Category: News

Azure: assurances and questions

Posted on by Inara Pey

Well, it’s official. As of today, MSL (operated by Anshe Chung) now effectively owns Azure Islands.

What does this mean? Well, overall, it means that a single land owning company now controls some 7.5% of private estates. May not sound a lot, but it is a bit of a clouting stick.

For Azure Island residents, it hopefully means that things will continue more-or-less “as is” under the new management, and both the outgoing Azure management and the incoming MSL team have stressed this, while indicating that perhaps some 5% of Azure residents may have to face relocation as MSL move to break up some of the Azure estates to provide “greater privacy and less lag” (to quote the MSL note to Azure residents).

The Azure team themselves are stating the reason for the transfer is simply that they’re in need of a change after some 5 years in the business – and as I previously noted, Adam Zaius does have his OS Grid interests that must be taking up a lot of time.

Change is a natural part of business. While some Azure residents may be adversely affected by the hand-over, it has to be said that while unfortunate, their disaffection doesn’t spell the end of SL or anything else; one can sympathise, but one isn’t going to chastise the Azure management or anyone else for the woo that some may encounter.

To me, the burning questions remain related to the wider implications of this move. While on the one hand, one cannot blame those behind Azure for wanting to move on to new challenges, there is still something deep down about the timing of this  change that concerns me – although what it is, I can’t rightly say.

Then there is the potential impact on smaller private estate owners. MSL / Dreamland is now a very powerful voice in LL’s ear, and one wonders at possible future implications in this. Again, none may be forthcoming, but given Jack’s penchant for behind-closed-doors deals, one has to wonder.

The entire – topography – of land sales and rentals is changing; the Azure move is in many respects “simply” another part of this. Doubtless some will cheer what appears to be another step in Adam Zaius’ departure from SL, while others will point to the sky and claim chunks of it are falling. I don’t think either is the case – but by the same token, I’m glad I’m no longer in the land business myself.

An Azure Dreamland?

Posted on by Inara Pey

It seems one of the major land businesses in Second Life is about to change hands. A comment posted on the SLU forums quotes the following for a notecard apparently circulated to some Azure residents:

We’ve got some fairly big news for the residents of the Azure Islands, as of March 16th, the Azure Islands will be transferring from us, over to a new management team run by Metaverse Services Limited.

If accurate, this is newsworthy on a number of counts. For a start, “Metaverse Services Limited” appears to be the holding company for Anshe Chung (Ailin Graef) of Dreamland fame, Time magazine celebrity and flying penises notoriety. If Azure is going under Anshe’s banner, then it means that from tomorrow, MSL control a huge swathe of estates and land across Second Life and are potentially in even more of a position of power where matters of policy and behind-closed-doors discussions with LL on land benefits, etc., are concerned.

Secondly, it begs the question as to what is happening to the land business overall in Second Life. Adam Zaius (Adam Frisby), primary owner of Azure island has been staunchly involved in SL almost from the beginning – something that has earned him a reputation as being a “pillar” of the so-called Feted Inner Core (FIC) and the devil incarnate by some, whilst simultaneously viewed upon as a fair and committed land owner, businessman and pioneer to others (notably his residents). Whichever side of the coin one happens to view when looking at Mr. Zaius – it cannot be denied he has built a considerable business enterprise within SL – one that goes beyond Azure itself; and has given a tremendous amount to the platform as well.

That he is now apparently selling-off / transferring / pretty much bailing on the SL land business – and taking into account his growing interest in / commitment to the OpenSim environment, which may be playing a part in this decision – tends to suggest that the entire land business, which has for so long underpinned SL as a going concern, is in far worse state than even the most negative of speculations around it have suggested. Even with his preoccupation with OSGrid development, it is hard to see Mr. Zaius abandoning what must be a healthy revenue stream simply for the hell of it. If he really is a “pillar of the FIC”, does he know something other’s are not privy to? Again, Zaius is not alone in running Azure…What of his partner in the venture?

Of course, this all could be grist for the rumour-mill – but I’ll be quite curious as to what emerges tomorrow.

Redefining the message

Posted on by Inara Pey

Back at the turn of the year, Mark Kingdon posted a piece on his vision for the future – near and far. The piece received much discussion and critical feedback. As a result, Kingdon promised to hold a series of in world meetings with all who responded to his post through the discussion thread.

The first of those meetings has just been held – and to be honest, it is a real eye-opener.

Sadly, Linden Lab themselves, in what can only be described as a completely myopic view of the meeting – failed to even consider recording the event and making it available for wider consumption than the invited audience. This is because may of the issues raised have themselves been the subject of heated debate, angry forum postings and outright rumours over the last several months. This being the case – any opportunity to deal with them head-on should have been aggressively grabbed by Kingdon’s team, and every effort made to ensure what was said is communicated more widely to the community as a whole.

