I have spent the past week or so arranging a podcast with Rezzed.TV. Stuart Warf has kindly assisted to plan this event. This is a perfect opportunity to ask Emerald Developers their perspective on this topic. Also, Tenshi Vielle and Rebel hope give their views and experience

*** When: – friday 30th October 3pm SLT ***

Where: Rezzed.TV Amphitheatre

This Panel has been convened so that you the user have the opportunity to learn and educate yourself to make an informed decision on whether 3rd party viewers are right for you. The panel will field audience questions as well as Questions on Notice.
We are fortunate to have two of the Emerald Development team to answer questions. Also on the panel is Tenshi Vielle, Spokesperson for Artist’s Voice, an educative and information resource for content creators and users. Tenshi will advise on where you can seek information to ensure you are not trapped in a compromising situation. She will also give her perspective on the realities of content theft. Rebel Hope will be here to give her experiences with content theft and the ensuing issues.

” Asked and Answered – All You Wanted To Know about 3rd Party Viewers and Content Theft”

Panel members

– Fractured Crystal – Emerald Devlopment

– Lonely Bluebird – Emerald Development

– Tenshi Vielle – Council, Artist’s Voice

– Rebel Hope, Owner, Rebel Hope Designs, Inc.® and Council member, Artist’s Voice

This Podcast Panel will operate in voice, moderated by Stuart Warf. Questions will also be quite acceptable in text chat on the day. Please come prepared for interesting discussion!

Stream: Live stream here (thank you Malburns Writer)

Questions on Notice: go here

Yesterday, I attended a Lindenlab Brown Bag event hosted by Blondin Linden. This was an informative Q & A whereby invited attendees could ask Lindens first hand of their issues and concerns.

The audio and local text transcripts can be found here as well as on the original blog.

I suggest you read and listen to this.

So I’m not above putting porn in a post just to generate traffic. (Wait, I forgot to slather my blog with Google ads, dag nabit.)

Put aside your opinion of the specific items rampantly being stolen in the virtual world for a moment, yes some are sexual. While you are at it ignore the Hax-name bigotry in Serpentine’s post.  (I have almost been banned from sims just for having the Hax name.) And let’s consider how all this affects you, just another avatar.

People will pay over $1 billion for virtual goods in 2009

Yep, over 1 billion for pixels and electrons this year with a lot of that exchanging between Second Life avatars. Compare that to the $1.7 billion Americans spent on movies, a 17.5% increase, or even the $13.3 billion Americans spend on porn, or the $13.8 billion we yanks spend on ice cream:

Thank goodness there are more ice cream eaters than—no wait, that doesn’t work because you could have ice cream while—oh nevermind. <Insert your own bad pie joke here.>

Still, none of this holds a shoestring to the $38 billion spent on footwear and the ungodly $401.6 billion spend on sports in the United States alone.

So what is the difference and why do I care?

The difference is theft—specifically how stuff is stolen—and what that means to the industries involved. All of these industries have stuff ripped, but the ease with which virtual stuff is stolen and redistributed puts Second Life and any virtual world economy at greater risk. World of Warcraft has been dealing with similar issues for years. If you like having your virtual world around and having decent stuff in it, beyond the legitimate freebies you can find around, then this should matter to you. Second Life content creators are leaving for other things because of this.

Ripping virtual goods (digital content) is easy

Script kiddies with the right viewers steal and redistribute Second Life content as easily as they can get any music they want. This reality is not going to change no matter how much anyone does technically to prevent it. In fact, no security is fool-proof, everything can be cracked, it’s just a matter of making more of a hassle than those wanting to steal it care to take. Then again, in the online world, one determined hacker can open the door for everyone else, and always likely will. But how does this different from ’save image’ from any image on the Internet?

Easy theft does not make it right

Just because my 6-year-old could steal content off just about any web site does not make it right. Just because you could copy any full-perms content out of Second Life into  your own sims even though you don’t have permission from the original creator to do so does not make it right. Just because you can run a viewer that lets you leverage a Linden bug to create identical duplicates down to the asset IDs doesn’t make it right. Just because you can ’sample’ any music from the internet without paying a dime does not make it right.

The world runs on trust and ethics. They come from universal communal values and have been around since Lucy or before. Every living thing in the observable Cosmos functions by playing a part in some community. Stealing will get you shunned or eaten in most all of them. *grin*

Where there is money there are thieves

And where the crime involves digital assets there is rampant piracy. I know a person or two who works with those agencies interested in this stuff. To quote this person in effect,

“There is no way they have the resources to ever chase that stuff down, not with people being killed for drugs and other violent crimes. That warning at the beginning of every movie just makes me laugh. There is no way we could ever go after anyone for that.”

There will always be thieves and digital thieves will probably always have the upper-hand, sad but true.

Don’t put all your virtual eggs in one basket

Even though Linden Labs is really putting an effort up to get a handle on this content theft stuff, the fact is, they have a nearly impossible battle ahead. The music industry has taught us that.  It is not surprising to see Linden Labs attacking this on policy grounds as opposed to technical grounds. Imagine the technical changes required to change the very encoding of the trillions of assets in Second Life only to have that encoding eventually cracked. No sane business leader would undertake that kind of risky effort, hence the policy-based approach we see.

The reality shaping up is that  content creators have to find ways to make a living that don’t involve that rather sweet create-once-sell-millions model. That model is very addicting, no doubt, no overhead, no staff, no raw materials, no overstock or inventory run-out. Content creators do put a lot into what they make and sell, but not nearly what a physical-world product vendor does. Does that sound like I am hinting that digital content creators are acting a little spoiled? Nah. But perhaps these challenges are the trade-off that comes from working with purely virtual goods.

Do content creators just have to be faster?

Some have suggested to play in the digital content world market you just have to be fast, real fast. Mr. Serpentine’s stuff was ripped in under three months. That is three months to make a profit before losing it to the knowing thieves and unknowing public accomplices. This roll-over-and-play-dead-but-fast-developer approach infuriates many since it just accepts that people will be thieves and somehow justifies it. It also emphasizes another idea that drives content-developers insane (myself included) that creating this stuff is easy, so easy we should just give it all away for free and make money some other way. [Disclaimer: I make practically nothing for stuff I sell in SL, just not that good yet.]

Digital content creation is  indeed a fun, fast growing industry but contains unique challenges requiring quick development skills. Just know what you are getting yourself into before you start.

So many blogs, like Tateru’s, buzzing about this trademark cease and desist letter sent to Jokaydia, some 18 months since Linden Labs made the policy as New World Notes succinctly describes. Some tell me hundreds of educators make extensive use of ‘SL’ and other trademarks in their materials, names and URLs. It is no surprise they are worried. They don’t have the time and resources to defend themselves and so will simply drop it or look elsewhere.

Yet I am also very ‘perplexed’ (like NWN) about “Why the fuss now?”

Here’s a personal observation:

Educators seem to be on a different path and wavelength in their adoption, usage, and views toward Second Life and virtual worlds in general. They largely are still learning things others haven’t. In fact, their very hype cycle seems to be on something of a time delay behind the well pronounced corporate hype cycle, with different drivers and results.

Having become more involved with educators (my preferred future career path) after so many years just focused on corporate and entertainment, the education community has a distinctly different network of participants, information sources, and perspectives. I’d go so far to say that there is something of a gap, even wall between the educational community and corporate community (which incidentally is the topic of a proposed ISTE 2010 panel presentation I just submitted with Julie Sugarplum and others).

This gap could explain why  educators sometimes don’t understand what is happening and vice versa. Both communities have tremendous amounts to learn from each other–especially in the wake of large-scale corporate failures in SL while educational institutions flourish for reasons discussed elsewhere.

Personally I find bridging this gap in communication and understanding between the two macro communities critical to the 21st century workforce, and if you’d like to hear mine and others’ perspectives look for our panel presentation at ISTE 2010.

With the opening of a new continent, I thought it was timely to remember where we have come from. This is the first new continent for some time now, and is interesting to see just how far we have come since the early days.

You can read more here, including a bonus offer!

With the opening of a new continent, I thought it was timely to remember where we have come from. This is the first new continent for some time now, and is interesting to see just how far we have come since the early days.

Here we see one of the earliest models of Telehub, which you utilised to travel the tiny grid

The map you see here is the full extent of the original continent.

I thought my retro-style summery outfit from Leezu was perfect for clambering around old equipment.

Do you have a sense of, and passion for SL history? Would you like your very own old telehub to rezz on your land? Message me in world (Arabella Steadham) and i will pass you two telehubs. One of them has the map hidden inside!

Credits:

Playsuit and hat: Nyar in charcoal from Leezu

Hair: Matilda in Mocha by Truth

Location: Sandbox Sex, one of the oldest private sandboxes, which is to be deleted next week. I am sad.

Philip Rosedale, founder of SecondLife and known inworld as Philip Linden, held a talk last may at TED. It’s finally posted!

Watch the video here

Wie ich gerade bei Reuters lese, plant unsere Regierung die Einführung eines neuen Kommunika-tionsweges. SLim soll es möglich machen, während einer SL-Abwesenheit – also im Urlaub oder beim RL-spielen, mit den Leuten aus der eigenen Friendslist in Kontakt zu bleiben. Grenzübergreifendes Instant Messaging – übrigens auch mit Applikation für das iPhone. Das wäre doch super! Viele von uns sind ja schon RLsüchtig und haben oft nicht mehr die Zeit, vernünftig die SL Kontakte zu pflegen. mit SLim könnte sich das ändern – wir dürfen gespannt sein.

–Et toutes les photos de l’événement sur Community Chest Flickr ou chez Stéphane Desnault–

Robert Vinet (R.V) : Commençons. Notre après-midi se divisera en deux parties : une première heure, approximativement , où j’aborderai un certain nombre de sujets avec Philip puis nous prendrons des questions de la salle.
Pour commencer, j’aimerais remercier Mr Rosedale d’être présent avec nous :”Thank you Mr Chairman to be there!”
Comme vous le savez, Philip n’est plus le Président de Linden Lab, c’est le Chairman. Il nous donnera certainement sa vision sur le changement de poste qu’il vient d’effectuer.
La discussion s’articulera en trois parties :
1. L’entreprise : Linden Lab aujourd’hui : des questions et réponses sur la société qui nous écrit, nous facture, nous rend mécontent, essaie de nous aider …,
2. Second Life : la plate-forme
3. Vision / prospective : le futur de Second Life et du développement de l’internet 3d.

Le tout suivi de questions de la salle.

Philip Rosedale (P.R) : quand j’étais au collège, la première langue que j’ai tenté d’apprendre était le français. Il s’avère que j’étais définitivement meilleur en langages de programmations …Donc, aujourd’hui, nous parlerons en anglais. Tout d’abord, merci beaucoup, je suis très content d’être ici. J’ai parfois l’occasion de me déplacer, de rencontrer des gens et de parler de Second Life. C’est toujours intéressant. Et, vous représentez, certainement, le groupe d’utilisateurs le plus nombreux que j’ai rencontré. Donc, merci à tous d’être présent !

Partie I: Linden Lab : la société

R.V : Linden Lab aujourd’hui. Pourriez vous nous parler de la structure de l’entreprise ? combien d’employés y a-t-il ? que font-ils ? Parce que pour beaucoup d’entre nous, ce n’est qu’un nom : Linden …

P.R: Linden Lab a été créé en 1999 et il n’y avait, à l’époque, qu’une seule personne. Le premier employé a été Andrew Linden, ingénieur informaticien, comme moi qui ait, préalablement fait des études en mathématiques et en physique. Aujourd’hui, Linden Lab, c’est 250 employés répartis dans 5 bureaux – le plus important à San Francisco – mais aussi à Boston, Seattle, Davis (dans la Silicon Valley) ainsi qu’un petit bureau à Brighton en Grande-Bretagne.

Linden Lab se répartit principalement en 2 grandes équipes :

1. Ingénierie, Développement et Exploitation : cela représente, à peu près 160 personnes qui développent et exploitent la Grid. Une équipe spécialisée de 20 personnes sont responsables de l’Exploitation dont la moitié, 10 personnes, sont en charge 24h/24 et 7jours/7 de veiller au bon fonctionnement de Second Life. Les autres membres de cette équipe est un mélange d’informaticien, de responsables qualités et de gestionnaire de programme, etc.
2. Customer support : l’équipe des Concierge qui représente une vingtaine de personnes.

Enfin, le reste de l’équipe qu’on appelle les “Overhead” sont le marketing, les RP (1 personne …), etc. Robin Harper que certains d’entre vous connaissent, travaille dans cette équipe au marketing. Et quelques autres groupes de personnes qui complètent l’entreprise.
Nous sommes profitables, ce que la plupart d’entre vous savez, nous sommes “self sustaining”, nous ne cherchons pas d’investisseurs externes.
Nous essayons de recruter de nouveaux talents mais pas aussi rapidement que nous le voudrions, Second Life demeurant encore un mystère pour beaucoup de gens.

R.V: Et qu’en est-il de la Grid, conçue pour être opérationnelle 7 jours sur 7 et 24 h sur 24 ? ? Pourriez vous nous parler de la structure technique qui la sous tend ?

P.R: En ce qui concerne l’architecture technique de Second Life, à chaque île correspond un serveur, une CPU ; nous en avons aujourd’hui 18 000 dans trois lieux physiques différents aux Etats-Unis : San Francisco, Dallas et Phoenix. Au maximum actuel de son débit, vers 14h00 (SL time) principalement lors de l’arrivée des européens, cela représente 65 000 personnes en ligne, 10 gigabits / seconde de trafic réseau. Ces serveurs doivent pouvoir être mis à jour très rapidement et cela représente beaucoup de travail. La Grid est opérationnelle tous les jours 24h / 24.

