Month: August 2009

LL and Content

Posted on by Inara Pey

Way back in the mists of time – during the OpenSpace farago, to be precise, a number of people, myself included, wondered if Linden Lab weren’t considering a shift from merely supplying land to moving complete, ready-to-occupy prefab sims. Anne O’Toole actually gave voice to our concerns, as I mentioned in a past blog.

Now, in the latest from Linden Lab we find that the idea of the pre-fabricated sim direct from Linden Lab is actually about to become a reality. In amongst all the gloss of Torley’s video and the PR department’s carefully-compiled script is this nugget, commencing at 1:13 in the video: “We’ve also completely redesigned the land store experience to make to make it easier to use and understand. We’ve launched themed private regions which are ready to move into after purchase…” (my italics for emphasis).

Exactly what form these “themed private regions” will take is unclear – but I’ll frankly be surprised if they are not Homesteads – even if this does mean a shift in LL’s current policy that Homesteads can only be purchased by those owning at least one full sim. I’d even be prepared to wager that should this be the case, the policy will be revised so that those with a premium account will be eligible to purchase such “themed private regions”.  But – Homestead or full sims, this move (however it might be dressed up) marks a substantial shift for linden Lab, bringing them into direct competition with both private estate owners and content creators.

Perhaps this is also why Linden Lab is now seemingly keen to engage with the major land barons on the question of Mainland development, zoning  – and even perhaps future management(?) – as recently reported upon by Prokofy Neva. Taken together, these two moves are anything but coincidental – the one (Mainland zoning deals) smacks very much of sweetening the other (selling pre-fabricated private regions) and making it easier for the big land barons to accept.

Beyond this is a further spectre. Jack Linden has made no secret of the fact that Linden Lab are looking to create “partnerships” with those using Second Life who meet some pre-ordained criteria (details of which are unclear beyond the fact that anyone engaged in “Mature” (will that be “Adult” now?) activities are precluded from such partnerships). So…following-on from this, will we yet see certain content providers elevated to special status, able to supply houses and builds for these new “themed private regions” while lesser mortals are effectively locked out?

Indeed, are we starting down the road towards Second Life becoming an environment much like the much-hyped Blue Mars appears to designed as – where all content creators must in some way be “licenced” by LL in order to operate fully and effectively in-world?

I know it sounds outrageous to say this now….and I hope I am reading far too much into things. However, then you take this latest (somewhat buried) announcement with the likes of Jack’ comments in seeking partnerships and LL’s recent acquisition and rebranding of SL Exchange, one has to admit the paradigm seems to be shifting – and control could well be the name of the game. Certainly, it could be argued that reining-in content creation through the control of outlets and in a possible “licencing / partnership” arrangement with the Favoured Few in SL may well be the “simplest” long-term solution to the twin issues of IP protection and convincing the corporate world that SL is a “safe” place to “do business”.

Time will tell, as they say.

Kudos to Rezzable

Posted on by Inara Pey

I recently took RightasRain Rimbaud to task over his proposals regarding Builderbot – not so much for the tool itself, I openly agree that is has a potential use – but in the manner in which he initially proposed releasing the tool into the open source environment sans any means of protecting people’s content, and then attempting to justify the original decision in the face of a strong backlash from the content creations community.

Following my post, RightasRain responded to my post, claiming I was somewhat out-of-date in the matter. This was a hard thing to verify, as at the time no official statement had come from Rezzable on the matter, other than vague platitudes from RightasRain that they may well review the situation.

Well, the good news is – and after I challenged RightasRain to put something in writing – it appears the decision has been made and it is the right one. Kudos go to Rezzable for this, and for RightasRain for putting it in writing – albeit 5 days after his comment on my blog.

Ensuring the permissions are maintained is, currently, the only means of coming close to “protecting” people’s own creations in Second Life – and it matters not whether illegal copying is always (to use RightasRain’s words) “gonna be out there”. If you want to put a capable tool out into the environment, then at least take the reasonable step of ensuring that the chances of it being abused are minimal.

Rezzable are now doing that – and while one could argue  that, whether they asked the question or not at the start, they could have averted the level of aggravation / concern shown by simply taking this step from the start – this is really now beside the point, and they should be congratulated for acting both wisely and positively in response to concerns if they are indeed to release the tool.

RightasRain should also be congratulated on clarifying points of concern within his post, as he does in his reply to Saffia Widdershin’s comment following the blog entry.

Do these steps elminate the risk of copy ripping – no. Do they put BuilderBot on a par with Second Inventory (which, to use RightasRain’s words, is used “without a lot of drama” simply because it does offer such protection) – then yes, and this is really what people wanted.

So again, kudos to Rezzable and RightasRain for taking the right steps.

