The Alphaville Herald

54 Responses to “‘Virtual Land’”

1. 

   Tenshi Vielle
   

   Jun 30th, 2007
   

   It’s absolutely insane to think that you can profit or even own something that doesn’t really exist for more than a short amount of time.

   If you can’t touch it or feel it… don’t buy it. It’s just that much easier to have taken away.
2. 

   Jessica Holyoke
   

   Jul 1st, 2007
   

   Intangible property existed before Second Life. Copyrights, easements, and patents, are all things that have monetary value but are not able to be touched or felt. What the Lindens are doing is no different.

   I was never clear on the exploit that Bragg used. The way the recent blog post comment was worded, Bragg inputed a URL and went to the auction page early. I’m not sure how he would have been able to get something for an absurdly low price if the auction site was working correctly unless he went in to change the written code.

   Another fun part of the post was this; “Use of the exploit not only harmed Linden Lab, but Second Life Residents as well, by disrupting the in-world economy. If those who used the exploit had succeeded, not only would have they profited unfairly, but they also could have sold their parcels at below-market prices and still made a profit, putting legitimate sellers at a disadvantage.”
   So a fraudulent scheme designed to net real world profits would have sold the land at below market prices. If they intended to make the most profit, wouldn’t the price have been at the current market prices at least?

   Seizing Bragg’s in-world assets in contemplation of a judgment for fraud is interesting. If the Linden currency is a limited license right, that potentially has no value due to it not having to be redeemed by Linden Labs (ToS 1.4), how is holding the money assets a means of securing a judgment? Doesn’t that suggest that the Linden dollar truly does have value if the company is willing to hold onto it in case of a judgment against Bragg for fraud?

   Just two arguments that perhaps this should have been settled much earlier. Through it all, the Lindens are not looking good.
3. 

   anon
   

   Jul 1st, 2007
   

   “We can allow fraud, but don’t defraud us…” The Linden Way

   After personally witnessing Linden’s reactions to serious fraud on their servers by allowing it, I’m now certain that not only does no one have any “real” rights to their purchased property in Second Life, but certain that Linden will be sued on many more accounts in the future by taking the stances they do.

   There is no “OWNERSHIP” involved which makes Lindens account of what the service provides fraudulent. There are documented cases of sim owners removing people from sims, changing the terms of the covenants, and re-selling the virtual space that others have already paid for.

   The multitudes of Abuse Reports do nothing and Linden continues to protect and harbor those that commit the crimes. Let alone all the Banking, Casino, etc… type scams we witness.

   Linden owns everything, can do what they want, the users have no protections whatsoever. The money goes to the top.. Right to Linden via the tier payments.
4. 

   anon
   

   Jul 1st, 2007
   

   Tenshi Vielle,

   It’s not that easy. What about IP rights? If I produce a product, write scripting, etc.. This is supposed to be protected intellectual property owned by the creator. This goes far beyond the concept of purchasing non-tangible creations.

   An example is a music cd. You purchase the plastic and feel like you truly have ownership rights over that CD and it’s content. The fact is, you do not. While you hold the property rights over the actual plastic medium, you do not own the IP of the existing works or data within that medium. Even what you might consider tangible is sometimes quite intangible.
5. 

   Tenshi Vielle
   

   Jul 1st, 2007
   

   Well, if I purchased it, can hold it in my hands… then whatever I do with it beyond that is my own business. Something that can only be seen and exists on servers isn’t really what I can see myself spending good USD$ on.
6. 

   Sanity Talking Again
   

   Jul 1st, 2007
   

   Seriously why do you people continue to give this company your money, even after having this kind knowledge of LL practices? Nevermind the griefers (they are at this point the least of SL’s concerns, or should be). The real monsters is the company you financially support.

   Sighs… you know at least there is a bright side to this issue. OpenSL & OpenSIM. they’re shaping up nicely. Once the developers get all the kinks out, and get a good working version up for download, I believe the playing field is going to change. I’ve played around with it. I had a server up and running a while back. It looks promising. And the best part about it: No Lindens .
7. 

   Jessica Holyoke
   

   Jul 1st, 2007
   

   I did some further research and I have more questions out of all of this.

   If Bragg was engaged in computer fraud, why haven’t the FBI or California police investigated? The blog post stated that Bragg was part of a scheme that violated both state and federal law. So why no real police action?

   Even if the proof was not there for a criminal case, but was available for a civil case, why wait to file fraud charges now as part of a counter-claim? Bragg may have filed soon after the auction activity ended, but that case was dismissed. The current action was a new filing by Bragg. The Lindens would have had time to file against Bragg in civil court.

   My problem with this is that the Lindens stated that they were holding Bragg’s funds due to a pending legal suit, which they were waiting for Bragg to file. If Bragg didn’t file, would the Lindens have filed suit in order to resolve the dispute?
8. 

   Petey
   

   Jul 1st, 2007
   

   The key here is that they seized the assets he didn’t acquire fraudulently. That’s already a sticky question under US law, and won’t fly for a second without due process.

   If Bragg loses, it will be because the Court says “shut up about video games”, in which case Linden loses. There is no way LL comes out of this lawsuit unscathed.
9. 

   Csven Concord
   

   Jul 1st, 2007
   

   @ Tenshi

   “Well, if I purchased it, can hold it in my hands… then whatever I do with it beyond that is my own business.”

   You can do whatever you want with the plastic, but not the data on it.

   http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,130254-pg,1/article.html
   http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,133388-c,cybercrime/article.html
10. 

    anon
    

    Jul 1st, 2007
    

    I too have many of the questions, as some have asked the same.

    Truly as mentioned, if there was a case of fraud on the part of Bragg, where was the law in the first place..

    What gives Linden the right to be Judge and Jury over Bragg by selling his land, locking his accounts, repo’ing his inventory? Wouldn’t it make sense that it should be a “proven case of fraud” in the legal system before having all of his IP or private assets taken, resold, etc…?

    Where did Linden get the idea the the “Community” is something they created within the SL world? They created the software, not the “Community”.

    They don’t speak for a majority of those that participate within SL necessarily, and here lately with all the open letters, complaints, etc.., it appears the opposite to many whom read.

    I don’t believe they are they protecting any majority with their actions as they claim either. One case of someone getting an island or a 1000 USD virtual space for a single 1 USD is not going to change the Second Life virtual economy. I don’t buy it.

    Linden continues to believe they can force all of the legal responsibility on the sim owners via local jurisdictions and laws that govern (ISP) when indeed the end user has no “real” access to the server, it’s administration capabilities, or any direct access to the data.

    I wonder how that one will go over in court.

    It may sound as though I am against the service and the company. Not at all. I enjoy the service as others do. I do take issue with some of what I’ve witnessed since becoming an active user and hope for serious inquiry and resolve.
11. 

    urizenus
    

    Jul 1st, 2007
    

    Yikes, that top screenshot is priceless in view of the Linden response in court documents. There they keep insisting that you only own your own creations and not land, and they keep putting “virtual land” in scare quotes. I note that they didn’t use the scare quotes in the screenshot above. Man o man, the court is not going to like this shit.
12. 

    Coincidental Avatar
    

    Jul 1st, 2007
    

    “”who is “just not moving the conversation forward,” as Daniel Linden once put it”"

    I found an article from the year 2005 describing problems in the LL implementation of VR. Since then LL has done nothing to solve the problems. On the contrary, they have defensed their policy of doing nothing. I can see several reasons for their actions:
    - incompetence; they don’t know what to do
    - they see micromanaging of the micro economy too expensive to be implemented. See the first reason
    - stupid lawyers gave them stupid advice. The lawyers collected their fees and the company collects the fallout. Why do they follow bad advice? See first reason
    - rumored ideological reasons. Are they in business or in politics?
    - competitors are lame and there is lack of pressure
    - law enforcement in the USA is lame and there is lack of pressure. LL collects money from illegal activities as long as possible
    - profitability of VR business is still questionable and they think in LL that any money is better than a bankruptcy

    “Seriously why do you people continue to give this company your money, even after having this kind knowledge of LL practices?”