R.V. : Ces serveurs se trouvent, donc, dans trois endroits différents. Ces serveurs gèrent des îles différentes, des natures de données différentes ?

PR: Oui, ils représentent des zones géographiques différentes. La plupart sont à San Francisco (les services centraux) qui gèrent, aussi, les connexions (login), les transactions monétaires, etc. Nous avons construit SL autour de la notion de machines de simulations, en se préoccupant de natures d’objets auquel personne ne croyait. L’architecture de Second Life est principalement issue de notre préoccupation initiale : simuler la réalité du monde. Construire un monde virtuel représentait un rêve et cela a été un combat de survivre pour notre projet et d’y amener des investisseurs au début. L’année dernière, soudain nous avons connu le succès. Nous n’avons pas construit le monde aussi bien que nous l’aurions souhaité. En conséquence, certaines des solutions que nous avons dû trouver ont été réalisé rapidement et approximativement. Aujourd’hui, le parc d’ordinateurs sur lequel fonctionne Second Life est sain.

R.V: Vous nous avez dit que Linden Lab gagnait de l’argent. Dans cette salle ne sont présentes que des personnes qui vous donnent de l’argent. Quel est votre modèle économique aujourd’hui ?

P.R: Oui, Linden Lab gagne de l’argent. Nos sources de revenus principales proviennent des comptes Premium, de la création de nouvelles îles et de la gestion de l’économie, entre autres par l’émission de L$ pour accompagner la croissance de l’économie.

RV: Vous avez aujourd’hui des partenaires importants comme IBM et quelques autres. Vous avez, donc, des “amis”. Mais comment choisissez-vous vos “amis” et pourquoi ?

PR: Oui, nous commençons à avoir d’importants partenaire mais notre priorité est de construire des partenariats autour de la technologie et du savoir-faire et pas des partenariats autour du contenu qui nous amènerait dans une situation de concurrence indue. Notre partenaire principal est IBM qui installe la Grid sur ses propres serveurs. En fait, tous nos partenariats sont des partenariats technologiques.

R.V : Vous êtes depuis récemment à la recherche d’un nouveau CEO. Quel est votre nouveau rôle aujourd’hui car ce n’est pas très bien compris dans les pays européens ? Quel sera le rôle du nouveau CEO ? Et comment voyez vous cette complémentarité dans le fonctionnement et le développement de la société ?

P.R: Je comprends. Je suis un ingénieur de formation, diplômé en physique et ma formation première est le génie physique ; mes meilleures compétences concernent le design, la technologie et la stratégie de développement technique. Maintenant que Linden Lab a connu une croissance phénoménale, gérer l’entreprise est devenu un challenge de plus en plus important et je ne crois pas avoir les meilleurs talents pour la gérer au quotidien.
Mon souhait était de trouver quelqu’un de neuf pour faire cette partie du travail que j’ai toujours faite. Il est, en effet, peu commun d’annoncer que l’on recherche un nouveau CEO avant de l’avoir embauché. Mais nous voulions vraiment que la bonne personne vienne à nous. Mark Kingdon m’a appelé et nous l’avons embauché comme nouveau CEO. Il sera responsable du leadership quotidien de l’entreprise. En d’autres mots, il fédérera l’équipe autour de lui.

RV: Et vous, quel sera votre nouveau rôle ? Serons nous toujours capable de vous “tenir responsable de tout” comme vous avez aimé le mettre sur le profil de votre avatar dans Second Life ?

PR: Je ne vais pas être du tout un nouveau retraité. En ce qui concerne ma nouvelle fonction, je serai le “Chairman of the Board” avec une responsabilité sur les investissements, etc. et je travaillerai, évidemment, de manière permanente avec Mark. Je ne pars pas du tout mais veux me concentrer plus sur le produit, sur le fonctionnement de Second Life et comment le rendre plus facile à utiliser ou rendre sa croissance et son développement plus aisée.

Partie II : Second Life : la plate forme

R.V: Second Life est, donc, une plate-forme qui fonctionne en continu. Nous allons maintenant vous poser des questions sur ce sujet. Il y a près de 12 mois, Linden Lab a décidé de rendre “open source” la partie client du logiciel. Pour vous, est-ce un succès ou un échec ? Qu’est ce que cela a apporté ? Est ce une approche en laquelle vous croyez réellement ?

P.R: En ce qui concerne l’Open Source, je crois que c’est un énorme succès. Mais nous avons encore besoin de plus de gens pour gérer de bon projets en open source : programmes, code, formulaires, etc. L’implantation de Second Life sur des téléphones mobiles a été construit sur cette base d’open source et je crois beaucoup à cette approche open source parce que nous voulons construire un nouvel environnement qui sera plus grand que le web actuel. Il n’existe aucune autre façon d’atteindre cet objectif que d’avoir une politique de développement fondé sur les principes de l’open source.

R.V: Quelles sont vos intentions en ce qui concerne les parties du logiciel qui sont encore des “logiciels propriétaires” ? Envisagez vous de les remplacer par des équivalents “open source” ?

P.R: Nous adorerions pouvoir le faire et nous essayons d’être le plus open source possible. Nous remplacerons les solutions propriétaires par des solutions open source si celles-ci sont meilleures. Il ne serait pas responsable de produire un logiciel moins bon sous prétexte d’être open source…Mais nous manquons de ressource humaines actuellement pour faire tout ce travail.
Par exemple, nous sommes prêt à utiliser Mono pour que plusieurs langages de scripting et pas nécessairement LSL puissent être utilisés. Cela rendra Second Life plus performant.

RV: Qu’en est-il des projets visant à rendre l’utilisation de la partie client de Second Life plus facile ? Vous avez le projet Dazzle, je crois ?

PR: Dazzle aide les primo arrivants. Il aide les nouveaux utilisateurs en rendant le logiciel plus professionnel. Nous avons, dans ce cadre, plusieurs priorités : rendre plus facile le téléchargement de la partie client de Second Life, trouver plus facilement la “bonne” façon de marcher, de mettre des vêtements, de trouver des choses, d’interagir avec les autres avatars …Nous avons encore beaucoup de travail pour parvenir à ce que la majorité des nouveaux utilisateurs aient envie de rester dans Second Life …

R.V: Il y a quelques mois de cela, au SLCC, je vous ai entendu déclarer que Linden Lab ne voyait pas la maturité de Second Life avant trois ans ? Ne craignez vous pas qu’en fournissant une version “inachevée” de Second Life, cela n’éloigne certains des nouveaux utilisateurs ?

P.R: Je crois que nous avons la bonne stratégie et qu’il fallait publier la version que nous avions au début et créer l’expérience par petites touches. L’expérience Second Life change en permanence et, on peut dire que probablement que Second Life ne sera pas terminé avant une dizaine d’années. Mais le plus important si on doit se souvenir de nous comme d’une société est d’être celle qui l’a fait tôt, avant les autres. Les mondes virtuels sont inévitables. Ils existent dans la science fiction depuis une vingtaine d’années.

Après l’introduction de la voix dans Second Life l’an dernier, notre projet le plus important est l’implantation du “HTML-on-a-prim”. Et après, nous développons toutes sortes de nouveautés, par exemlpe, l’utilisation du Space Navigator est super pour se déplacer, bouger la caméra … L’utilisation de caméra 3D, comme le montre Mitch Kapor, pour faire bouger son avatar de manière synchrone aux mouvements de notre corps est très intéressante. Mais certains problèmes comme le mouvement des lèvres des avatars pendant qu’ils parlent demeurent éminemment complexes.

R.V: Quels sont vos plans concernant l’architecture de la Grid ? Qu’en est-il d’une possible décentralisation ? Quelle est votre sentiment sur l’implantation de Second Life dans une architecture de type peer-to-peer ?

P.R: Notre responsabilité comme société est d’anticiper la charge et le développement des serveur Second Life. Dans les 5 à 10 ans, leur nombre sera considérable, bien plus important que le nombre de serveurs qu’une société comme nous pourra gérer. Pour bien fonctionner, Second Life devra disposer de serveurs bien distribués et les problématiques d’accès distant et d’interconnexion devront avoir été résolues. Ceci est une étape de développement très importante.

Second Life se généralise et devient plus solide : la répartition de nos serveurs dans plusieurs lieux physiques en est un exemple. Nous voulons utiliser le même type de technologie pour déployer de nouveaux serveurs. De ce point de vue le déploiement de serveurs par IBM derrière leur firewall est une expérience pilote qui devra se généraliser.

En ce qui concerne des approches peer-to-peer dans lesquelles on utiliserait des clients interconnectés pour produire une visualisation du monde virtuel, il s’agit d’un problème très, très complexe. Des questions telles que la sécurité sont peut être insolubles. Je n’ai pas de plan à court terme pour travailler dans cette direction. D’ailleurs, je ne sais même pas si des solutions existeront un jour pour ces problèmes. Mais nous sommes évidemment prêt à implanter ces solutions si elles devaient voir le jour! Quelques approches existent comme l’architecture de Croquet, mais tout doit être basé sur un modèle de confiance entre les pairs et c’est éminemment complexe.

R.V: En ce qui concerne la politique commerciale de Second Life, avez vous des projets nouveaux qui pourraient impacter les résidents ? Par exemple, les objectifs du projet “Travaux Publics et Revitalisation du Mainland” semble particulièrement obscurs …

P.R: C’est tout simple. Une personne de Linden Lab voulait travailler sur ce type de projet. Et notre idée demeurant de faciliter les échanges entre les résidents, nous faisons certaines de ces expériences sur le Mainland.

RV: Le prix des sims, le prix d’accès à Second Life suit une courbe plutôt erratique. Quelle est votre ligne de conduite sur ce sujet ? Que couvrent financièrement ces coûts ?

PR: Avec le prix actuel d’installation des sims, nous faisons une marge financière tout à fait raisonnable. Quand nous permettrons aux gens d’interconnecter leurs serveurs avec les nôtres, ils pourront à leur tour fixer leurs coûts d’accès. Malheureusement comme l’installation de nouvelles îles requiert de nouveaux serveurs, nous devons fixer un prix d’installation. Et nous ne pouvons évidemment pas complètement prévoir leur prix qui est lié à l’évolution du marché du matériel informatique. Dans ce domaine, plus de concurrence devrait apporter du bon.

R.V: Pouvez vous nous parler un peu du “Second Life Brand Centre”, qui est un nouvel aspect de votre politique commerciale mais qui apporte plusieurs contraintes, entre autres sur les conventions de nommage…Cet annonce a suscité beaucoup de commentaires…Et nous partageons tous une certaine perception sur la brutalité de certaines annonces faites par Linden Lab, par exemple les annonces du dimanche soir …

P.R: L’explication la plus simple est que nous tentons de gérer Second Life comme un bien public (comme Wikipedia). Même dans les cas de Second Life ou Wikipedia, existent encore une marque et un nom et ceci devient une question compliquée.Parce que pour le bien de chacun, il n’est pas possible de définir l’administration d’une marque comme Second Life comme étant une marque dont 10 millions de personnes sont propriétaires. Je ne connais aucune organisation qui pourrait raisonnablement réfléchir de cette manière. Qu’auriez vous fait ? Faire voter les gens ?

RV: Ce que vous dites est tout à fait raisonnable, bien sûr. Second Life doit défendre sa marque. Cependant, nous observons que des changements sont apparus dans votre approche …

P.R.: Une fois de plus, je vous rappelle que nous avons une équipe marketing et RP de petite taille. Nous sommes une société de technologie. Nous n’avons certainement pas passé le temps suffisant historiquement à nous poser les questions de ce qu’il fallait faire sur l’utilisation de notre nom et de la marque Second Life… Au fur et à mesure du recrutement de nouveaux talents, nous essayons d’apprendre et de devenir plus intelligents et avons à traiter ces questions qui avaient été laissées pour compte. Au fur et à mesure de la croissance de la communauté des Second Life, ces questions peuvent devenir problématiques. Au fond, nous souhaitons protéger cette marque de la manière la plus minimaliste possible. Le challenge que nous nous sommes posé est de gérer cette marque à l’intérieur des contraintes posées par le Brand Center. Je ne crois pas que nous ayons fait des règles particulièrement strictes.

R.V: Je vous sais particulièrement fan d’indices de mesure de performances. Continuez vous à développer des indices pour la mesure d’un meilleur service ? Des choses qui ne soient pas que des chiffres mais la vérité derrière ces chiffres ?

P.R: De mon point de vue, les statistiques les plus importantes concernent l’uptime, le crash rate et le framerate : ils permettent de mesurer le bon niveau de fonctionnement de Second Life. Depuis le SLCC, nous publions tous ces indices et ils nous semblent particulièrement adaptés et nous continuons à ajouter de nouveaux instruments de mesure. Je crois que nous faisons plutôt un bon travail de mesure de nos performances.

Évidemment, je dois devant vous m’excuser car du point de vue de la performance, nous avons eu un mois d’avril particulièrement exécrable : entre autres, une panne réseau massive bizarre dans sa façon d’arriver mais au fond sans surprise. Nous avons eu plusieurs interruptions de service, entre autre dues à des pannes de switch haute capacité chez notre FAI. Le diagnostic de ces pannes a parfois été plus long qu’ attendu, notre communication a pu être déficiente et le switch mis hors service. Ce fut complexe d’avoir à convaincre notre FAI que la panne venait de chez lui. C’est cependant un cas presque unique. Et une seconde malheureuse chose est arrivé ce mois ci : la base de données centrale. La mise jour de sa configuration a entraîné un grand nombre de problèmes inattendus. Veuillez, à nouveau, accepter toutes mes excuses. Mais l’environnement logiciel est, à nouveau, maintenant très stable. Dans le fond, il est vrai que nous avons relativement peu de concurrence parce que le tout repose sur une technologie qui demeure particulièrement complexe.

