Peter Gray has just informed me that on Wednesday February 5th, the board of directors of Linden Lab formally announced the appointment of Ebbe Altberg as the company’s Chief Executive Officer.
The press release announcing his appointment reads in part:
SAN FRANCISCO — February 5, 2014 —Linden Lab®, the makers of Second Life®, BlocksworldTM, DesuraTM, and more, today announced that Ebbe Altberg will lead the company as its new Chief Executive Officer.
Ebbe Altberg (image courtesy of Linden Lab)
“We remain committed to world-changing innovation from Linden Lab,” said Jed Smith of the company’s Board of Directors. “We’re keenly focused on providing incredible experiences for all of our customers, and Ebbe is the perfect person to help lead our team as we continue to serve and grow our global audience of active users.”
“Linden Lab has long been at the forefront of building experiences that entertain people while empowering them to express themselves and profit from their creations,” said Altberg. “Our customers’ creativity is unparalleled, and I’m proud to join the talented team that serves them. Second Life is now in its eleventh year, and every day, users continue to create more and more amazing experiences to enjoy. Though much younger, Blocksworld has already seen hundreds of thousands of unique user-created worlds shared for everyone to play with. I’m absolutely committed to supporting our customers and helping them become even more successful. There are significant opportunities ahead, and I look forward to leading us into the next phase of growth.”
The appointment brings to an end almost two weeks of silence on the matter of the CEO position, following Rod Humble’s surprise announcement that he had departed the company, which was made via his Facebook account, and the news broken by Jo Yardley on January 24th, 2014.
On January 30th, 2014, Linden Lab updated its Bot Policy. The update is small, but potentially far-reaching, outlawing the use of bots for mainland parcel purchases.
Updated by Patch Linden, the revisions comprise two parts: a comment on the use of bots in mainland parcel sales, and an update to the policy itself barring the automated purchase of mainland parcels via bots, etc. In turn, these read:
Mainland parcel sales and bots
Some bots are used to automate the purchase of Mainland parcels priced below fair market values.
Using bots to purchase Mainland parcels is not allowed
The use of bots, autonomous software, scripting (manual or automated), scripted agents, or any systems or software internal or external to the Second Life service that circumvent, automate and/or remove the human interaction required to purchase a Land parcel within Second Life on the Linden Lab owned Mainland is prohibited.
The updated policy – click to enlarge (or follow link to read in full
Nick Yee is senior research scientist at Ubisoft who has been involved in studying the psychological impact our avatars can have both on ourselves and with others since the early 2000s, starting as an undergraduate researcher focused on Everquest before moving into studies involving Second Life. He is also the author of the recently published The Proteus Paradox: How Online Games and Virtual Worlds Change Us– and How They Don’t, an examination of our increasingly complex relationships with our digital Doppelgängers.
In an article for Slate magazine entitled Virtual Worlds Are Real, Yee offers something of a taster for the book, and it’s a fascinating piece outlining the profound effect avatars actually do have on us, and which actually goes some way towards explaining why security concerns over how virtual worlds might be used weren’t as silly as people might think.
Nick Yee
Some of what Yee covers is already familiar to many of us using Second Life; we’re often prone to state ourselves, while the avatars on the screen may be pixels, the minds and emotions behind them most certainly aren’t. Hence why – unfortunately – Second life has been known to attract psychological predators bent on baiting others for their own perverse amusement, either individually or in cliques.
Many of us are also familiar with a range of studies and also individual cases where the positive identification with our own avatars has been shown to yield genuine benefits. Most recently, we’ve had the remarkable story of Fran Swenson (Fran Seranade in SL), and there have been studies such as those by Dr. Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz, which demonstrated how people’s choice of avatar directly affected their real-world existence and how they view themselves. Then, of course, there were the 2010 Stanford and 2011 Indiana University studies into avatars and weight loss. Yee points to the latter studies and on one involving students who, while initially unwilling to consider the future proved far more willing to put aside money for retirement after engaging with their virtual Doppelgängers which had been digitally aged by some forty years.
These are also positive examples of how we relate to out avatars and, in some cases to those around us. However, Yee also points out there are negatives as well. In terms of gender, for example, he notes how those using the opposite sex for their character within World of Warcraft were more likely to conform to gender expectations, helping to perpetuate a false gender stereotype. “We assume that virtual worlds allow us to reinvent ourselves and leave behind offline norms and prejudices,” Yee notes in regard to this. “But the truth is more sobering. Virtual worlds can and often perpetuate the status quo.”