    After doing brief competitor analysis recently, the answer is: They have a monopoly.
    LL implementation of VR is crap. But the competitors haven’t even tried to go as far as LL. LL adds much features to their VR but never complete the implementation of any of them.

    So you can choose between incompetent weasels and their retarded competitors. Business as usual.

    OpenSim etc. would require some business backup to compete with SL. The technology alone is not enough.

    At the moment the size of SL economy is 1 million USD in a month.

    According to LL visions, the future internet will require password and credit card to get in. I doubt these visions.

    “You can do whatever you want with the plastic, but not the data on it.”

    Do you mean that LL has violated Bragg’s rights to his data?

    I wonder how they will handle this mentally in LL when the probably outcome is that they get their asses whipped. Will they dig in denial? They resist fiercely growing up mentally.
13. 

    Jessica Holyoke
    

    Jul 1st, 2007
    

    One other point though about OpenSL and Open Sim. Aren’t the Lindens still going to be involved? Won’t we still be signing up with Linden Labs to access SL?
14. 

    Spankubux
    

    Jul 1st, 2007
    

    Urizenus, the legal expert speaks. Let all be silence.
15. 

    Lem Skall
    

    Jul 1st, 2007
    

    Another great day in the saga of LL’s relationship with the SL community. LL reach out to the community by posting this blog entry and their attempt blows up in their faces. You have to understand your audience in order to communicate with it well and LL don’t understand their audience.

    I am anxiously waiting for LL to pull a real “Michael Richards”.
16. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Jul 1st, 2007
    

    You can do whatever you want with the plastic, but not the data on it.

    This is an ideological position of Csven’s and many tekkies who program and believe they should have overreach into everyone’s private lives and private property, and that ordinary people’s use and enjoyment of their coded electronic or pixelated creations is a provisional thing that they claw back as they wish.

    PC World or any other link withstanding, this is one school of thought — maybe even the predominant one — but it’s one that is eroding, changing, and being challenged. Csven himself will go from defending it to backing around and seeming not to defend it within the space of one debate because his main objective isn’t to prove that programmers have copyright; his main objective is to show that tekkies have the power to create or disrupt, to grant or not grant — it doesn’t matter which it is, and should never be challenged and should always rule, merely because programmers and other tekkies are elites who should always rule and never be challenged.

    It’s my calling him on this indefensibe position again and again that has caused him to use despicable debating tactics on me — but those who are annoyed that I continue to defend myself, like Uri, aren’t grasping what in essence this is about: the tekkie war to define the space, and define its values as exclusively belonging to themselves; the tekkie war to claim overreach into property and governance systems merely because they are coders and code the tools and “objects” everyone is forced to use on the Internet and in virtual spaces.

    It isn’t a school of thought I agree with across the board, because I can see some simple examples where these companies overreach and ordinary people violate it all the time, and companies have to find a way to get more organized as to cheap micropayment systems for people to listen once or sample. The FBI has a warning on every video tape of a movie: under pain of federal law you can’t copy a movie or resell it or display it.

    Tenshi’s right though, most people think once they “hold something in their hand” they can resell it — so they go out and trade and resell their videotapes freely at yard sales or on ebay and they never once glance at some fineprint or consider some tekkie and his representatives’ overreach.

    Ditto software, where geeks themselves are the biggest offenders, copying Microsoft Word on to other machines of their clients, or within one office where they haven’t bought multiple licenses.

    Schools and other groups routinely show movies, especially towards the end of the year, with popcorn or brownies, and charge $5 or $10 as fund-raisers. They aren’t licensed to do so by any company or entity.

    People copy songs for personal use but they also rip them and combine them or put videos up on Youtube — it’s impossible to keep policing.

    People in places like Russia play tapes, copy them to another device, and re-sell them — it’s call pirating — and record companies spend millions trying to catch them. Should they keep trying? Or should the U.S. government in fact facilitate this process as the best thing they have going for them to spread American culture across the globe by enterprise instead of war?

    I’ve argued on Raph Koster’s blog that this extension by the tekkie into virtual worlds of the values they insisted on with video and audio recording is very problematic. They code up a visual experience of a chair, which is merely code and pixels. They sell that chair — and say it’s “programming” and therefore can never be copied, and that we don’t “own” it just like we don’t own what is “under the plastic” we are only “licensed for its use”.

    Making everything “licensed for our use” is the way tekkies hope to have ultimate power over every aspect of our lives, including entire areas they have no business even being in, and aren’t in now.

    If they put it out for free distribution, they fly into a rage if someone resells it, because they think this is “unethical”.

    The rages that occur around these debates such as selling freebies or not considering an object “full someone else’s” and always considering it “code that belongs to the author and use is only licensed” lies at the heart of the ideological and economic struggle in virtual worlds.

    Some ordinary person buying a table feels they have bought a discrete object that they now own completely, and the idea that they can’t modify it as they would a RL table in their possession is not only curious to them; some resist it with a passion.

    The overreach of creators trying to dominate every aspect of ownership in SL is one that I call “creator fascism”. It actually doesn’t begin to explain all the new elements we now face about all this.

    What’s clear is that ownership is a concept that has become completely undermined, and tekkies are doing two things:

    o making sure that their own coding remains unassailable — the idea that “scripts can never be copied because they are mission-critical”
    o making sure that the ownership of property that in RL forms the bulwark against people like them by enabling other power groups to form and defend themselves is always undermined — therefore when Copybot comes along to copy everybody’s furniture and skins, they shrug, and tell people to “suck it up, it’s the Internet, everything’s copyable.”

    Yeah, it’s the Internet, everything is copyable except their code ROFL.
17. 

    Reality
    

    Jul 1st, 2007
    

    Hmm, yet another failing grade for you Prokofy dearie.

    Let’s review the lesson, shall we?

    1. The only thing anyone really owns in second Life is the Intellectual rights to their creations – all else exists within the servers that Linden Lab owns and operates.

    2. All ‘land’ in Second Life is server space rented from Linden Lab – words to the contrary mean nothing and cannot make the code that is your allotment in the servers suddenly materialize in the real world.

    3. The creator of an object in Second Life – holding all IP rights to it – gets to decide what permissions it has and how you are allowed to use those permissions … Not you dearie.

    4. All of your information within Second Life exists at the behest of Linden Lab – In a very real sense they do get to decide if you may use it or not.

    5. There is no great conspiracy or great war dearie – it is all in your head. what’s next? A rant about how the entire Internet itself – which Second Life is both a part of and must use to connect you to the servers – has been taken over by (nonexistent) ‘tekki-wikki’ (which incidentally is not a real word until it is adopted by at least one reputable dictionary source) personages?

    6. This is not the world you grew up in dearie, things have changed quite a bit and quite frankly the same views that made the world go round back then only hinder the current world. Deal with it.

    Now then dearie, there will be a brief break in the lesson while you formulate your attempt to counter each point above using absolutely no hard line, impossible to counter (meaning there are no other ways to interpret the data nor any differing conclusions) data. Granted the sixth above was a simple observation, until such a time as you are capable of providing the required (yes dearie, you’ll have to actually back your words up with something other than your own beliefs and opinions) data, points one through five above remain concrete facts of ‘life’ in the digital realm.
18. 

    Obscure Doodad
    

    Jul 1st, 2007
    

    Contrast this “virtual land” perspective LL is now propagating . . . as server space that they own . . . with their position in recent weeks that “what takes place on landowners’ land is their responsibility and all liability for such things belongs to landowners with LL never ever to be named as a defendant in any consequent lawsuits”.

