten Trademark Clarification Questions For The Lindens

The survey results are in, and they clearly suggest Residents have numerous unanswered questions about the Lindens' new trademark policies, despite this follow-up post.  Numerous readers posted their queries here-- thanks to all who submitted-- and I've collected and slightly reworded ten of the most pertinent here.  I'm forwarding them to the Lindens, and will post any replies when I get them.

1 - For four years, the Lindens have encouraged Residents to use their rightfully registered trademarks for all kinds of fansites as long as they included the clause, “Second Life® and Linden Lab® are trademarks or registered trademarks of Linden Research, Inc. All rights reserved. No infringement is intended.”  Now that policy has been drastically changed, and the company is demanding compliance.  Isn’t this estoppel?

2 - Does Linden Lab intend for the Terms of Service to be coextensive with trademark law? If not, how does LL justify restricting our speech and activities through the ToS in a way that isn't required to protect its trademark?

3 - Will I be covered if I simply put in my blog header/sidebar all Linden Lab’s names and trademark and copyright identifiers, so I don't have to worry about TM-ing and ®-ing every time I write the words in my posts?

Second Life(tm) Trademark Turmoil Continues-- And Gwyneth Lays Down The Gauntlet (Updated)

"®  is the new black!", fashionista Kit Meredith announces sweetly, then hands me the latest must-have accessory for the metaverse:  Intellectual property symbols converted into giant ear rings. Kit created them on a lark for friends, she tells me, but Crap Mariner has been passing out copies across the grid, so you're likely to see them dangling from fashionable heads around Second Life.  It's only the most overt response to the tumult over the Lindens' latest trademark policies, scheduled to go into effect in three months, but seems to be causing more anxiety, than understanding.

"I know people who've gone through a year of blog posts to update all the references [to Linden trademarks]," NWN fashion correspondent and blogger Irish Ophelia tells me, "and I really won't have the time for that for more than three months, so I have kiiinda been freaking out about it."  I'm not sure that's required-- if I read the guidelines right, it's only necessary for bloggers to include the "®" symbol on "your first or most prominent reference to a Linden Lab brand name", i.e. on your banner. 

Still, I'm not entirely sure myself.  Then again, neither is Gwyneth Llewelyn, and she's one of Second Life's most influential intellects (named as such in the official guide), along with being CEO of Beta Technologies, a leading metaverse developer which just helped launch the official SL presence of Slovenian public broadcasting.  Seeking clarification in an open letter to the Lindens on her blog, she points out how the new policy contradicts Lindens' previously established guidelines:

Your previous policy, established in May 2004 (”Second Life® Fansite Tolkit”), and later reinforced with referral programmes like “Viva La Evolution”, positively encouraged the widespread use of your trademarks, so long as it was quite clearly displayed that no infringement was intended. To requote your own terms of agreement for the usage of your trademarks:

Does Using JIRA Matter? Lindens Say Yes, No... Maybe

In recent months, two items have generated record-breaking Resident support on JIRA, the Lindens' official software feature request/bug tracker.  This despite JIRA's profoundly user-unfriendly system (you have to log in with your SL account name and password, for instance, and existing issues are remarkably difficult to locate.)  Spurred by lobbying from a coalition of Second Life bloggers, however, a request to expand the maximum number of groups a Resident can belong to from its current 25 has received 1052 votes so far.  Galvanized by a rash of alleged content theft, another JIRA request begging the Lindens to deal with the matter has 901 and counting.  As such, both are easily the most popular requests (most other issues hover far below 100 votes.)

Yet despite this groundswell, each issue remains Unassigned.  When I asked Robin Linden about the group request, Robin said it was on the Lindens' To Do list-- but gave no indication that the large JIRA vote had moved that feature up in development priority.  With the content theft issue, the Lindens have made no official response.  Given that, the question becomes: Why should Residents continue using JIRA when it doesn't seem to influence Linden development to any significant degree? 