R.V: En ce qui concerne le développement général de l’économie de Second Life, avez vous des pays cibles en particulier ?

P.R: Avec l’émergence de résidents de nouveaux pays, nous devons implanter de nouveaux sites web client adaptés. Avec l’émergence d’utilisations pertinentes de Second Life dans ces pays, nous tentons d’améliorer la localisation des services de Second Life – ceci est un de nos vrais défis. Cela veux dire d’implanter les sites web avec la gestion des clients, la facturation, le service client, le tout dans cette langue locale – ce qui représente un gros travail. Second Life est réellement devenu une plate forme internationale. En 2006, les résidents étaient à 70% américains et 30% d’ailleurs ; aujourd’hui cette proportion s’est inversée et 70% des résidents sont d’ailleurs que les US. Le fait de demeurer dans Second Life est une décision que les nouveaux utilisateurs prennent dans leurs premières heures de fréquentation. Nous perdons, aujourd’hui, une grande majorité de ces nouveaux visiteurs. Mais si vous commencez à utiliser Second Life et que votre expérience dure plus de deux mois, vous restez dans Second Life.

R.V: Pensez vous avoir besoin d’une plus grande plateforme en raison du nombre connections simultanées ?

P.R: Second Life grandit et c’est ce qui compte ! Aujourd’hui”hui, de 90 à 95 % des personnes qui créent un compte ne restent pas, 500 000 personnes l’utilisent 3 heures par mois cependant que 250 000 personnes l’utilisent 3 heures par jour .

R.V: Quid de la TVA facturée par une filiale britannique ?

P.R: La TVA s’applique et doit être respectée dans tous les pays. Cela suppose un coût élevé (20%) variant d’un pays à l’autre, et ce coût désavantage les gens ici. C’est une taxe injuste (elle n’existe pas aux Etats-Unis sur les services informatiques) contre laquelle nous ne pouvons pas lutter. La TVA constitue une grande frustration pour nous.

R.V: Que pouvons nous attendre de vous ? Et, qu’attendez vous de nous ?
P.R: Le développement de contenus est ce qui attire de nouvelles personnes, donc nous devons travailler ensemble. Pour l’instant, nous n’avons pas de concurrent car le mode de développement est difficile et nous avons été assez malins.

Partie III: Vision/prospective/ futur de Second Life et du Web 3D

R.V: Comment voyez vous le développement futur des mondes virtuels ?
P.R: La transition majeure est le passage du web au web 3D. De ce fait nous devons anticiper pour construire un monde meilleur et définir le futur. Nous devons faire en sorte de garder une plateforme ouverte. De mon point de vue, la technologie de Second Life doit opérer une double mutation : originellement, il s’agissait de textes connectés par des liens hypertextes. L’internet 3D tel que Second Life permet de présenter l’information de la manière la plus parfaite pour les êtres humains. Des symboles universels peuvent être utilisés et compris par tous, une chaise en constitue un bon exemple. Si on peut organiser l’information avec ces symboles alors on peut parvenir à une vraie transformation. L’homme est un animal social et Second Life permet de partager l’information avec les autres (consommer, créer, vendre, etc…) . En tant qu’esprits vivants nous avons besoin du contact avec les autres. Cette technologie permet d’échanger de l’information, d’assurer la consommation et la création en temps réel avec les autres. C’est cela que nous construisons et c’est précisément ce changement qui va guider le développement de l’Internet 3D.

R.V: Pourriez vous nous dire quelques mots au sujet de l’interopérabilité ? Faire un état des lieux? Les grandes orientations? Nous avons coutume de dire que nous sommes agnostiques en matière de plateforme, ces dernières vont se développer car tout le marché se développe. Que pensez vous de l’interopérabilité des avatars?

P.R: L’interopérabilité la plus utile se fera entre les réseaux sociaux et Second Life. Des solutions comme OpenID existent et répondent partiellement à cette question. Il n’existe pas de mondes 3D comparables à Second Life. Nous sommes plus dans l’optique de créer des expériences spécifiques sur des cibles précises (MTV Laguna Beach project). Je rêverais voir un avatar passer d’un monde à l’autre mais je ne sais quand ni comment cela se fera. Ya-t-il quelqu’un dans la salle qui utilise un autre monde 3D et souhaite le connecter à SL ?

Stéphane Desnault : Ce que je vends dans SL comme une passion, je rêverais de pouvoir le vendre dans d’autres mondes.

R.V: Importer et exporter des objets, qu’en est-il ?

P.R: Je rêverais de voir cela mais ce n’est pour l’instant pas compatible avec les mondes virtuels. Les objets sont les choses les plus incompatibles dans les mondes virtuels. La simulation de l’architecture et le rendu sont différents d’un monde à l’autre ce qui empêche les objets de passe de l’un à l’autre.

R.V: Qu’en est-il de la concurrence ? Pour certains de nos clients aller sur SL ou Habbo Hotel revient au même…
P.R: Certains clients ne perçoivent pas l’unicité de SL. Habbo ou Club Pinguin (mon préféré) développent des mondes analogues, mais le contenu est différent. IMVU est impressionnant d’un point de vue technologique. OpenSim est fantastique et rassure sur nos orientations. Les gens vont commencer avec des contenus simples pour se diriger vers des plus complexes. HiPiHi est plus ou moins comparable à Second Life, d’ailleurs notre business model nous encourage à nous rapprocher d’OpenSim.

R.V: Comment voyez-vous Second Life dans 3 ans ? Qu’est-ce qui vous ferait plaisir ?
P.R: Je réfléchis un peu plus à long terme. Dans 5 ans il serait bon d’avoir 1000 ou 2000 personnes qui travaillent pour nous autour du monde et de posséder un bon système fiable sous le grid. Je serais fier également si notre société devenait le leader dans cette branche de software et que nous puissions rester indépendants.

Partie 4: Questions des Bloggers

Parmi un auditoire de passionnés, de nombreuses questions se font jour !

Hugobiwan Zolnir de la Bibliothèque Francophone
J’espère que vous comprendrez mon anglais… Je m’interroge à propos des open formats, la faculté d’utiliser SL comme une partie de l’ensemble d’un éco système d’information.

Personnellement j’utilise OpenSim qui me permet d’importer des fichiers 3DS, de les utiliser comme des fichiers regroupés. J’ai réalisé des tests avec de vrais musées et découvert la possibilité de travailler sur tout type d’architecture, de plans, sur Google Earth, Ketchup, augmentant la réalité. Il est très important de faire des expériences avec les objets et les avatars, se déplacer dans des espaces mirroirs, avec une présence ici et là bas, et ainsi de suite ….

Mon problème est que je ne peux pas faire cela dans SL malgré toutes mes tentatives. Le même problème se pose pour la vidéo, le son, les sms. Il convient vraiment d’améliorer les liens entre SL et les standarts classqiues du web.

P.R.: Sur le contenu, le vrai problème concerne les fichiers regroupés de manière arbitraire. Si on créé une sim entière remplie de ces fichiers, ça prendrait une heure pour se logger. J’ai travaillé sur la compression, c’est mon passé professionnel. Cependant, dès que nous pourrons nous soutiendrons l’import en direct de tous les formats. Aujourd’hui tout ce qui est fait à partir de 3DS rend les sim inutilisables en raison des durées de chargement. Nous souhaitons SL aussi ouvert que possible et essayons de faire les choses dans l’ordre. Tout le monde souhaite pouvoir importer directement, il y a également des intérêts pécuniers, nous voulons aussi que vous en soyez capable.

Jean-Michel Billaut, président d’honneur de l’Atelier BNP-Paribas
Quelle est votre vision de l’économie virtuelle dans 10 ans ? (inflation, impôts, immobilier, etc) R.V : Pouvez-vous nous parler un peu de votre expérience au Congrès, comment ça s’est passé?
P.R: J’ai eu la chance d’être invité avec Colin Parris de IBM, Larry Johnson du New Media Consortium et Susan Tenby de TechSoup pour parler de Second Life. L’internet est un phénomène global, je ne suis pas sûr à propos des impôts mais a priori les transactions y échapperont . De même pour l’inflation, nous ajoutons de nouvelles devises, ce qui est la bonne technique, il est pourtant très difficile de créer un système monétaire à moins que tout le monde ne l’utilise. De même, pour ce qui concerne l’immobilier, je ne sais pas… On parle souvent du fait que le caractère illimité des terres ajoutées risque d’influer sur le marché. De toutes façons le prix des terrains sera toujours liés au prix du matériel informatique, des serveurs, etc…

Fred Cavazza:
Que pensez vous des plateformes de jeu crées par les sud coréens telles que : Kart Rider, MapleStory, Drift City ?
P.R: Kart Rider est juste l’une des meilleures choses au monde. J’essaie toujours d’expliquer SL depuis l’intérieur, c’est la façon la plus facile et naturelle… Kart Rider est un jeu de course de voitures, pourtant la plupart des biens vendus sont liés à l’apparence des utilisateurs pour les rendre plus cool. Les gens sont donc prêts à investir de l’argent même si ce n’est pas directement lié à l’expérience d’utilisation du jeu. Tout ce qui se déroule en Corée du sud est intéressant mais demeure différent de ce qui advient dans SL. L’appétit des asiatiques pour la technologie réside dans la pratique ludique : courte durée, se relaxer, s’amuser après le travail. Je simplifie évidemment un peu la situation, partout dans le monde chacun a ses raisons et ses usages, il me semble néanmoins que la tendance en Corée du sud est plus au Gaming qu’en France ou aux Etats Unis.

Gil Reveillon, LaSer :
Ma question porte sur le terminal permettant d’accéder aux mondes virtuels dans un futur proche. Il y a 3 milliards d’utilisateurs potentiels dont une une grande partie utilise de plus en plus d’intermédiation avec les téléphones mobiles et Comverse semble avoir trouvé une solution pour SL. Avez vous une idée de la manière dont ils vont intermédier dans le futur ? Par exemple, les sociétés chinoises et japonaises vendent de la publicité sur les jeux, quel est votre vision ?
P.R : SL sur les mobiles est un projet intéressant. La nature immersive de l’environnement SL créé sa puissance et son intérêt. Or cela ne peut pas être correctement restitué sur un mobile. La solution semble se trouver dans l’open source qui permettrait aux gens de le tester sur les mobiles et de trouver une manière simple d’y parvenir. Je pense que c’est possible. Une tendance lourde se dégage concernat la volonté des gens de se rencontrer, en 2007 15% des îles étaient entièrement utilisées à des fins éducatives, pour des universités, des écoles.

Thomas Khayat aka Saddam Triskaidekaphobia, de Liberta et de SLMag :
Je suis très intéressé par les partenariats professionnels dans SL, travaillant moi même avec de nombreux partenaires. De même; je sais que Linden Lab a créé des partenariats avec IBM et Samsung par exemple. Souhaitez vous créer de nouveaux partenariats avec des grandes entreprises ou préférez vous une évolution plus modérée?

R.V : Thomas aimerait savoir si vous avez l’intention de créer d’importants partenariats avec des sociétés non spécialisées dans la technologie qui pourraient être intéressant pour le développement de cet environnement 3D ?

P.R : Tout d’abord, il ne me semble pas nécessaire de créer des partenariats directs avec ce type de companies, avec les sociétés d’infrastructures comme Facebook, Ebay ou Youtube… Le web fonctionne correctement dans SL, dès lors nous n’avons pas besoin de ce type de partenariat. Aujourd’hui, je ne vois pas de société non technologique avec laquelle nous pourrions créer un partenariat. En revanche, si l’envie de connecter des services bancaires par exemple avec SL se faisait sentir, c’est tout à fait le genre de partenariat que nous serions ravis de créer.

R.V.: un peu à la manière du partenariat avec IBM sur la sécurité des réseaux…

Serge Soudoplatoff : Je suis très intéressé par les applications business incluant par exemple le travail collaboratif, la relation client ou la vente de biens et services. Aurez vous vous une sorte de plan de route de IPI, de services web sur les serveurs qui seront publiés pour aider les gens à mieux savoir intégrer leur intranet ?
Ou bien devrons nous passer par IBM qui m’ont dit qu’ils commençaient à vendre des services web comme des bases ou des centres de données ? Comment cela va-t-il se passer ?

P.R : Je pense que nous devons travailler davantage sur une feuille de route. La raison pour laquelle nous n’avons pas donné de feuille de route jusqu’à présent est que nous ne savions pas exactement comment cela allait évoluer. Nous venons de commencer et cela va s’améliorer dans les tous prochains mois. Je suis plus à l’aise avec le moyen et long terme mais j’ai conscience qu’il nous faut fournir des orientations intermédiaires. C’est une évidence et notre nouveau PDG est là pour cela.

Stephane Desnault ou Stephane Zugzwang sur SL, Consultant stratégique, convergence :
Deux choses : Quand aurons nous une version de SL qui soit plus facile à mettre en oeuvre malgré les firewall des sociétés? Une tendance que j’ai remarqué consiste pour les sociétés comme Amazon a déployer une image partout dans le monde qui se déploie auprès de ses clients sans que ceux-ci n’aient à faire quoi que ce sot. Allons nous avoir droit à une image des serveurs SL que nous puissions déployer très facilement et rapidement?

