Your2ndPlace

I'm having a hard time getting my head around the whole DMCA issue within Second Life, namely with regard to clothing design but I guess it covers all areas.

RL clothing companies have a hard time proving copyright infringement, so it's going to be even tougher for digital creations to prove infringement. In the UK you generally have 15 years of protection before anyone can copy your design, in Europe it's less, which causes a quandry and in the USA, well I can't find anywhere that says you can claim infringement on RL designs, although clothing designers want such protections.

The conflict stems from the simple fact that if designs can be copyrighted, then the first person to create a T-shirt could stop anyone else from selling a T-Shirt, which would be silly. So then we dig a bit deeper, it's the same colour, same wrinkles, same shading, same item but different creator.

How do you prove it was your design? How do you prove you've been ripped off? Forget for a moment the moral argument and think about the proof argument. Knowing you'been ripped off is going to hurt, proving it is going to be hard.

Then there's the issue of photo sourcing, if you download a photo, import it into Second Life, do you have a leg to stand on in an IP case in the first place?

There have been some previous cases, the Eros case springs to mind but no legal precedent was set there. I believe Stroker was right in this case, but he was in the position of having the clout to be able to pursue the issue, how many other residents are in that position?

There was also a furniture maker whose name escapes me, RL furniture maker whose products were being sold in Second Life, but I can't recall whether that was a copyright issue over the designs or a trademark issue over people using their name.

Trademark issues are more clear cut. If someone is selling Coca Cola in Second Life, then Coca Cola can obviously claim infringement. The name, the logo, they belong to Coca Cola.

More language problems this week in the wonderful world of Second Life. I have a new Spanish tenant, introduced to me by another Spanish tenant, neither speak English well and my Spanish from school has utterly failed me, so has altavista babelfish.

Where's Peter Stindberg when you need him!

An hour it took me the other day to discover she was suggesting that she thought she had some prims buried under her land. This was after we'd eventually found a translator. Top tip, "traduzca" means translate.

Now the best thing about Second Life in terms of understanding foreign languages is that it's a visual world, so there are things everyone can understand. This is why on Sunday when I was having awful trouble understanding the new resident and the calvary arrived, we all gave up, someone handed out Onigokko and we all understood how to use that animation!

I was also shown her pose balls, which she explained to me in Spanish were "For those moments", although I've forgotten the Spanish phrase now (I seriously need to write these down). I was also told "Good eh?" which was true!

She kept saying "Joder" a lot, which babelfish wouldn't translate, and now I know why! F*ck! OMG she said that a lot! See, Second Life really is educational!

Prins = prims.... I think.

Tierra = land

:(:( = I haven't got a bloody clue what you're saying and you don't understand me.

However, if all else fails, animations, pose balls and gestures work an absolute treat! I've also noticed that my Spanish tenants are extremely enthusiastic about their partying and their community spirit. I noticed this with my French tenants too when I had a couple, there were always people at their homes getting ready to go off and do something together. I don't notice this so much with my English speaking tenants, maybe it's because English speaking tenants don't have so much trouble being understood?

When 'Second Life Improves Real-life Social Skills' came up on my radar, I just had to ask myself what it was about. Since I had not written the article, I had no idea - so I went and read it. It seems that a PhD student has submitted a paper that has been interpreted as saying that Second Life assists real social skills.

She definitely hasn't been hanging out with my crowd. Or Pighed, for that matter. It isn't that I don't believe that Second Life has the capacity for positive social skill development - I just seem to have the soft and putrid underbelly of it in my face all too often.

From the article:

..."There are not many places we go in the world where we are guaranteed social contact, in real life it is harder and less likely that you will go up to a stranger and start a conversation," said Ms Grant...

But in Second Life, unless you create some sort of real world link with the owner(s) of the other avatar(s), everyone is a stranger. Some are stranger than most, and most are stranger than people outside of Second Life - sometimes in nice and interesting ways, but sometimes in disturbing and macabre ways. A balance is struck based on who you wish to be associated with... but when you're writing about Second Life, that balance has to be less utopian and more realistic.

Konner McDonnell was kind enough to email me a few links to look at regarding yesterday's news of the successful teleportation between Second Life and OpenSim. While, at a simple technical level, this is no big deal - logging an avatar onto a secondary grid - the architecture cooperation is noteworthy.

