Linden Lab is building a NEW virtual world

[Gavin Hird]

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irihapeti wrote:

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position to negotiate

i buy a copy of Microsoft Windows 8.1. I don't get to negotiate the Terms of how I can use it. I buy a Toyota car. I don't get to negotiate the terms of warranty. If I use it in a way that breaches the terms the warranty is null and void. etc, etc

 

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In EU countries and in my country both Microsoft, Apple, Toyota and most non EU suppliers have been forced by the consumer legislation and the authorities to substantially change their TOS to bring them in accordance with the consumer legislation, which is quite different from what it is in the US.  Warranties and returns in consumer purchases are mandated by legislation, but a few manufacturers offers better warranties than the minimum requirements. 

Again, since the TOS is a one way declaration in consumer relations it protects the consumer from casually signing away legal rights. 

[DesperadoReprise]

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Gavin Hird wrote:

 

What they also have done is making new provisions in the TOS retroactive where they essentially have given themselves the full IP rights to what is the user's IP.  This may - and I stress may, have been acceptable if the owner was given the option to retrieve a full backup of their creations and remove the existing copies fully from the existing system if they did not accept that change.  I cannot recall having seen any such options. 

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This is the crux of what a class action against LL should be based upon.

And it would be successful.

Blackmail has never been allowed in commercial law.

"that's a stone-cold fact"

[Gavin Hird]

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irihapeti wrote:

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retrospective application

break it down

you make something. I buy a copy off you or you give it to me for free. You withdraw your property from the market and/or SL entirely. You do not get to withdraw my copy I bought/received from you. LL hold my copy for me. Is not yours. Is mine

the IP in the product I have might belong to you. The product belongs to me. Thats the law

+

break it down further

when you withdraw from SL. Delete everything off your parcel. and or any stuff on group owned/shared land which you no longer wish to share with others in the group . Relinquish/sell the empty parcel. Delete everything in your inventory. Leave your avatar dressed in the default outfit. Cash out any L$ you have or shove it in a charity vendor. Delete your account

and you done

what property remaining contains your IP? That which you sold/gave to others. Which is not your property by law

 

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No, this would work like in a DMCA takedown. In this event all occurences of the IP will be removed from the system regardless of who is the holder. We have already seen this in effect in SecondLife where products have been removed from inventories or textures have gone white. 

It is also technically possible to do it this way because all occurences of the creation points back to the originating database record. That is not possible to do in the physical world without substantial effort. 

[Qie Niangao]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

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Drake1 Nightfire wrote:

With animations and avatars changing "radically" will mesh clothing have to be re-rigged or will we be able to use the ones we already have?

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Of course, I'm not Ebbe, but I think I can answer this, maybe even better than Ebbe.

Yes, and maybe no. If the avatar uses a different skeleton, then the clothing will need to be rigged to that new skeleton. If the creator uses the exact same skeleton from SL, then the old clothing might work, and I stress might.

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Right: "might" needs a lot of stressing, given what we've read in this thread. Asked directly, Ebbe wasn't even confirming that animations will be inventory assets. I suppose with this Sylvia was asking about something like "expressive puppeteering", part of the long gone Physical Avatar project. That could be a very brave new world indeed -- but still folks will want to replay animations somehow (and store them, if it comes to that), so I'm not sure what change could be so fundamental at to prevent any form of animation from existing in inventory.

[DesperadoReprise]

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irihapeti wrote:

DesperadoReprise wrote:

... virtual sexual ageplay between consenting adults isn't actually illegal in any legislation I have seen.

 

where I live depictions of it are. Which is what pixellations are. Not only are the actors guilty of a criminal act by depicting sexual ageplay so are the operators of the service which enables it

 

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Electronic cartoons - which is what SL is - are not illegal depictions; only if real life people are depicted might it be illegal, and even then, there is an artistic licence defence.

By your argument, ebooks of Lolita - which are textual pixellations depicting sexual age-play - would still be illegal; but then, maybe they are in some culturally backward countries.

"ain't it hard"

[Kayleigh McMillan]

I think it is good news we can keep our virtual identity and L$ and these worlds will run parallelle to eachother so we can indeed decide where we like to spend our energy.