Rezzable’s Risible Rationalisation

Posted on by Inara Pey

IP protection has always been a matter of concern to content creators across Second life. While LL are apparently finally getting around to taking serious steps in the matter – albeit more to reassure potential major players: corporations, NGOs, educational organisations – than to help “everyday” creators, they face a very uphill battle when even the more “respectable” members of the community seem to be bent on undermining matters.

Take Rezzable for example: recently they caused a stir with the creation of BuilderBot, a tool that allows entire sims to be copied and saved on a local computer, and then uploaded elsewhere either within Second Life or on another grid entirely.

Now, let me state straight off, that there is actually wrong per se with Rezzable making this tool – it was designed to fulfil a unique situation Rezzable have. As many know, Rezzable have had a large presence in SL and have worked hard with content creators to develop unique sims – sims and builds that they not only own but to which they also own the IP rights. More recently, Rezzable have been investing in developing their own OpenSim presence. As such, they wanted a means by which they could move all the content they own and to which they have IP rights to from SL to their OpenSim environment. Building a tool that would copy and save an entire sim, rather than invdividual items (as with most copybots and Second Inventory) was the most expedient way of doing this.

So far, so good. Rezzable are acting totally within the SL ToS – which grants, remember, full IP rights to content creators – who therefore have the right to protect their work beyond relying simply on LL’s altruism and asset cluster.

However, where Rezzable fail is in the fact that – acknowledging that their BuilderBot can ignore all rights of ownership and creation on objects (thus potentially allowing it to be used for content theft), they nevertheless announced that they’d be making the code available as open source.

This was nothing short of utterly irresponsible, and despite more recent assurances on the matter, it still seems Rezzable believe themselves justified in potentially releasing the tool as open source going on the comments made by RightAsRain Rimbaud in a  recent interview hosted by the folks over at Designing Worlds.

In the interview, Rimbaud used what can only be described as a the most risible of rationalisations to justify Rezzable’s initial descision (which is merely “on hold” right now, rather than having been scrapped altogether) to make the BuilderBot code freely available to all. Rationalisations that include:

  • Inventory copying software already exists in the form of illegal copybots and inventory recording software such as Second Inventory
  • Because content is already effectively cached on local PCs, then BuilderBot isn’t really doing anything different to how Second Life “works”
  • BuilderBot uses the lib0inv library – which is “already out there”

So, in other words, because dubious software (in the case of copybots) is already out there, it is OK for Rezzable to put software that potentially offers the means to rip entire sims up on the “open market”, and that furthermore, as SL does record information on content on local drives, it is OK to exploit the Second Life software.

Shaky ground indeed. It’s the equivalent to saying that because Copybot A already exists on the grid, it is OK to develop and release Copybot B….

His inclusion of Second Inventory is also misleading – Second Inventory scans an avatar’s inventory within the SL Asset Cluster not anything cached on the local drive, and also respects permissioning.

Rimbaud digs a deeper hole in that he states that a) Rezzable don’t know how big the potential market for such a tool might be and b) that really, there are few individuals or organisations in SL who share Rezzable’s unique situation which lead to the creation of the tool.

Well, if both (a) and (b) are true – why even consider releasing the tool before investigating the matter first – taking the time to contact other organisations and content creators? Instead, Rezzable simply posted a notice of their intent to release the code and only paused when the (inevitable) backlash struck.

In this regard, all of Rimbaud’s justifications for the intial “release first, assess later” approach to BuilderBot ring hollow. As does his comment that “it was never our intent to damage the Second Life community”.

To suggest one never really considered how making such a powerful tool, based, no less on the same technology as existing copybots, available as open source code, readily available for tweaking, modifying and altering into something far more nefarious than it’s original intent is at best frankly breathtaking in its naivety.

The very fact that BuilderBot does make the wholesale copying of sims  – prims, textures, and even scripts – so easy and the admitted fact that it is based on Copybot software (thus potentially making it very familiar to content rippers and thus even easier to tweak and play with)  – should have given a responsible organisation such as Rezzable pause to consider the validity of releasing the tool long before they considered making any announcement on the matter. Doubly so when Rimbaud admits the legal “market” for the tool is probably small to non-existent.

A further rationalisation Rimbaud uses to justify Rezzable’s position is that no-one elsewhere would take an illegally copied sim – IBM, for example, wouldn’t simply access copies of sims from a “creator” (ripper)  without solid proof of ownership / IP rights ownership, ergo, there is little to fear from BuilderBot.

But this is again a risible argument – as Angela Talamasca herself points out in the same interview. The problem with BuilderBot is not that it can “simply” copy an entire sim for distribution elsewhere – it is in the fact that it potentially allows a content ripper to obtain the contents of a sim: the malls, the shops, the contents of said shops, the contents of houses, the house designs, etc., and then comb through them at leisure and select individual items and textures they wish to rip and illegally resell either in SL or elsewhere. Sure beats the risk of wandering around a store and risking interception when using a Copybot….