    It’s not hilarious. It’s grim and foul. LL is behaving in a manner that might generously be called slimy. They will take any position that is legally convenient at that moment with no interest in principle or consistency. Sometimes virtual land is sacred in being owned by a landowner and sometimes “virtual land” gets quoted as mere euphemism for server space that LL owns and has total control over.

    The growth curve is flattening, and the absurdity of their policies is not going to fix that reality.
19. 

    Jessica Holyoke
    

    Jul 1st, 2007
    

    While keeping in mind that I’m a supporter of free speech, can we please *please* stop with all the dearies? Its very annoying and distracting.

    Reality, I have to disagree with your point number 1 above. If the only thing that a resident owned in SL was the content we create, then why is our account transferable by will? The account because a form of property that is transferable, although in limited ways. (You can’t sell or gift your account for instance according to the ToS.)

    And then there’s point three. I have always hated with a passion ‘no transfer’. It is never honored in the real world. There’s an actual legal doctrine called the first sale rule where you lose the right to control what the next owner does with what you sold them. Its akin to saying if you buy a book, the author could prevent you from selling that book to someone else. This is different than ‘no copy’ and ‘no modify’, things that are valid in the RW.

    In this case, you are making what I think Prokofy means by ‘tekki-wikki’ arguments, even if that label is used about as often as ‘marxist whore.’
20. 

    Csven Concord
    

    Jul 1st, 2007
    

    “Csven himself will go from defending it to backing around and seeming not to defend it”

    Key word is “seeming”. And only because Catherine can’t follow a logical argument. That’s what happens when dimwits claim: “A statement I believe to be true *is* a fact until it is *disproven*.”

    -

    “It’s my calling him on this indefensibe position again and again”

    Maybe Catherine can provide links to her calling on me “again and again” to defend my position on intellectual property. I’d be happy to provide links to my blog posts that explain my position.
21. 

    urizenus
    

    Jul 1st, 2007
    

    Reality you can repeat the Linden position all day long, it doesn’t mean the courts will buy it. In particular, while the ToS may say that all your information in Second Life exists at the behest of Linden Lab (they can delete it for “any reason and/or no reason”) a court has already ruled that the ToS in unconscionable. While that decision was aimed specifically at the arbitration clause, the rationale offered by the court seems to suggest that the ToS will not hold up elsewhere. In particular, it is problematic for the Lindens that their fine print says you don’t own the land while their web site says “own virtual land.” Why is Prok delusional to think that the court will hold them to that promise?

    I also meant to add earlier that I agree completely with Jessica, Petey, and anon that there is a real problem with the Lindens claiming that they did what they did because Bragg was engaged in fraud. If it was fraud, then that is against real world laws and it should have been reported to real world law enforcement organizations and Bragg should have been tried by real world court systems. As Petey pointed out, it is hard to imagine that any court is going to cede its jurisdiction to Linden Lab on this.

    We’ve long noted here that playing god is a heady tonic and the Lindens just cannot leave it alone. When that happens inside SL it is counterproductive. When the Lindens think that their god powers extend to seizing real world assets from people because of alleged real world crimes — when they self-appoint themselves judge, jury, and executioner — well, it looks to me that the Lindens have become delusional. They think their powers and authority extend into the real world and trump the role of real world laws and legal institutions.
22. 

    Reality
    

    Jul 1st, 2007
    

    To Jessica:

    “While keeping in mind that I’m a supporter of free speech, can we please *please* stop with all the dearies? Its very annoying and distracting.”

    Nope, sorry. as I said to Coco in another article’s comments the use of ‘dearie’ is reserved for a select few people and is meant to be annoying. So sorry you ended up in the cross fire.

    “Reality, I have to disagree with your point number 1 above. If the only thing that a resident owned in SL was the content we create, then why is our account transferable by will? The account because a form of property that is transferable, although in limited ways.”

    Point one does not encompass truly personal information – such as that used to create your account – nor does it encompass the purchase (for some) of the ability to use the service.

    “And then there’s point three. I have always hated with a passion ‘no transfer’. It is never honored in the real world. There’s an actual legal doctrine called the first sale rule where you lose the right to control what the next owner does with what you sold them. Its akin to saying if you buy a book, the author could prevent you from selling that book to someone else. This is different than ‘no copy’ and ‘no modify’, things that are valid in the RW.”

    Second Life is not real Life and the items in question are nothing but data. as such the only person – aside from Linden Lab – that decides how such items are sold is the Creator. It is akin to nothing from the real world as anything – almost – that you purchase in the real world is physical.

    “In this case, you are making what I think Prokofy means by ‘tekki-wikki’ arguments, even if that label is used about as often as ‘marxist whore.’”

    There is no such thing as ‘tekki-wikki’ anything. These are facts based solely upon the reality of what your objects and ‘land’ are – data stored in servers owned by Linden Lab.

    To Uri:

    kindly do the same I have charged Prokofy with – find and present hard line data which supports your position in opposition to the facts of reality.

    As to the court’s decision? Laughable as this now presents a means to overthrow every terms of Service and EULA currently in use by any and all corporations – Microsoft included. This is in addition to one very simple thing: Law and rulings simply alter the way in which such things are implemented – there is no change to the base fact.
23. 

    Csven Concord
    

    Jul 1st, 2007
    

    @Uri

    “If it was fraud, then that is against real world laws and it should have been reported to real world law enforcement organizations and Bragg should have been tried by real world court systems.”

    Gee, that sounds suspiciously like an argument I’ve been making lately.
24. 

    Jessica Holyoke
    

    Jul 1st, 2007
    

    -1. The only thing anyone really owns in second Life is the Intellectual rights to their creations – all else exists within the servers that Linden Lab owns and operates.

    -Point one does not encompass truly personal information – such as that used to create your account – nor does it encompass the purchase (for some) of the ability to use the service.

    You still have a license right, even if you don’t own something physical. When my account is transferred at death, my heir is not limited to my ability to use the service, but also has access to everything I own, created content and rented content. If that is the argument the Lindens are making,that the license right expires at death as to currency, content and leases, that’s going to really blow up in their faces one day. (saaaay, you aren’t a Linden, are you?)

    And even if Prokofy made up ‘tekki-wikki,’ you are still making a ‘virtual world is not subject to real world situations’ argument, which is common to his use of the term. Visting the ‘no transfer’ issue again, lets say I purchase a software program. I can still sell the right to use it to someone else, so long as I don’t make a copy of the program. Meaning if I sell my computer, I don’t have to erase all the software on it because its ‘no transfer’. Its still data,and not physical, but I should have the ability to transfer the program at will, but I don’t have the right to copy the program.
25. 

    Lem Skall
    

    Jul 1st, 2007
    

    Prok wrote: “Making everything “licensed for our use” is the way tekkies hope to have ultimate power over every aspect of our lives, including entire areas they have no business even being in, and aren’t in now.”

    The great conspiracy of “tekkies”? I am a “tekkie”, so why wasn’t I notified of it? Prok, we tekkies are only trying to make a living or do good. And just like in the case of musicians, our work can be easily copied and distributed. A RL table cannot be copied and then distributed like a SL table can.

    Even when we choose to make our creations freely distributable, there is still a purpose in doing that. Either for marketing or philanthropy, it is ours to give and we get something out of it, whether it is a name or personal satisfaction. When others copy our creations and make a profit from that, they take away that purpose from us, and that is in fact a violation.

    You are probably not getting paid (or at least not much) for your stories in the Herald or on your personal blog. How would you feel if someone would copy all these stories almost ad literam and would publish them without an acknowledgment and if they would sell advertising on their website? I see a “Copyright © 2003-2006 The Second Life Herald” at the bottom of this page, why is that? Grabbing “power over every aspect of our lives”?