Fortunately, Angela Talamasca was not so short-sighted, and she recorded the event for playback – and it makes fascinating listening. Admittedly, the audio commentary isn’t always brilliant – but it is worth sticking with.

Much of what Kingdon says puts a lot of what has been going on recently into a more balanced perspective. Not only does it help allay some fears, it also clarifies a lot of thinking going on at Board / executive level within Linden Lab and gives one some encouragement that those in charge at the lab are not so divorced from the realities of Second Life as recent blog posts and activities may imply. Indeed, Kingdon goes so far to acknowledge that the choice of words and the phrasing of messages have both been poor. While this is not something that is going to go away overnight (indeed, his choice of words during the meeting was in places poorly considered, and gave rise to a lot of gnashing of teeth within the forum thread on the meeting). But, given the fact that this is not the first time LL have admitted their failure to communicate what they actually mean – that they are aware of the problem may hopefully see them take steps to improve the situation.

Of course, there will be those who continue to nay-say this (and future) meetings as little more than an exercise in PR. I’m certainly not swallowing all the reassurances lock, stock and barrel – at the end of the day, actions speak louder than words. However, It is worth giving Kingdon a listening to free of any preconceptions; the results might be surprising.

It’ll be interesting to see how SL develops against the backdrop of these discussions, and I very much hope that the remaining meetings in this series are also recorded and published for posterity.

If nothing else, the last five minutes lays to rest the completely unfounded rumour (seemingly started by one resident – who has previously demonstrated a sizeable personal bias against Linden Lab) that Viewer 2.0 will not include the in world building tools: Kingdon is most emphatic in stating the tools will be in the viewer, and that user generated content is very key to Second Life.

Addendum

Sice posting this, it has emerged that Blue Linden tried to record the session, but had an eleventh hour software issue that prevented this from happening. In the interests of fairness, I’m only too happy to correct this point.

Score One….

Posted on by Inara Pey

OK…I bash LL quiet a lot. So, in a pleasant change, I’m going to blow them (or some of them – notably Soft Linden) kisses.

Anyone reading this blog knows that content theft is a genuine issue within SL and that, as a content creator myself, I’d like to see LL become more proactive in dealing with it.

Well, now they have, as reported by Tateru Nino over at Massively – no fewer than 50 rippers have been summarily banned from SL for blatantly stealing assets from the Linden servers.

The culprits in question had been using a Viewer called Neillife (unfortunately built on the Emerald codebase) that utilises an purpose-built exploit that fooled the Linden asset servers into providing them with items to which they had no rights to own.

This is very much a step beyond “simple” copybotting or Viewer copying as evidenced with the likes of Cyrolife. It borders on outright computer crime that can far more easily be acted upon with legal measures than protracted DMCA actions, as the violations in question were directly against Linden Lab.

And it was becasue the Viewer behaved this way that Soft and co were able to get the hackers – by identifying the object the hackers were going for, they simply substituted the original item with one that effective “phoned home” with the user’s account information each time it was illegally copied….making it a cinch for LL to round up the culprits and ban them – including the Viewer’s creator….

It’s not clear how this kind of action by LL can be broadened, but the fact that they have quietly taken such a step is very welcome; and while it would be very easy to say “well, they only took this action as a result of the class action against them”, I’d beg to differ and simply say that kudos falls where kudos is due – and that LL are to be unreservedly congratulated in the action they have taken.

My one real worry is that this success will leads to greater cries from the ill-informed (or those carrying certain grudges) for other “safe” Viewers such as Emerald, Meekat and Cool Viewer to be  “banned” as third party viewers are “evil”…..

LL Facing Class Action

Posted on by Inara Pey

SexGen is a well-known name in SL. Go just about anywhere in Zindra, and you’ll see adverts for SexGen beds….so much so, that you’d think that “SexGen” was a generic term.

It’s not. It’s a trademark. It belongs to Eros LLC, operated by Stroker Serpentine – as does the underpinning code and IP relating to objects powered by the SexGen system.

That so many apparent knock-offs of SexGen items thrive in SL points to the endemic nature of content theft in-world – theft which LL are only now resuming efforts to try and make harder, despite having over six years  – plus their pre-launch period – in which to more properly address the matter and try to stay abreast of evolving techniques and capabilities.

Thus, it is unsurprising that Eros has – together with clothing making Nomine – filed a class action against LL for allowing such copyright infringement to run unchecked in SL for so long.