It’s also ironic that Rimbaud belittles the idea of entire sims being potentially ripped, when Gospel Voom is sitting beside him in the interview. Voom himself is the victim of “sim ripping”, having seen a sim he built (and to which he retained the IP rights to the builds) in Second Life copied, taken down and then reappear on another grid. Quite what was used to copy Voom’s work is unclear….but the fact remains the work would have been considerably easier with a tool like builderBot being readily available in the manner Rezzable originally announced.

While Rimbaud does give some assurances in the interview that Rezzable are considering introducing a means of protecting permissions on objects copied using the tool (a step in the right direction), he still tends to naysay the need by stating in the same breath that such controls could be “bypassed” (the implication being “so why bother?”). Again, this misses the point.

There may well be cases where a tool such as BuilderBot does have an appropriate use; I’d be a fool not to deny that – and the problem of IP right protection is not one for the likes of Rezzable to solve; that’s a matter for Linden Lab to finally and properly work out.

However, where Rezzable do have a responsibility it is in ensuring the tool they have built doesn’t become the means by which content rippers can expand their activities. This in turn means Rezzable need to take steps to ensure their tool is probaly safeguarded – up to and including not making it available as open source, period.

This is where Rimbaud’s other argument of “why punish those people who want to do the right thing because some people will always find a way to do the wrong thing?” falls down.

By his own admission, the potential legal use of such a tool is limited. He himself makes the strong differentiation between ownership “rights” on objects and the actual Intellectual Rights (simply put: you may own a copy of one of my houses, but you don’t own the IP to the design of the house – *I* do) – so to suggest that dumping a tool into open source that is so clearly capable of misuse as is for those who “will always find a way to do the wrong thing” is somehow “helping” those people “who want to do the right thing” is …. well, nonsensical.

Surely, a preferrable way of providing the tool to those “who want to do the right thing”  would be to formalise the software, licence it and sell it as a bracketed, out-of-the-box tool? True, this doesn’t prevent it being hacked, but it does reduce the overall risk of hacking / misuse occurring compared to dumping it into an open source library – and it certainly demonstrates Rezzable are sincere in their desire not (to again quote RightAsRain Rimbaud) “to toss a grenade into the room” as they are leaving….

Greenlife Emerald Viewer (revised)

Posted on by Inara Pey

Those who know me know I’ve been a long-time fan of Boy Lane’s iteration of Henri Beauchamp’s Cool Viewer – still am, in fact. However, I’ve recently been trying out the Greenlife Emerald Viewer – and I have to say, I’m impressed!

This viewer has grown from the Open Source SL code and features contributions from some of SL’s leading lights of the coding world – for me, notably Chalice Yao and Zwagoth Klaar. It includes features common to the most recent “official” releases, features we used to know and love within the Viewer (but were done away with on the whim of LL) and many features developed by third parties that are either plug-ins to the official viewer or which have never been officially supported – such as Marin Kelley’s Restrained Life API (even if this is somewhat flawed).

Emerald is, from the outset, both comfortingly familiar and yet startlingly different from other flavours of the Viewer – and this in no bad thing. Even with the likes of Cool Viewer, things in Viewerland have become somewhat staid. We’ve all settled into a nice little rut of Things We Like within the Viewer that for the most part, we tend to load-up, sit down and make a few surface tweaks to the UI (set the skin, fiddle with the buttons, turn on various options / objects) and do very little else. We even tend to choose our Viewer based on the functionality we like to see there ready and waiting for us, rather than having to fiddle-fart: again, I like Cool Viewer not only for the “built-in” nature of RLV, but because it harks back to the good old days of the Friends list and boots the cumbersome Communicate into touch.

Emerald, on the other hand goes a lot further. It brings to bear a raft of options and tools that have clearly been designed to improve our SL experience (take note, LL), and which just beg to be used. Here’s a short summary:

  • Double-click tp: simply cam anywhere you like in a sim (or even in a neighbouring sim, if visible), double-click, and ping there you are! (cannot override tp hubs, etc., however – this is an SL defined limitation)
  • Disable the teleport screen – Yay! no more black screen and progress bar when Tping (note your avatar may appear to freeze during the tp process as all the sim-to-sim handshaking still needs to take place)
  • Built-in radar system: no more need for radars and scanners that impinge on server-side resources to operate; click on the button to bring up a list of avatars up to 4096 m away, together with a host of resource buttons (IM button, Profile button, tp-to-avatar button, etc.)
  • Built-in lag prevention methods – such as blocking spammed calling cards, etc.
  • An auto-response system for IMs: automatically respond to those IMing you, and select categories of people to who you wish to auto-respond (e.g. non-friends, people previously muted, etc.)
  • Ability to turn off the typing sound from others (Yay!): OK, so you have turned off the typing anim on YOUR avatar – but you still have to put up with the irritating clickety-clickety-click from those who haven’t – well, not any more!
  • Command line capability: type a defined command into Chat and have it happen, gesture-like) – e.g. teleport to ground level or teleport to a given height or position sim the sim

The list really is quite impressive, and the options are so easy to access and set-up, thanks largely to the the care and effort put into the EMERALD tab in PREFERENCES.

