Linden Lab is building a NEW virtual world

[Pamela Galli]

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arton Rotaru wrote:

 

Most of the creators I know, spend a huge amount of time and effort in developing products, which will be sold at very little prices. Which means,

they monetize over a rather long period of time until you can speak of  real profit they made

.

 

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Exactly my thoughts. For those of us spending sometimes months making something extremely complex -- and keeping it updated -- we want our customers to trust that they are making an investement in their entertainment that they will be able to use as long as they are in SL. If that is a short time, they simply are not going to want to make that kind of purchase.

 

[LaskyaClaren]

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Perrie Juran wrote:

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Zena Zemlja wrote:

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WickedWanda1956 wrote:

The problem with that course of action is if there are more young people like my daughter and not like us. My daughter is CONSTANTLY on World of Warcraft and she tells me that people there are forever making fun and laughing at all of us, Second Lifers. I can't even repeat some of the jokes they have said in WoW about us. Her feeling is that people of her generation (25-35) are more into games like WoW then what the "old" people (like me) are into. Actually if someone can give me a counter arguement to her I would appreciate it.

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No, I cannot give you a counter arguement, as a matter a fact, I hear same thing: most young people are not interested at all in Second Life, as SL seems to have an image problem: an online game for 'old people', and especially for 'oldies' who come online for seksual activities. I bet the comments you cannot repeat are about the bdsm lifestylers among us. Mom whipping dad's ass online, that's not happening in World of Warcraft. They 'only' kill each other there. I would not be surprised if the new brave world they are planning on will erase all 'adult' content in the process as well. 

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I live in a bit of a precarious position here because while I firmly maintain that what goes on between two consenting adults is their business, there is a lot of activity that falls under the umbrella of BDSM it would not bother me one bit if it went bye, bye.

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There need not be anything "precarious" about supporting the right of people to do things that you find abhorent.

The world is full of people who do things I find repellent, stupid, or harmful -- voting Conservative, buying from Apple or Amazon, wearing white after Labour Day -- but whose right to do those things I support. 

The really precarious trick is in making fine distinctions between role play that depicts, say, raping and/or butchering women, on the one hand, and, say, doing the same things to children, Jews, or blacks. Apparently there is a difference, although I've never got it.

More to the point, however, there has been no indication that LL plans to Disneyfie this new VW. It might happen, of course (we know so little still!), but mostly what I'm hearing is the same bleating that we heard when Zindra and the adult rating were introduced. The death of adult content was prophesied then as well, but so far as I can see it's still doing just fine.

 

[Gaia Clary]

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WickedWanda1956 wrote:

As a consumer, I can rebuild but if Lindens don't transfer, I simply don't see the point in at least trying to look for something new now as I will be starting from scratch in two years anyway.

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I doubt that Linden$ will be replaced by anything differnet (What could be a sane reason to invent another currency ?)  But well, in the worst case you could convert your L$ to real $ then convert back to whatever the new currency will be ...

[Zena Zemlja]

We are all entitled to our opinion, so you are entitled to yours.

Having said that: SL was created once as a virtual world for adults only. A separate teen grid was created, anyone younger than the age of 18 was simply not allowed on the main grid. It's quite a normal thing in an adult world - without minors being around - that people will start seksual activities. It's what people do in rl too when the kids are not around. What we like to do for a seksual activity is indeed only the business of the consenting adults involved, so why would you want it gone when nobody can force you to consent to being a part of it? In sl it is happening on some private land or the adult mainland only, since the teen grid has merged with the main grid and the concept of 'adult' content was introduced. 

I seriously think SL needs to get back to its original concept, being a world for adults only. If they want 15 year old computer nerds to play their game, then yes, they will have to create a new world for those. And yes, it will have to be more like WoW to make it work. But the concept of SL was not meant to be like WoW. So what if the younger generation goes to WoW now, they will come to SL in a few years, when they are tired of all the fighting and killing online, and they want to have an adult relationship online to relax with likeminded adults. 

[Gavin Hird]

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Gavin Hird wrote:

You cannot give away such rights as property rights through what the law sees as a one way declaration. It can be done in a two way signed contract, but not in TOS. It has been tested multiple times in many European countries including mine.

Mind you, this waries a bit even inside the EU, so it cannot explicitly be stated for all the EU countries. 