P.R: Il existe des systèmes distribués, Google et Amazon l’ont annocé. Nous utilisons déjà Astree, le EC2 qui consiste à avoir un ordinateur fonctionnant comme un simulateur SL. Un problème se pose cependant, la simulation d’un monde virtuel dans un local suppose l’utilisation des CPU les plus puissants qui existent et les sims de virtualisation ne permettent pas d’avoir assez de puissance pour simuler SL, nous avonsd essayé EC2 pour SL mais cela ne fonctionne pas car c’est trop lent.
En ce qui concerne les firewalls, c’est plus facile. Nous travaillons avec IBM pour “tunneliser” SL pour le rendre plus perméable aux firewalls. C’est une nécessité. Personne ne travaille aujourd’hui sur ce sujet, c’est compliqué car il y a entre 15 et 20 connexions de réseaux. Nous devons parvenir à intégrer tout cela dans un seul tuyau propre au http.
Un autre problème réside dans l’installation du client, l’environnement informatique des sociétés ne permet pas d’installer le client. Nous devons essayer d’utiliser flash, des clients plus légers, ajax like par exemple. Je suis impatient de tester flash 10, il semble que cela puisse marcher, il a les fonctionnalités 3D. J’aimerais aussi pouvoir des gens créer leur avatar entièrement sur le web. Si quelqu’un ici veut travailler sur le sujet, s’il vous plait, qu’il s’y mette !

Jeanrem Beebe
J’ai entendu William Gibson dire il y a quelques semaines que nous ne sommes pas conscients du fait que le futur est déjà là . Pensez vous que SL soit une forme du futur déjà présent ? Quel est votre rêve en matière d’éducation dans SL ?

Philip Rosedale: J’adore William Gibson! Sa pensée exacte est : le futur est déjà là, c’est juste qu’il n’est pas équitablement partagé ! William Gibson est mon auteur préféré en ce qui concerne le metavers. Il est s’est promené dans SL et a eu une pensée très intéressante : en marchant dans Toronto, je vois des gens de Second Life dans la rue. Comme nous commençons à utiliser des avatars pour projeter une identité, d’une manière étrange, cela modifie la façon dont nous regardons dans le monde réel. J’ai parlé de cela à beaucoup d’utilisateurs de SL et me suis rendu compte que certains avaient changé leur façon de s’habiller. SL a une influence sur le monde réel. La distance séparant la fiction de la réalité s’amenuise de jours en jours. Jules Verne a écrit de la terre à la lune et cela a pris 74 ans avant de lancer le sputnik et nous avons marché sur la lune ! Snow Crash qui est la description la plus fidèle de Second Life a été publié en 1981 et cela nous a pris 15 ans pour réaliser SL !

Pour ce qui concerne le futur de l’éducation, je suis membre de deux conseils d’institutions scientifiques et suis persuadé que les sciences vont connaître un bond fantastique. Nous serons désormais capables d’enseigner la physique 10 fois plus rapidement. Il y a là des opportunités inouïes !

Gil Reveillon, LaSer : Il s’agit plus d’une vision stratégique cette fois … Vous nous avez parlé de votre site à Brighton en Angleterre, aux Etats Unis vous êtes de loin les leaders pour savoir et anticiper ce que sera l’internet de demain. En Chine il y a le CRD pour les mobiles , etc… Comment pouvons nous convaincre l’Europe et le gouvernement français de promouvoir et vendre la 3D au travers d’une plateforme qui serait uniquement basée à Brighton ? Quels sont vos intentions pour l’Europe ?

R.V: Si je résume, être à Brighton ce n’est pas être en Europe ? Nous sommes un peu frustrés…. Que comptez vous faire pour les résidents français et les sociétés spécialisées dans SL ?

P.R: Bien plus qu’un installateur… Nous avons un Second Life optionnel mais il n’est pas encore assez abouti pour être publié. Nous devons travailler ici et ouvrir des bureaux le plus tôt possible. Brighton compte 5 employés, nous nous développons aussi vite que possible. Le service doit également être amélioré.

Yohan Launay ConceptSL : Peut être serais-je poursuivi en justice dans les prochains mois pour le nom de ma société… ? Se diriger vers un logiciel en tant que service d’application d’hébergement et nous savons que Google est est extrêmement fiable en termes de qualité de services. Comment pouvons nous convaincre les sociétés de s’implanter dans SL si nous devons faire face à des problèmes de stabilité aussi fréquents?

P.R : Je suis d’accord, nous devons améliorer la stabilité. Je suis désolé que cela ne soit pas plus stable. Pourtant Google ne peut pas faire tourner Sl mieux que nous. Il y a une grande différence entre la capacité de stocker des données et de faire tourner SL . Quelle caractéristique du système êtes vous prêt à laisser de côté pour cela ?
Quand j’ai présenté Second Life, j’avais l’habitude d’avoir des photos de Pyramids, le plus grand centre commercial des Etats Unis. Vous pouvez imaginer comme cela peut être laid… disais-je Cela représente le plus grand édifice centralisé que les humains ont pu créer. J’avais d’autres photos, Paris centre, Tokyo, New York, ces villes sont intéressantes car elles ont été construites par chacun, elles sont chaotiques, parfois frustrantes, mais contiennent la magie de tout ce que nous aimons dans le monde. Je voulais que Second Life ressemble à cela.

R.V.Au nom de tous, je vous remercie de votre présence !

Sometimes, the weirdest things just happen.

Here I am, minding my own business in SL after a nice afternoon spent, well, actually, this is neither here nor there — minding my own business as I said, when this AV IMs me out of the blue. The conversation, if you want to call it that (and you will have to forgive the dazzling display of esprit that makes up my side ; I was a tad surprised) went like this :

[Name of avatar deleted for privacy reasons]
[15:14] Anonymous: don’t mute me plz don’t mute me
[15:14] Anonymous: their after me
[15:14] Anonymous: just listen to me just 1 min
[15:15] Anonymous: PLZE!
[15:15] Anonymous: their after me
[15:15] Rheta Shan: Err…
[15:15] Anonymous: thye will get me any min now
[15:15] Anonymous: u hav to let the world know
[15:16] Anonymous: SHIT
[15:16] Rheta Shan: Is this some kind of joke ?
[15:17] Rheta Shan: Hey ?
[15:19] Rheta Shan: Right, very funny, really…
[15:19] Second Life: User not online – message will be stored and delivered later.

Oh great, I thought, more to file under « another day in Second Life ». Shee-eesh.

Which would pretty much have concluded the whole episode (and made for a very poor blog post, if at all) if my subsequent spring cleaning hadn’t uprooted a notecard in my inventory I’m sure I never put there. Yes, I know there’s no way it could have gotten there without me agreeing to it. In fact, it should not be there, at all. But it is. Which, all things considered, is only half as weird as its content. If not less.

But read for yourself :

From: Community Management Task Force
Attn.: All Task Force personnel
Re: Assessment of current community management effort

EYES ONLY

I am aware of a certain level of worry as to the continuation of the community management effort directed by our Task Force now that Linden Research faces the advent of a new CEO. Although Mark Kingdon’s choice of avatar name seems to denote a particular propensity for intelligence type operations, the new CEO is an unknown quantity. A measure of worry in an operation as sensitive as ours is understandable.

To state it up front: I have received the most reliable assurances that operations of the Task Force will be continued independently of the change of regime. The Task Force is considered a success, and its operation will not be at the disposal of the new CEO.

Looking back at past operations, this is the logical thing to do: from its inception, the Task Force has been both resourceful and effective in exploring shadow community management strategies with a minimum of in-house personnel. Despite not faring well under financial review, our very first operation, codenamed Pravda, is still considered a tremendous success, firmly establishing a body of criticism that has been shied by most community members for being unacceptable, whatever factual truth it might contain.

With newer concepts in place, the Task Force is currently in a position to play on the natural dynamics of the fractured user community in a way that is far more cost effective. This has been duly noted and, far from suspending operations for the transition, continuation of codename Pitchfork has been greenlighted.

A first assessment of the preliminary phase of codename Pitchfork shows great promise. Injecting the ARC “feature” into the viewer code and making this public through the developper channels (SL Dev mailing list and early RC releases) has surpassed all our expectations. Without adding much on our side (though codename Pravda does contribute), the community has fractured over the signification of the measure, with prominent bloggers both hailing and damning the new “feature”. The superb effectiveness of the channel also is proven by the fact that of the technical articles maximising coverage of the “feature”, not one has even touched on its peculiar implementation.

The main deployment phase will include :

• getting Torley to do a video tutorial: “render cost lag explained, and how to get rid of it in 11 easy ways”, possibly with a cheering theme song;
• implementing client side visual muting features; these do not actually have to be functional – it’s the availability that counts as far as we are concerned. Please coordinate with the Dazzle team for best integration into the new UI;
• distributing updated welcome packs on one or more orientation areas containing a quest HUD and sword to new users before sending them off to kill as many red ARCs as possible (budget for “kill” bounties has been approved; sword and HUD still in testing). This will be declared as a new user experience program. Should “M” ask, we are trying to make inroads into the MMORPG market.

Later phases are still sketchy, although the parallel launch of several other “features” is planned. Further updates will be given on a need-to-know basis.

[Updated at 1:05am Pacific] It has come to our attention that this memo has been distributed to unauthorised persons, at least three of which are not Linden Research personnel. A redesign of our distribution system is considered in the near future to prevent incidents of this kind; as a stop gap measure, memos will only be provided in unique hardcopy form from now on, to be read under supervision in the Task Force’s office (HTML on a prim under consideration).

[Resolved at 2:10am Pacific] We have identified three accounts to which this memo has been transmitted by error and have terminated them. We are still working on resolving the account owner issues and expect to post a progress report soon.

I’ll admit reading this rattled me somewhat. After all, the ARC feature really exists. And the community’s range of reactions does oddly conform to the description, ranging from technical explanations (by Vint Falken, twice, and Tateru Nino) to the usual contradictory comments on the official blog and to opinion pieces as diverse as Lillie Yifu’s and Ciaran Laval’s. Also, despite the fact that the logical flaw in the whole ARC concept is glaringly obvious, it seems to have gone nearly unnoticed.

Maybe I’m just seeing things, but consider the following for a minute : according to Pastrami Linden’s blog post, ARC is aiming to quantify the workload that rendering avatars puts on your graphics hardware (which it calls costs) by adding up token values for typical GPU operations. The idea behind this is « educating Residents about how 3D art should be made » so as to reduce client side lag. To that aim, the ARC rates the value it has calculated by displaying it in traffic light colours (i.e. red is bad, yellow is so so, green is good). Now comes the bit where it stops making sense, at least to me : it rates them on an absolute scale.

Yes, you read that right — the ARC colour rating is entirely independent of the power of your graphics hardware. How well your GPU would handle the workload never goes into the equation. So we have costs all right, and bugger relative purchasing power, let’s just all yell « this is too expensive ! » together. I feel better already.

Admittedly, the blog does a brilliant job stepping around the issue altogether, blabbering about carbon footprints instead (of 150 commenters, exactly one asked about the scale). It’s such a neat piece of spin you could believe for one fleeting moment there really is an invisible hand pulling the strings. Especially as the original release notes dangle the option of not only rating, but actually visually muting people, before our noses. Some people drool over the option to blot others out of their world already, wishing for individual or estate based muting levels. Maybe that is what Pastrami meant by the hope for « community » regulation : render vigilantism à la « if your ARC is over X, I’ll mute you » notices.

But then again, distasteful as it is, why should it be a conspiracy ? There is nothing substantiating the authenticity of the notecard I found. The disappearance of the avatar that gave it to me, and the subsequent disappearance of the card itself in a freak asset server failure are probably nothing but the usual random SL madness. A much saner theory would be to consider ARC as one particularly enlightening example of LL’s development processes. Coders thinking « wouldn’t that be neat » in a corporate culture encouraging them to work on whatever they like is all that is needed. The proposed new rating system for search items, as published by Massively and commented upon by Jacek Antonelli (a dream come true to anybody wishing for an efficient way to mob SL entrepreneurs — protection racket, anyone ?), fits that bill quite nicely too. Bright ideas probably account for a much higher quota of human disasters than conspiracies.

Which is why I have decided I will not let my train of thought run further along the tracks of paranoia. No software service provider would ever go to this length to influence its own user base. Not even one where the founder believes he is building a country. He didn’t mean « including an intelligence service » by that, I’m sure.

As to the pizza delivery van with California plates that has been sitting on my street since yesterday, I am perfectly sure there is an innocuous reason for its presence in Paris. A Dodge 90’s models collector maybe.

See ? It all makes sense.

Bookmark this post…

Ce n’est donc plus une rumeur, mais une annonce que nous relayons ici! Comme Jean-Michel Billaut, une vingtaine de personnes auront la chance de participer vendredi 25/04/2008 à Paris à une rencontre avec Philip Rosedale.

Cette rencontre de la Communauté Française de Second Life, modérée par le Président de Community Chest, Robert Vinet se déroulera de 15h à 17h à Paris dans la First Life et sur l’île Crao Beach de Second Life.

Philip Rosedale fera tout d’abord une présentation avec Robert Vinet, suivie d’un échange avec les participants, composés essentiellement de représentants d’agences, de blogueurs SL et autres acteurs du Web 2.0.
Les participants pourront, dans une ambiance conviviale, rencontrer directement Philip Rosedale et lui poser quelques questions. Ils pourront ainsi partager leurs initiatives et présenter leurs projets inSL.

