The Strike is Ovah

Readers may be wondering about the sudden lack of posts in the past few days from not only this blog, but many other Second Life blogs as well. They and I have been on strike between the 15^th and the 18^th of this month in an attempt to provoke Linden Lab to provide more appropriate and useful guidance regarding their recent branding guidelines.

It all started days ago when new branding guidelines were introduced. These are really of no great consequence to most residents, and of some interest to business owners. However, while the intentions are good and logical, a read through the regs stunned the blogging community. I can’t repeat all the details, as they span multiple long web pages, but many bloggers feared effects such as:

• Having to change the name of their in-world business if it contained some reference to the trademarked names
• Having to change their website domain name (and risk losing their audience), again if it contained some reference to trademarked names
  
• Having to change product names
  
• Having to change website templates to include appropriate ™ and ® symbols
  
• Having to edit hundreds or thousands of earlier blog posts that might violate use of trademarked names
  
• Having to refrain from “disparaging comments” regarding the trademarked entities, for fear of being banned in-world (the new terms of service hold you responsible not only for your actions in-world, but now also out-of-world!)

Bloggers aren’t lawyers and the regulations mystified and confused many. It was felt that a much better form of communication should have been used, as well as practical guidelines specifically for bloggers (of which there are hundreds). No clarity emerged, and thus a strike was proposed by Gwyneth Llelewyn that was carried out by many bloggers.

Toward the end of the strike period, some clarifications emerged and some of the major issues were clarified. But many concerns remain, some of which are quite serious.

Why is all this happening? How can a company that has been quite friendly and supportive suddenly turn to the dark side? It’s those lawyers again, in my opinion.

They want to make sure that there is a clear distinction from their operations and those run by residents. In other words, if a resident is doing bad things, providing poor service or otherwise causing distress, Linden Lab wants to make sure you know it is the resident, not them causing the problem.

Another major issue is the terminology. We’ve been used to using the term “Second Life” in a casual way - but that is precisely the problem. If vast numbers of people use the term as if it is just another common word or phrase, then Linden Lab effectively loses control of the term.

This is going to be much more important in the future when alternative virtual worlds emerge and Linden Lab will want to differentiate their world from other worlds. They can’t do that if everyone uses the trademarked names to casually refer to any old virtual world. So, they have to position for the future today.

But they’re just not being very gentle or helpful. Throwing pages of quasi-legal web page regulations at the blogging community literally overnight feels a lot like getting a legal document in the mail. NOT FUN.

As for me, I am going to have to evaluate what changes I have to make to my blog, business and marketing approach. Of course, I’m going to determine the simplest approach and just do that. Stay tuned for changes!

Beggars in a Strange Land

Getting hit on by a beggar is not uncommon in Second Life, but twice today it happened in ridiculous places. Where does one go to escape them?

It began at CG Linden's Friday open discussion on software releases. Myself and 10 others (including new friend and fellow blogger Ciaran Laval) showed up to ask questions and get answers from the well-spoken CG Linden. Much I had heard before, but a few things were new to me:

• Evidently Linden Lab keeps a "blacklist" of banned scripts. Each region's simulator checks the UUID of scripts against the master blacklist to ensure that bad-guy scripts are unusable across the grid.
• The BETA grid (a separate virtual world used to test radically new software in a safe manner) is currently testing MONO, a more effective script engine. One of the participants suggested that particles would require a lot of work on this new software. Now that got my attention! The notion of re-writing my 200ish particle scripts is a scary thought.

As the meeting drew to a conclusion, questions for CG kind of petered out. Suddenly, a quiet guy in the corner spoke up and told the crowd that he's "looking for work" and is "available for interviews". Somehow his topic didn't really relate to the highly technical discussion up to that point in the meeting. Worse, when no one responded to his plea, he continued on, saying: "Anyone? Anyone? I need Lindens to have a place to live!", "Boy, you guys must be rich!" and finally: "Please give me L$1000!!!!".

Sad. Amusing. Pitiful. In spite of all that, the crowd was very polite and provided sage advice on where the best freebie shops could be found. Eventually he disappeared. Or ejected, I'll never know.

After CG's meeting broke up, I decided I'd better test my scripts on the BETA grid, just in case I have months work of rewriting unbeknown to me. I'd never been to the BETA grid, and I landed on a small area of only four adjaecent sims containing some basic structures and facilities. I was mostly interested in the sandbox where I could perform the testing.

I usually try not to test particles in public sandboxes, as they often attract a lot attention and I end up answering questions instead of building. On the lonely BETA grid the same phenomenon occurred, as I was approached by several gawking spectators wondering what was going on.

A freebie-equipped standard avatar approached (not the one pictured here) and asked a few questions. Suddenly, she asked me, "can u borrow me some money?" And then I began laughing, a lot.

Why? Because any money on the BETA grid stays on the BETA grid and won't transfer back to the main grid where it could be used to buy cheap hair and pole dances.

Beggars in all places, even where money is meaningless.