    The world is a-changing. The concept of ownership, distribution, and use is changing with the new world of IP. Physical objects are becoming mere commodities and IP is becoming the most important part of world economies. The progress of these economies is threatened if the rights of creators of ideas will not be defended. It’s not power-grabbing, it’s the moving the economy forward.
26. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Jul 1st, 2007
    

    Urizenus, you’re absolutely right about the fraud claim and RL police and laws. We tend to forget it in our setting. If I find my neighbour selling drugs and he’s stolen my stereo and committed theft and sale of narcotics, *I* don’t get to seize all his property until he gets it back; our landlord in the apartment complex doesn’t get to seize his property, only the city/police authorities get to seize it under a warrant with due process in a court of law. But everything depends on whether Second Life is a club where the owners let you use a dorm room and the pool table and the pool as long as you don’t steal or wreck anything, or whether they are a public commons with a service offering actual property transfer.

    I’m glad you’ve called Reality on his series of statements issued like Holy Writ, which in fact are merely One Point of View about all these matters — and the prevailing tekkie view, but not “The Truth” — and that’s why Bragg is important, and even if Bragg loses, while these notions will be contested again and again.

    Gee, that sounds suspiciously like an argument I’ve been making lately.

    This is nothing like any arguments Csven makes claiming that if someone glimpses child pornography that is deleted, or avatar pornography that is illegal in some states, they should bypass the Lindens and call the real police. That’s ridiculous. The Lindens own the relations between residents — no resident has power to make another resident do anything except leave his space. If one resident has a claim against another resident, they have to go to those who own the servers and can fish out the addresses from RL and bring the RL authorities the necessary information. Bragg is about something different, and that’s about Linden Lab itself saying it has a torts claim and claiming a violation of law in regard to itself, not between residents.

    >When the Lindens think that their god powers extend to seizing real world assets from people because of alleged real world crimes — when they self-appoint themselves judge, jury, and executioner — well, it looks to me that the Lindens have become delusional. They think their powers and authority extend into the real world and trump the role of real world laws and legal institutions.

    That’s just it, Uri, and it isn’t only Lindens who have this delusion. All tekkies who code and think “code is law” have this delusion, that they have absolute jurisdiction over everyone on the Internet and in virtual worlds precisely because they code them — they do not recognize even the need for judge or jury as all truth resides server-side and no adversarial defense could ever be complete because client-side information is always subjective.

    The Lindens make the software, they make a “game” of coming and having “the emulation of land” but they believe that because code is law, and they are coders, they are judge and jury and can decide when to alienate or change or devaulue that property at will. They do not recognize property.

    Philip said in his office hour that he doesn’t believe the extreme precept that “all property is theft” — but from what I gather, he *does* believe that all coded property is his and other coders’ domain and therefore everything that is coded, i.e. digital, belongs to the digitalizers, not anybody else, not any RL authority, not the consumer.

    That’s why a group of your pals at Ludium could get up and form a “self-governing organ” “because we have to get started somehow” as Thomas Malaby put it to “take over” the governance of virtual worlds. They feel that those who code, understand, write about, have power over virtual worlds now should just “do it” since their authority is already established.

    That’s why people on here who seem like merely ankle-biting annoying young trolls are worth knocking down again and again — the viewpoint that Reality espouses here, the one that fuels his constant harassment and vicious attacks on me, is one that we cannot allow to prevail in the Metaverse.

    That’s why you have to stop being “tired” and “annoyed” at trolls, Uri, and understand that this is a fight to the death, and fight it better, if you will, but not give it up and morally equivocate.

    Let’s take apart everything that Reality says:

    >1. The only thing anyone really owns in second Life is the Intellectual rights to their creations – all else exists within the servers that Linden Lab owns and operates.

    Actually, this is a temporary and expedient viewpoint of some tekkies provisionally, as LL is willing to back off and say they will not protect copyright of such creations or do much when they are threatened by things like Copybot, and they also begin to talk more about licenses to use their software when people begin to talk more about their IP — it’s not much IP when it isn’t portable.

    But I and other landowners have always held that if the Lindens sell land on the auction or in the land store for prices that are more like the cost of a new computer than the cost of an Internet page hosting service, they need to accept that their offer of virtual property is taken seriously, and yes, that means a property-owning, tier-paying class emerges that is separate from, and even at odds with, them and their coding and content creator class. They must share power with this class through measures like giving a seat on the board to tier payers as a group, ending the favouring and boosting of their own class at the expense of other classes, and becoming more accountable and transparent about what they do.

    <2. All 'land' in Second Life is server space rented from Linden Lab - words to the contrary mean nothing and cannot make the code that is your allotment in the servers suddenly materialize in the real world.

    The code materializes in the virtual world, is sold, and is transferred, and a fee is paid for its maintenance. It's a contract. It's a contract with some entry language to it in the form of the TOS already called "unconsionable" by a RL court!

    If virtual worlds are merely to be elaborate castles that coders only allow their special friends to come into, with only a feigned public opening, then people will only retain at the rate of one in 10. Oops, that's what we have happening, because the coders will not make the interafce, the rules, the experience any better than it is, to let it artificially winnow out people they don't like.

    >3. The creator of an object in Second Life – holding all IP rights to it – gets to decide what permissions it has and how you are allowed to use those permissions … Not you dearie.

    I certainly agree to that. And that’s why, if the creator sets his object to “transfer” in Second Life, he cannot then double back later and scream about people selling freebies. If he wants his product not to be resold without his terms, he needs to check off “no transfer”. This is the internal contradiction I highlight every time a tekkie wikkie screams about permissions.

    Yes, I’m all for respecting permissions, and not for legislating morality, and making mob rule and public denunciation as a substitute for permissions. But then…take it all the way. No doubt “Reality” thinks it’s slimy to resell freebies. But…he’s the one who just told us five seconds ago to respect permissions. I do. So turn off transfer? And don’t browbeat me for reselling a freebie. Sorry, but live by the sword, die by the sword.

    >4. All of your information within Second Life exists at the behest of Linden Lab – In a very real sense they do get to decide if you may use it or not.

    And they get customers who retain at the rate of one in ten as a result — and many other problems. They’re a monopoly now; they won’t always be. The mentality summarized by the nasty, vicious mindset of “Reality” here is actually not even one as harshly held by Linden Lab publicly, although their coders no doubt have the same attitude deep down.

    >5. There is no great conspiracy or great war dearie – it is all in your head. what’s next? A rant about how the entire Internet itself – which Second Life is both a part of and must use to connect you to the servers – has been taken over by (nonexistent) ‘tekki-wikki’ (which incidentally is not a real word until it is adopted by at least one reputable dictionary source) personages?

    Tekkie-wiki has been adapted by many more people than I’d ever dreamed imagineable, to the point that they no longer know I’m the one who invented it. And the viewpoints that I’m either espousing here against “Reality”, or pointing out exist in spite of Reality’s claims about the tekkie world — in fact they aren’t mine alone, or delusionable, but held by two very broad groupings: a) everybody in real life about real life law trumping the virtual and b) lots of people on YouTube or whatever who think they can rip all content and watch it and trade it at will.

    People have written these rules about CDs and mp3s, for example. They’ve claimed that the rights to the content of CDs and mp3s can only belong to the company that paid for the creator and produced them; that they cannot be sold or traded without their permission. And yet millions of people ignore this. Why would they be any different in virtual worlds?

    I’ve outlined on Raph Koster’s discussions of this issue a different point, which is the way in which I take over a table and incorporate it into my house, my 3-d streaming experience, my second life, makes me a co-creator, a co-sumer who can’t be dislodged without peril to the entire system of creation and consumption.

    Creator fascists will simply be forced to roll back their heavy -handed possession of things like “a Second Life table” or “a SL land parcel” and concede that co-creators or co-sumers have rights, and without protection of those rights, the entire edifice of creation and consumption cannot stand.

    >6. This is not the world you grew up in dearie, things have changed quite a bit and quite frankly the same views that made the world go round back then only hinder the current world. Deal with it.