Ce sera aussi l’occasion pour Linden Lab de renforcer son lien avec la communauté française sur Second Life.

Les débats devraient s’articuler comme suit:
1. Linden Lab aujourd’hui: les ressources humaines et techniques, le business model, les partenariats, le nouveau rôle de P. Rosedale au sein de Linden Lab…
2. Second Life: le client open source, le serveur open source, la plateforme Second Life, le développement général de l’économie de Second Life, les partenariats et communautés…
3. Internet 3D & mondes virtuels: l’avenir des mondes virtuels, les principales direction de développement des univers virtuels, les ambitions de Linden Lab dans ce domaine…

Les candidats étant nombreux, il n’est malheureusement plus possible de rencontrer Philip Rosedale en First Life.

Cependant, Community Chest a fait en sorte que le plus de monde possible puisse assister à cette première en France: cette rencontre sera donc retransmise dans Second Life sur l’île Crao Beach de Community Chest.

Si vous souhaitez vous y rendre avec votre avatar, n’hésitez pas à contacter Community Chest (yvettejallade@community-chest.com).

Vous pouvez également installer le flux sur votre implantation:
http://www.community-chest.com/TVinSL.mov

Vous voulez venir avec nous sur Crao Beach:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Crao%20Beach/119/206/22

Your bad weather and poor economic conditions.
Our oppressive government.

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Catherine Linden does not listen.

She does not answer questions asked of her either.

Granted, the marketing director of Linden Lab did post a second time on the official Linden blog about the new trademark policy, in response to the outcry in the Second Life You-know-Where blogosphere, but this was nothing but a reiteration of the original position. The Lindens did not budge a millimetre.

Truth be said, there was one good thing about the second post : with the rephrasing cutting through the legalese, shortly after the revised ToS enforcing it was force fed on all residents at logon, many more bloggers started noticing things are really amiss — for one example, see Ciaran Laval’s change of mind on Your2ndPlace. Most important maybe, it spurned Gwyneth Llewelyn, whose « Second Life® Bloggers Require Clarification » (reproduced by express permission on my own blog) clearly put the blogosphere’s questions before the Lindens, to the next logical step of presenting them with a petition to reconsider their policies. Thanks to Gwyn’s efforts to mount a real campaign, the petition has been open to for review and suggestions by other SL Y-K-W bloggers before publication.

Whether you think already this is an issue, are convinced it is not, or are at loss about what to make of the whole fuss, I urge you to take the time to read the petition. Because, as you will realise when you do, Linden Lab are going far beyond the legitimate aim of protecting a vital business asset of theirs in the form of their trademarks. Not only did they suddenly revert a policy which has led thousands of residents to create blogs, fansites, services and similar around the world they live in, and that quite in agreement with the then lenient guidelines of Linden Lab, effectively thanking good and unpaid community building with a kick in the vitals and breaking all rules of good faith, both legal and moral, in my book — they also have abrogated themselves a censor’s right to decree how, and what is to be written about their products anywhere on the internet as long as you are a resident and wish to stay so, as Kit Meredith succinctly resumed.

But don’t take my word for it. Gwyn and her contributors have put all of the matters at hand much better than I could ever do it on my own, and the petition even offers what I think is quite a reasonable compromise to the Lab. Find it quoted in full after the fold :

Petition to Linden Lab on the Policy of Trademark Enforcement

Linden Research Inc., a company incorporated in Delaware, United States of America (”Linden”), doing business as Linden Lab®, developers of the Second Life® virtual world platform, owners of not only the Second Life® registered trademark (in the US, Europe, and other countries), and the eye-on-hand logo, but also of several recently registered trademarks (including, but not exclusive, to the words “SL”, “SL Grid”, “Second Life Grid”, “2nd Life”, etc.), has launched, in May 2004, the “Second Life® Fansite Toolkit”, which was later reinforced with referral programmes like “Viva La Evolution”, to positively encourage the widespread use of Linden’s trademarks, so long as it was quite clearly displayed that no infringement was intended, and a disclaimer to non-affiliation to Linden.

A direct quotation of the previous accepted use includes the following paragraph:

USE OF SECOND LIFE MARKS

While you are in full compliance with the usage guidelines described here, you may use the “Second Life” name on your website, as well as the related logos and graphics available at Toolkit, solely in the form described there. Additionally, you may use screenshots from Second Life to the extent that Linden Lab has the right to authorize use of the content within such screenshot, including screenshots of Linden in-world objects and Linden avatars, subject to these usage guidelines.

The full text of the acceptable use of Linden’s trademarks is published here. Three versions of the Fansite Toolkit were distributed by Linden, which included banners, logos, and a set of images, as well as a PDF encouraging their dissemination (the link is not available any more).

Under these gentle terms, users of the Second Life® platform have set up dozens of thousands of websites, blogs, forums, 3rd party services (both inside the Second Life® environment or on the World-Wide Web). The intended purpose of the “Fansite Toolkit” was not only accomplished, but overwhelmingly effective. From about 10,000 registered users in May 2004, the number of registrations climbed to over 13 million users in March 2008, and the growth continues — as well as the growth in the number of fansites related to the Second Life® environment. A quick search on Google comparing the number of times “Second Life” is referred on Linden’s own sites (9000+ results) compared to what the non-Linden sites (24 million results) shows quite clearly that the promotion and marketing of “Second Life” as a Linden product is, by far, being done outside Linden’s own feeble efforts — as it was intended.

The terms of the “Fansite Toolkit” enabled furthermore a small startup company in San Francisco, without any advertising, promotion, or little public relations in 2004, to create one of the most effectively known technologies on the Internet, enjoying raving press reviews in late 2006, and, since then, a product and an environment that cannot be further ignored by the mainstream. Like it or hate it, the Second Life® virtual world is now part of the Internet’s history. All this was achieved thanks to the huge community of very enthusiastic users of Linden’s platform, who have promoted its use way beyond Linden’s own ability to market their own product.

“Genericide”

The secret of Second Life®’s success was, however, accompanied by an adaptation of the word to describe not only Linden’s product, but a new concept that did not exist before: a community of users that generate content in a shared environment, using Linden’s tools and Linden-managed computer servers to provide an interconnected grid where this content can exist. The usage of “Second Life” was never strictly associated with the client software (the 3D viewer installed on users’ computers), the server software (running on Linden’s servers), or the communication protocol (which, until recently, was even unnamed). Rather, “Second Life” was employed, for the past four years, to describe all the above together as a technology empowering user-created content in a virtual world environment using Linden’s technology. The subtle difference has, however, huge implications. “Second Life”, as employed on the 24 million links stored by Google (ref), describes not patented software (the Second Life® client is, indeed, free and open source) nor a “technology”, but an “environment”, a “virtual world”.

The situation is very analogous to the usage of the terms “World-Wide Web” or “Internet” (the latter having at some point been trademarked by Microsoft around 1995, with little success), both describing a certain use of several technologies, hardware, software, and telecommunications, but where no definite claim can be made on the resulting environment created by a community of users. Derivative words like “Internet Service Provider” or “Web consultant” are popularly used. The difference between those two terms is that no organisation currently managed to secure a claim to those names.

But further examples are also common, where registered trademarks have been adopted by a community of users generating content for their platforms. Thousands of sites and technologies have used the term “Mac” in their names, or even “Windows” (clear cases where the respective owners, Apple and Microsoft, have indeed solidly claimed their registered trademarks). “Mac” and “Windows” fansites abound and help the promotion of these technologies and platforms. The difference, in those two cases, is that the popularity of those technologies was heavily promoted by their owners through massive advertising and public relations. And still both companies “allow” the widespread use of their trademarked names in 3rd party websites, fansites, service providers, or even products!

Second Life®, by contrast, never enjoyed the same level of promotion by Linden. It relied on the “Fansite Toolkit” as the primary — and most successful! — way of “viral marketing”, effectively crowdsourcing the co-promotion of the Second Life® virtual world by its users. And these, obviously, were very eager to do so — since all participants in the virtual world, Linden and their users, benefit tremendously from this cooperative promotion. “Your World, Your Imagination”, Linden’s motto for their Second Life® virtual world platform, was taken to an extreme, and perhaps unprecedented, level in the history of technology dissemination.

Linden, however, now fears (probably very correctly) that the usage of Second Life® might fall under “genericide”.

Recent developments

Possibly advised by their legal advisers, Linden announced here and here that they would start as of now to aggressively discourage the usage of all Linden-related registered trademarks, thus effectively reverting its four-year old policy of co-promotion through marketing crowdsourcing. The major issue with the current population of Second Life® users is that dozens of thousands of products and services were created within compliance with the old guidelines, and there is no provision made by Linden to “grandfather” existing services now currently in existence. Almost all have no legal protection that will allow them to contest any of Linden’s claims in court to shut their services down if they receive Linden’s Cease & Desist letters. Linden’s claim to their trademarks is, naturally, factually correct, unambiguous, and entirely within Linden’s rights.

There is, however, one aspect of Linden’s claims where we feel the Guidelines are overshooting the legitimate intent of Linden Research in preserving their trademarked brands and preventing their dilution. We refer to the section “Proper Reference to Linden Lab’s Brand Names in Text”, which basically outlines how any mention of terms trademarked by Linden has to be written in any text published. Among other things, it claims to make sure the brand names are only ever used with an “appropriate generic noun” of which Linden provides a list, and that “as often as possible”, down to capitalisation, spelling, elisions and contractions. In effect, this precludes any usage of trademarked terms in text in most of the forms current nowadays, and dictates to commentators, bloggers and critics how and what to write when referring to trademarked terms.

The issue, however, is even more serious. Although Linden’s prevention of the use of trademarks under the new guidelines could be contested in court, either in the US or elsewhere, possibly appealing to estoppel, as a matter of fact, Linden can — through its new Terms of Service, that all users required to sign to access their content on Linden’s virtual world — simply ban any user that Linden considers to be in violation of their trademark claims. By virtue of the same principle, Linden can simply ban any user that exerts his or her rights to free speech, nominative use of trademarked terms as laid down by US law, or equivalent rights under local legislation.

This is “doing justice with your own hands” — without laws, without trial, without a jury, without recourse. The Linden Terms of Service allow Linden to ban any user from using their services, without any reason whatsoever. Linden can, at whim, delete accounts and content (even copyrighted content) from any user without a complaint.

Granted, complaints can be filed against Linden — but in a court of law. In at least one case (Bragg vs. Linden), a user of the Second Life® world managed, through a lawsuit, and with a settlement agreement, to get access to his content back. But this requires effectively users to sue Linden in order to get their access back, no matter if they are or not violating Linden’s trademarks. Linden does not require any impartial judgment to validate a user’s claims on the lack of violation. Linden can safely ignore their four-year-old policy and revert their decision at whim — because they can ban accounts that refuse to comply with their new Terms of Service.

In effect, Linden is able to enforce their own interpretation of the usage of their trademarks by banning all content they view as “threatening” to their claims on registered trademarks, no matter if it is displayed inside Linden’s virtual world or anywhere else on the world. Linden’s decision to ban avatars and remove content is unilateral and not appealable unless a user is willing to sue Linden in a court under the jurisdiction of the State of California.

This total reversal of Linden’s policy threatens to shut down most (fortunately not all) of the sites providing 24 million links to Linden’s products and services; it threatens to deprive Second Life of hundreds or thousands of 3rd party services, websites, fan sites, blogs, Second Life®-specific media, artistic and cultural developments, educational and research efforts — not to mention thousands or dozens of thousands of the most energic “evangelisers” that have co-promoted Linden’s products and technologies in the past which might, in less than three months, see their accounts banned and their content deleted with little or no hope of appeal.

Open petition to Linden Research, Inc.

The community of users of the Second Life® world always recognised, beyond a shadow of doubt, Linden’s full right to its registered trademarks, which were almost always duly credited, and clearly stated their non-affiliation with Linden and that they had no intention of infringing in any of Linden’s rights or claims to the trademarks. Some of those trademarks were never disputed, for several years since their registration and use by Linden, and Linden’s claim to them is solid and universally accepted world-wide. Linden, in return, gently condescended to a limited usage of their registered trademarks for specific purposes, well stated in a clear document (the “Fansite Guidelines”). The very few exceptions where abuse occurred could be effectively dealt with by Linden’s own legal advisers and were very reduced in number.

It is our belief that the extreme switch to the complete opposite of what has been actively promoted in the past four years is not a good marketing strategy — effectively, fighting off, one by one, all the most energetic promoters of Linden and their products, shutting down their right to talk and co-promote Linden’s technology and environment, ban their accounts, and remove their content. A four-year policy grants (at least under estoppel) the large community of enthusiastic supporters the moral right to request from Linden a better model of co-promotion, one that is fair and balanced, protective of Linden’s legal rights as valid owners of their registered trademarks, but also that allows “fansites” to continue to spread and promote Linden’s products without fear of litigation.

