Open Letter to Free Fandom

by Alphaville Herald on 14/01/09 at 10:53 pm

See you on OpenLifeGrid

[UPDATE: Nikola Shirakawa's Free Fandom Texture Package is now available through BitTorrent]

Hello Free Fandom. I know it has been a while since you heard from me, and there's a reason why.

First off, my account was cancelled. The reason for this was I refused to pay the bill. I refused to pay, because, at the time the bill was due, I received disciplinary action regarding classifieds I posted denouncing Lalinda Lovell for stealing Free fandom content and reselling it.

The fact is, I believe Linden Labs has become unworkable as a company, and the main grid stymied because of the drama. As such, I have transferred to OpenLifeGrid, where, lacking a money system, content theft will no longer be a concern.

I operate under the avatar name of Miley Stewart, and if anyone wants help with projects, I will be running projects similar to Free Fandom there. I am also working on open sourcing all of my files, and I am transferring all targas to the new admins.

Unfortunately, the objects and scripts I made will soon be defunct, as will my land. All I can outsource, sadly, are the textures, but as mod rights were enabled wherever possible, hopefully the new creators will be able to recreate what is lost. Thank you all for your support, and so I leave for peaceful pastures, so to speak.

Happy playing, and see you at the crossroads.

Nikola Shirakawa

35 Responses to “Open Letter to Free Fandom”

  1. zac

    Jan 14th, 2009

    you copybotted other peoples stuff anyway you are very talented

  2. Reality

    Jan 15th, 2009

    Gee – I guess you should have gone through the proper channels for reporting stolen content instead of breaking the Terms of Service.

    Cry me a river, build a bridge and get the fuck over it.

    Oh yes – Open Life is actually working on an in-world monetary system … Guess you are screwed there too now aren’t you?

  3. kms

    Jan 15th, 2009

    If you are open-sourcing all your content, consider giving it to the OpenSimulator folks as default inventory items.

    Some other grids, like osgrid.org run by the OpenSim developers, are in existence simply as a proof-of-concept and not for commercial intentions like OpenLifeGrid who, from what I know, took the open source code, made modifications and is not donating any “advancements” back to the community.

  4. This Code is My Soul

    Jan 15th, 2009

    Copybot is a pretty cool guy. Eh removes fags from grids and doesn’t afraid of anything.

  5. Emperor Norton Hears a Who?

    Jan 15th, 2009

    My account was canceled because “I didn’t pay the bill. My BS detector just went off.

    And a “fandom” group, are we talking yet another collection of intellectual property thieves who plagiarizes other people’s work and then claim it is their own? Because you know, the original work is not on the grid, therefor the artist is not a real person and since they did it professionally a sell out anyway.

    Like copyboting takes software. LOL

  6. Nikola Shirakawa

    Jan 15th, 2009

    First off, let me say that I had no intention of this being published here, I wrote it to give to that group itself. I wanted this to be lowkey a I leave. I did not want any attention brought to it.

    Second, I tried to use the official channels and got told off because I didn’t own copyrights. But the fact was, Lalinda Lovell is known by the grid to be dirt, and a thief, and I was not the only person she was ripping off. I did not lie, or slander, I simply stated the facts, that she was reselling freebies, I named which ones she was reselling, and that was considered Slander by LL. The truth is not slander, despite what LL seems to think, and with that loose of an interpretation of the ToS, I saw no point in sticking around. I only received a warning, but it was a warning not justfully earned, and the last straw keeping me on SLG. AT any rate, I am getting over it, by leaving the problem area for better pastures.

    Third, I never used Copybot. I did copy some prims stuff, but I did so, one prim at a time, created from scratch, mimicking instead of perm stripping. It was early on and it was bad. But wherever possible, I paid tribute back to the original creators by donating my textures for their use, and negotiating cross-promotional deals. I made sure everyone I bought from new I used their product as a base, and I only ever got two negative reprisals, one from a JLU person who had muted me and as such was unaware that I had tried to give her the skins to help boost her product’s value, and another hair maker whom I apologized and worked it out with.

    Fourth, no I did not own copyrights, but under Fanart policies, I did not break any laws. I simply did not really own any of it.