I think energy and all the efforts we have put in Second Life to me is indeed something which makes this all difficult.

Many people have put immense efforts and energy in the grid over the years and as such we have invested, not per se money wise only, in a platform many of us love and are emotionally attached to.

Our stuff, creations, homes, social networks, groups, communities, events and so on and so forth.

If I speak for myself, ofcourse I have to see "Second Life 2.0" first to know this for sure, I doubt I want to build everything there from the ground up again.

This was not why I joined Second Life in the first place and this is also the reason why I was never interested, besides curiousity, in other grids.

Second Life as it is now was and is my virtual home where I love to spend my spare time without hassle and certainly without doing extra work.

I doubt, how cool and full of potential an other grid might be, I feel like investing all those efforts again.

I rather build up on what I currently have, this gives a way more positive feeling than building on something which may or may not become a Second Life 3.0 some years after or fail by lack of ungoing interest all together.

Which was the case with many attempts to copy SL by people who have build other grids.

The big question is where exactly do we want to spend our precious time in.

It may be a content creators Walhallah but it isn't to say that their current costumers feel this vibe as well.

It is quite possible they rather have the world they know and care about.

The virtual worlds I have visited besides SL were not so populated at all besides stores of merchants who took the gamble in spending energy for should this ever work out just so they had their piece of the pie.

[Gavin Hird]

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DesperadoReprise wrote:

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irihapeti wrote:

DesperadoReprise wrote:

... virtual sexual ageplay between consenting adults isn't actually illegal in any legislation I have seen.

 

where I live depictions of it are. Which is what pixellations are. Not only are the actors guilty of a criminal act by depicting sexual ageplay so are the operators of the service which enables it

 

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Electronic cartoons - which is what SL is - are not illegal depictions; only if real life people are depicted might it be illegal, and even then, there is an artistic licence defence.

By your argument, ebooks of Lolita - which are textual pixellations depicting sexual age-play - would still be illegal; but then, maybe they are in some culturally backward countries.

"ain't it hard"

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Wrong, both the UK and Germany has very strict legislation covering pixelated depictions too. Possibly other countries as well.

[DesperadoReprise]

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Gavin Hird wrote:

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DesperadoReprise wrote:

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Ebbe Linden wrote:

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Racheal Rexen wrote:

Hello Ebbe, thanks for taking the time to answer ours questions, My question is if the Adult Community will have a place in the new Virtual world? 

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We have no plans to disallow anything that's going on in SL and is legal. We're proud of the freedom we offer. 

 

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Because virtual sexual ageplay between consenting adults isn't actually illegal in any legislation I have seen.

 

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It may not be illegal per se, but some countries have very strict legislation on the depiction of ageplay involving minors even if there are adults behind the actors. This in itself is problematic even if the legal age of entry to SecondLife is at or above the age of sexual consent (not sure if that is the right term...) Mixing child avatars into adult situations and land my in itself incriminate the users of the system, and also the operator.

In a family oriented setting, having adults behind child avatars regardless how general the setting is, will probably create massive problems with authorities in most countries and will most likely result in regulatory intervention and negtive media exposure.  

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Which all goes to support my view that Ebbe is contradicting himself and his company's position with content-free statements which do not match reality, and providing himself with a get-out when Sanitised Life tries to limit adult activity to the missionary position, in the dark, between married partners of different genders, but the same religion, behind locked bedroom doors.

Because as recent news events have demonstrated, different countries have different attitudes to what constitutes legal adult activity.

Erm, did Ebbe mention whether his "freedom " meant that Sanitised Life would just have to adhere to California laws? Or all limiting prohibitions globally?

"the lawmen cleared the people"

[Innula Zenovka]

Of course they don't have any plans to disallow ageplay of the sort you describe.   They disallowed it seven or eight years ago, and people don't normally talk about making plans to do something they've already done.    

 

[irihapeti]

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Gavin Hird wrote:

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No, this would work like in a DMCA takedown. In this event all occurences of the IP will be removed from the system regardless of who is the holder. We have already seen this in effect in SecondLife where products have been removed from inventories or textures have gone white. 