We thus propose the following:

1. Accept that, by introducing the “Fansite Guidelines” four years ago, Linden effectively allowed co-branding and co-promotion of their registered trademarks, so long as these were displayed on “website[s] created and maintained by residents or other devotees of Second Life®, with content primarily focused on some aspect of Second Life.” and had no other purpose. These “Fansite Guidelines” lead to fair expectations (under estoppel) of goodwill of Linden towards a fair use of their trademarks without intention to infringe on any of Linden’s rights.
2. Rewrite, but not eliminate, the “Fansite Guidelines” to be more strict, but still allow the usage of Linden’s trademarked words as part of the co-promotional effects, accepting that their existence in no way invalidates Linden’s claims on their registered trademarks, but only serve as a vehicle for promotion and marketing.
3. Require that all such websites register with Linden and formally accept the Guidelines (very similar to the request for the display of the “inSL” logo). Remember your international audience, too, and provide translations as well.
4. Reinforce the duty of all websites under the “Fansite Guidelines” to be strictly compliant with these, or face a Cease & Desist letter/Takedown notice.
   Request to all owners of such websites a clear display of their non-affiliation with Linden or its subsidiaries, stated clearly and unambiguously.
5. Reword the statements of the Brand Center, which currently states that no requests for the usage of any of the trademarks (with few exceptions) will be taken, and that most emails will never be answered (or even read). Instead, work on a case-by-case basis, grandfather existing products and services, and work with organisations, groups, and companies owning those websites to make sure they clearly comply with the Guidelines.
6. Request assistance from the users to locate, identify, and report websites where your Fansite Guidelines are not in compliance, or their non-affiliation with Linden is not being clearly and unambiguously stated, or where your registered trademarks are illegally used. Deal with each case separately and encourage first the non-compliant websites to voluntarily display conforming information, and threaten with a Cease & Desist or takedown letter if they refuse.
7. Remove the threat to ban avatars from users that have inadvertently ignored (or misunderstood) the Guidelines. Instead, warn them and give due notice of their lack of compliance with the Guidelines, encourage them to sign on and register their sites, and validate their compliance after the warning.
8. Continue to invest in the world-wide co-promotion of the “Second Life®” brand by launching different levels of “affiliation programmes”; “inSL” is a good start but a very weak one with limited value (no aggressive promotion by Linden of the logo and word).

We would also request Linden to further clarify the potentially censurous policy towards residents implied in the guidelines in conjunction with the Terms of Service:

1. Clarify that the rules and policies outlined in the brand guidelines under the heading of Proper Reference to Linden Lab’s Brand Names in Text do not apply to cases covered by rights of free speech, including but not limited to nominative use of trademarked terms under US law and equivalent rights conferred upon users of the Second Life® service by local legislation.
2. Clarify that Linden Research does not intend to ban or threaten to ban users exerting the rights delineated above, independently of the contractual relationship created by their usage of the Second Life® service.

We feel that the above proposal, if correctly implemented, and duly promoted, will not only reinforce Linden’s claim to their registered trademarks, but positively encourage their further widespread in all media, without hurting the millions of hours spent in the past year by dozens of thousand of users to promote and disseminate Linden’s products and services world-wide.

Disclaimer: the petition was originally authored by Gwyneth Llewelyn, with contributions by others you will find acknowledged on its original place of publication : Gwyn’s blog, and is reproduced here with her express permission.

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Ogni tanto, parlando di architettura digitale, salta fuori una qualche citazione riferita ad Abbott ed al suo Flatlandia. Il libro descrive un mondo completamente piatto (Flat, appunto), abitato da figure geometriche bidimensionali, e gestite da un rigido modello sociale che sembra quasi ricalcare il paradigma euclideo. Ad un certo punto del romanzo, un’abitante di Flatlandia, Quadrato, entra in contatto con Sfera, uno dei residenti di Spacelandia, mondo riempito da figure solide. Sfera diventa una sorta di maestro per Quadrato, il quale viene iniziato alla presa di coscienza del nuovo universo. In seguito Quadrato racconta di come gli abitanti di Flatlandia abbiano reagito al suo tentativo di illustrare la presenza di una terza dimensione. Ma contrariamente ai concittadini del narratore, la scoperta della terza dimensione da parte dello stesso, viene colonizzato (dall’etimo di cultura, e non colonia). Questo alzare lo sguardo verso z è stato il motore che ha messo in moto tutta una serie di studi specifici sullo spazio e la sua fruizione. Ma cosa ci ha guadagnato la figurina bidimensionale nella scoperta della terza dimensione? Certo, come metafora del limite delle nostre conoscenze, il racconto di Abbott è molto efficace, e le disavventure dell’incompreso Quadrato sono diventati precedenti esemplari per i militanti dei mondi virtuali. Ma come Sfera, questi, rifiutano lo scavalcamento della terza dimensione. Infatti pur avendo Sfera iniziato Quadrato al mondo delle tre dimensioni, quando Quadrato ipotizza l’esistenza di mondi con quattro, cinque, sei, n dimensioni, il solido lo zittisce affermando che il modo ha solo tre dimensioni e non può averne oltre. Il maestro si dimostra più miope dell’allievo, che, nell’eccitazione della nuova scoperta, risulta più curioso del primo, il quale non riesce ad proiettare la propria mente oltre i propri sensi. La nostra condizione, allo stato dell’arte, vestendo i panni del progettista web, non è troppo diversa da quella di Sfera. L’unica differenza è che noi siamo in bilico tra le 2 e le 3 dimensioni. E forse questo potrebbe offrirci un piccolo vantaggio. Perché? Il perché di questo è in realtà non del tutto scontato, e preferisco spostare l’attenzione su un altro punto: Perché dovremmo desiderare un web visualizzato in tre dimensioni, piuttosto che continuare ad usare la classica e funzionale pagina? In fondo, negli ultimi anni la sua struttura si è molto potenziata, e continuamente vengono messe a punto migliorie che offrono nuovi spunti sia ai designer sia ai tecnici. La saggistica propone decine di argomentazioni per sponsorizzare l’uso dello spazio come fonte privilegiata di navigazione, come ad esempio la ricerca di un maggior realismo dell’interfaccia (con un consequenziale maggior coinvolgimento da parte dell’utente), oppure quella di una più pertinente rappresentazione della realtà teorizzata sull’attuale virtuale. In realtà questo tipo di approccio (ortodossi della teoria, perdonatemi) non riesco a non trovarlo ingenuo. Infatti, ne la simulazione, ne la rappresentazione, sono pretesti pertinenti a giustificare l’investimento culturale in una ricerca di tale dimensione. Considerando anche l’inadeguatezza delle categorie di simulazione e di rappresentazione in questo contesto. Tra gli altri deterrenti, il dover ridisegnare ogni portale secondo i canoni della modellazione VRML, comporterebbe un’opera di stoccaggio di dimensioni titaniche. Questo porterà contemporaneamente ad una giustificazione teorica per la nascita di una archeologia del net, con la conseguente ridefinizione di molti dei concetti elaborati ad hoc, come quello di fluidità delle informazioni, o tempo reale, dato che in un ottica conservativa varrebbe la pena di ripensare. Prima o poi dovremmo scontrarci con questi problemi, e dunque sarebbe bene iniziare a riflettere su questi argomenti, ma credo che sia anche necessario, funzionalmente alla creazione di questa ipotetica nuova e paradossale archeologia, capire il passaggio tra le due modalità, e capire perché la simulazione/rappresentazione non sono pertinenti come parametri di studio. Non giustificabili non solo perché idee poco appetibili alla meccanica del Wired, ma soprattutto perché riferite ad un approccio di matrice postmoderna che per quanto stimolante, rischia di far impantanare le ricerche nelle paludi della semiotica. Un esempio di questa stagnazione è Second Life, che nonostante le potenzialità enormi del mezzo, l’indirizzo dato in partenza (verso una simulazione/rappresentazione di una vita virtuale) ha portato l’intero progetto a fermarsi in una stucchevole idealizzazione della città virtuale, simile a quelle dei fondali rinascimentali. Non che manchino casi di sfruttamento fortemente sperimentale di Second Life, ma sono per la maggior parte progetti di arte digitale chiusi in se stessi (dunque, dove si impone il paradosso dell’assenza della relazione all’interno della rete) oppure progetti di scripting art penalizzati dai limiti tecnici dell’architettura di Second Life. Nonostante in Second Life ci siano delle eccezioni alle due macro categorie che ho fittiziamente costruito e riportato (come la straordinaria land Svarga, progetto che, speculando sull’emergente nozione di vita artificiale, ricrea un intero mondo formato da una flora fantastica che cresce, si riproduce e muore, assecondando i tic di un DNA scriptato, progettato senza bisogno di staminali…), il grosso malinteso che gira attorno, e nutre, il problema è la diffusione e l’appeal delle così dette Realtà Virtuale e dei Mondi Virtuali. Manovich ne Il Linguaggio dei Nuovi Media ricorda l’influenza reciproca tra il cinema (strumento nato per rappresentare) e le tecnologie di modellazione (strumenti nati per simulare), parlando di Realtà Virtuali per quanto riguarda il mondo della rappresentazione e Mondi Virtuali. Gli esempi citati sono esemplari per descrivere una tendenza di studio del virtuale e del web 3d. Ma c’è dell’altro. Qualche riga fa è emerso che la nostra supposta condizione di equilibrio tra 2 e 3 dimensioni potrebbe essere un vantaggio, lasciando una qualsiasi motivazione in sospeso. Questo è più facile da capire, se proviamo a tracciare la strada verso la categoria dell’Infoambiente, dove la terza dimensione non viene usata per dare una resa più realistica o una rappresentazione più pertinente, ma per dare una grana di informazioni maggiore e qualitativamente diversa. Tanto per parafrasare il Generale Barbagli, eroe di Fascisti su Marte,

L’informazione ha diritto alla sua espansione anche in verticale!.

Se il carattere tipografico e il contenuto multimediale sono gli elementi essenziali della pagina web (per quanto si possa discutere sulla natura del contenuto audio), a farla da padroni nell’infoambiente saranno i concetti di Mappa, Modello e Telecamera. Ma questo ancora non chiarisce il vantaggio acquisito dalla nostra posizione di equilibrio delle dimensioni. Allora, connettiamoci solo un’istante in Second Life, giusto per leggere una qualsiasi cosa. Difficile vero? Il vero problema delle piattaforme di Realtà Virtuale e Mondi Virtuali attualmente on line è proprio all’interno della sua natura: quello di cercare di rappresentare e simulare. Cercare di fruire di contenuti all’interno di questi luoghi, progettati soprattutto per una fruizione unicamente ludica, diventa una questione di pazienza. L’unica gerarchia visiva offerta all’utente per orientarsi all’interno dei dati diventa la prospettiva. Sembra quasi che la fruizione dei contenuti sia un problema urbanistico. Da questo punto di vista, la precedente interfaccia di ActiveWorld, altro mondo virtuale progettato e reso online ben prima di SecondLife, sembra maggiormente evoluto: al fianco della finestra 3d, si apre un browser tradizionale che da informazioni sugli spazi che si sta visitando e sugli oggetti cliccati.

Dunque Second Life sembra aver fatto un passo indietro, dal punto di vista da cui si sta analizzando la questione. Ma come Second Life viene utilizzato per lo più verso strategie volte al business e l’entertaintment, la stessa LindenLab si impegna in progetti ben più sperimentali volti a questa integrazione quasi frattale tra il 2d ed il 3d. Come uBrowser, nato dalla collaborazione con il team di Mozzilla. Ampliando alla font ed al contenuto multimediale, il concetto di mappa UV (ossia l’immagine che colora il modello tridimensionale), si è creato quello che si spera essere lo standard per il 3d browser del prossimo futuro: nella versione beta, pubblicata nel Febbraio del 2006, dei solidi in VRML, navigabili attraverso una ancora immatura telecamera, vengono vestiti con le pagine web aperte dall’utente, trasformando così la fruizione della pagina in una esperienza tattile.
Tutte le funzioni del browser tradizionale vengono mantenute, ma la fruizione viene stravolta, senza che l’interezza dell’informazione possa esserne corrotta.
Potrebbe essere considerato questo un passo avanti? Forse si, se l’intuizione avuta Da Linden e Mozzilla verrà sviluppata, sicuramente possiamo dire di aver oltrepassato un primo scoglio in direzione dell’Infoambiente. In un futuro prossimo, è da sperare che il supporto tridimensionale di uBrowser, per ora fermo ad un cubo, una sfera ed un fazzoletto (in movimento!) possa essere dinamicamente sostituito con altri a scelta dell’utente, per far si che il web design si sposti verso una progettazione non più, o non solo, di pagine web, ma di corpi web. Come attraverso i vari css, xml, php, noi inseriamo banner e contenuti inviati da piattaforme di supporto, sarà possibile creare il layout tridimensionale adatto alla comunicazione che si intende perseguire. La strutturazione di un sito internet diventerebbe un problema non solo grafico, ma più specificatamente architettonico, dove la gestione degli spazi dell’informazione diventerebbe il problema principale. Ovviamente, una perdita, o comunque cambiamento di informazione sarà richiesto, e sarebbe lecito chiedersi se vale la pena impegnarsi in questa ricerca. Ma per tornare a Manovich,

Le immagini realizzate al computer vengono compresse usando tecniche di compressione selettive, come il JPEG. Perciò la presenza di disturbo (nel senso di elementi indesiderabili e di perdita di informazioni) è una caratteristica essenziale, non accidentale.

Disclaimer : The following manifesto has been published by Gwyneth Llewelyn, on her own blog. It is reprinted here to show my support of its intent. All credits for the manifesto itelf go to Gwyn. As I quote it verbatim, I have excepted it from the new terminology in vigour elsewhere on my blog.

Dear Linden Lab®,

Your recent change of policy regarding the usage of your trademarks — Second Life®, Linden Lab®, and others registered by Linden Research Inc. — will effectively prevent the operation of the very vibrant community of bloggers, forum posters, websites, community portals, and even 3rd party services, that have provided Linden Lab® with links and driving traffic to your blog, and raising brand awareness for free for your product Second Life®.