    Actually, these RL forces have tremendous powers to come in and completely wreck the little playgrounds of Reality and his friends, as we can see the awesome power of the German police merely investigating “ageplay”.

    In fact, Reality is at a loss to explain why, given his trumpeting of the powers and rights of companies that make proprietary software, millions of kids all over, on YouTube and such, backed by copyleftist tekkies, simply disagree that companies should have this power and make good on their disagerement with action. These aren’t people who grew up in the world I did; they grew up with “Reality,” many of them in the same sort of mom’s basement. This simply confounds “Reality”.
27. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Jul 1st, 2007
    

    >”And then there’s point three. I have always hated with a passion ‘no transfer’. It is never honored in the real world. There’s an actual legal doctrine called the first sale rule where you lose the right to control what the next owner does with what you sold them. Its akin to saying if you buy a book, the author could prevent you from selling that book to someone else. This is different than ‘no copy’ and ‘no modify’, things that are valid in the RW.”

    Fortunately for us all, whatever RL copyright freaks put on as “no transfer” on a movie or computer game, people resell them to their friends and neighbours anyway because those companies can’t physically bar the transfer.

    In a virtual world they can — or can try. But that’s why consumer rights have to be fought for.

    >Second Life is not real Life and the items in question are nothing but data. as such the only person – aside from Linden Lab – that decides how such items are sold is the Creator. It is akin to nothing from the real world as anything – almost – that you purchase in the real world is physical

    Sorry, but “Reality” will have to come to grips with the reality of virtuality. Nobody will sit still for such a regime. You can’t get millions of people to play. If they buy something, they sure as hell want to modify it and transfer it. They don’t think the Creator deserves to be spelled with a capital “C” as he is nothing without his consumer. The co-sumer, the consumer who continues the creativity with the use of object, has rights, too, and the large media companies, old and new, that understand this will have more customers.

    They will begin to charge not for the pixels and the electrons and fuss about their ownership, they will charge for admission and popcorn and “the experience.”
28. 

    Reality
    

    Jul 1st, 2007
    

    well look at that! Once again Prokofy dearie you have failed to produce hard line data and have substituted in your own opinions and beliefs as facts.

    Try again dearie – your opinions and beliefs are unacceptable as evidence. Oh yes, and by the by?

    “I certainly agree to that. And that’s why, if the creator sets his object to “transfer” in Second Life, he cannot then double back later and scream about people selling freebies. If he wants his product not to be resold without his terms, he needs to check off “no transfer”. This is the internal contradiction I highlight every time a tekkie wikkie screams about permissions.”

    Sorry dearie – you’ve contradicted yourself here, not to mention your usual lack of reading comprehension. Object properties mean – are you read and comprehending this so far dearie? – nothing. Object properties do not decide if you are allowed by the object creator to resell something they have made, they simply give you the ability to do so.

    Now then dearie: Provide hard line data from external sources – such as a scientific analysis with no possible alternate outcome – otherwise your words are nothing more than an empty attempt to once more foist your own opinions and beliefs upon others as anything but what they really are.
29. 

    Reality
    

    Jul 1st, 2007
    

    Jessica, you may want to go back and reread my response to you. I said nothing at all about an account terminating upon death nor about it not being able to be transferred in such an event. to put it bluntly: do not place words were there are none.

    As for your closing argument – It does not relate whatsoever to the issues within Second Life concerning ‘ownership’ of the data on Linden Lab’s servers.

    Now then – on to you once again Prokofy dearie ….

    “Fortunately for us all, whatever RL copyright freaks put on as “no transfer” on a movie or computer game, people resell them to their friends and neighbours anyway because those companies can’t physically bar the transfer.

    In a virtual world they can — or can try. But that’s why consumer rights have to be fought for.”

    Linden Lab owns the servers – that is the beginning and the end of your little argument there dearie. When you own your own Grid then you may have all the ‘consumer’ rights you wish and have all the psychotic persons who cannot be bothered to learn the difference between what is Real and what is not.

    “Sorry, but “Reality” will have to come to grips with the reality of virtuality.”

    Sorry dearie but you will have to come to grips with the reality of facts and the physical, real world. The days when we can jack into the Internet and actually upload ourselves so as to truly be in such an environment have not yet arrived – until they do … You have to live in the real world. Deal with it dearie.
30. 

    Csven Concord
    

    Jul 1st, 2007
    

    “This is nothing like any arguments Csven makes claiming that if someone glimpses child pornography that is deleted, or avatar pornography that is illegal in some states, they should bypass the Lindens and call the real police.”

    Should have known Catherine would bring this up yet again.

    But there’s a correction:

    “glimpses real life child pornography that is removed from the land but remains in someone’s inventory so they can continue sharing it”

    More importantly, Catherine is saying it’s more important to contact the RL authorities for fraud, than it is to contact them for real images of children being sexually abused. If it’s *only* pedophilia, Catherine says send a quick note (even one that’s ignored) to a low-level Linden employee. That’s good enough; it’s not even important enough to AR. Then just forget it.

    Wow.
31. 

    urizenus
    

    Jul 1st, 2007
    

    csven says: “Gee, that sounds suspiciously like an argument I’ve been making lately.”

    I wouldn’t know csven, because I stopped reading your posts, and its too bad because I used to think you were one of the most valuable contributors in the virtual world blogosphere, and I enjoyed reading your posts here, on terra nova, on clickable culture, your own blog and elsewhere. I *used* to think, “hey a post by csven, this will be interesting.” But I don’t feel that way anymore.

    I don’t really understand what you are trying to accomplish. The best that I can come up with is that you want to be the Captain Ahab of the blogosphere, following Prok across the seven seas of the blogosphere and baiting him into endless idiotic debates that Prok can’t walk away from unfortunately. Your plan: sink to the bottom of the sea taking Prok offline and you with him, like Moby Dick and Ahab sinking to the bottom of the ocean.

    Well, I hate to disappoint but I’m not going to ban or censor either Moby or Ahab — I think that would be giving you what you want. You can keep baiting Prok with your dissappearing kiddie porn meme and you two can destroy topic after topic on blog after blog if you want. No one is going to stop you. I would ask you, however, to please stop.

    Also, this is not an invitation to a meta-discussion. I’ve said what I have to say on the matter. To everyone else, can I ask that you all make use of that fabulous invention — the scroll bar — and learn to scroll past the csven and prok follies until they decide to be productive again. As folks have been saying for over 20 years now: don’t feed the trolls.
32. 

    Csven Concord
    

    Jul 1st, 2007
    

    @Uri – Telling people to scroll past both of us is all I could ask for. Thank you.
33. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Jul 1st, 2007
    

    Csven must be dense as well as a troll — but it’s an act.

    “”glimpses real life child pornography that is removed from the land but remains in someone’s inventory so they can continue sharing it”

    The only appropriate thing to do here is to *go to Linden Lab* with the report, as ONLY LINDEN LAB can see into people’s inventories — not me, not the RL police – until they have probably cause and a warrant, of course.

    I cannot file a report on the basis of something deleted, that the Lindens are presiding over and observing, it’s up to them to take action — or not — and they certainly had ample numbers of abuse reports — they ignored them, which is why there was even a

    If there’s RL child pornography out for display somewhere in Second Life, and people abuse report and demonstrate and it isn’t taken down, and Linden Lab does nothing, then of course one would have to start going to RL authorities — and people did! And I’d likely be going along with them IF that were the case.

    But…it wasn’t. The material was deleted. LL saw it was deleted and its further actions are not known.

    Furthermore, Lindens have crafted a policy, first in a notecard then later in a published official blog policy, that lets us know that Linden Lab COOPERATES in these cases and contacts RL authorities, and the sensible thing to do is START WITH AN ABUSE REPORT TO LINDEN LAB.

