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Linden Lab

**The information contained here should not be misinterpreted as legal advice.**

Hello, Content Creators of Second Life!

It has been a while since we have had any new DMCA reporting news, but we are pleased to announce that reporting has never been easier. 

We hope everyone’s aware of the Intellectual Property Online Webform, which has replaced the prior submission method by fax.  If needed, you can still send us snail mail.  

Found someone violating your intellectual property? 

  • Ripped skins

  • Textures

  • Animations

  • Body part(s)

  • Clothing

Head over to www.lindenlab.com and follow this link to submit your DMCA notification: https://www.lindenlab.com/legal/intellectual-property-infringement-notification-policy.

Please note that only the authorized rights holder may submit a notice of copyright infringement. 

Section 17 U.S.C.§ 512(f) of the DMCA states that you may be liable for any damages, including costs and attorney’s fees incurred by us or our users if you knowingly materially misrepresent that material or activity is infringing.  

We also implore Marketplace store owners  to make sure that all of their listings are in compliance with the Marketplace Guidelines https://marketplace.secondlife.com/listing_guidelines#branding-guidelines

As always, we welcome your feedback and you may send an email to ipteam@lindenlab.com.

We appreciate your interest and support of the Second Life environment.  
 

The Intellectual Property Team at Linden Lab

Linden Lab

Web User Group Notes

Here’s a shortlist of some of the features that the web team has been working on in the last month, we covered these in our web user group yesterday:

  • Profiles Feed for the Legacy Profiles Project Viewer (forthcoming)

  • Events cleanup to prepare the way for a much more extensive Events overhaul (stay tuned)

  • A number of Marketplace fixes and features:

    • Related items list shows old items again

    • Error fixing 

      • Page doesn’t exist when trying to open buy now in new tab

      • Store manager unable to load item listing folder

      • Store creation errors (various)

      • Localization

  • Product alert notifications inworld (opt-in)

  • Place your order button to the top of the checkout/continue page for 0L$ items (no need to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page for 0L$ items any longer)

  • Updates to lindenlab.com (facelift, check it out!)

  • We have disabled resident-to-resident auctions

    • We need to go back to the drawing board with these to make them more robust and truly usable for our community, stay tuned!

  • The Contact Info page on your accounts dashboard has been removed to add in more protection in the case that someone has their account maliciously taken over.

  • Viewer splash page updates

    • Localization

    • Current SLT on the front page

    • Second Life Blogger Network feed

  • Backend work to install more security software across our web properties to ensure everyone’s online health and safety. You’re welcome!

Ongoing work on Events, Name Changes, and Premium Plus - stay tuned for more information on these big-ticket items as we have it!

Linden Lab

Happy Tuesday! 

We would like to invite you to our monthly Web User Group meeting on Wednesday, November 13, 2019 at 14:00/2:00 pm SLT. We have some updates to give on our ongoing projects and a few exciting releases from the previous month that we’d like to spotlight. As always we would love to receive your feedback and answer your web-related questions. See you there!

Linden Lab

Happy Monday!

We’re writing today to remind everyone that we’ll be holding our monthly Web User Group meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 2nd at 14:00 SLT in our usual meeting place, and also to highlight for the community at large some of the things that our Web team has been working on for the last month, and wow, there sure is a lot to choose from!

First, we need to acknowledge that a large portion of our time has been spent making on-going back-end changes that our Residents may never notice directly, but which will provide a much more secure and pleasant experience for all going forward. For example, we’ve already completed a full-scale migration of multiple web services away from our dedicated hardware colo and into the cloud. Others have been moved from third-party vendors to an in-house implementation. Still, others have been decoupled from their previous dependencies into stand-alone services. This is all part of our long term plan to move all of our services, from the web properties to the Second Life grid itself, providing us greater reliability, flexibility, and security across the board. We’ll let you try to guess which services have already been migrated - we’re betting you’ll never know the difference!

Second, we’re extremely pleased to say that in the last month we’ve made significant progress in laying the foundations for the long-awaited Name Changes feature.  All of our teams have been working hard on preparing the grid and all of our systems to accommodate account name changes, both first and last. We’re not quite ready to release all the details yet, but suffice to say that if you’ve ever wanted to change up your account name for whatever reason (and we know you have!) STAY TUNED.

Finally, our continuing dedication to improving the Marketplace experience continues. Last month we were very excited to release the new Store Managers functionality. And this month, we’ve been refining that experience, as well as adding more new features for Merchants such as in-world messaging when an item is sold. But we haven’t forgotten the most important part of the Marketplace, the customers! For them, we’ve added a “Gifts Received” page with details about what the items are, who sold it, who bought it, any gift message, with much-requested options for self-service redelivery! 

All of this on top of our usual laundry list of bug fixes, quality of life improvements, security updates, and general troubleshooting. Whew! 