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Add to that; the reason the law sees it this way is because it falls under consumer protection legislation and not a B2B legal relationship.  In my country SecondLife is classified as a consumer game and hence falls under that part of the civil law. 

[Perrie Juran]

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Gavin Hird wrote:

According to the law you cannot give away your IP rights in the form of a TOS.

The TOS can in many ways be seen as a one way declaration which makes it void. 

 

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Until that is upheld specifically dealing with SL by a European Court that amounts to nothing more or less than personal opinion about how the law applies.  You could be right.  Myself, I don't know but so far everything I've read it has looked like misapplication of the law  to me.

 

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Gavin Hird wrote:

 

EDIT: and also privacy rights and others – one of the reasons Europeans balked big time over the Adult verification backle. 

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I remember the flap also.   When you use SL at any level, you are doing business with LL.  The TOS is a business agreement.  No Court would force LL to allow any one to use SL without the agreement.  Nor would a Court force anyone to do business with someone that they can't verify the identification of.

 

 

[Phoebe Avro]

Curency conversion tax just like in the RW and LL current exchange system!

[WickedWanda1956]

So (and this is a serious question), do you think it would be better to convert your Lindens now before the exchange rate goes potentially down the drain?

[Phil Deakins]

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WickedWanda1956 wrote:

Just turned 58 earlier this month. I love Second Life and don't want to leave. I just need to have an answer to my linden transfer balance question sometime in the next month. As a consumer, I can rebuild but if Lindens don't transfer, I simply don't see the point in at least trying to look for something new now as I will be starting from scratch in two years anyway.

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You're just a kid then lol

You're the first i've seen mention L$ (there were so many new posts in this thread when I got up today that I didn't read them). L$ don't have to transfer over but, imo, it would be very wrong of LL not to make it so. Even I would be up in arms then lol

[Innula Zenovka]

Sorry, Wanda, but I don't understand your concern now about what may happen to your L$ in 18 months' time or so.   If the worst comes to the worst, surely at the time you just cash out your remaining L$ and use them to buy whatever the new currency is (L€ or whatever), and take a hit on the transaction costs.

I don't think LL is going to give you any guarantees about a 1:1 exchange rate, anyway, since that presupposes that the new currency is going to be pitched at the same rate to the US$ as is the L$.   Possibly it will be, but if they decide that the L€  should trade at around 100:1 or 1:1 with the US dollar, that would be completely inappropriate.

ETA I see that Gaia has raised this same question while I was writing, and

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WickedWanda1956 wrote:

So (and this is a serious question), do you think it would be better to convert your Lindens now before the exchange rate goes potentially down the drain?

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 I can think of no sensible reason why this would be an issue now.   We're talking about an event some 18 months or 2 years ago, at least.   I don't know how many L$ you're sitting on, but most people either simply buy enough L$ for their immediate needs every few weeks or cash out however frequently it makes sense (weekly, monthly or whatever).   Certainly, if you're sitting on more L$ than you're going to need for the next few weeks, I'd cash out the extra and put it in an interest bearing account of some sort with your bank, where it's far safer.   That would be my advice anyway, regardless of SL2.

[Perrie Juran]

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Zena Zemlja wrote:

We are all entitled to our opinion, so you are entitled to yours.

Having said that: SL was created once as a virtual world for adults only. A separate teen grid was created, anyone younger than the age of 18 was simply not allowed on the main grid. It's quite a normal thing in an adult world - without minors being around - that people will start seksual activities. It's what people do in rl too when the kids are not around. What we like to do for a seksual activity is indeed only the business of the consenting adults involved, so why would you want it gone when nobody can force you to consent to being a part of it? In sl it is happening on some private land or the adult mainland only, since the teen grid has merged with the main grid and the concept of 'adult' content was introduced. 

I seriously think SL needs to get back to its original concept, being a world for adults only. If they want 15 year old computer nerds to play their game, then yes, they will have to create a new world for those. And yes, it will have to be more like WoW to make it work. But the concept of SL was not meant to be like WoW. So what if the younger generation goes to WoW now, they will come to SL in a few years, when they are tired of all the fighting and killing online, and they want to have an adult relationship online to relax with likeminded adults. 

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I corrected my statement to reflect what I meant, "some."  I don't disagree with "all."  But I didn't want this to sidetrack into a discussion of the specific activities.

[Magnus Brody]

Since my first post, I'm become more positive about the Brave New World, and here's my thinking.

