“”In yet another attack against intellectual property rights–just got word that those ‘libsecondlife’ people and sheep have an avatar named RON HUBBARD that creates itself as identical to the avatar next to it.”

*and sheep*. So the ESC were involved in the creation and testing of Copybot?

And they did nothing to stop it? Or ameliorate it? Or influence their copy-happy buddies at libsl to stop?

Well, who gets to decide “who has the technical skills”? Again, I have to ask, is this rocket science of such an important and criticial form that only LL’s specialest friends get to have it?

Is this like Jeska deciding who gets to be in Mentors on how clean their rapsheet is?

1) Is the API something that LL has in thei posession and can give out whenever they want, or is it something that needs to be developed and or tweaked to be released?

2) If they have it and can release it (widely) why don’t they?

3) If they don’t have it and are developing it or tweaking it prior to release, are they bringing Sheep(e.g. Adam Zaius) or other selected dev company employees on the development/tweaking team?

4) If they are doing the latter, then what’s the functional difference between that and having it and releasing it to selected groups?

1. Linden Lab itself, like the Vatican or the Kremlin, may have disagreements among its own ranks, and they either play their different FIC and SIC and MMMs (Metaversal Minions & Myrmidons) against each other, or the media, or other groups, with their different rumours to try to position their particular political position.

2. One privileged group or group in the know like the IRC channel types immediately come forth when there is an allegation like this and sullenly proclaim that in fact LL is *right* to privilege and fete. That it’s ok to “preview software”. But…is it? I mean…is this REALLY how it is done in RL with RL software companies? And is *this* software company allowed to indulge in this behaviour because they have a really revolutionary thingie? This aggressively loyal faction in advance justifies LL doing things like putting resident content in the library, or giving a heads up to island dealers, because they think that’s the normal way to deal with elites and those in power, and they count themselves among the elites.

When LL itself disavows the practice or in fact apologies for it, we never hear any apologies from the clan that boosted LL when they thought in fact they *had* engaged in favouritism. And that lets us know there is always a significant lobby, both within LL itself (made up of privileged former residents) and within the FIC, for the act of “previewing” as John has so helpfully described it.

3. What’s being said here is this, “Adam Zaius and others do have access to unpublished capability APIs.” What does this mean, exactly? Why? How? To what end? What is the thinking?
I’d like to get a layman’s explanation of what an API *is*. Is it a bridge to the city, or the city itself? Would the people who have the bridge be in a position to play troll or access all the stuff in the city?

And is this “previewing” stuff because this software/product is so complicated and special that only the most expert wizards of the game can fathom it? or is it just about a small company, unable to cope with the stress of such rapid growth, reaching for their old friends as a secure port in the storm, figuring they will be kind?

4. This statement also isn’t entirely clear to me from Sibley, “Linden Lab does seem to go occasionally to groups of residents or sometimes companies who use its platform to get feedback or test something new – I applaud that as a way to get focussed feadback and to improve their quality control.”

Is this a reference to SL Views? or to a long-acknowledged sounding-board approach that the Lindens take to various long-time residents? I noticed that in the last scandal with the island prices, Robin Linden spoke unflinchingly, with no sense of self-justification apparently, about their list of developers that were made up of long-time residents and developers (this list was *not* the “developers’ director” or public developers’ group).

Does this practice work, even in the view of those who favour it, to improve the product? I personally can’t believe that it does.

5. *Is* anybody, whether Linden Lab or any of its pets or just anybody out there working on the problem of the crappy interface? it’s really hard constantly telling newbies how to use the game screen — it’s really long overdue for an overhaul. How hard is that to do?