Probably thousands — if not dozens of thousands — of sites include (now illegitimately) the name “Second Life®” or “SL®” somewhere in their names. From sites like Reuters (which has a Second Life® channel) to whole companies that have a “Second Life® Division” (and promotes your product by the explicit naming of it), a plethora of online communities, products, and services — some free, other commercial, many in the limbo between both extremes — include, in some way, your registered trademarks.

Your previous policy, established in May 2004 (”Second Life® Fansite Tolkit”), and later reinforced with referral programmes like “Viva La Evolution”, positively encouraged the widespread use of your trademarks, so long as it was quite clearly displayed that no infringement was intended. To requote your own terms of agreement for the usage of your trademarks:

USE OF SECOND LIFE MARKS

While you are in full compliance with the usage guidelines described here, you may use the “Second Life” name on your website, as well as the related logos and graphics available at Toolkit, solely in the form described there. Additionally, you may use screenshots from Second Life to the extent that Linden Lab has the right to authorize use of the content within such screenshot, including screenshots of Linden in-world objects and Linden avatars, subject to these usage guidelines.

Under those very friendly terms, a plethora of fansites of all sorts popped up, driving traffic to Second Life®’s main website, its blogs, forums, and other related sites — making SL®’s own ranking quite high on Google, Alexa, and other systems — while at the same time, in a period of a little less than four years, allowing the number of registered users to skyrocket from 10,000 to 13 million.

Fansites, blogs, 3rd party sites, Second Life®-related online communities, 3rd party sites that create products and services related to Second Life® are the “off-world” counterpart of the dynamic and enthusiastic community that made Second Life®, as a brand, get world-wide recognition — without the need for Linden Lab® to spend millions in advertising and campaigns on the media. We worked for free on the promotion, brand awareness, and market recognition of your products — while, at the same time, we also worked for free creating the fantastic content of the 3D environment that makes Second Life® a place worth to visit, to enjoy, to chat, to socially connect, to do business, and launch the pillars of the upcoming metaverse — fulfilling Philip ‘Linden®’ Rosedale’s dream of having more users in Second Life® than on the Web.

We’ve been the ones ultimately promoting that vision, spreading it around, and making sure that the world noticed your product and your brand. We were very successful — thanks to your gentle and encouraging former policies.

And for four years, you have been thankful enough to allow us to do that promotion, by establishing very reasonable and clear guidelines of the terms of usage of your trademarks.

Your sudden reversal of position — effectively limiting the display of the name “Second Life®” on most sites, domain names, products, and services, through a mechanism of explicit approval that you fully admit “can take long and might never finish” and will only be available to a very limited number of sites — means that suddenly all the off-world promotion of Second Life® will necessarily have to stop; or face a lawsuit in court; or, at the very least, receive a Cease & Desist letter from your lawyers and be forced to shut down.

The current terms can be aggressively enforced or not. According to your blog, we are supposed to have a 90-day grace period to remove all mentioning of Second Life® and its logo from our fansites, blogs, forums, or 3rd party sites offering products and services related to Second Life®. In fact, what this means is that we are forced not to talk about Second Life® any more — or, if we do, we cannot explicitly name the product at all.

This is, obviously, absurd.

The compromise between Linden Research Inc. (owners of the registered trademarks) and the community of volunteers that have so faithfully promoted your product, Second Life®, was quite clear for the past four years. We had clear guidelines of what we could do and what we couldn’t. Abuses could still be effectively dealt with by your legal department; to the world’s knowledge, these cases were few and scattered, if any. They were not significative to prevent a vast number of dozens of thousands of sites of all sorts to draw traffic to your own site; to reach out the huge audience on the Internet; and to drive new users to register. The numbers fortunately speak for themselves: with almost zero promotional costs, you managed to grow a thousand times in four years, thanks to crowdsourcing the promotion of Second Life®.

The “inSL” programme is definitely interesting, but a small new logo, worthless to an audience of hundreds of millions of users that are familiar with the eye-on-hand logo, without a massive campaign of promotion behind it to reflect the logo change, is not enough. “inSL” doesn’t say much, and it cannot be expanded to talk and promote Second Life® directly. And, anyway, the same restrictions apply to the usage of “inSL” as with all your other trademarks. We appreciate the grant to use that new logo, but we also feel it will be unable to gather the same support and promotional effort as the old logo and the product name did in the past four years.

We would thus kindly request that you clarify your position regarding the usage of the trademarks Second Life® and the logo on all fansites, blogs, forums, or other 3rd party websites offering products and services related to Second Life®. This clarification should be as easy to follow as your previous policies on the usage of those trademarks. They should make clear that all people intending to promote your product and raise your brand awareness are not facing lawsuits because they have faithfully used your trademarks using the old policy, and wish to continue to do so in the future.

We consider that an appropriate response should be forthcoming in the next few days, or we will be forced to shut down our own blogs, websites, forums, community portals, and other 3rd party sites to avoid litigation — and thus deprieving Linden Lab® from the traffic generated by millions of direct links and millions of viewers that learn first about Second Life® through all those sites.

Personal note: This blog will enter on strike on April 15th, 2008, for a period of 3 days, if no clarification by Linden Lab is published before that date.

following up on your post on the Official Linden Blog on the Brand Center, I turn to you today in my quest for an instance able to certify that the measures I have taken on my blog do indeed make it conform to the new trademark policy of Linden Research. Not wishing to incur costly legal disputes, I have made the following amends :

• All mentions of Linden Research’s trademark « Second Life » have been replaced by « You-Know-Where » throughout all posts, pages and comments.
• All mentions of Linden Research’s trademark « SL » have been replaced by « Y-K-W » throughout all posts, pages and comments.
• All mentions of Linden Research’s trademark « grid » have been replaced by « you know where » throughout all posts, pages and comments.
• Common derivative terms have been adapted as fitted this  « Second Lifers » for instance has been replaced by « You-Know-Where denizens » throughout all posts, pages and comments, « SLURL » by « Y-K-W-URL », etc.
• Related uses of Linden Research trademarks have been corrected likewise : the subtitle of the blog now reads « Rheta Shan’s You-Know-Where blog », and posts relating to the trademarked product are now tagged « you-know-where ».
• The Disclaimer page has also been amended to conform to the required form.
• Finally, all errant « s » appended to Linden Lab have been removed throughout all posts, pages and comments.

I have left these edits documented for inspection, and will do so for the length of the grace period generously offered by Linden Research, or until a crack team of censors trademark lawyers from your office signifies the all-clear for this measure, preferably with an official seal of approval (a large watermark « TM » might be fitting). I must however preemptively beg your leniency as to an issue that is bugging me : the title of the post Second Life Guess, which, as any expert you care to consult will probably be able to explain to you, is a pun, or play on words – I’d appreciate a proposal on how to handle the translation into the new terminology in this case. I also must apologize for not having converted the incriminated trademarked terms to the new form in URLs, as I have not found a solution to do so this without breaking the link to the targeted page. On this matter too, advice would be greatly welcome.

Once approval is given, I will extend this corrections to all other statements on the web I have made, as far as I have editorial rights to these (I am very much afraid there is not much I can do about old Twitter posts, barring deleting them all. Would that be the suggested course ?).

If I may, I would urge you to accede to my request in a timely fashion, allowing me to turn this blog into a shiny example for the entire Second Life You-Know-Where-related blogosphere. I can promise that, once your and the censors’ trademark lawyers’s approval has been given, I will use my influence in blogger circles for the blogosphere to follow my example and conform to your expectations.

Do not hesitate to contact me, in-world or here, in case of questions.
Cordially yours
Rheta Shan (avatar)

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“Changing my Job“, wrote Philip Linden in the Second Life Blog.

Wow, this headline attracted my attention! First Cory, now Philip? No, the opposite! Everything is in order. The more, I think Philip is making a wise (maybe overdue) step:

Fast and enormous growth changes a lot of aspects of startups. Philip will stay the one with the vision and have a new CEO do the work of organisation and management. Both can concentrate on their job with full energy.

Quote the LL Blog:

As to title, I will become chairman of the board. I will be 100% involved and fulltime at Linden Lab. Second Life is my life’s work, and I am not going anywhere! I will focus on product strategy and vision, continuing to design the right kind of company, and being an effective communicator and evangelist about Second Life. As a community member, you will probably see more of me in-world.

Philip Linden, Lindenlab Blog

http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/03/14/changing-my-job/

Ok, I take you at your word, Philip! You’re invited to the next large Party on Laguna Nude Beach (coming soon!) )

[I apologize for not being able to correct the title of this post so as to conform to the new trademark policy of Linden Research. A suggestion by the office of C. Linden and / or Linden Research's censorship trademark lawyers is however pending]

Linden Lab’s ban on SL Y-K-W banks is in effect as of today, on the dot two weeks after it has been announced. Two weeks in which, in the words of Massively’s Tateru Nino :

…we’ve had protests – some assuredly genuine, some apparently staged – runs on banks (a sort of game of musical chairs, where everyone hopes not to be the one left standing when the music stops), and the usual commingled mish-mash of cheering, screaming, jesting and angry outbursts…

— much of it happening in the SL Y-K-W blogosphere (see my own round-up of it here). Now the grace period is over, the economic effect of the ban turns to have fallen somewhat short of the sky caving in, in fact seeming to be near to negligible for the SL Y-K-W economy as a whole (though I am sure that on the personal level, for people having lost money in the crash, this is an entirely different story).

Seeing that and the fact that Linden Lab seem nowhere close to reverting their decision, the discussion of the pro and con seems to have petered out somewhat. Artur Fermi stating in essence « Good riddance, and keep the hype down » on Your2ndPlace and Aldon Huffhines / Hynes arguing on SLNN that Linden Lab’s decision is ill conceived and drives needed financial services out of the official grid, and that LL should reconsider are more or less the last ones to battle it out. Prokofy Neva and Benjamin Duranske on the other hand have added most welcome shades of grey to the often black and white discussion by casting some light on the people behind the banks. So, what am I up to, besides fawning for some more pats on the back for my diligent compiling work ?

Well, there is a twist on the debate I find fascinating : it is the guessing going on about LL’s rationale. Everyone I spoke to on the matter seems to have their own pet theory of why the Lindens acted the way they did (starting from one very smart person dear to my heart, Void Singer, whom I mention here because she wrenched that contribution from the claws of her depression ; please go over to her blog and give her a virtual hug, everybody). One of the more popular theories seems to be that LL faced a subpoena in the legal battle (purportedly, one should add) pitting Midas Commons against the World Stock Exchange — read the gist of it here. Note that this conclusion is basically, and somewhat daringly, extrapolated from a blog entry by Lindsey Druart of in-world L & L Corporation. Put in less kind terms, it is sheer guesswork based on a single, unverified source.

Now I’m not bashing Aldon ; the same remark holds true of all other theories, including my own. Just watch us pundits latch on minute signs, nearly unrelated facts, few and in between sources inside and outside the Lab — unverifiable by the very lack of collateral information — as well as on the occasional leaked document (with its authenticity, and possible rationale for the leak, discussed, as it was for Philip Rosedale’s internal email on Cory Ondrejka’s departure from the Lab — see here and here for examples) ; watch us construct theories (again, and with my apologies for this kind of reference, see here and here) on the Lab’s internals decision making processes, power balance and future direction on the authority of these crumbs. Doesn’t it all strike you as very reminiscent of the guesswork, sorry, I meant to say political analysis, going on when it comes to judging the internal decision making of authoritarian and tightly knit RL regimes, say contemporary China, or the defunct Soviet Union ?

To me it does. For a company liking to extol how transparent they are, Linden Lab excel at keeping their motivations and internal workings to themselves (the pronouncements on their intentions by their speakers — well, Robin Linden / Harper mostly — remaining cryptic, vague, and, of course, entirely non binding) leaving observers to their second-guessing, most of us probably doomed to finding ourselves far out on a limb retrospectively.

More than a simple curio, the similarity highlights one harsh fact : benign as King Philip might intend its rule to be, Linden private law (privilege — ever wondered about the etymology ?) reigns supreme over Second Life You-Know-Where, by its very nature despotic (despotism having very little to do with the goodwill of the rulers, or the style of their rule). Internal power struggles in the ruling group are the only politics, mock-democratic crowd mood sounding systems like the public JIRA notwithstanding. That is the status quo of Second Life You-Know-Where’s burgeoning society.

RL history shows that evolving societies do not tolerate despotic regimes indefinitely. They either topple over, or evolve before they get toppled over. Second Life You-Know-Where’s society is evolving ; maybe it is time that we, as its members, start pushing.

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The road to hell, it is said, is paved with good intentions. The same might be true of other destinations held akin to hell by individuals and organizations, though it is a matter of debate if these destinations would be considered such by anyone but the traveller. Take Linden Lab and governance for instance. One could argue the point that for the bunch of laid back coders and start-up entrepreneurs that constitute LL’s core, the notion of governance is by its very nature indeed hell. If it is, LL has taken a big step down that road, the biggest to date, and — of course — out of good intentions.

Hell ? Governance ? Girl, what are you gabbing about ?

Well, you will not have missed the fact that, with its New Policy Regarding In-World “Banks”, effective from January 22nd, Linden Lab has decreed what amounts to a total ban of in-world banking activities. This has been hailed, or at least acknowledged as inevitable, by observers as diverse as Benjamin Duranske, Prokofy Neva, Nobody Fugazi, Tateru Nino and Dusan Writer; dissenters have been few and in between, easily dismissed as either obvious lobbyists (for instance Arbitrage Wise, « CEO » of JT Financial) or as missing the point (see Lillie Yifu’s angry retort to Robert Bloomfield’s plea for a continuation of SL Y-K-W banking activities as a sandbox for RL studies). Not surprisingly, the decision sat far less well with depositors, who, on hearing the news, panically flocked to the ATMs to withdraw their deposits en masse before the impending closure of their « bank » (see Prokofy Neva’s superb on the spot reportage ; also the articles on Your2ndPlace and Massively), as well as being accompanied by cries of « despotism » on the comments everywhere. The whole thing simply reeks of RL déjà-vu.

