Your2ndPlace.com Publisher Notes on Second Life® Trademarks

I really hate the fact that I have to write this. Legally speaking I am the de facto publisher of Your2ndPlace.com, so I actually am compelled on legal and moral grounds to discuss some of the issues that Ciaran Laval already touched on. It is a serious issue.

The meat of this is that authors should follow the spirit of what has been published in the The Second Life® Brand Center. This isn't a manner of bowing to the great spitball of legalese in there, but simply a matter of respect for their trademarks. I have written my own issues with their branding, but the point of the matter is that they do have legal right to determining how their products are referred to. This holds for all other worlds, companies, products and services, of course.

I will say now that the bloggers presently on Your2ndPlace.com do not worry me much with this. Everyone is sensible, and everyone is pretty mature. If anything, I may be the least exemplary in some instances. :-) Still, I have to put it out there.

When I write that authors should follow the spirit, I mean exactly that. A respect for the products and services is really an implicit thing. Because of the legal chessboard involved, it is especially important to follow the spirit - and the letter of their usage - when criticizing products and services. In this, trademark does work both ways. Parody, as attorneys have told me, is a difficult thing to prove - so be very careful with parody. If it sounds scary - good. It is supposed to sound scary because it has some real world consequences that people need to comprehend.

However, as I have said before on this very site (somewhere...) - Your2ndPlace.com isn't just about one proprietary world. The tag, 'Our Realities, Our Worlds' means more than one world - something implicit from site inception. It is not a play on anyone's tag line; it exists completely separate and is meant to allow for content from all worlds that authors and readers have presences in.

As such, a rather generic Legal Stuff link now exists at the bottom of every page within Your2ndPlace.com. In it, it allows for authors to screw up and for a means of anyone with a complaint to address it. In most cases, a light sprinkling of '®' and '™' will suffice, but other things that are not clearcut will happen on a case by case basis.

Your2ndPlace.com will not be hiring an army of lawyers to protect authors, but it doesn't mean that we'll back down on everything either. It will be case by case, and will follow the spirit of trademark law as interpreted in the United States and in the country of residence of the relevant Author or Authors.

In essence - nothing has really changed; Your2ndPlace.com is just formally acknowledging a few things to cover the bases. We're still who we are. They're still who they are. And hopefully, you're still who you are. If you're not, please update your account accordingly. :-)

I have a background including Internet Governance in the context of Civil Society, so if I don't know an answer I usually know who to ask. And I always ask when possible. Law can be a fickle thing.