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Everyone has been checking out SLBrowser, so I decided to give it a whirl. With a quick teleport to SLBrowser inworld headquarters, I managed to get one of the HUDs. To the right, you can see the image I got when I did a search for 'Your2ndPlace' by typing ?Your2ndPlace with the HUD attached.

That is kind of cool. It is an effective way to search; indexing items around the virtual world and making them quickly available. There are problems, of course - where simulator resources are limited by other scripts on the server, speed is lower. In fact, as a HUD the SLBrowser is highly dependent on the immediate environment of the avatar. And texture loading may sometimes be slow as well. People all over will find it useful, but may want to find low lag areas to use it.I'd suggest a web interface, actually - and if I'm right, that is probably already in the works.

But understanding how it works leads to 2 pretty big questions.

Is It Legal?

While I don't know the intrinsics of the scripts, everyone knows that uploading textures costs 10 Linden dollars a pop. That isn't cheap, and using the asset server for texture keys to display a texture is only supposed to work if the person who is attempting to use them has the appropriate permissions.

But these images don't belong to SLBrowser. For example, the Your2ndPlace.com logo that appears in the screenshot in this entry belongs to me - so how did they get it? The path of least resistance would be to create a bot which teleports around and grabs textures. SLBrowser then automagically adds a watermark to it and uploads it - and since it is free advertising for businesses, there is unlikely to be a complaint about using copyrighted materials in this way - but if one does not defend one's copyright, the copyright claim becomes diluted. It isn't an exact science; it is a realm where lawyers and courts can debate back and forth. It is a stumbling block, perhaps, and one which is better left for lawyers to discuss, especially with variations in copyright law around the world. Plus, the images I saw had an SLBrowser watermark across them, which is actually an alteration of my recognizable work. [w:Fair Use]? Maybe. As long as the user of the work doesn't benefit financially, it may very well be Fair Use. I'm just someone with some copyright and trademark disagreements in my past (and probably my future), and am aware of these things. When Benjamin is around, he'll hopefully drop a comment or write an entry.

For my part, I like it. I respect that it was done, and as such I'm publicly giving SLBrowser.com the Rights to use my copyrighted materials for non-commercial use in their HUD for the strict purpose of showing search results. So they are clear with me, as far as I am concerned, and I have protected myself as well. Maybe it is overkill, but copyright is my bread and butter. I take it seriously, it puts horseradish on my roast beef. Heck, I got offered 100 British Pounds for a photo I had on Flickr today, but Linden Lab press beat me to the shot of a Ginko ATM for the Economist. Grr.

Still, that is probably something which should have been addressed much earlier on - though begging for forgiveness is sometimes much easier than asking for permission. I know I've been guilty of begging for forgiveness a few times myself, especially when pushing the envelope. Without pushing the envelope, nothing gets done. My stance is pretty clear - sure, use my work, but if you collect money, well, we may have to rethink this whole thing.

Hats off to Diva Canto and Felix Wakmann for pushing this envelope, and I hope that if Linden Lab runs with the idea you get something out of it - well, more than fictional currency.

Will A New SecondLife Search Make It Obsolete?

Probably. Linden Lab has all this information already on their servers. They could easily query against objects for sale, textures used on the objects and many other factors. Where they are lacking, as most of us are painfully aware, is infrastructure. The problem with the HUD is that it is dependent on available resources on the simulator; a web interface would be less affected - and since the HUD is a listening device, the HUD also generates lag.

If Linden Lab decided to do this, though, they wouldn't need to pull the data using a bot - they already have it!

Overall

Yeah, I'll use it when I need to search for things quickly - but I do have to admit that some of the most interesting things I found were through wacky search results. If this is a new era, and I believe it is, I will miss those wacky search results. Seriously.

I do have questions about how rankings are done, since the rankings themselves will affect what people purchase - which will cause gaming of this system as well. And further, I wonder whether the use of the HUD is being recorded with avatar names; if so there may be privacy issues involved. Creating a database of intentions is all well and good, but how the digital dossiers on avatars are used is always in question.

In all, I'm glad to see SLBrowser - but to be balanced, it brings up some serious questions as well - and to ignore those questions only means that they become delayed.