The Emerald Tab in Preferences
The Emerald Tab in Preferences

EMERALD neatly lays out the majority of the viewer’s additional functions in a series of additional tabbed pages:

Teleport / Login: set-up your Tp and login options from here, including disabling various screens

Voice: set additional Voice options

Shields: select your preferred spam prevention, etc.

IM: set-up your additional IM preferences and auto-responses

Misc: set-up additional options (such as enabling Restrained Life functionality, disabling your typing animation muting the typing sound from others, etc.)

Cmdline: configure the chat-line commands you wish to use

Avatar: accesses some vaery useful tools for your avatar – tweak your selection beam particle effect from her or – with care – manipulate your Avatar’s bounding box (so you can raise / lower your position, for example, without altering your shape)

Got to love this!
Got to love this!

Build: a host of useful pre-sets for those of us who love to build.

Not only are these options available through PREFERENCES -> EMERALD, the more useful of them can be accessed via the EMERALD option on the menu bar of the Viewer – surely again, one of the most useful updates to any viewer. Cool Viewer could certainly benefit from the inclusion of a similar menu option rather than constantly diving into PREFERENCES.

For me, the killer aspects of Emerald can be summarised as:

  • Speed – I’ve found it comparable to Cool Viewer for Windows (providing the “go faster” pack is downloaded and installed!)
  • Stability – It has yet to crash on me, or even wobble
  • Radar – true, it is a little chunky and eats into screen space, but the tools it provides are very handy; I just worry that due to its size, most will leave it off and still opt for lag-inducing in-world scanners and the like
  • The build tools – this for me is a Godsend, and totally overdue in the “official” viewer. Kudos to the Emerald team for its inclusion. Just having the ability to quickly and easily specify default textures for created prims is a boon – I can now swap and play with my “placeholder” and “orientation” textures without having to create custom prims sitting in my inventory
  • Double-click tp; speaking as an Estate Manager, this is marvellous: I can zap around checking things out and fixing things without all that tedious mucking about with flying.
  • Protection tools: in line with the above, the ability to act on problem avatars quickly and easily without the need for additional tools or needing to be physically present, is simply great.

Emerald also have perhaps the smoothest installer going – not only does it slip into its own folder, providing you already have a Second Life Viewer installation, it’ll also go grab the non-distributable files other third party viewers need you to manually copy across. I was particualrly impressed with this feature because a) I only have Cool Viewer and Imprudence installed on my PC (nothing under “C:\program files\SecondLife”) – yet Emerald grabbed the required files from one of these other Viewers OK; b) It also grabbed some of my other preferences, such as my Busy response, and my preferred location to store chat / IM logs (something other viewers generally require you set-up manually yourself after installation).

If there are any negatives to be voiced about the viewer, they really come down to three things – at least for me:

  1. The radar window issue mentioned above – again the button options that are included are certainly nice, but how many of them are actually going to be regularly used by the majority of users? Could the window just be made a little less intrusive to encourage its use?
  2. Documentation – there isn’t really, as yet, any real documentation to steer the novice through the various options and features included in the Viewer other than the brief Features and New Preferences options of the website. More needs to be done in this area – and I’m half contemplating volunteering to help!
  3. A small flaw in the RLV implmentation. RLV is designed to enhance the BDSM experience by making restraints harder to remove (they will in theory *not* detach in an RLV-enabled Viewer). This is a psychological boon to BDSMers as it increases the mental thrill of bondage. Emerald is supposedly an RLV-compliant / capable Viewer – BUT it fails to fully meet the RLV criteria. By dint of a menu option readily accessible through the ADVANCED menu – any locked restraint can be accidentally or deliberately knocked off. What is more, due to the IM controls in Emerald – it is entirely possible that the keyholder for such a locked item will not be informed the items has been either removed or replaced. This is something of a critical gameplay flaw, and one that does need addressing for Emerald to truly carry the “RLV badge”.

About the only thing that induced a “meh” response was the selection of skins included with the Viewer. While they are impressive when looked at in PREFERENCES, the majority are pretty eye-boggling from a graphics design perspective. Granted, there is only so much you can ever tweak and change in the UI, and so all skins are going to be limited in application and appeal – but it has to be said, the majority of those included in Emerald make even the boring default blue look interesting. I’ll therefore be sticking with the tried and trusted (and easiest on the eyes) Silver.