The Proteus Paradox
That avatars can have a profound psychological impact on us might also help in understanding why GCHQ and the NSA were (are?) concerned about the potential of virtual environments to foster terrorist or other activities.
At the time the news on the activities of GCHQ and the NSA broke, there was talk of how an “Osama bin Laden” like avatar could be used to influence others. Yee counters the dismissals that such worries were “nonsense” with a quite sobering counter-argument.
Just before the 2004 US Presidential election, Yee and his colleagues invited people of voting age to each sit before photos of the two contenders: John Kerry and George Bush and select, purely on the basis of the photos, who they would be inclined to vote for. Unbeknownst to each participant, either the photo of Kerry or the photo of Bush has been morphed to include around 25% of the participant’s own features. The result?
“Even in a high-stakes, high-information election scenario,” Yee says of the experiment, “our study participants were more likely to vote for the candidate they had been morphed with. When participants were morphed with Kerry, the effect was strong enough to have won him the election.”
Yee goes on, “That study helps explain why a Bin Laden avatar is potentially useful: It could be individually tailored to potential recruits. In a virtual world where every user sees only her version of reality, a Bin Laden avatar could be tailored to hundreds of users at the same time. ”
This doesn’t excuse the manner in which GCHQ (in particular, who developed a means to access and trawl the XBox Live network and who sent three days gathering some 176,000 lines of data pertaining to Second Life chats, IMs and transactions) and the NSA went about their business within Second Life and World of Warcraft, but it does tend to underline why they were concerned.
All-in-all a fascinating article introducing what would appear to be a fascinating book. I’ve already ordered my copy.
Update: The message on Rod Humble’s Facebook page confirming his departure from the Lab reads: “Its been a great 3 years! All my thanks to my colleagues at Linden Lab and our wonderful customers I wish you the very best for the future and continued success! I am starting-up a company to make Art, Entertainment and unusual things! More on that in a few weeks!”
Jo Yardley has posted that Rod Humble has apparently left Linden Lab. In a blog post she states:
In a personal message to me via facebook send a few minutes ago, Rod Humble told me that he has left Linden Lab as CEO last week.
After 3 years of running Linden Lab and bringing a lot of improvements to Second Life he resigned and is going to start up his own company that will make art, entertainment and all sorts of wonderful stuff.
It is not yet clear who will replace him but I wish him lots of success with his new project.
This news comes as a bit of a surprise and shock and there is no official announcement yet.
As noted in Jo’s post, there is no official announcement on the matter, but I have contacted the Lab in an attempt to gain further verification. I’ll provide an update should any reply be forthcoming. Even if confirmation is given, and there is no reason to doubt the veracity of Jo’s post, it is unlikely the circumstances behind his departure will enter the public domain
As recently reported, in November, the Lab commenced e-mailing users meeting certain criteria to submit tax documentation to the Lab, which was subsequently expanded upon via a blog post on the matter.
In both the e-mail and blog post, reference was made to two IRS forms: W-9 (for U.S. residents) and Form W-8BEN (for non-U.S. residents), which must be completed and returned to Linden Lab within 30 days of any request for them being received in order to avoid having funds from accounts being withheld as stimplated by the US Internal Revenue Service (at the current rate of 28% of the gross amounts received).
With reference specifically to Form W-8BEN, concern has more recently be expressed at the fact it calls upon the person submitting it to provide either an Employer Identification Number (EIN) or an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN), either of which must be obtained from the IRS. However, the EIN is not something everyone outside of the US may be in a position to obtain, while obtaining an ITIN can take from between four and six weeks (compared to the Lab’s stated requirement that the form and supporting documentation be submitted to them within 30 days of receipt of the request).
Confusion was further heightened when several people indicated that had supplied Form W-8BEN to the Lab without either an EIN or ITIN.
As a number of people contacted me on this matter, I dropped a line to Peter Gray, the Lab’s Director of Global Communications, asking of the Lab could provide further clarification as to whether Form W-8BEN must have either an EIN or an ITIN in order to be submitted to the Lab. He replied with the following:
Hi Inara,
The users whom we have asked to submit the W8-BEN need only complete the fields in Part I, #1-5 (which does not require an EIN nor an ITIN).