Way back when I first rezzed in 2006, SL was much more about community and less about the Lab making a profit.  Lindens were around a lot, often popping into live concerts and they were chatty.  I even became friends with Blue Linden, who often attended the same concerts as I did during his lunchbreak, and my 9:00pm UK time.  So Lindens were once friendly and around a lot.

When things changed makes sense when you consider the Lab to be a business, which needs to repay and make profit for its original backers.  As I remember SL opened, after a brief period as Linden World initially, around the end of 2002.  It became a proper early version of what we have today in 2003.

The first few years of SL were probably run purely on the credit of the investors and the main goal of the Lab then would have been to build up its customer base, hence the community atmosphere.  Come 2007/8 there definitely was a shift in focus, and some here have mentioned the homestead fiasco.  That time was certainly a shift from "hey we're all cool dudes here at the Lab" to let's change the financial model to start bringing in cash proper.  In fact, possibly those with the out of date community atmosphere, vanished in the great redundancy cull.  Was it, "thanks guys for being the type of friendly folks we needed to start us off, but we need to start making money now"?

This was all at the same time as M Linden making a bried appearance and changing things around a lot.  He was clearly an eye on the money man.

Unfortunately that left many longer-term residents stuck in a timewarp feeling of SL being a huge community run for the benefit of residents and, although that changed, many still have a residual feeling of what it was before.

As for the future, and reading many posts here which indicate that the Brave New World will need to be a simplified version of SL, albeit with better graphics and new bells and whistles, to run on tablets, phones, etc., that would set-up a need for two versions of SL, the current one and Brave New World.  One for those who love SL for all its knob tweaking complexity to get just the right graphics, and those who would prefer an instant switch on and it works Brave New World.

Again, as has been posted here, the very ethos of Brave New World is going to be different from SL.  I don't think it will be called Second Life, because I don't think the Lab wants it to be separate from first life.  It's going to be more integrated with first life and interrupt your day for a few minutes at work, like facebook and twitter.

This difference is a positive one I'm thinking, because the Lab may consider it business savvy to continue with two brands of Virtual World, just as Volkswagen owns Bentley, Audi, Seat and Skoda and markets their brands separately to appeal to different market sectors - clever, because it means they can seel the same car 4 times to completely different markets by rebadging it Audi, VW, Seat or Skoda.

My tuppence worth is, at the time of Brave New World being up and ready to go (or even five years later) if SL continues to be a profit making business, why would the Lab close it, particularly in the early days of Brave New World when it won't be making money?  I think Ebbe has hinted at that, I think I remember "years and years" and a comment about "as long as it remains profitable".  Effectively then it's really up to those who want to see SL continue, to keep it going.

It's possible SL could continue to run as a niche product with vast unused areas of land wiped out, creating a slimmer operating model financed by those who remain perhaps paying a lesser tier in return for a viewer which offers more and more infrequent updates, and therefore less Lab maintenance.  SL would be cheaper for the Lab to run, cheaper to participate in, and still generate a profit.

Even in the future, if the Lab were not happy with profit levels, but they were consistent yet modest, SL could be sold as an ongoing business - even perhaps as a structured resident buy-out.

I don't think everyone is going to be running over to Brave New World, and some of those who initially do, may return to SL as a preference.  Once things stabilise and the Lab are happy SL continues to generate profit, then I think SL will continue.  Brave New World may fail, so the Lab are going to want a fallback for a few years to come.  If Brave New World takes off then I still see a future for SL

Personally, I think I'll be hovering between both for a while.

[WickedWanda1956]

Thanks for your answer but if that is the case, I am gone now. I simply don't see the point in staying without that. I can spend the next two years looking for something better or simply wait until Version 2 is released and start over new like everyone else. Although I do agree that the currency rate needs to be established soon to allow people to get a better sense of what to do.

[Ebbe Linden]

Not sure what you mean by "tax issues".

Yes, Lindens will go across just fine.

I wish you all the best.  

[Ebbe Linden]

You are jumping to all kinds of assumptions here. If you listen to the chat I had with the TPV crew you won't hear me say what you're suggesting I say or what you suggest it means. 

[Gavin Hird]

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Perrie Juran wrote:

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Gavin Hird wrote:

According to the law you cannot give away your IP rights in the form of a TOS.

The TOS can in many ways be seen as a one way declaration which makes it void. 