There are a couple of things I do miss from Cool Viewer, however – and would love to see incorporated into Emerald. These are:

  • Allowing MU* pose styles, so that “:” can be used in place of “/me” to denote emotes (e.g. “:smiles” instead of “/me smiles”)
  • Auto-close of Out-of-character brackets (i.e. automatically adding “))” to the end of all comments starting with “((” )

Both of these features within Cool Viewer are a major boon to role-players across the grid.

That said, none of the above are in any way showstoppers preventing the widespread use of Emerald. Rather, they are niggles – even if the RLV issue is one that particularly disappoints. And “niggles” brings me on to the last “negative” with this Viewer. Which is this: just why has Emerald been the victim of so much unfounded and downright inaccurate vitriol in SL?

People have been blabbing about it being “lag inducing” (it isn’t – it is perhaps the Viewer that has gone the furthest to try and reduce lag), through to the idea that the developers are hacks after your credit card details (utter nonsense). Yet the fact is, Emerald presents no greater risk to users than any other 3rd party viewer, whether they fully conform to the Open Source gpl standards (such as Hippo, CV, etc.), or have been tweaked by a creator who refuses to release the code back into the OS environment (such as KLee’s Viewer). Quite why Emerald has been subjected to more scare-mongering than its “rivals” is beyond me.

Maliciousness, perhaps, on the part of those simply opposed to Open Source? Who knows.

Anyway, the only true way of discovering how good (or bad) a Viewer is, is to try it for yourself. Right now, I stand convinced. I’ll even live with COMMUNICATE being back on my Viewer buttons and FRIENDS disappearing once more; Emerald will, alongside of Cool Viewer, now be my Viewer of choice.

But don’t just take my word for it – go take a look for yourself.

 

What to do if you get banned

Posted on by Inara Pey

Over the last two and a bit months, I’ve been asked on no less than three occasions to assist people who have been banned from Second Life. I’m not entirely sure why I’ve been asked – touch wood I’ve never faced banning myself – and have at best only heard third-hand of people’s experiences when banned; but I’ll take the fact that I have been asked as a) a form of compliment, and b) a learning situation – because the only way I’ve been able to provide any kind of help is to read the rules myself.

Linden Lab themselves provide a set of guidelines on the subject, but that said, and for what it is worth, here’s a quick guide – not a foolproof guide, mark, and one that doesn’t carry any guarantee – of things to do should you get banned. Following the notes below may not get you unbanned, but they may help the situation.

Try to avoid getting banned in the first place

Well, “duh!” I hear you say – but the fact of the matter is there are rules surrounding the use of Second Life, and whether we agree with them or not, the best way to avoid getting a ban in the first place is to avoid any infringement of said rules.

Now, granted, the Terms of Service aren’t a great help here. The statement Linden Lab has the right at any time for any reason or no reason to suspend or terminate your Account… is, not to put too fine a point on it, both bland and yet all-encompassing: it opens all of us to the risk of banning or suspension. However, there are some specifics that can be used to help avoid a ban (or a suspension):

  • Be careful with your choice of avatar name. Names which are misleading, offensive or infringing can be subject to banning, even if they survive the hurdle of registration. Names selected, or which appear (note the key word here) to be have been selected to causing deception or confusion may well be subject to a ban; similarly, names which infringe upon, or give the appearance of infringing upon, a copyright or trademark may also be subject to a ban. Likewise any name Linden Lab deems to be offensive or vulgar will be banned. So while you may well be creating that alt account in a fit of pique, just take care over the name! And remember that while it may seem a fun idea to give your avatar a sex-oriented or suggestive name (“GagMeTight Oh”, “SexyTwat Twitter”, or the like), and indeed a harmless prank, there is no guarantee that others will view your choice in the same harmless manner…
  • If you are engaged on SL commerce, be aware of Linden Lab’s rules on money transfers and financial transactions, and particularly the in-world caps on avatar-avatar transfers. While these then to invoke a suspension during a period of investigation rather than an outright ban, bans can occur if the rules are repeatedly ignored.
  • Don’t get abusive or rude in the forums or SL-related activities. Again, a ban in one can lead to a suspension / outright ban elsewhere.
  • Don’t engage in activities such as griefing – or even responding to griefing. Just because Joe Schmoe is bombarding your sim with self-replicating prims doesn’t give you the right to go after him come hell or high water, orbit him, attack him, hit his own land / sim in retaliation or anything else. All it may well do is place you on the wrong end of an AR.
  • Don’t put yourself in situations where your avatar or actions could be misinterpreted – such as wandering around a sexplay sim looking like an adolescent and engaging in sexual banter with others (again, note the emphasis and remember that LL have themselves made this one a particular minefield by stating on the one hand that it is “OK” for child-like avatars to roam “Adult” sims (Blondin Linden) but on the other hand, it is a violation for such avatars to engage in “sexual activities”).