We regret the confusion this form has recently caused for some users. To help avoid this confusion moving forward, we’ve uploaded a new version of the form that allows users to complete only the necessary fields and will update the messages sent to users when this information is requested.
Best,
Peter
[My emphasis in the above.]
Hopefully, this will resolve any confusion where this particular matter is concerned.
Also, and purely as a point of reference:
Deirdre Young pointed me towards Kat Fetisov’s attempts to unravel W-8BEN, which have also been referred to by Ciaran Laval.
Kat’s circumstances, being what is effectively a UK-based Sole Trader, are such that she was able to get an EIN directly from the IRS, with the form-filling taking place over the ‘phone. Those who are in a similar situation as Kat may want to consider approaching the IRS to obtain an EIN for future reference. Should this be the case, please refer to Kat’s blog, where she has provided clear guidance on doing so based on her experience.
I’ve been covering preparations for the upcoming production of Paradise Lost: The story of Adam and Eve’s original sin, which will be staged by the Basilique Performing Arts Company starting in spring 2014.
A re-telling of the original sin based on John Milton’s Paradise Lost, choreographed and set to the fourteen movements of Mozart’s Requiem Mass in D minor, the production is both ambitious and one of the most highly anticipated theatre events of Second Life, following on the heels of the Company’s lauded and acclaimed Romeo + Juliet.
And now YOU have the opportunity to be a part of the show.
Canary Beck and Harvey Crabsticks, the creative pair behind the production have issued a casting call. On offer are six parts within the production, two of which are to be played by the same actor. The six are:
Beelzebub – Satan’s right hand man, counsel-at-war, mastermind of the infiltration into Eden and more, and who appears in three scenes of the performance. The person behind this avatar will also be asked to play Moses – part of a dream sequence, Moses does what Moses does best, much to the annoyance of Pharaohs
Moloch – Satan’s War Captain and all-round war monger. Also seen in three scenes. The person behind this avatar will also be asked to play Noah – he of the flood and very large floating menagerie fame. Also seen in a dream sequence
Belial – another of Satan’s Fallen, a cunning beguiler working against those who would have war and manipulating things for her / his own advantage; appears in three scenes
Mammon – a Prince of Hell eager to see it industrialised and its resources exploited (no doubt lining her / his own pockets with gold and precious gems along the way). Again appears in three scenes.
Adam and Eve by Caitlin Tobias on Flickr – click to enlarge
Requirements in Brief
No prior experience of acting is required, nor are there any special technical requirements or skills requested. Applicants will not be expected to use voice
Preferred applicants are those with reliable Internet connections who are prepared to commit to 2 hours a week at weekends (13:00 Saturdays or 12:00 noon Sundays) for a 12-week season (March through June 2014)
Fully costumed and kitted avatars will be supplied to the successful applicants for the duration of the production.
Successful applicants will also receive 50% of all tips donated to them during performances, the remaining 50% going towards funding the Basilique Performing Arts Company’s adoption of Ihoho, an infant mountain gorilla living in Rwanda. you can read more about why the Company has decided to adopt a baby mountain gorilla on Canary’s blog.
For full details on the roles and the requirements, please refer to Canary’s blog post.
How to Apply
Supply a note card in-world to either Canary Beck or Harvey Crabsticks (crabsticks Resident), giving your name and any information you feel relevant by no later than Friday January 31st, 2014.
Romeo + Juliet in Second Life
Sunday January 19th marks the 31st performance of the Basilique Performing Arts Company’s Romeo + Juliet in Second Life. This means that, including the Sunday presentation, there are only five performances of this acclaimed production left in the winter season. These are (all times SLT):
Sunday, January 19th, 12:00 noon
Saturday, January 25th, 13:00
Saturday, February 1st, 13:00
Saturday, February 8th, 13:00
Friday, February 14th, 13:00
All performances are at The Basilique Playhouse, and the show comes very highly recommended – it really should not be missed. See also my notes on the production’s winter season and on attending a performance.
Peter Gray has just informed me that on Wednesday February 5th, the board of directors of Linden Lab formally announced the appointment of Ebbe Altberg as the company’s Chief Executive Officer.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 