It is also technically possible to do it this way because all occurences of the creation points back to the originating database record. That is not possible to do in the physical world without substantial effort. 

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you taking it into a whole other realm now

up til now we be discussing who owns what as it relates to IP contained in products. IP that is indisputably owned by a vendor. Sold/given by the vendor/giver to another/customer in a product. indisputably owned by the reciever/customer

DMCA is for when the ownership of IP (as a property in itself) is disputed 

+

 the Courts dont consider wether is easy or hard technically to recover/return property when determining who owns what

[Gavin Hird]

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DesperadoReprise wrote:

Erm, did Ebbe mention whether his "freedom " meant that Sanitised Life would just have to adhere to California laws? Or all limiting prohibitions globally?

"the lawmen cleared the people"

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Because California is where LL is incorporated, they would probably get away with just adhering to California law. 

The issue is that despite this users from other countires my incrimidate themselves by following what is legal in the US. 

LL can be sanctioned by putting their addresses in the EU child porn filter, which would effectively shut them out of a 500 million people market if it came to it. 

[Qie Niangao]

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Gavin Hird wrote:

In a business to consumer offering like Linden Lab's Secondlife is, the TOS is regarded a one way declaration because the consumer, in reality, has no way of changing the terms or renegotiate them. Because of this TOS must satisfy the minimum requirements of the law, in addition they must protect the consumer from casually signing away legal rights. 

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Understand the disastrous consequences of that, if indeed that's how European courts interpret it. If that's how a service such as Second Life must operate, then all content creation will require that the creator "negotiate" a license with the service provider. Now, of course, no serious company "negotiates" anything with millions of suppliers. It may not be a ToS, but it's take-it-or-leave-it. So this would have no practical benefit, only the effect of preventing the offer of any service in which casual creativity could be rewarded without the creators first hiring a lawyer.

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This does not, however, mean they can be transferred to a new service for storage and rendering in the new service, unless the new service is an upgrade to the existing one (meaning the existing one goes away.)

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That would be an extraordinarily stupid thing for a court to find, if "both" services are provided under the same ownership, entangling as it does even such innocent and basic service separation as A/B testing. (European courts are shockingly stupid, it's true, but this seems beyond even their incompetence.)

[Gavin Hird]

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irihapeti wrote:

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DMCA is for when the ownership of IP (as a property in itself) is disputed 

 

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Which is exactly the issue here. I as the IP holder can dispute LL's right to distribute my original IP to a new service and hence file a DMCA takedown. :-) 

[Gavin Hird]

The way to fix this without having to negotiate with millions of consumers is through a separate developer and distribtuion agreement that regulates this in a proper way. This is exactly what organizations like Apple organize this for distribution of creations in the app store. 

[DesperadoReprise]

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Gavin Hird wrote:

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DesperadoReprise wrote:

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irihapeti wrote:

DesperadoReprise wrote:

... virtual sexual ageplay between consenting adults isn't actually illegal in any legislation I have seen.

 

where I live depictions of it are. Which is what pixellations are. Not only are the actors guilty of a criminal act by depicting sexual ageplay so are the operators of the service which enables it

 

---

Electronic cartoons - which is what SL is - are not illegal depictions; only if real life people are depicted might it be illegal, and even then, there is an artistic licence defence.

By your argument, ebooks of Lolita - which are textual pixellations depicting sexual age-play - would still be illegal; but then, maybe they are in some culturally backward countries.

"ain't it hard"

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Wrong, both the UK and Germany has very strict legislation covering pixelated depictions too. Possibly other countries as well.

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As far as I am aware, there's certainly a degree of interpretation involved in the UK, but I wouldn't like to comment on the German situation.

But you would agree that virtual child pornography is specifically allowed in the USA by the 2003 PROTECT Act?

So it is "legal" where LL is based.

Which contradicts Ebbe's claim.

"just an empty fable"

[Qie Niangao]

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Parrish Ashbourne wrote:

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Ebbe Linden wrote:

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Racheal Rexen wrote:

Hello Ebbe, thanks for taking the time to answer ours questions, My question is if the Adult Community will have a place in the new Virtual world? 

---

We have no plans to disallow anything that's going on in SL and is legal. We're proud of the freedom we offer. 