Don’t panic!

Banning does not equate to account deletion. You inventory will be held for a couple of months following the ban, so you have time enough to launch an appeal and hopefully get the situation remedied.

Read the e-mail notifying you of your ban / suspension

Contrary to common myth, Linden Lab do send out a notification as to why an account is banned / suspended. If you’ve not received one, it’s probably more to do with the spam filtering on your e-mail system than it is with Linden Lab failing to notify you. So…if you find your account blocked, take the time to go investigate. Check your recent e-mails, look at your incoming junk, etc., (providing such is not automatically deleted) – you will find something from LL on the matter.

Gather some basic information

It seems ironic, but before you can move towards getting your account unblocked, you first need to prove who you are. As a start you’ll need to have the basic information on the account itself: the avatar first name and last name, the e-mail address connected to the account, the answer to your secret question (set when you created the account, and the biggest downfall for all of us, as we so easily forget), any payment information registered against the account, etc. You may even be required to provide other information as well – details of Friends on your list, your home sim, etc.

If you cannot provide basic criteria proving the account is yours – then, sadly, you’re sunk.

Contact Linden Lab

You have three options for this: raise a support ticket, fax them or write to them (see the Kb link above). Raising a support ticket requires you have an Alt account or can log-in as guest. I actually have little faith in the support ticket system when using it as a guest – all too often the response comes back that you’ve made a request that isn’t “appropriate” to the (pre-defined) subject heading, and has therefore been closed by the system – therefore, I’d personally opt for faxing / writing. Neither have the immediacy of a ticket, true, but both are harder to ignore.

If you opt for a support ticket anyway, and are logged as Guest (i.e. non-premium account), then:

  • Ticket type = “Special Question – basic account or Guest Login” -> “Account Issues” -> “Basic Account Issue” and select “The system says my account is Disabled or Suspended”
  • In the Disabled Issues field enter the highlights of the ban / suspension e-mail you received from LL. If you DON’T have the e-mail to hand, select I do not know why my account has been disabled or suspended

If you fax / write, make sure the fax / letter kick-off with the subject matter (“Appeal against account banning”) and give the basic information on the account in question as defined in (3.) and any information relating to the ban contained in any e-mail from LL.

Give your side of the story

Whether ticketing, faxing or writing set out clearly, concisely and politely the reasons why you thing the ban should be reversed.

  • If you think it may be a case of mistaken identity – say so; but try to provide evidence as to how it might have been
  • Don’t try to argue Linden Lab on the interpretation of the ToS – it is their ToS and they can interpret it as they please. You won’t get anywhere in polemic argument and you certainly won’t get unbanned. similarly don’t produce a diatribe on the “stupidity” of Linden Lab in all matters SL related, it’ll fall on deaf ears, and possibly rightly so
  • Don’t fudge the issue – if you can see the ban has arisen due to a genuine incident, own up. You may not have been in full possession of the ToS, you may been subjected to other pressures and acted out of character . Ignorance is never a good defence BUT – if LL detect that you are genuinely repentant on the matter, they may well be more willing to reconsider the ban
  • Don’t enter into long justifications for a wrongful action you know you committed (“well of course I orbited him and then littered his land with a gazilllion self-replicating prims that brought down the entire sim. But if you really knew him you know what a lowbrow, dirty stinking rotten son-of-a XXXX he is and how this has been coming for a long time and the little so-and-so has deserved it for so long now, in fact YYYY said the other day that if someone didn’t do something….”) – again, it won’t wash
  • Don’t try badgering LL for names and addresses of your accusers – they (rightly) won’t be forthcoming
  • Do be polite, get to the heart of the matter, put forward any evidence you have on the matter clearly and concisely and without resorting to threats, name-calling or intemperance

Remember: appeals are heard only once. If you blow it there is no supreme court or law lords you can further appeal to. Make what you have to say count, and be professional.

Give Linden Lab a fair chance to evaluate and respond to your appeal

Appeals do take time to be evaluated. Just because you’ve heard nothing back after 24, 48 or 72 hours doesn’t mean your situation isn’t being seen to, considered, or simply in the queue.

Don’t start e-mailing all and sundry in LL about your situation – it’ll be regarded as spamming the company and could extend a suspension (or even elevate it to a ban) or weigh against your appeal when it is reviewed.