 

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Until that is upheld specifically dealing with SL by a European Court that amounts to nothing more or less than personal opinion about how the law applies.  You could be right.  Myself, I don't know but so far everything I've read it has looked like misapplication of the law  to me.

 

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Gavin Hird wrote:

 

EDIT: and also privacy rights and others – one of the reasons Europeans balked big time over the Adult verification backle. 

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I remember the flap also.   When you use SL at any level, you are doing business with LL.  The TOS is a business agreement.  No Court would force LL to allow any one to use SL without the agreement.  Nor would a Court force anyone to do business with someone that they can't verify the identification of?

 

 

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The only reason why it cannot be upheld (and you are right about that), is because LL does not have a subsidiary inside the EU or in my country.

The minute they had a subsidiary inside the EU they would have to bring their TOS in compliance with EU legislation (and it is not) just like all US companies must do. If they in addition had a subsidiary in my country, they would have to bring the TOS in compliance with that legislation which is even more restrictive in certain respects and thus a superset of the EU legislation. 

However, if you as a developer had to enter into an additional contract, like you do when you sign up to Apple's developer group for distribution of your creations in the app store, then it is possible to have such wording in the contract.  This would be regarded as a B2B relation and not a B2C relation.   No creator in their right minds would casually sign away such rights...

[Dresden Ceriano]

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WickedWanda1956 wrote:

The problem with that course of action is if there are more young people like my daughter and not like us. My daughter is CONSTANTLY on World of Warcraft and she tells me that people there are forever making fun and laughing at all of us, Second Lifers. I can't even repeat some of the jokes they have said in WoW about us. Her feeling is that people of her generation (25-35) are more into games like WoW then what the "old" people (like me) are into. Actually if someone can give me a counter arguement to her I would appreciate it.

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Tell your daughter that while they're making fun and laughing at us, we're too busy enjoying ourselves to make fun and laugh at them because of their lack of the determination and imagination necessary to set their own goals and entertain themselves... therefore, having to rely upon someone else to hand those things to them on a plate.

...Dres

[WickedWanda1956]

THAT IS FANTASTIC. As a retired programmer, I wish you all the best and I am looking forward to the Brave New World

[WickedWanda1956]

Thanks Dres, yes, that is my go-to closing arguement. I can get her face red and see the pout I have seen on her pace for over 28+ years.

[Ebbe Linden]

I pretty much only said these things:

We are embarking on a huge project to build a better virtual world from the ground up.

We are not going to constrain how good it can be by forcing some levels of backwards compatability (Sine then I've added some detail that identity and social connections and Lindens$ will come across and quite a bit of content as well, but with content we need more time to figure out exactly what will be backwards compatible, people will have plenty of time to see how this plays out and get a chance to try the new while still also hanging out in SL)

We will continue to invest in SL and keep improving and have no plans for any shutdown. 

The rest is all speculation that has since then popped up. 

[Phoebe Avro]

"The rest is all speculation that has since then popped up"

Because LL never announced this in the correct manner i.e on the SL blog when LL had more information as to what's going to happen!

[Imagin Illyar]

I think they've announced all that they can for now.  There just wouldn't be enough details for a blog post yet.  And even if they did do a very short blog post announcements with no real details - you really think that would prevent speculation?  I'm impressed with how willing Ebbe is to communicate with us here.  I much prefer him answering questions in the forums than just making a blog post.

[Pamela Galli]

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Imagin Illyar wrote:

I think they've announced all that they can for now.  There just wouldn't be enough details for a blog post yet.  And even if they did do a very short blog post announcements with no real details - you really think that would prevent speculation?  I'm impressed with how willing Ebbe is to communicate with us here.  I much prefer him answering questions in the forums than just making a blog post.

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Agree. Because of this willingness we have some critically important information and the expectation of more as it becomes available. 

[Phoebe Avro]

As far as i can see LL have not anounced anything bar a TPV meeting and some forum posts the first of those on SLU and not on the SL forum, a lot of those at SLU don't even log in to SL now!

[Theresa Tennyson]

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Gavin Hird wrote:

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Perrie Juran wrote:

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Gavin Hird wrote:

According to the law you cannot give away your IP rights in the form of a TOS.

The TOS can in many ways be seen as a one way declaration which makes it void. 