 

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in the TPV meeting it was said that that SL2 would be closed source at fist, with out TPV's there's no RLV.  To give you an idea of the impact of having no RLV, the open collar group has over 90,000 members, and that's down from where it use to be.  Any chance of RLV in the official viewer, if not we need the TPVs.

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Two things here. First, by no means do all OpenCollar users enable RLV, so that's not really a very useful statistic. Second, I'm pretty sure that the RLV developers themselves would admit that RLV is a hideous hack -- almost as kludgy as the Firestorm LSL bridge -- and a new platform could easily extend the concept of Experience Permissions to have a viewer component, making it possible to implement RLV-like functionality cleanly. I hope they do that because it has many uses besides BDSM, so it would be better if it were more respectable in both reputation and implementation.

[DesperadoReprise]

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Innula Zenovka wrote:

Of course they don't have any plans to disallow ageplay of the sort you describe.   They disallowed it seven or eight years ago, and people don't normally talk about making plans to do something they've already done.    

 

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But Ebbe has comitted here in these forums very recently that Sanitised Life will allow user freedoms as long as they are legal.

And depiction of sexual age-play is not illegal in California, with whose laws LL has to comply.

Is he lying, inconsistent, or incompetent?

"it's finally turned the tables"

[Qie Niangao]

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Gavin Hird wrote:

The way to fix this without having to negotiate with millions of consumers is through a separate developer and distribtuion agreement that regulates this in a proper way. This is exactly what organizations like Apple organize this for distribution of creations in the app store. 

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Other than invalidating all existing content for which no such agreement could be practically obtained (creators gone missing, etc.), this all seems an utter waste of time. It may be the cost of doing business globally, but that doesn't make it less silly.

[Gavin Hird]

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DesperadoReprise wrote:

But you would agree that virtual child pornography is specifically allowed in the USA by the 2003 PROTECT Act?

So it is "legal" where LL is based.

Which contradicts Ebbe's claim.

"just an empty fable"

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I am not going to step into the interpretation of that act as I personally think it is a way too sensitive subject. If it is allowed, my personal feeling is the act should be changed to forbid it. 

[Gavin Hird]

Yes, it is the cost of doing business globally - hence also one of the parameters for New & Shiny.

But then again I have asked LL to create a developer group since 2009 to get these things in order... 

 

[DesperadoReprise]

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Gavin Hird wrote:

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DesperadoReprise wrote:

Erm, did Ebbe mention whether his "freedom " meant that Sanitised Life would just have to adhere to California laws? Or all limiting prohibitions globally?

"the lawmen cleared the people"

---

 

Because California is where LL is incorporated, they would probably get away with just adhering to California law. 

The issue is that despite this users from other countires my incrimidate themselves by following what is legal in the US. 

LL can be sanctioned by putting their addresses in the EU child porn filter, which would effectively shut them out of a 500 million people market if it came to it. 

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Extending your argument . . .

Sex between a muslim woman and a christian man is legal in California, but not in the Sudan. Does this mean that LL has to demand details of users' religions and prevent such congress?

To say nothing of the legality of apostasy.

"twisted fate"

[DesperadoReprise]

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Qie Niangao wrote:

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Gavin Hird wrote:

In a business to consumer offering like Linden Lab's Secondlife is, the TOS is regarded a one way declaration because the consumer, in reality, has no way of changing the terms or renegotiate them. Because of this TOS must satisfy the minimum requirements of the law, in addition they must protect the consumer from casually signing away legal rights. 

---

Understand the disastrous consequences of that, if indeed that's how European courts interpret it. If that's how a service such as Second Life must operate, then all content creation will require that the creator "negotiate" a license with the service provider. Now, of course, no serious company "negotiates" anything with millions of suppliers. It may not be a ToS, but it's take-it-or-leave-it. So this would have no practical benefit, only the effect of preventing the offer of any service in which casual creativity could be rewarded without the creators first hiring a lawyer.

---

This does not, however, mean they can be transferred to a new service for storage and rendering in the new service, unless the new service is an upgrade to the existing one (meaning the existing one goes away.)