The suit itself makes interesting reading – and has already created a storm of debate on LL’s own blogrum and elsewhere. Certainly, the suit is taking a different tack from other attempts at suing LL. In all it cites twelve individual causes for action against Linden Research, the majority of which relate to deliberate / negligent trademark / copyright violations, but which also extend to breaches of Californian business codes and intentional / negligent interference in economic relations.

The crux of the argument is that Linden Research is benefitting from the inappropriate use of trademarks and copyrighted property in that the infringing  / illegal goods must be sold via in-world land – from which LL benefits in terms of tier payments OR via XStreet – from which LL benefits in terms of the commission they receive on each sale. The argument even extends to ripped textures (particularly relevant in the Nomine side of the action) – wherein LL benefits to the tune of L$10 per ripped texture uploaded. Finally, there is the claim that LL also benefit in that they receive a 3.5% commission on every transaction of illegally-raised L$ transferred out of SL as hard currency.

This is indeed an interesting track to take – and one in which it is hard to see LL being unable to escape any claim they are failing to meet their responsibilities, either deliberately or simply through their own negligence – again, note that the action purposefully differentiates between the two and brings separate causes for each in terms of trademark and copyright infringements against Linden Research. Thus, it is hard to see that “ineptitude” on LL’s part can in any way be proffered as an excuse.

Certainly, the approach calls into question whether Linden Lab will be able to defend itself using the DMCA in much the same way as Veoh has apparently successfully done. But that is not to say the case is by any means open and shut. Take the DMCA and couple it with LL’s own recent announcements on the subject of content protection, their ToS, the fraud protection within Lindex – and one can see that LL may be able to mount a persuasive – to a judge, if not to content creators – defence of their position.

What cannot be dismissed is that should this come to an open trial, it puts Linden Research between a rock and a hard place. Should the case come to court and they lose – then they undermine their self-promoted position as the “safe” virtual platform for “serious” business – which has been touted so very recently by Amanda Linden. If they win, then they risk losing the confidence of every earnest content creator, big or small, already within Second Life.

Thus, either winning or losing the case could irrevocably tarnish Second Life’s reputation as a “serious” platform.

…Which, in a way, is why this may yet end-up as a non-issue, inasmuch as one can see it being quietly resolved out-of-court, which may in turn result in little or no major changes within SL beyond those already roadmapped by LL themselves. Or maybe the fact that the matter is now in the public eye – and being so widely debated – may still encourage LL to be more proactive in dealing with content ripping despite any out-of-court they may reach with Eros / Nomine.

Switch-over today

Posted on by Inara Pey

Today is the day LL “throw the switch”, so to speak, on Adult Content – from today, all commercial / advertised content related to Adult Activities must either be located on the “Adult” continent of Zindra or on a private island sim which has had the Adult Content flag set.

Exactly how much confusion is likely to come out of this has yet to be seen – but my honest opinion is that, despite the wailing, gnashing of teeth and rending of garments by many in the BDSM community, there won’t actually be very much confusion at all and that life with more-or-less go on as normal.

I say this because, despite LL’s truly abysmal handling of the entire affair in terms of the lack of clear-cut announcements, bringing the changes to the attention of the community as a whole, the confusion evident within their own ranks (Cyn, Jack, Blondin all issuing contradictory statements at one time or another – or even at the same “press conference”), the unwillingness to engage more directly with those with genuine concerns (who admittedly had themselves to fight against a wealth of misinformation circulating within the BDSM community relating to things such as Age Verification, and who were frequently shouted down as a result)….the fact remains the those who will be most affected by the changes are now sufficiently aware of the changes – thanks to the BDSM commuity itself – that the “flicking of the switch” will barely affect them.

And that’s perhaps the saddest part of these changes: not so much that they had to be made (I’ve never actually had much against the changes in principle) but in the fact that despite the utter ham-fisted manner in which LL executed the entire “programme” the overall lack of confusion will cause those most responsible for the repeated blunders of communication, understanding and implementation within LL to give themselves a self congratulatory pat on the back and walk away in the mistaken belief that, despite all the naysayers, they clearly did “communicate” “clearly” and they obviously “listened” to the user community – and therefore see little reason to change how they “manage” such interactions in the future.

One thing I did find interesting in a quick-fire trip around Zindra some 24 hours before the switch-over was the large number of “Mature” rated sims their that were still attracting relatively new avatars (less than 3 months old) with NPIOF. Now, granted said avatars may have been age verified, but I do have my doubts as to whether they are – and the fact that they were happily enduring the already noticable lag on Zindra suggests that there will at least be some confusion after today, as people find their way barred to places they’d visited 24 hours before. Or maybe I’m doing them a disservice, and they’re aware of the changes and were making a quick “last visit” before the doors closed…