    Finally, I am working on a way to get everything I made distributed in texture format so any one on any grid, SL, Opensim, whatever, will have access to them. I confess I am a bit tech illiterate in this way, as I tried and failed in several ways to get the content to the new owners of Free Fandom. I am bug testing to maybe use BitTorrent to seed it out, but I can’t seem to get it to work yet. Once this is done, I will post links for everyone to download to their heart’s content, everything I’ve ever made. Not that it’s all good, but it will all be public domain to the extent that I can give it.

  7. Former OLG User

    Jan 15th, 2009

    Going to OpenLife huh? Prepare for lies and never realized promises. Sakai says money comes in feb. so it will be there too but nevermind that he has made at least 10 promises that it was comming on a certain date and failed. Openlife is a fucking joke. Stay away unless you want the same lies and false hopes you can get in second life.

  8. Former OLG User

    Jan 15th, 2009

    @KMS
    you say: Some other grids, like osgrid.org run by the OpenSim developers, are in existence simply as a proof-of-concept and not for commercial intentions like OpenLifeGrid who, from what I know, took the open source code, made modifications and is not donating any “advancements” back to the community.

    Has anyone verified any modifications? theyre perms have been borked for months. the only way shit gets fixed is if the OS project fixes them. The guy running that place cant code. He is a leech. I agree OSGrid is the shit. Don’t help the bottom feeders like openlife!

  9. Orion Pseudo

    Jan 15th, 2009

    Nikola,

    KMS does have a good point in regard to OpenLife. What they seem to have done was to create their own fork of OpenSim which on its own is okay, but its usually a nice idea to give something back to the main branch of the project when you can. Its kind of like if Microsoft were to replace the command line of Windows with Linux and call it MS-DOS.

    After looking at OpenLife in all honesty it seems as though they’re attempting to become just another Second Life clone. Give it a little while – soon they’ll have an economy going and then it’ll turn into another “festering cesspool” (to quote Arcadia Asylum) of greed and commercialism just like the Linden grid.

    (- points in the direction of the alien vs predator story on the next page as an example with a sigh -)

    Given the direction OpenSim has taken lately in regards to HyperGrid (sort of like LL’s OGP only this one works and lets you bring your inventory with you to wherever you’re teleporting to), perhaps you should consider opening up shop on several different grids? Right now OSGrid is starting to act as a central nexus for HyperGrid links, so that would probably be a good place to start. As well, there are other grids that take a similar methodology, like mine for example where we have an economy system enabled but its not linked to any real world funding source. This enables spacebucks to be traded as game currency, but since they have no value to sell anything using them is futile – hence all assets are made free using a create for the sake of creativity, Arcadia Asylum freebie type of approach.

    Anywho, take some time and check out the other grids out there. OSGrid (http://www.osgrid.org) in particular is a good place to start. As well feel free to check mine out (http://www.pseudospace.net), although we’re still in the process of building and probably wont have everything ready until late 2009.

    Welcome to freedom from Linden tyranny! :)

  10. Nikola Shirakawa

    Jan 15th, 2009

    I understand it’s not fully opensource as the root OSGrid and such are, but I cannot actually upload textures and such with OSGrid, so as a creator, there’s not up to snuff yet. Eventually I want to have the stuff available for any grid that wants them, but figuring out how the web hosting and such for that would work well needs some tinkering. For the moment OLG has provided the highest quality of environment of the open source grids, so at the moment, it is where I work, but the second the others begin hitting stability and uploading, I’ll no doubt switch out.

  11. General Drama

    Jan 15th, 2009

    Nikola, Lalinda has juice with the g-team cause some of them are ageplayers in her little pedo heaven.

  12. Orion Pseudo (Shamroy on SL)

    Jan 16th, 2009

    “I cannot actually upload textures and such with OSGrid, so as a creator, there’s not up to snuff yet.”