---

That would be an extraordinarily stupid thing for a court to find, if "both" services are provided under the same ownership, entangling as it does even such innocent and basic service separation as A/B testing. (European courts

are

shockingly stupid, it's true, but this seems beyond even their incompetence.)

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Perhaps Ebbe should be planning to restrict access to Sanitised Life to US residents only.

And keep out those annoying foreigners from Europe.

(See what I did there?)

"turned the tables"

[Gavin Hird]

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DesperadoReprise wrote:

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Extending your argument . . .

Sex between a muslim woman and a christian man is legal in California, but

not in the Sudan

. Does this mean that LL has to demand details of users' religions and prevent such congress?

To say nothing of the legality of apostasy.

"twisted fate"

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No, but that is why I posted this on the cultural context of such a service previously and because scaling to 100s of millions in a single instance of the service is a pipe dream:

 

 There is also a third aspect of this that comes into play when you try to scale up the platform, and that is cultural context. 

 

The current SecondLife is primarily set in a Californian cultural context where the legislation of the location "the servers are in" spills over to what is halal and what is haram to use muslim expressions. This is a problem in that very large sections of the world does not necessarily share this cultural context, and that in itself becomes a barrier to entry. 

 

We have seen this in Europe in the European app stores where Apple, who is in the same cultural context as LL, have had major clashes with European content providers who are used to expressions in their print media that Apple does not allow in apps traded in their app store. We saw exactly the same with the adult cluster**bleep** that LL introduced where Europeans left in hordes over adult verification that they felt fundamentally stepped on their privacy (and factually where in conflict with privacy legislation inside the European union countries.)

 

So rather than provide one service for the world filled with content "California Dreaming" style (alt b above), the "tool is the journey" alternative can prove to be a much better alternative in that it allows people to create virtual worlds in the frame of their local cultural context and legislation without holding Linden Labs legally accountable for it. 

 

By enabling travel between such contexts, like when we go to some exotic place for vacation, it enables virtual travelers to have the same, unfiltered, exotic experiences. Alternative b) can only provide a watered down experience mandated by the legislation of the locale Linden Lab is incorporated in, in addition to what is the current political correct view of the area.

[DesperadoReprise]

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Gavin Hird wrote:

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DesperadoReprise wrote:

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Extending your argument . . .

Sex between a muslim woman and a christian man is legal in California, but

not in the Sudan

. Does this mean that LL has to demand details of users' religions and prevent such congress?

To say nothing of the legality of apostasy.

"twisted fate"

---

No, but that is why I posted this on the cultural context of such a service previously and because scaling to 100s of millions in a single instance of the service is a pipe dream:

 

 

There is also a third aspect of this that comes into play when you try to scale up the platform, and that is 

cultural context. 

 

The current SecondLife is primarily set in a Californian cultural context where the legislation of the location "the servers are in" spills over to what is halal and what is haram to use muslim expressions. This is a problem in that very large sections of the world does not necessarily share this cultural context, and that in itself becomes a barrier to entry. 

 

We have seen this in Europe in the European app stores where Apple, who is in the same cultural context as LL, have had major clashes with European content providers who are used to expressions in their print media that Apple does not allow in apps traded in their app store. We saw exactly the same with the adult cluster**bleep** that LL introduced where Europeans left in hordes over adult verification that they felt fundamentally stepped on their privacy (and factually where in conflict with privacy legislation inside the European union countries.)

 

So rather than provide one service for the world filled with content "California Dreaming" style (alt b above), the "tool is the journey" alternative can prove to be a much better alternative in that it allows people to create virtual worlds in the frame of their local cultural context and legislation without holding Linden Labs legally accountable for it. 

 

By enabling travel between such contexts, like when we go to some exotic place for vacation, it enables virtual travelers to have the same, unfiltered, exotic experiences. Alternative b) can only provide a watered down experience mandated by the legislation of the locale Linden Lab is incorporated in, in addition to what is the current political correct view of the area.

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So, after sex tourism and health tourism we are now envisaging virtual cultural tourism . . .

"sooner or later"

[DesperadoReprise]

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Qie Niangao wrote:

 

 It may be the cost of doing business globally, but that doesn't make it less silly.

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"The law is an ass"

But it's still the law.

"don't you wonder why?"