I put that question to the Lindens' PR, and after some delay, got this reply:

Robin Linden on Expanding Group Limits

The lobbying effort to get the Lindens to increase the number of groups a Resident can join beyond 25 (as it's currently capped) has so far attracted nearly 800 votes in Jira, Second Life's development tracker, making it far and away the most demanded
feature.  (If you have an SL account, click this Jira link to review or vote on it.)  With so much aggregate enthusiasm, I checked with Community Development VP Robin Linden (above), to see if the company had any immediate plans to implement this expansion.  Via the Lindens' press rep, here's what she told me: "We realize that this issue is important to Residents, especially Residents who utilize groups to run their businesses," she began.  With that acknowledgment, an extended technical qualification followed:

How to Supercharge Groups

Veryon Supercharge is rallying Second Life bloggers to campaign for expanding the limit of SL groups a Resident can join from its paltry 25.  To do that, you need to register that desire with the Lindens, and to do that, you need to log into the Lindens' user-unfriendly JIRA software development tracking system, and enter in your SL name and password for access. 

To vote for expanding the number of groups that can be joined beyond 25, click this link. Or just as good, click on Veryon's avatar to the left.

This is one lobbying effort I can get behind.  A 25 group limitation seems deeply arbitrary, and worse, runs counter to Second Life culture, which is comprised of hundreds of subcultures based on numerous affiliations (region, last name, SL interests, RL interests, role playing groups, etc. etc.), most of which depend on group communication channels, to thrive.  If you agree, click on Veryon.  Disagree?  Say why in Comments.

12/24: Bumped to keep the campaign fires burning.

BROADLY AMBIVALENT

D. Linden portrait by Tao Takashi

Daniel Linden's post on the official SL blog yesterday has provoked not a little consternation among many Residents, for while it restates the Lindens' sometimes ambiguous prohibition against sexual "age play" (sex involving avatars who appear to be minors, even if all participants are verified as real life adults), it also specifies prohibitions against "avatar portrayals... of sexual violence including rape".  This might apply to SL's consensually BDSM-themed (and often popular) areas; more worrying to some, Daniel states that "other broadly offensive content are never allowed or tolerated within Second Life", without clarifying exactly what that entails-- then enjoins the community to keep a vigilant eye on such behavior, and to file an official Abuse Report on it.  (Over at Second Life Insider, NWN contributor Tateru Nino has a round-up of outrage and worry, including one Resident who memorably describes this as "Second Life's Patriot and Domestic Surveillance Act".)

All that in mind, I fired off some questions to Daniel, someone (full disclosure) I know personally and like a lot.  His replies after the break-- and the debate over them, no doubt, to follow in Comments.

BUG TRACKER, DEBUGGED

In my last post, I noted that very few Residents have used the Lindens' bug tracker, Jira.  According to Torley Linden, that was partly due to the fact-- the irony is rich here-- that Jira was itself bugged.  He says the log-in issue has been resolved-- go here to read more, and go here to log into Jira.  Now that it's fixed, will it make the crowd any wiser?  We'll have to track the bug tracker, to see.

WHAT YOU VERIFIED

With 241 votes received, the results of my unscientific poll on the Lindens' upcoming age verification policy are in: the largest percentage of you (27.4%) described it as "An unnecessary feature which will cause significant in-world upheaval."  Another 13.7% called it an unnecessary feature that'll only cause minor upheaval; taken together, 41% total described it as a needless addition.  And while a scarce 12.9% designated Linden's verification policy as needed and well-implemented, 57.3% total described it as a necessary feature.  Which suggests that most of you do want some kind of age verification established in-world, and that the plurality's dispute is mainly over how the Lindens communicated it, or their suggested implementation, or even the third party corporation that was proposed to do the verification.  (Or the fact that a third party was suggested at all, which was perhaps taken as a violation of the unwritten social contract of trust between Residents and the Lindens.) Or all four things. 

Other interpretations, of course, are possible.  What's your take?