    Those who feel going to the RL police is effective in a game with avatar names where they don’t have access to real life names are welcome to do so, but it’s foolish. It would only make sense if LL abdicated its responsibility. It hasn’t, and doesn’t.

    >More importantly, Catherine is saying it’s more important to contact the RL authorities for fraud, than it is to contact them for real images of children being sexually abused. If it’s *only* pedophilia, Catherine says send a quick note (even one that’s ignored) to a low-level Linden employee. That’s good enough; it’s not even important enough to AR. Then just forget it.

    This is typical of the tendentious and really sinister misrpresentation that Csven engages in, which is beyond trolling, and which is why it needs careful rebuttals every time.

    Uri is intelligent and can see that I’ve made a distinction between disputes between residents and disputes *of Linden Lab itself* against residents.

    I’ve made the eminently reasonable and practical point that while Linden Lab has the power as a company to go to RL authorities as it has all the information server-side, and complain of a tortious action by a resident, one resident suffering tortious action from another doesn’t have that power nor that information.

    That’s why these residents claims against another resident, that he violated TOS or RL law *has* to begin with Lindens *because they have the server-side information*.

    Csven is deliberatley side-stepping and twisting this not only to find another time to make a false claim about me supposedly finding RL child pornography worse than fraud involving stealing of virtual land (I sure don’t) — he’s doing this to avoid tackling the real issue: server-side powers, and client-side weaknesses. As a coder, he is reluctant to cede any powers to the client-side resident *within the context of the programmed virtual world itself,* and wishes to force people to make the hard trek to RL to try to enlist RL authorities — anything to avoid ceding power for his class and his caste.
34. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Jul 1st, 2007
    

    >I wouldn’t know csven, because I stopped reading your posts, and its too bad because I used to think you were one of the most valuable contributors in the virtual world blogosphere, and I enjoyed reading your posts here, on terra nova, on clickable culture, your own blog and elsewhere. I *used* to think, “hey a post by csven, this will be interesting.” But I don’t feel that way anymore.

    Then you didn’t see the seeds of bad thinking back even in his “good posts,” Uri, and you’re easily misled. And you will be easily twisted and manipulated when, with cunning malevolence, he deliberately goes back to posting “interesting technical posts” again to try to rehabilitate himself with the community, knowing that he can get golf claps from some really nasty types like Matt Mihaly for having taken me down from TN and CC by illicit and despicable means.

    >I don’t really understand what you are trying to accomplish. The best that I can come up with is that you want to be the Captain Ahab of the blogosphere, following Prok across the seven seas of the blogosphere and baiting him into endless idiotic debates that Prok can’t walk away from unfortunately. Your plan: sink to the bottom of the sea taking Prok offline and you with him, like Moby Dick and Ahab sinking to the bottom of the ocean.

    You’re not interested in fighting moral fights, Uri, because you’re a cynic, busy, or lazy, and you want it to feel “fun” or not bother. I am willing to undertake the hard slog and the really unimaginable abuse from these characters because I think something hugely important is at stake – the very navigability of the seven seas themselves; the very right to sail in them.

    >Well, I hate to disappoint but I’m not going to ban or censor either Moby or Ahab — I think that would be giving you what you want. You can keep baiting Prok with your dissappearing kiddie porn meme and you two can destroy topic after topic on blog after blog if you want. No one is going to stop you. I would ask you, however, to please stop.

    It’s good you’re asking Csven to stop — I think even just analyzing the few posts he’s made in this article let you know the grave forms of bad faith, manipulation, and lying that he’s engaging in. I mean, it was obvious that I wasn’t saying fraud is worse than child pornography; I was saying that Linden Lab can bring suit against a resident easier on fraud than a resident can get either LL or RL authorities to focus on another resident, and that ultimately, when crimes occur, residents LIKE YOURSELF URI trying to get EA.com’s attention to a child brothel or a child engaging in RL physical abuse of his sister DEPENDS ON THE COMPANIES. These are matters of obvious fact as well as principle.

    It’s especially annoying that you can’t understand the disappearing kiddie porn meme as being ABOUT Evangeline, Uri. Seriously, that’s retarded. Of course it’s the same issue. Only turn it around. You aren’t banned, but merely a shrill bleater about a fact nobody else can either agree on, thinks is wrong, or do anything about. That’s what it’s all about.

    >Also, this is not an invitation to a meta-discussion. I’ve said what I have to say on the matter. To everyone else, can I ask that you all make use of that fabulous invention — the scroll bar — and learn to scroll past the csven and prok follies until they decide to be productive again. As folks have been saying for over 20 years now: don’t feed the trolls.

    There is no such thing as trolls, only people with persistent beliefs or people who believe they can exercise their powers to annoy and harass as a debating technique. You either persuade them of the falsehood of their position, or you condemn their tactics. Not answering them allows them to fester as much — if not more — than feeding them.
35. 

    Jessica Holyoke
    

    Jul 1st, 2007
    

    Reality,

    I was pointing out that there were ownership interests associated with Second Life that doesn’t have to do with content creation. I was supplying proof of my statement by talking about what is transferable to a third party in keeping with the ToS, which only happens at death through your will or the rules of intestacy. The Lindens won’t allow, or won’t accept, someone selling their account or giving it away while the typist is alive.

    And my closing argument above does relates back to ownership of data on Linden servers. Your position seems to be that Second Life is new and has new rules that don’t need to conform with what is already the law. I’m stating that Second Life is not unique and the relationships in Second Life do need to conform with the established law. (I’ve already made previous arguments regarding whose law to apply so I don’t need to see that here.) You stated that data shouldn’t be treated like other forms of goods, such as books. I stated that data is already treated like other forms of physical goods and provided an example.

    I know its weird, making arguments with facts to bolster them. But its something I like to do and you can’t stop me.
36. 

    Csven Concord
    

    Jul 1st, 2007
    

    “Csven must be dense as well as a troll — but it’s an act.

    “”glimpses real life child pornography that is removed from the land but remains in someone’s inventory so they can continue sharing it”

    The only appropriate thing to do here is to *go to Linden Lab* with the report, as ONLY LINDEN LAB can see into people’s inventories — not me, not the RL police – until they have probably cause and a warrant, of course.

    I cannot file a report on the basis of something deleted, that the Lindens are presiding over and observing, it’s up to them to take action — or not — and they certainly had ample numbers of abuse reports — they ignored them, which is why there was even a

    If there’s RL child pornography out for display somewhere in Second Life, and people abuse report and demonstrate and it isn’t taken down, and Linden Lab does nothing, then of course one would have to start going to RL authorities — and people did! And I’d likely be going along with them IF that were the case.

    But…it wasn’t. The material was deleted. LL saw it was deleted and its further actions are not known.

    Furthermore, Lindens have crafted a policy, first in a notecard then later in a published official blog policy, that lets us know that Linden Lab COOPERATES in these cases and contacts RL authorities, and the sensible thing to do is START WITH AN ABUSE REPORT TO LINDEN LAB.

    Those who feel going to the RL police is effective in a game with avatar names where they don’t have access to real life names are welcome to do so, but it’s foolish. It would only make sense if LL abdicated its responsibility. It hasn’t, and doesn’t.

    >More importantly, Catherine is saying it’s more important to contact the RL authorities for fraud, than it is to contact them for real images of children being sexually abused. If it’s *only* pedophilia, Catherine says send a quick note (even one that’s ignored) to a low-level Linden employee. That’s good enough; it’s not even important enough to AR. Then just forget it.

    This is typical of the tendentious and really sinister misrpresentation that Csven engages in, which is beyond trolling, and which is why it needs careful rebuttals every time.

    Uri is intelligent and can see that I’ve made a distinction between disputes between residents and disputes *of Linden Lab itself* against residents.

    I’ve made the eminently reasonable and practical point that while Linden Lab has the power as a company to go to RL authorities as it has all the information server-side, and complain of a tortious action by a resident, one resident suffering tortious action from another doesn’t have that power nor that information.