It’s been a heck of a September, and this post is only scratching the surface of what we’ve done and what we’re planning for October through the end of the year, so come on by the Web User Group meeting this Wednesday at 14:00 SLT to share your thoughts and to hear ours!

Linden Lab

Today (Aug. 1) Tilia, Linden Lab’s wholly-owned subsidiary, assumes responsibility for handling process credit requests and payments made from accounts with a USD-denominated balance in Second Life.  

Due to this change, as originally announced on July 1, Residents who have a USD balance on their account will be prompted to accept the Tilia Terms of Service when they log in to their account on the web.  Residents who request to process credit out of Second Life may also need to supply information for ID verification.

Tilia is a registered money services business and fully licensed money transmitter which helps Linden Lab comply with U.S. laws and regulations.  You can learn more about Tilia’s work to better protect your privacy and security in this blog post from our Information Security Manager, Soft Linden. 

We want to be clear that most people should not see any disruptions or changes to their Second Life experience due to the introduction of Tilia. However, for those who maintain a USD balance (usually through the sale of L$ on the LindeX), it is important that you review and accept the Tilia Terms of Service. You’ll see a prompt to do so when you next login to Secondlife.com. If you have a USD balance on August 1 and do not accept the Terms of Service, you will have until October 31, 2019 to do so. If you do not, you will not be able to utilize the USD Balance or request a process credit until you have accepted the TOS and Privacy Policy, after which you will once again be able to use the USD balance and process credit. For those who do not accept the Terms of Service, you will still be able to login to Second Life and use your payment method on file (such as a credit card) to pay for items and services, but you will no longer have the ability to request a process credit transaction, sell L$ on the LindeX, or make payments for Second Life services from your balance. 

We know that you may have additional questions about Tilia and these changes. We encourage you to visit our Tilia FAQ and/or contact our Support team if you have any specific concerns. We’ve also addressed many community questions at a recent Tilia Town Hall in-world, which can be viewed on YouTube.

Linden Lab

As we promised in our town hall meeting about Tilia and its relationship to Second Life last week, we have been working on a way for Residents to voluntarily submit additional information that may be required to process credit prior to the August 1 Tilia launch date. That option is now available on your Second Life account billing information page!

billing info.png

For many of you, we may already have all information required to process credit from your USD balance, and you will be able to see that you are good to go from the green check mark.

good to go.png

For some of you, we may need to collect some additional information before you can process credit from your USD wallet after August 1.  You’ll be able to see that from the red X in the same location.

additional info.png

And from there, you can click on ‘additional information’ link to proceed to the information request form if you would like. You are under no obligation to do so at this time. 

As registered money services businesses, Linden Lab and Tilia are required to comply with applicable U.S. laws and regulations. As part of our ongoing risk management process, we must obtain, verify, and record information about our customers for whom we offer financial-related services. We take your privacy and security seriously, so your personal information will continue to remain protected and will only be used for purposes that are outlined in Linden Lab’s and Tilia’s Privacy Policies.

You may learn more about Tilia and its relationship with Second Life and Linden Lab from our FAQ.

 

Linden Lab

Online DMCA Complaint Submission


Web User Group

Happy Monday!

Today, we would like to direct your attention to our new DMCA web form. Previously, in order to file a DMCA claim, a Resident would need to send their complaint to our legal team via snail mail.  As of this week, we are proud to save our Residents some postage and provide a new, easy to use web form to complete these requests!

DMCA - Hero image.PNG

 

We know no one wants to be in a position to make a copyright or trademark complaint, but we also recognize that these are important tools for our Merchant and content creation partners, and we’re committed to making this process as efficient, painless, and useful as possible. We are confident that providing an online submission form for this delicate process will help us achieve those goals.

If you believe you need to take advantage of our online submission form, please navigate your browser to https://dmca.lindenlab.com and fill out the session request form.

DMCA - Initial Form Fill.PNG

We will then email you a session link where you can fill out your complaint in full with the usual information. The session will remain active for 4 hours after your session request, so don’t delay!

DMCA - Email Confirmation.PNG

As always, all requests are subject to Linden Lab's IP Infringement Policy.  Thank you for your patience while we enter the 21st century.

 

Linden Lab

Happy Monday everyone!  As we posted last month the Web Team has been busy with an array of different project and fixes.  One we’d like to highlight is our effort to clean up Marketplace listings. We’ve had many of you give us feedback on absentee store owners who cannot offer sales support for their products. You also told us there were older products which were still in demand even though the Merchant hasn’t been currently active.  Keeping all this feedback in mind, we had undertaken a cleanup sweep of the marketplace in the past, and had very positive response. Today, we have taken a second one:

  • If the Merchant hasn’t logged in in two years *and* a specific product hasn’t  sold in 1 year, the product will be unlisted.

  • If the Merchant hasn’t logged in in two years *and* the store hasn’t sold anything in 1 year, their store will be disabled.