    Now that’s a strange problem… I was just on OSGrid about a half hour ago and I was able to upload just fine. As well I and others constantly uploading to my own grid without a hitch. Maybe consider double checking your loginuri or trying the Hippo client? (http://sourceforge.net/projects/opensim-viewer/)

  13. Orion Pseudo (Shamroy on SL)

    Jan 16th, 2009

    @Nikola again – sorry, re-reading the comments… Check out a program called Second Inventory. If you have full permissions over and object it will let you backup the prim structure, textures, and any prim contents (scripts, anims, sounds, etc.) to your hard drive. You can then connect to another grid and it will restore it for you. Its a bit pricey at around $30usd but it will save you a hell of a lot of time and effort. :)

  14. carly

    Jan 16th, 2009

    How can it be that Ms (is she really a woman) Lovell, manages to stay on SL despite innumberable AR’s and TOS violations? She is now back properly on the grid – what was the real story behind litesim going down? – hawking her, erm, creations and being much more careful about the child sexual abuse roleplaying areas and groups. Her name pops up frequently in search also as a byword and none too subtle code for csa and ageplay.
    It makes no sense that she’s been allowed to remain. Or does it? Someone enlighten me.

  15. Nikola Shirakawa

    Jan 16th, 2009

    I tried that, I think it’s just my connection is not very good, so the real alpha grids tend to be finicky for me. As to Second Inventory, my account was canceled for not paying the bill. While the objects still exist for some reason on my land, and the XStreet stuff still works for some reason, the account itself is gone, with the account’s inventory.

  16. Reality

    Jan 16th, 2009

    If you went through the proper channels and got told off … you should have dropped it and done something a bit more clandestine than listing a classified ‘ad’ concerning the activities of an Avatar.

    It has been my experience that it does not matter if what is placed up is true or not – You are not allowed to place any such information anywhere that is publicly accessible.

    That was your mistake – so again, cry me a river, build a bridge and get over it: This shit happens a lot more often than you think.

  17. Nikola Shirakawa

    Jan 16th, 2009

    I did get over it, in just the way I am doing so now, leaving the SL Grid where such bogusness is allowed to take place. Yes, the currency and such might pop up there later, but there are a lot less people there, and a lot more rules that would stop thieves like Lalinda from doing what they do. I’m not crying about it, but I’m not going to stay where a company takes the side that is clearly in the wrong.

  18. Reality

    Jan 16th, 2009

    There is no question concerning IF currency will pop up in Open Life or not: They have stated it is in the works. The question is more or less: Can you handle an environment that is being run by an individual or perhaps even a small time company, allowing teenagers to mingle in with the adults … and where such acts of ‘theft’ not only CAN and WILL happen but where people will STILL get away with it?

    Sorry, moving to a new ‘grid’ is not getting over it: That is being a coward, a crybaby and a child.

    by your own admission nothing was really stolen from you due to your work being considered in the same category as Fan Art and thus carrying no Copyright.

    Feel free to continue to respond and try to reason your way out … I’ve gotten all the information I need at this point.

  19. Nikola Shirakawa

    Jan 16th, 2009

    I never said anything was stolen from me. She was a thief because she stole lindens. Anyone that sells you something that’s supposed to be free is a thief. She didn’t steal from me. She stole from anyone who didn’t know they were freebies.

    Now that that’s settled, just shut up Penance. You’re the one who needs to get over yourself. Ever since I broke off ties, you’ve been trying to destroy me, but the fact is, it doesn’t matter. I’m on to greener pastures, where your brand of drama will not reach for a nice long while.

  20. Jumbo

    Jan 17th, 2009

    Another drama queen leaving for the “greener” pastures of OpenGrid. Who cares? Don’t let the closing door hit you on the ass, Nikola.

  21. Penance Sautereau

    Jan 19th, 2009

    Um…. ego-deflation time. I came to the Herald to read an article Jessica posted at her request and find paranoid ranting from Nikola and….. my name?

    Hate to burst your bubble toots but until today I haven’t looked at the Herald since the last time I posted here some 11 months ago, and I haven’t even thought about you. My time is too booked with business obligations and time with friends to obsess over a kook like you who sees conspiracies in everything and threw away a friend over your own imagined slights. Sorry but anyone trying to “destroy” you is doing so of their own volition. I just don’t care enough about you to bother. But of course you’ll believe what you want to no matter what, so you have fun with that okay? If believing I’ve dedicated perfectly good free time over the past year to the destruction of someone who’s clearly self-destructing just fine on their own without my help makes you feel better about your own flaws and failures then more power to you sweets, but I really could give a half a catshit about anything you do.

  22. Reality

    Jan 20th, 2009

    Congrats Dearie – you’ve earned a spot among such nitwits as Prokofy Neva, Salome and a few other Internet twits with their heads up their asses.