    That’s why these residents claims against another resident, that he violated TOS or RL law *has* to begin with Lindens *because they have the server-side information*.

    Csven is deliberatley side-stepping and twisting this not only to find another time to make a false claim about me supposedly finding RL child pornography worse than fraud involving stealing of virtual land (I sure don’t) — he’s doing this to avoid tackling the real issue: server-side powers, and client-side weaknesses. As a coder, he is reluctant to cede any powers to the client-side resident *within the context of the programmed virtual world itself,* and wishes to force people to make the hard trek to RL to try to enlist RL authorities — anything to avoid ceding power for his class and his caste.”
    …

    >I wouldn’t know csven, because I stopped reading your posts, and its too bad because I used to think you were one of the most valuable contributors in the virtual world blogosphere, and I enjoyed reading your posts here, on terra nova, on clickable culture, your own blog and elsewhere. I *used* to think, “hey a post by csven, this will be interesting.” But I don’t feel that way anymore.

    Then you didn’t see the seeds of bad thinking back even in his “good posts,” Uri, and you’re easily misled. And you will be easily twisted and manipulated when, with cunning malevolence, he deliberately goes back to posting “interesting technical posts” again to try to rehabilitate himself with the community, knowing that he can get golf claps from some really nasty types like Matt Mihaly for having taken me down from TN and CC by illicit and despicable means.

    >I don’t really understand what you are trying to accomplish. The best that I can come up with is that you want to be the Captain Ahab of the blogosphere, following Prok across the seven seas of the blogosphere and baiting him into endless idiotic debates that Prok can’t walk away from unfortunately. Your plan: sink to the bottom of the sea taking Prok offline and you with him, like Moby Dick and Ahab sinking to the bottom of the ocean.

    You’re not interested in fighting moral fights, Uri, because you’re a cynic, busy, or lazy, and you want it to feel “fun” or not bother. I am willing to undertake the hard slog and the really unimaginable abuse from these characters because I think something hugely important is at stake – the very navigability of the seven seas themselves; the very right to sail in them.

    >Well, I hate to disappoint but I’m not going to ban or censor either Moby or Ahab — I think that would be giving you what you want. You can keep baiting Prok with your dissappearing kiddie porn meme and you two can destroy topic after topic on blog after blog if you want. No one is going to stop you. I would ask you, however, to please stop.

    It’s good you’re asking Csven to stop — I think even just analyzing the few posts he’s made in this article let you know the grave forms of bad faith, manipulation, and lying that he’s engaging in. I mean, it was obvious that I wasn’t saying fraud is worse than child pornography; I was saying that Linden Lab can bring suit against a resident easier on fraud than a resident can get either LL or RL authorities to focus on another resident, and that ultimately, when crimes occur, residents LIKE YOURSELF URI trying to get EA.com’s attention to a child brothel or a child engaging in RL physical abuse of his sister DEPENDS ON THE COMPANIES. These are matters of obvious fact as well as principle.

    It’s especially annoying that you can’t understand the disappearing kiddie porn meme as being ABOUT Evangeline, Uri. Seriously, that’s retarded. Of course it’s the same issue. Only turn it around. You aren’t banned, but merely a shrill bleater about a fact nobody else can either agree on, thinks is wrong, or do anything about. That’s what it’s all about.

    >Also, this is not an invitation to a meta-discussion. I’ve said what I have to say on the matter. To everyone else, can I ask that you all make use of that fabulous invention — the scroll bar — and learn to scroll past the csven and prok follies until they decide to be productive again. As folks have been saying for over 20 years now: don’t feed the trolls.

    There is no such thing as trolls, only people with persistent beliefs or people who believe they can exercise their powers to annoy and harass as a debating technique. You either persuade them of the falsehood of their position, or you condemn their tactics. Not answering them allows them to fester as much — if not more — than feeding them.”

    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

    Who’d have thought that by posting a simple reply to Tenshi with a couple of links, some whale would come along, swallow them and shit out all of the above.
37. 

    placebo
    

    Jul 2nd, 2007
    

    Assuming by now people have actually had time to read the document itself…..

    …Just want to quickly point out that Linden Labs now takes the position that there is absolutely no such thing as virtual property. The concept is only a sort of “metaphorical” one they conceived of, not a legal one.

    There is no “maybe” about it, as the original post by Prokovy Neva says. In the response document as early as page 3, the position is that what you really do when you “own” Second Life land is receive a license right to use server resources. Later on, more information on the position is that the CEO’s usage of the words “own” and transferring land “titles” was nothing more than just “metaphors.”

    But they deny trying to deceive people…..

    TO BE CLEAR: Linden Lab’s official position – now that they have been forced by a lawsuit to state one – is that you do NOT own anything whatsoever. If you thought you did, it was just your own misunderstanding. Too bad. You are merely given a *revokeable* right, and anything and everything you spend money on within the service is just a license, whether it’s purchased from Linden Labs or other people, and you may be deprived of those virtual things at their discretion. That much was apparent by reading their finely crafted, but also finely unconsionable Terms of Service for most of the data represented in the world. Except for one thing: virtual land that had attached to it words like “ownership.” That is, until now.

    ONCE AGAIN: Read the document. Linden Lab’s position is that you do NOT own your land – in other words, you can’t claim it’s your property in court. You essentially just rent from them.

    Congratulations on Linden Lab for morphing the word “own” into “rent” when challenged by a greater authority (the US legal system).

    Anyone who has invested time and/or money in the ‘Second Life’ service should immediately reevaluate the true value of your investments within, and consider whether you believe you were defrauded of said investments from false advertising. The “clarification” made in the response court document can potentially affect all customers who purchased land under a false belief that it would be owned by the purchaser.

    All customers, even those who have not purchased land should evaluate whether such business practices by this company are acceptable to you and whether it is worthy of any of your future investments.
38. 

    Lem Skall
    

    Jul 2nd, 2007
    

    Prok, what you are complaining about as “code as law” (at least as I understand you) is really just developers who do not listen to their users. It’s a common mistake and LL is a great example for this mistake. But it’s not a conspiracy like you make it sound. It’s just an inability, a failure, and it can have many reasons, probably the most common one being that software developers are usually not good at dealing with people. That and the fact that many users are indeed relative idiots, which should never be an excuse though for developers not to listen.
39. 

    Reality
    

    Jul 2nd, 2007
    

    Jessica your closing statement had nothing at all to do with Second Life as the data you used as an example was data you stored on your own computer or on a CD not data stored on a server owned by a company whose services you have purchased. A web page would have been a better example. Next time try and keep it relevant to the situation at hand if you are going to make an analogy.

    In addition Jessica the other ‘ownership interests’ have nothing at all to do with this particular case as none of the issues you states came into play. It was a deviation from the topic.

    As to your closing statement in your most recent response? I have only this to say: Make all the arguments you want, supported by facts backed up with hard line data all you want Jessica – Just make damn sure they relate to the exact issue at hand and to the particular kind of service and data Second Life is and contains.
40. 

    Jessica Holyoke
    

    Jul 2nd, 2007
    

    Reality,

    Perhaps you should write a bit more carefully. Perhaps instead of saying “The only thing anyone really owns in second Life is the Intellectual rights to their creations – all else exists within the servers that Linden Lab owns and operates.” you should have stated; the only thing anyone really owns in relation to the linden servers are the intellectual rights to their creations, and not reference Second Life as a whole, which is what I was referring to. We all have a number of license rights beyond the intellectual property rights of our creations, but they aren’t necessarily linked to data on the server.

    And you seem to have lost sight of what I was railing against, the very concept of ‘no transfer’. You are stating that contrary to a person’s expectations anywhere else, it is ok to say you purchase something, but you can’t sell it or give it away to someone else because its data. No wait, because its data on a server. No wait, its data on a Linden server. Which doesn’t change the restriction and the distastefulness of it. You were making an argument that because the code allows it, it must be ok. Which it doesn’t and we come back to the tekki-wikki insult.
41. 