If, on the other hand, you’ve not heard anything back from Linden Lab after two weeks or so, then you might want to contact them again, preferably via ticket, again including as much information as possible on the ban / suspension and the salient details of your appeal (when the ticket was raise / fax or letter sent, any reference numbers / ticket numbers, etc.).

And if they don’t unban you?

All you can do in this situation is evaluate for yourself what you want to do. You may want to start over, you may not want to; there may be other opportunities for you elsewhere. No-one else can really advise you or understand your circumstances better than you. That may sound hard, but it’s the truth.

Content Management Roadmap

Posted on by Inara Pey

Cyn Linden seems to have rolled on from the ill-considered, ill-planned and ill-executed Adult Content changes to look at the question of content creation and rights protection.

Leaving aside Cyn’s somewhat patronising comment that we “deserve” to know LL’s thoughts on the matter (we don’t – with LL portraying SL as a platform of commerce and drawing-in users on this basis, we are entitled to know of any changes that could impact our ability to trade, and are entitled to have input to said changes in order to ensure they are fair to all) – that LL are looking at the matter is long overdue, but nonetheless potentially welcome.

Copybots and the like have been the scourge of LL commerce, to say nothing of the likes of texture rippers like GL Intercept. However, when it comes to policing content and protection of content creator’s intellectual property, one has to admit it really is an uphill battle – and while LL have been inexcusably slow in meeting the challenge, I for one don’t envy them the task of getting things sorted. It is just a shame that given the aforementioned “entrepreneurial” promotion of the platform by LL tool, IP and content protection were never properly considered from the start rather than being regarded as a bolt-on nice-to-have, as in many ways over the years it has been.

But that said, at least now LL are looking at matters and apparently doing so from all sides. As Cyn acknowledges, while there is a need to protect creator’s content fully and fairly, so to is there a need to recognised that copy tools actually do have legitimate uses – such as backing up ones own creations. But again, a meaningless line is already being drawn in the sand; leaving aside other issues around copy tools, Cyn indicates LL are concerned about content being created in SL and going “outside the grid”  – i.e. to opensim platforms or to something like OLG – although they are perfectly sanguine about content being copied to their own behind the firewall “solution” – something which in itself raises similar content protection concerns as copying content elsewhere.

Again, while safeguards should exist to stop the wholesale illegal copying of content for use elsewhere, LL should also be prepared to recognise the rights of the content creator to move and use content they have legally created and have rights to wherever they wish – whether it be in the open SL grid, on the behind the firewall “solution” – or indeed to another grid entirely.

As Cyn states, the matter is in the early throes of discussion and much will, frankly, depend upon LL beefing-up aspects of their own tools (such as ensuring copy tools cannot reassign names to the content creator field, etc., that metadata on ownership can be included in objects easily, and that such metadata actually allows for one object to contain prims / sub-objects from several creators without screwing everything up, etc.), as well as LL working with copy tool manufacturers to develop workable standards that can help prevent the illegal activist. But tools alone won’t solve the issue. Much needs to be discussed and anyone who is involved in content creation should get over to the “forum” and join the debates and make your concerns and idea heard.

This is a major subject, and LL should neither rush into “solutions” nor be allowed to push the content creation community down any biased path.

This is particularly true of the last section in Cyn’s post, and the one that initially causes me greatest concern – if only because it is perhaps the “easiest” change to implement on the part of LL – and that is the concept of a “Content Seller Program”. This is, as Cyn explains:

…a program that sellers may participate in if they meet certain eligibility standards intended to show a level of trustworthiness and quality of content.

Which sounds innocuous on the surface, but alarm bells quickly start ringing as one reads on:

For example, we currently offer the Gold Solution Provider Program for Solution Providers with a demonstrated track record of successful Second Life projects and client satisfaction.

Uh-oh.

And it gets worse as Cyn reveals:

We are starting the process of planning a content seller program, and we would like your input on possible program criteria. At a minimum, participation in the program will require that the selling Resident:

  • have identity and payment information on file with Linden Lab;
  • be in good standing and not have been suspended for any violation of the Second Life Terms of Service;
  • meet a minimum threshold for content transactions; and
  • affirm that all necessary intellectual property rights and licenses have been obtained for all content that the Resident has for sale.

Indeed, reading this entire section of her post, one can only assume that LL are at best looking to set-up another of Prok Neva’s infamous “Feted Inner Circles” (FICs)  – this one of content creators who enjoy a favoured nations status within SL based on somewhat subjective criteria, or at worse, looking to leverage fees out of a somewhat skewed programme of recognition.  Why?