    Do yourself a favor and look around the Herald a few months or so back for my chosen pseudonym to be linked to a web blog entitled “Reality’s Views”, then go to the home page for that blog. Tacking the identity of another person on someone who disagrees with you or whom calls you out without any form of solid proof, such as an IP address or a MAC address which coincides with the last known address of the person you THINK is behind a name …. Well, let me put it to you simply Dearie: Grow the fuck up and stop acting like a preteen AOL user.

    Stick to the topic at hand or cease responding.

    Unless the amount is far greater than L$10 … an item can still be considered a ‘freebie’.

    In any event, you are NOT ‘moving on’ you are running away.

  23. Nikola Shirakawa

    Jan 20th, 2009

    Oooo, I touched a nerve didn’t I. So hurt, you had to protest twice. I particularly love your need to swear like a child to back up expectations to grow up. As to this:

    “Unless the amount is far greater than L$10 … an item can still be considered a ‘freebie’.”

    What does this mean? Arte you having a conversation with yourself here? You made a rebuttal for an argument no one made. Wow, that’s remarkable, Penny, I’m not even mad, that’s just great writing, pure comedy straight and through.

  24. Reality

    Jan 20th, 2009

    Nikola, Child, Dearie …. You really are an idiot sometimes.

    Here is a line out of one of your own posts: “I never said anything was stolen from me. She was a thief because she stole lindens. Anyone that sells you something that’s supposed to be free is a thief. She didn’t steal from me. She stole from anyone who didn’t know they were freebies.”

    Your argument is that the resale of free items at any price is theft – you did not state a threshold at which this becomes an issue.

    In addition Dearie I see that you continue to mistake me for someone else: I have been posting here under this name and ONLY this name for damn near two years now … going on three. The only “nerve” you have touched is the one that is triggered whenever some prepubescent halfwit like yourself gets it in their head that their delusional opinions concerning identities hold any water or basis in fact, which makes me want to KILL such worthless piles of tissue and remove their genes from the pool.

    Let me know when you are capable of coherent thought.

  25. Nikola Shirakawa

    Jan 20th, 2009

    Penny, that’s not my argument at all. You’re right, sale for small amounts, under 10L are still pretty much free, I would not contest that. Sales for 200L or 300L, as Lalinda sold at, are another story.

    Still awfully violent. At least you managed to hold your profanity. I guess that’s something.

  26. Reality

    Jan 21st, 2009

    Dearie, the name is Max – not Penny. Get it right, further idiocy will result in your responses being treated as total bullshit due to your lack of a functioning brain.

    If your argument is not as you stated prior then it may be a good idea to actually proof read what you write.

    Once again – feel free to respond when you are capable of coherent thought … apparently you responded a bit early last time.

  27. Nikola Shirakawa

    Jan 21st, 2009

    Proof reading would not have unveiled arguments fools infer, Penny. I never stated it was my argument that reselling at any price was theft. My argument was what Lalinda Lovell was doing was theft.

    Back to the profanity I see. You must really be getting angry. Oh and for future reference, when you want to claim to be another avatar, it’s probably a good idea to choose n avatar that was created before you started commenting. Just helps the credibility a bit.

  28. Reality

    Jan 22nd, 2009

    Dearie, Max is a real life name. It may help your inane and rather underused and underdeveloped mind to actually do a bit of research before jumping to conclusions.

    This name was originally used by one other that I am aware of … Once again, you do not have a leg to stand on and quite frankly you are proving more and more that you have the mental faculties of an AOL preteen.

    Your argument “”I never said anything was stolen from me. She was a thief because she stole lindens. Anyone that sells you something that’s supposed to be free is a thief. She didn’t steal from me. She stole from anyone who didn’t know they were freebies” mentions no one by name and states that the resale of freebies is theft. There is nothing at all in that statement to infer anything other than what is directly stated.

    Take care Dearie and come back when you can read and have dropped the bullshit.

  29. Nikola Shirakawa

    Jan 22nd, 2009

    Rather convenient, Penny, and also pure wild speculation. I read what I need to. I concede that that argument could be inferred, but really, why is it so important for you to make me look bad? Honestly, your efforts to discredit with immature remarks and profanity hurt your credibility far more than mine.