    Kryss Wanweird
    

    Jul 2nd, 2007
    

    “You’re not interested in fighting moral fights, Uri, because you’re a cynic, busy, or lazy, and you want it to feel “fun” or not bother.”

    I like Uri!
42. 

    Reality
    

    Jul 2nd, 2007
    

    @ Jessica:

    “And you seem to have lost sight of what I was railing against, the very concept of ‘no transfer’. You are stating that contrary to a person’s expectations anywhere else, it is ok to say you purchase something, but you can’t sell it or give it away to someone else because its data. No wait, because its data on a server. No wait, its data on a Linden server. Which doesn’t change the restriction and the distastefulness of it. You were making an argument that because the code allows it, it must be ok.”

    Rail against the concept of ‘No Transfer’ all you’d like Jessica, your arguments and those of others thus far have hinged on making an analogy to either physical real World goods or software that is either stored on your own machine or in a physical CD in your possession. Such arguments utterly fail when used on something like Second Life simply due to the way the service is run at this time.

    At this time all that anyone really owns concerning Inventory in Second Life is the Intellectual aspect of their own creations. when you buy an object from its Creator you are simply purchasing an identical copy of the data which represents their Idea – their Intellectual Property. They do get to decide if an item they have given you the ability to transfer to another account can be sold to another account.

    In the case of a type of item oft cited by Prokofy concerning this issue … Freebies have one tie in as far as Real Life is concerned. There are programs in real Life that hand out certain things to the homeless and those quite close to being homeless. The only cost of these programs is to everyone else granted … But a person attempting to sell the exact same things to these people is looked down upon and denounced.

    A loose tie in, but I do believe the core of it is there: Just because you can sell an object you did not create in Second Life does not mean you should.

    Now then all that said …. I do not much like the idea of ‘no transfer’ myself Jessica. However due to the people reselling that which they did not create … It has become a necessity. I know at least one resident has proposed that Object permissions be added to, to separate the ability to resell an object and the ability to transfer it. Hmm … Problem solved there.

    Now then I come to this opening statement:

    “Perhaps you should write a bit more carefully. Perhaps instead of saying “The only thing anyone really owns in second Life is the Intellectual rights to their creations – all else exists within the servers that Linden Lab owns and operates.” you should have stated; the only thing anyone really owns in relation to the linden servers are the intellectual rights to their creations, and not reference Second Life as a whole, which is what I was referring to. We all have a number of license rights beyond the intellectual property rights of our creations, but they aren’t necessarily linked to data on the server.”

    forgive the way this sounds Jessica but quite frankly I’ve had to repeat it far too many times in recent days: Perhaps you should remain on the topic at hand, which has nothing at all to do with any other rights within Second Life aside from Intellectual Property rights as well as the ‘rights’ of ‘landowners’.
43. 

    Coincidental Avatar
    

    Jul 2nd, 2007
    

    “What’s clear is that ownership is a concept that has become completely undermined”

    This is the American plague. Peeps there don’t know anymore what ownership means. A market economy can’t exist without consumer class rights and the supplier side hates consumer class rights.

    LL has taken micro-Soviet Union stance in their property rights visions, because they can’t support any more complex system, even if they believe that they can craft laws at will by modifying TOS. I don’t.

    Tekkies as a new ideological movement. That’s an interesting point of view.

    Virtual land has value when there is not enough it. Other VRs offer practically infinite amounts of free land. In them the content and the location are kings.

    Forecast from history: When the growth curve turns down, LL comes out with excuses to no more publish economical data.

    Forecast from history: In the future there is an “infinite” supply of free virtual land and building is free.
44. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Jul 2nd, 2007
    

    Coincidental, you’re forgetting that land is server space. It *does* take up physical space at the server farm. It might get cheaper; it can’t get “free”. The Lindens need to put out servers — buy servers to sustain it. They buy them, and have to sell them. Anyone hosting their own servers might have to pay even more for them and thus charge even more for land. This incorrigible tekkie dream, which Philip shares, of land rolling out endlessly like toilet paper, costing nothing, isn’t correct, given that it does correlate to physical space in RL on physical machines that cost something and need electricity to work.
45. 

    Anonymous
    

    Jul 2nd, 2007
    

    The reason we have “no transfer” is we have “copy.”

    In the real world, there is no such thing as your new television or winter coat coming with a “copy” ability.

    I am glad we have these three choices in SL. I don’t think of any one of them as something we “had to come to.”

    When I make something I want people to be able to give as a gift, I put transfer on it. I don’t put copy on it, because then they would go into business with it themselves. Examples: Ironing board, kitchen sets, a couch. These are things you would generally want only one of anyhow.

    When I make something I need people to be able to make multiple copies of for their own convenience and safety, I put copy, but no transfer on it. Examples: Houses. It’s important they be able to copy houses, if you want them to be able to redecorate or remodel. (Redecorating and remodeling means mistakes.)

    In the real world, it is not important you be able to copy houses even if you could (though it would be handy if one burned down), but it is important that you be able to transfer them.

    In the real world, if you can make dozens of copies of something, then you are not be allowed to sell the copies yourself.

    So for the purposes of a make-believe world that does allow making copies of things (and modifications of things that would be prohibitive to do, time-wise and physically, on all those things in the real world), the no-transfer is vital.

    The transfer option is in no way, that I can tell, something that had to be sadly resorted to. If so, that was done before my time, and by someone who should not have been sad about it.

    coco
46. 

    Ian Betteridge
    

    Jul 2nd, 2007
    

    Prokofy says: “Coincidental, you’re forgetting that land is server space. It *does* take up physical space at the server farm.”

    Umm… So I rent a server and run a sim on it. Now I add a second sim, running on the same server. And a third. How much extra physical space has the additional “land” taken up when I added an extra sim, running on that server?

    Land is software and data. It requires physical infrastructure to run, but it’s not physical itself.
47. 

    Ian Betteridge
    

    Jul 2nd, 2007
    

    “Contrast this “virtual land” perspective LL is now propagating . . . as server space that they own . . . with their position in recent weeks that “what takes place on landowners’ land is their responsibility and all liability for such things belongs to landowners with LL never ever to be named as a defendant in any consequent lawsuits”.”

    I suggest you read the Safe Harbor provisions of the DMCA. LL’s conduct is entirely consistent with a company attempting to establish itself as a “service provider” under that law.
48. 

    Ian Betteridge
    

    Jul 2nd, 2007
    

    Prokofy writes: “Tekkie-wiki has been adapted by many more people than I’d ever dreamed imagineable”

    I’d love to see some links to anyone except you and your alts using it.
49. 

    Khamon
    

    Jul 2nd, 2007
    

    “This incorrigible tekkie dream, which Philip shares, of land rolling out endlessly like toilet paper, costing nothing, isn’t correct, given that it does correlate to physical space in RL on physical machines that cost something and need electricity to work.” – Prokofy

    I think what Philip means by this is that people will develop the idea that virtual land in the Metaverse is free the way most users now consider the Internet to be freely available at no cost to anyone. It’s not true; but it *is* the general perception.

    “The transfer option is in no way, that I can tell, something that had to be sadly resorted to. If so, that was done before my time, and by someone who should not have been sad about it.” – Coco

    We used to be able to take a copy of anything rezzed on our land and copy or modify anything we had in our inventory. That was nice, but not practical for business. So the transfer/sell, copy and modify options were put into place specifically to provide that functionality to creators.
50. 

    Jessica Holyoke
    

    Jul 2nd, 2007
    

    I’m not going to get into the argument with Reality right now over property again, but I wanted to thank Coco because they did an excellent job describing why ‘no transfer’ is important. Although it doesn’t excuse, ‘no copy’ ‘no transfer.’

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