Well, at its heart, the “gold solution provider program for solution provider” (a mouthful in itself) is – when one strips away the glitz and glamour – a fee-based enrollment system. Those selected (by Linden Lab) for inclusion in the program pay an annual “membership” fee ($500)  – and even if an organisation is turned down by LL, they sell have to stump up $125 non-refundable just to be considered. If LL are speculating along these lines (in addition to any other criteria listed by Cyn, of which more anon), then SL is immediately in danger of having its whole commercial attractiveness unfairly twisted in favour of those who generate sufficient revenues to afford the cost of enrollment in such a “program”.

It may not be $500 a year. It may only be $75 a year, but it makes no difference. $75 a year could represent months of turnover for smaller content creators and wipe out any hope they have at making a profit, or even recouping costs – and just because they are small, doesn’t mean they are either any less dedicated to producing quality goods or any less trustworthy as those who can stump-up the fee for the Linden Lab thumbs-up. And making the program “voluntary” doesn’t excuse this, given that those joining the program will get favoured nations status with LL, which will likely include open promotion from Linden Lab  (tailored MOTD on the login, for example?), further driving up their ability to make sales and wipe out the smaller competition.

Then there are the criteria specified by Cyn – and it is interesting to note the tone of her post suggests these criteria have already been decided on and are thus tablets of stone):

  • have identity and payment information on file with Linden Lab – of them all, this is the only criteria that comes close to making sense, although some would argue that there are some content creators who don’t have payment info on file. However, given there is no cost involved in registering a payment method, and that doing so is little different from, say registering payment info with PayPal (with whom many NPIOF residents are registered with), i don’t see any reason why people can’t simply register to avoid this issue
  • be in good standing and not have been suspended for any violation of the Second Life Terms of Service – while this sounds reasonable on the surface, it is actually a pretty dangerous criteria. LL are already linking forum suspensions with account suspensions – so speak out-of-turn in the forums, and you are locked out of SL for 3 or more days for your felony. The suspension (and AR) mechanism is already biased against the accused – all too often LL’s reaction is to ban first and then consider asking why after; and even when you lodge an appeal, it is nowadays seemingly heard by the individual imposing the ban – again, as Prok Neva and others have found out – who is hardly likely to be sympathetic to your appeal. Thus, linking the content seller program to suspensions, when the latter are at times so arbitrary, is hardly balanced. People are people – and a wrong word said in the forums is hardly indicative of a lack of morals or trustworthiness in in-world business. This criteria at best, therefore, needs clear-cut and unambiguous qualification.
  • meet a minimum threshold for content transactions – and here we hit the first of the big two of the questionable criteria. Just what is this threshold? Turnover? Hardly fair. Just because merchant X achieves monthly sales of $$$ while merchant Y only makes $ does not mean Y’s products are of a lesser standard to X’s, or that Y is any less trustworthy. Many content creators (I openly count myself among them) are not making content to generate massive turnover. We’re not into SL to make money or run a business. We make content for two reasons: a) it forms a creative outlet for us and b) it helps offset the cost of being in SL in the first place. And what about those who make perfectly good content – clothes, scripts, etc., and give the same away for free, massively helping newbies to SL? Use turnover as a criteria and a large portion of the merchants in SL are excluded from the run. Turnover works the other way as well: X may charge $$$ as an average price for wares; whereas Y only charges $ – so Y’s sales must be an order of magnitude over X’s to achieve the same level of turnover. And these arguments apply to a threshold based on volume: just because X outsells Y by a ratio of 3 or 4 to 1 does not mean X’s products are any better than Y’s, or that X is the more trustworthy.
  • affirm that all necessary intellectual property rights and licenses have been obtained for all content that the Resident has for sale – again sounds fine on the surface, but is a minefield of risk underneath. Just look at the number of full permission textures available in Second Life as a single example. Are all of these genuinely royalty-free items? Are those that make them available their genuine creators? Are the creators still active within Second Life available to contact and confirm the status? What quantifies a licence? Are, say, builders (the subject closest to my heart for content creation) going to be expected to include an explicit statement that every texture they have used in their build is duly “licensed”. Who is to say it isn’t? How will allegedly violations be policed?

However one looks at such a programme, it is hard to see how it fits with the rest of Cyn’s proposals. Content protection and IP right protection are issues that need addressing. So to does protection against illegal copying and the illegal use of valid copying tools. However, the tack-on of a “content seller program” to the rest of Cyn’s post seems somewhat uneven: it’s not a vital requirement that will in any way make the other issues she raises any more manageable. Rather it opens the door to the potential for the entire SL marketplace to be openly gamed and manipulated far more than it is right now. It’s really hard to see how anything other than merchants with favoured nations status among themselves can emerge from such a move.

Let’s protect again IP infringements and content rip-off. Let’s hit those who persist in such activities as hard as we can – but please, in doing so, let’s not tilt the commerce playing field to the point where the smaller players slide off the edge into oblivion through no fault of their own. And let’s certainly not start creating yet another two tier system within SL.