One can log in to multiple websites on the Internet with the same username; it stands to reason that the same should be true of virtual worlds. The difference, of course, is in the assets - something which was apparently not addressed in the teleportation... yet. Basically, IBM and Linden Lab had a handshake across their virtual worlds to verify that the systems could communicate. While the technical details require more digging to understand how this happened, the week old Linden Lab blog entry pretty much explains that this is only for logging in and teleportation. The real test will be the asset server.

And so, one's avatar will be hopping grids in the not too distant future. That sounds fun and interesting on the surface, but it also brings with it new problems that have to be looked into:

• Security: Soon, your password for your avatar will become that much more important as it leaves the Second Life sandbox and goes forth to brave new virtual worlds.
• Names: Naming limitations in one world may not exist in another. While this may not be a big deal for some, it can be a very big deal for others. Like Pighed.

Well a few days ago I did a blog that included a message I had gotten from someone asking me to pay for a prim baby.  Well today I got a new message from a different stranger asking for the same thing.  I decided that I would make my own FREE prim baby so that I'm prepared
next time I'm asked.  Now I have always considered prim baby's pretty
freaky looking, so I decided to stay with tradition and make sure my
own prim little one was freaky as hell.  So here you have it.  Enjoy
your sleepless nights, and changing diapers!

On SLExchange

On OnRez

And my inspiration...

[2008/07/07 8:41]  xxbabyxx Twine: excuse me sarah i really want to by
a baby is it possible if i borrow actually quite alot of money to buy
one otherwise i wont have a baby and my husband on sl will devorce
wilth me and kill me! so please can i borrow quite alot of money?:'(
[2008/07/07 8:42]  xxbabyxx Twine: and they are 1977 l$
[2008/07/07 8:42]  Sarah Nerd: No I'm sorry the only way I hand out
money is via my money tree's and my free pay out greedy greedy tables. 
Best of luck though.
[8:46]  xxbabyxx Twine: ..

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Like Sarah I'm a bit sad with regards to the current land market. My rentals are down, not "OMG there's an iceberg ahead" down, but they're down.

Unlike Sarah I live in an RL country where "Rain" means summer. July 15th is St Swithin's day, legend has it if it rains on St Swithin's day it will rain for 40 days and 40 nights. However, it already seems to have rained for 40 days and 40 nights anyway so another period won't bother anyone!

However today, I want to talk metrics. I actually called Meta Linden "Metric" at yesterday's office hour. I also want to throw things at Zee Linden for his outrageous push of Openspaces.

On the blog Zee gushed about the increased size in land mass. He attributed this to new users buying new cheaper islands and Openspaces, and then went onto highlight the price of Openspaces. Shake your money maker.

What he didn't point out was that Openspaces are intended for light use. I have no problem with Linden Lab promoting their product, but promote them for their intended use or support them as normal type sims. They know damn well the boom in Openspaces isn't for "light use".

There are lies, damned lies and statistics.

Then we come to the 9% increase in profitable inworld business. I'm not even sure where the growth comes from because on the spreadhseet linked by the blog they're lower in June than they were in May. There's also the issue of how relevant is this stat? If an inworld business makes L$5,000 but have to find USD$25 tier, then surely they're not profitable? Am I missing something here?

However I like metrics and stats and I want more. I want to know what keywords bring people to my parcels, for example. I also want traffic to be fixed because it keeps freezing for days on some of my parcels, which really isn't helpful.

I really hate to blog about this but it's reached a point where I feel I have to.  I've been involved in Second Life for 3 years in August, and been involved with land since not all that long after I started.  I love Second Life.  I love the people that have become what I consider real friends, I love what I do here.  I love the fact that a mother of 3 with no college education has just as much of a chance to get ahead as anyone else in SL.  

When I first started mainland it was a lot easier.  I just kept a close eye on the land list, and jumped when I came across a good deal.  Sometimes I decorated it a bit, and then I would sell it a little higher and make a small profit.  CP Costello who was real mentor to me early on always said that all land sells eventually and that used to always be the true.

In late 2006, early 2007 LL stopped full sim auctions for a good while and land slowly skyrocketed to 15-20L a meter.  Then all at once, they flooded the market for the first time in my land dealings pulling the price down to 5l a meter.  I ended up losing about $1500usd, but was more upset because everything I had always known about land had just changed.  A lot of land dealers quit.  It was to much of a blow and/or they just lost all trust they had in LL.  I stayed because, well like I said I love what I do.  I really enjoy dealing with land aside from the crashes.  Well since then there have been a few other smaller crashes.  When they happened I sucked it up, counted my losses, and carried on.