 

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Until that is upheld specifically dealing with SL by a European Court that amounts to nothing more or less than personal opinion about how the law applies.  You could be right.  Myself, I don't know but so far everything I've read it has looked like misapplication of the law  to me.

 

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Gavin Hird wrote:

 

EDIT: and also privacy rights and others – one of the reasons Europeans balked big time over the Adult verification backle. 

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I remember the flap also.   When you use SL at any level, you are doing business with LL.  The TOS is a business agreement.  No Court would force LL to allow any one to use SL without the agreement.  Nor would a Court force anyone to do business with someone that they can't verify the identification of?

 

 

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The only reason why it cannot be upheld (and you are right about that), is because LL does not have a subsidiary inside the EU or in my country.

The minute they had a subsidiary inside the EU they would have to bring their TOS in compliance with EU legislation (and it is not) just like all US companies must do. If they in addition had a subsidiary in my country, they would have to bring the TOS in compliance with that legislation which is even more restrictive in certain respects and thus a superset of the EU legislation. 

However, if you as a developer had to enter into an additional contract, like you do when you sign up to Apple's developer group for distribution of your creations in the app store, then it is possible to have such wording in the contract.  This would be regarded as a B2B relation and not a B2C relation.   N

o creator in their right minds would casually sign away such rights...

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Here a portion of the end-user license for Eve Online, incorporated in Iceland (and considered by one forum poster as the a model for MMO conduct:)

"

B. Rights to Certain Content

You have no interest in the value of your time spent playing the Game, for example, by the building up of the experience level of your character and the items your character accumulates during your time playing the Game. Your Account, and all attributes of your Account, including all corporations, actions, groups, titles and characters, and all objects, currency and items acquired, developed or delivered by or to characters as a result of play through your Accounts, are the sole and exclusive property of CCP, including any and all copyrights and intellectual property rights in or to any and all of the same, all of which are hereby expressly reserved.

Without limiting its rights in any way, and subject to the other terms of the EULA, CCP shall have the right to display and publish any information (except certain personal information in your Account) relating to any character in your Account, for example, in charts, lists and other compilations, without notice or any compensation to you whatsoever.

You hereby irrevocably and without additional consideration beyond the rights granted to you herein, assign to CCP any and all right, title and interest you have, including copyrights, in or to any and all information you exchange, transmit or upload to the System or while playing the Game, including without limitation all files, data and information comprising or manifesting corporations, groups, titles, characters and other attributes of your Account, together with all objects and items acquired or developed by, or delivered by or to characters, in your Account. To the extent that any such rights are not assignable, you hereby grant CCP an exclusive, perpetual, worldwide, irrevocable, assignable, royalty-free license, fully sub-licensable through multiple tiers, to exercise all intellectual property and other rights, in and to all or any part of such information, in any medium now known or hereafter developed. The foregoing assignment and license in this paragraph shall not include User Content (defined below).

C. User Content

The System may allow you to communicate information, such as by posting messages in chat rooms, on bulletin boards and other user-to-user areas (collectively, "User Content").

User Content that you cause to be communicated to the System may not (i) violate any statute, rule, regulation or law; (ii) infringe or violate the intellectual property, proprietary, privacy or publicity rights of any third party; (iii) be defamatory, indecent, obscene, child pornographic or harmful to minors; or (iv) contain any viruses, Trojan horses, disabling code, worms, time bombs, "clear GIFs," cancelbots or other computer programming or routines that are intended to, or which in fact, damage, detrimentally interfere with, monitor, intercept or expropriate any data, information, packets or personal information.

CCP may take any action it deems appropriate regarding any User Content, if CCP believes, in its sole discretion, that such User Content violates the EULA or may expose CCP, its licensors and/or its suppliers to liability, damage CCP's relationship with any of its suppliers, licensors, ISPs or other users of EVE, harm anyone or harm CCP's reputation or goodwill.

You hereby grant CCP an exclusive, perpetual, worldwide, irrevocable, assignable, royalty-free license, fully sub-licensable through multiple tiers, to exercise all intellectual property and other rights, in and to all or any part of your User Content, in any medium now known or hereafter developed.

Violation of CCP's proprietary rights is a material breach of the EULA, in the event of which CCP may suspend your Account, terminate the EULA and take whatever additional action CCP deems appropriate under the circumstance. The foregoing is without prejudice to or waiver of any and all of CCP's other rights and remedies, all of which are expressly reserved, survive termination, and are cumulative."