Now I’m not going to discuss the pros and cons of the banking ban, nor of its implementation (try aforementioned Arbitrage Wise on Your2ndPlace, or Aldon Hynes on SLNN, a man also on record for saying it needed Colgate to bring smiling to SL Y-K-W avatars, for criticism of that). There is little my gut feeling and homebrew reasoning can contribute to what brighter minds have written. Neither am I going to ponder the question what the balance between scammers and little boys playing bank might have been ; being neither a lawyer, nor a theologian, I find the degree of inherent malice pretty irrelevant to my opinion of the impact of people’s actions.

What I do find interesting is why Linden Lab felt necessary to step in — and what this means for the future of Second Life as a society, a topic I hold dear since the spectacular failure of my first and only recurrence to in-world policing.

Gwyneth Llevelyn has summarized the three current theories about LL’s motivations. In a nutshell, these are : 1.) LL’s hand was forced by impeding, but undisclosed legal problems, 2.) LL intends to boost the LindeX by choking off all financial activities but their own, 3.) LL does what it says it does, viz . step in to protect residents. You could call these respectively corporate bottom line policy (as put in evidence by the gambling ban, or the age verification scheme), conspiracy of greed, and surprising. Ashcroft Burnham has nicely pointed how unlikely case one is :

It would be very surprising if Linden Lab truthfully cited legal requirement as the reason for the gambling ban, but, although it is in fact compelled by law to prohibit unlicenced banking, it pretended that the reason that it was so prohibiting was to protect its residents from fraud. It would also be odd if Linden Lab, believing itself to be legally obliged to prohibit all banking operations, nonetheless gave the banks a grace period before it closed them down: it did not do that with gambling, either.

As to case two, I’d venture to say you can probably safely dismiss the notion of LL banning banking to assert the LindeX’s supremacy, or install a monopoly, simply because the ban does not encompass financial bodies duly regulated in their RL country of origin. Not that I’m aware of any RL banks actively doing business in-world, but what matters is that the playing field is still open for them, and compared to the Lindens running the LindeX, these are the real thing. Had LL wished to monopolize the financial sector Metaplace style, would they not have banned all banking activities outright ? They could have, safe to say without consulting a lawyer, because the world it is to happen in is their sole property. Stating LL can’t ban RL banks from SL Y-K-W sounds to me a bit like saying businesses can’t ban freelance hotdog vendors from operating in their cafeteria.

Which leaves case three. Unlike Ashcroft, who on concluding this called the measure « mundane and un-news/rantworthy », I think LL acting this way is actually pretty spectacular : it is the first time LL do install a grid wide policy on strictly intra-residential issues without being legally compelled to do so or having a (financial) stake in it.

As such it is a 180 degree turn away from their previous professions of policy on not regulating intra-resident issues and conflicts. The more so since they also throw their VP of Business Affairs’ staunch denial of SL Y-K-W having an economy overboard along the way. This is not just Philip Rosedale mentioning the « economy » of SL Y-K-W in an interview, this is LL officially acknowledging its existence and the need for its regulation — even if it is only to declare themselves unable to do so but by delegating the responsibility to RL regulators. Which, as both Garret Balaklava and Aldon Hynes have rightly pointed out, is as much an act of governance as instituting a banking codex, or installing in-world financial sector regulators. It just happens to be the one incurring the least cost in terms of permanent administrative effort. But as a step down the road to Linden hell — governance — it is a big one.

LL are in a dilemma. They have created a world so diverse, attractive and powerful that is has gained all the trappings of a society. Societies, however, need some kind of governance, which LL has been historically loath to provide. Maybe so because, as a for-profit company, the only kind of governing body you can be while keeping total control of your business assets is a despotic one. Obviously, as LL has refused to assume this role whenever they could, despotical rule runs counter to what they, CEO first, envision as the nature of Second Life. But sidestepping the question by instituting a policy of near absolute laissez-faire, as they have, proves to be a less and less viable proposition. You might hope that, if you never act as if you were a governing body, people won’t notice that you are. But the price you pay is dearth of governance, which means anarchy, verging on chaos. Too strong a word ? Then try abuse reporting for griefing (as I did) — or anything else that needs Linden intervention, and cannot be conveniently deferred to private sim owners. Never mind the mainland, which is under complete Linden control, or rather, in practice, lack of it. As Second Life You-Know-Where society has grown, LL’s non policy has turned from an annoyance into a major failing. The banking ban might very well be the first sign of LL acknowledging that.

Ordinal Malaprop’s pictorial comment

might prove to be closer to the truth in historical hindsight than the tongue-in-cheek application suggests. LL’s decision might indeed be a significant step in overturning the rules of an old era, and a first sign of things to come in a new one.

They might have taken the step down that road very reluctantly, but we should still applaud they did, whatever our stance on their reasons may be. And we should start thinking about where we want this to go before they take the next . The days of anarchy are ending. What follows next will be up to us.

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I really, really will update this blog real soon now, any minute… uh… well, as soon as possible… some time. Duh. RL is a bit mad right now, so while the blog topics and snippets pile up in my del.icio.us. closet, I’ll try to keep everybody (if that is anybody but me) distracted by pointing to my contribution to Nicholaz Beresford’s call for Linden jokes, located on this page [note the location has moved as I have reorganized the miscellaneous pages section of this blog].

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On the set of « A Fish Called Wanda » then 77-year old director John Crichton was given a t-shirt by his co-director John Cleese. It read

Age and Treachery Will Always Overcome Youth and Skill

Though this was meant as a joke about the significant age difference between the director and the rest of his crew, there is a moment of philosophical truth in this. Faced with a world ruled mainly by elder people with an entirely different background and set of interests, youthful talent is doomed to fail. Witness the departure from the Second Life Teen Grid You-Know-Where-for-Underagers of its whizz kid Katharine Berry, as announced in her blog.

For those of you who have never heard the name before, Katharine Berry is probably best known as the developer of AjaxLife, a web based Second Life You-Know-Where client which has allowed many people to maintain their social network on SL Y-K-W even when unable to install the SL Y-K-W client on a machine. I have been using AjaxLife on and off, myself, and have been full of admiration for the work of one single dedicated developer, a female one at that, always a sure way to win my sympathy. What I was not aware of before the announcement of Katharine’s withdrawal and the accompanying media coverage is that she is « only » 15 years old (an ageist reaction I will come back to later).

As befits to her being underage, Katharine has religiously stuck to using the Teen Grid you know where alone, gaining a track record there as a forum moderator, volunteer and provider of web services (all of these by now defunct). Exemplary one would say, were it not for the fact that it must have been a very disheartening experience. As she explains in more detail here, her main reason for leaving Second Life You-Know-Where is the complete state of neglect Linden Lab seems to leave the Teen Grid you know where in, and the low resident count which follows from this sorry state of affairs.

Now, like most Main Grid Second Lifers You-Know-Where denizens I presume, I have been entirely oblivious of what goes on on the Teen Grid you know where. Judging from Katharine’s comments on her departure, it hardly looks like an interesting offering for bright young minds. In fact, it looks suspiciously like an excuse everybody can agree on when it comes to excluding teens from Second Life You-Know-Where in general. By everybody, I do mean that Linden Lab aren’t the only ones at fault here, though they are obviously responsible for the sorry state of the thing, but that all of us Grid Second Lifers You-Know-Where denizens share a part of this. After all, we always point to the Teen Grid you know where as the place for underage Second Lifers You-Know-Where denizens to go whenever we squabble with the Lindens and each other over the value and founding of age verification. It is such a convenient fig leaf when we basically agree that everybody under legal age (and that means anybody below the age of 21, in some cases) should be excluded from participating in Second Life You-Know-Where. They have their own grid you know where, haven’t they ?

Katharine’s withdrawal alerts us to the fact that this notion is nothing but a convenient lie. Linden Lab obviously does not offer a valid option to underage Second Lifers You-Know-Where denizens, and judging from the duration and extent of this state, it will not do so in the foreseeable future. In that light, the question we Main Grid residents You-Know-Where denizens should ask ourselves is : do we actually want to lose talent like Katharine’s ? Do we really think a world is a better place if the young (gifted or not) are banned from it ? Are we so comfortably ageist we think there is nothing worthwhile to be contributed by people below a certain arbitrary age limit ? The ageist reflex is never far ; I know it was not with me (see above), but how about not giving in to it ? Every world needs fresh talent, and age has nothing to do with it. Confining this talent to the Teen Ghetto (oops, Grid you know where, sorry for that) is stupid.

Of course, there is the problem of adult content. Let’s be honest : the ability to create and interact with adult content is one of the main selling points of Second Life You-Know-Where. I know that there would be no point to it for me if I could not indulge myself via my strike>SL Y-K-We avatar. I am pretty sure I am not the only one. There is more to it, of course, but that is neither here nor there. What is is that we have to either agree to Second Life You-Know-Where being an ageist society, barred to the young, or find a way to open the Grid you know where to them. Which means relieving us and the Lindens of liability by blocking underage Second Lifer’s You-Know-Where denizens access to content they are legally forbidden to see, in a foolproof way.

The Lindens have announced and then elaborated on a verification scheme on their blog (first, second and third post here). As noted here, it originally seemed to point into the direction of a content rating system, which basically would have allowed for segmented access to Second Life You-Know-Where content, effectively clearing the way for a demise of the Teen Grid you know where. Strangely (or maybe not) it has been one of the most vocally opposed announcements of Linden Lab, with the fact that youths are not meant to be on the Main Grid you know where at all a key argument.

The Lindens have not risen to this. Instead of challenging our comfortable ageism and boldly asserting the measure as a foundation for the merging of the Teen and Main Grid you know where, they seem to just stick to a bottom line policy bent only on protecting Linden Lab’s butt. Which would make the whole package nothing but a grand insurance scheme against the liability of underagers sneaking unto the Main Grid you know where to be confronted with unsuitable content (as explained by Gwyneth Lewellyn).

That would be disheartening enough, but some Lindens at least seem to have latched another agenda entirely on the thing. Robin Linden’s blog post makes the establishing of « trust » through identity (not age) verification the cornerstone of the whole affair. You can dismiss this as mistaken, as Grace MacDunnough does, especially after the Lindens voided the in-world avatar rating system not so long ago, but I am feeling rather queasy at the fact that this is from the same person who backed and inspired the call out on « broadly offensive content » in the infamous Keeping Second Life You Know Where Safe, Together post. That post, which Robin clearly declared her brainchild here, sparked suspicions that the Lindens advocated some kind of moral majority policing and started one of SL Y-K-W’s largest, and, for a short period, most vigorous, protest groups. Its troubling connotation of Brave New World also marrs Robin’s statement on verification. I, for one, am very wary of that kind of vision of a better virtual world. It is this mix of corporate bottom line logic and conceited agendas that makes me fairly sure I do not want to participate in the Lindens’ grand new scheme. I do think, however, that the grids you know where should be merged, and that is not going to happen without some kind of age verification.

Thesis :

1. As there is no viable alternative but exclude the young from Second Life You-Know-Where until they reach an age where years of exclusions have redirected them away from it, effectively robbing us of a future, the Main Grid you know where needs to be opened for underage Second Lifers You-Know-Where denizens.
2. To make the Main Grid you know where safe for teens, its content needs to be segmented by suitability and a working system installed which makes sure the segmentation holds, which means more than providing coverage against litigation.
3. To achieve this without compromising the range of Second Life You-Know-Where’s contents, our privacy and the divide between physical and virtual identity, we residents must take matters in hand. Waiting for Linden Lab will not help. It’s priorities as a commercial entity are different, and there is the ominous risk of the whole process being hijacked by individuals with as dubious agenda.

There are tentative first steps as some realize age verification is needed, and cannot be left to the Lindens. A group of residents is offering an in-world age verification system called AgeLock (there is an interview with one of the founders, Allana Dion, here). Time will tell if it can stand the test of litigation. But it does not address the big question of how to make the Main Grid safe for teens. In fact, it expressly states that it does not :

How does this system prevent children from accessing adult content?

It doesn’t. It won’t. It can’t.

As parents ourselves, we really do care about the importance of protecting children but this is not about protecting children this time. In this instance, our goal is to provide a sense of security for the adult community.

It is our opinion that, currently, the only system in place that can effectively keep children out of areas where they don’t belong is responsible parenting. We are not able to be the world’s baby sitters, even if it were our desire to be. The purpose of AgeLock is not to protect children or prevent them from viewing adult content, but rather to protect us, the adults of Second Life You-Know-Where, from the indisputable fact that they already are.

Us versus them ? This is most certainly not going to end the ageist segregation of the grids and let the teens share our world. We need better systems than AgeLock to achieve this, if we want to do it without sanitizing our world for the teens’ sake. We should. No world is better off that shuts out a sizeable portion of its future.

I have no proposal how this is to be done. I am no guru, and I most certainly am no politician. But I know it will take you, and me, and many more besides to do it. Understanding that we need to do more than enforcing the status quo of « teens stay out » is the first step. Else age and treachery will have overcome more than Katharine Berry’s youth and skill.

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