  30. PenanceSautereau

    Jan 23rd, 2009

    Not really hon, because I seriously haven’t thought of or spoken to you in any form since I left the Herald until I saw this stunning little outburst of paranoia on your part. I don’t need to worry about credibility for things that are all completely in your head dear. I don’t care enough about you to devote time and energy to trying to take you down. I don’t NEED to, you’ve done an admirable job of it all by yourself. And whoever you’ve been trading witty banter with since my one whole whopping post a few days ago, it ain’t been me hon. But of course you’ll never accept that because it would mean you’d have to face the fact that A) more than one person might think you’re a quack and therefore there may be something to that belief and B) that I whom you have apparently wasted near a year obsessively blaming for everything that happens to you does not in fact give a crap about you and hasn’t made any effort to talk to or about you since last June according to a Herald search.

    Max or whoever, I recommend either giving up completely or just have fun baiting the kook, because as far as she’s concerned you’re me and always will be, (funny she has no issues accusing everyone who disagrees with her of being me, despite having a kitten every time someone says I’m just one of her alts, haw!)

    It’s been fun but I have a life that needs my attention. You might consider getting one Nikki.

  31. Nikola Shirakawa

    Jan 23rd, 2009

    No I’m pretty much sticking to the one fact that you post as Reality, which all the timing of your “disappearance” and her “appearance” match up, as well as attitudes towards people here. The Witness X People who I might also add hate me are clearly unconnected, as are any of the JLU who hate me, and those couple of people like Jumbo up there. Anyone can tell those aren’t you, but the fact that you and Reality share writing tone, style, outlook, and appear usually right alongside each other when you post as your real name. It’s all a simple matter of putting together the right pieces.

  32. Reality

    Jan 24th, 2009

    Dearie – I don’t hate you … I hate your attitude and your mentality.

    What is ‘important’ to me … I just got: “I concede that that argument could be inferred”

    Thank you for admitting that you could have worded your statement a bit more clearly and that you never fully stated what your criteria for theft in Second Life was.

    Now then – on to your need to look for an alt for someone you quite clearly hate yourself:

    How far back have you looked Dearie? You might have noticed that my FIRST appearance coincides with the disappearance of Just a Thought, which was a pseudonym being shared between myself and a friend of mine who had been using Second Life for almost a year by that point (don’t quote me on that, look it up).

    That friend? Solar Legion.

    I later decided to see what he was so excited about and joined under the name Universal Infinity.

    It did not take long for me to identify a few people who needed a serious reality check and thus the Pseudonym “Reality” was born.

    The more amusing thing is that you’re not the first person to assume I am someone’s alt: Prokofy Neva did the exact same thing on HER blog, just before removing posting rights for the IP I had been using (which does not work very well when the IP is not Static) … all because I dared to disagree with her and she took it upon herself to look me up in world, fresh out of the box.

    Hmm, small wonder I wasn’t part of many groups then, nor will I be. I don’t join groups without a good reason.

    I do hope that clears things up for you … oh, and before you jump to conclusions … Solar posts under his real name more than the avatar name.

  33. Nikola Shirakawa

    Jan 24th, 2009

    I’ve looked back far enough, Penny. I don’t care what you did before, I simply can point out that “Reality” increased in posting regularity after “Penny” was soundly trounced by everyone on here, myself included. You share the same motivations and the same writing style, as well as general consistency. Maybe you posted with other names prior to Penny. I don’t really care. The fact is you are the same, and it’s just causing nothing but amusement to see your flailing attempts to deny it.

  34. Reality

    Jan 26th, 2009

    Writing style? Motivations? General consistency?

    Lets’ think for a moment shall we Dearie?

    Anyone can go back in the comment postings, compare writing styles and tie together any number of user names/pseudonyms …. I could probably find a few that are damn near identical to you.

    No one knows what another persons motivations are until they are told – period.

    Last part? Try coming up with a bit of false logic reasoning that actually sounds like it makes sense Dearie.

    -sighs and yawns- Dearie, when you are capable of growing up and admitting when you are wrong, feel free to respond to me in the future.

    Until then: You have lost the right.

  35. Nikola Shirakawa

    Jan 26th, 2009

    Sure, I’ll admit I’m wrong. That is, when I’m actually wrong. Hasn’t happened yet. The fact you find it so vital to defend yourself merely adds grounding to confirm I’m right.

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