  • This means that if a product has sold within the past year, that product listing will remain available on the marketplace.  If a store has products, which have sold within the past year, it will remain enabled.

We are confident that a more relevant selection of products and search results will benefit the shoppers on the Marketplace, as well as active Merchants.  Spring is in the air!


 

Linden Lab

Hello Residents!

As some of you located in the United States may know, it is tax season. Important documents go out to report sensitive information to the appropriate government agencies every year.

As a requirement to ensure that we are adhering to respective state laws for reporting taxes, some of you may be receiving a 1099-K form if you have reached a certain Linden $ sale transaction volume. This form collects information the IRS requires from US taxpayers. Please note that these are time sensitive documents that will need to be completed in order to meet these requirements.

If you are due to receive such a form, you will be receiving an email from “secondlife-support@lindenlab.com” with more information on how to complete this process.

For more information on tax forms in relation to Second Life, please view our Wiki article here.

If you are from the state of Massachusetts, you may find more information regarding their most recent updated tax reporting requirements here.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us at https://support.secondlife.com. Thank you for your patience and attention to this matter.

- Linden Lab

Linden Lab

 

At Linden Lab we appreciate and support the creativity of our community - a community based on the very idea that the only limit to your creativity is your imagination. That is why we feel it is important to clarify our stance on and process for the protection of community-created content. Our goal is to nurture the overall creative and competitive ecosystem that enables each member of our community to prosper -- even when that means making difficult determinations in disputes between our Creators.

While we cannot comment publicly with a definitive analysis of any one case or dispute, we want to reassure our community that we closely consider all perspectives (and applicable law) before arriving at any dispute determination. When there is disagreement in our community over the integrity of a creation, we strive to be fair in our review of the facts. In particular, we do not take actions for or against any Creator lightly as we know that our Creator community is passionate about and protective of their work.

So, why make this statement now?

Due to the size of the Second Life economy and its user base, there will always be Creator conflicts and complaints under review. Recently, there’s been some debate about one of the more esoteric aspects of content creation, which impacts many in our community. For example, one high-profile complaint under review deals with a fundamental question about whether UV mapping can be considered proprietary and protect-able or part of the public domain.

Linden Lab recognizes that there are passionate arguments to be made on both sides of this and similar discussions. However, the determining factors are quite nuanced and not easily assessed without a closer review of the facts in the context of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (or DMCA).

Ultimately, Linden Lab will always comply with the DMCA process, and continue to determine the validity of each DMCA notice (and any counter-notice) on a case-by-case basis. That is precisely why we have a team dedicated to reviewing all properly-submitted IP claims and determining the fairest outcome within the guidelines of the policies and laws governing the process, which is described in the Intellectual Property Infringement Notification Policy.

We are ever-amazed by the ways this community utilizes the Second Life platform for creativity. Keep innovating - you make Second Life even better as we roll out new features and tools to create with -- and keep supporting your fellow Creators!

225673608_58e244be15_o.jpg

Image courtesy of Torley Linden

Linden Lab

We're adding wishlists, favorite sellers (with a feed of recent items) and a few bug fixes.

Features!

Wishlists!!!

  • Items can be added to the wishlist (if the item is not free) via the product page, and deleted via the delete button on the wishlist page

Image 1.png

 

  • Items can also be bulk added from your favorites list
  • Wishlist can be found by viewing https://marketplace.secondlife.com/wishlist while logged in, or via the favorites links in accounts,
  • Wishlists operate like favorites, except that you can find someone else's wishlist at /wishlists/firstname.lastname (there's a link on your own wishlist)
  • There are also share buttons on wishlists.

image 2.png

image 3.jpg

Follow merchants!

  • Stores can be favorited on the main store page, and stores can be removed via the delete button on the list.

image 4.png

  • Favorite stores can be found by viewing /favorite_stores while logged in, or via the favorites links in accounts. Shows your favorite stores, including up to four of their most recent products.

Fixes:

  • Avatar Brands were not visible when editing, and would then get reset as a result.  That’s frustrating and we’re sorry.
  • The related-item pickers (demo, related items) will no longer show archived products - but will show unlisted.
  • We know you think your product is awesome.  That’s why you’re selling it! However, Merchants can no longer review their own listings.
  • When you change display options on your Manage Listings page, you will go to the first page of your listings.
  • Whatever you chose to search by is what we’ll show you.  We were accidentally overriding that with your sort from the previous session. Oops!
  • Redelivering: when redelivering gifts, we would send a confusing email claiming to have sent the item to the gifter, even though we actually had sent it to the giftee.
  • Listing limits: we were counting archived listings against your limit of 20000, but not anymore.  
  • We had recently replaced “Prim count” filtering with “Land Impact” filtering and then stopped finding all the expected results.  We’ve located them and will return them to you once again.
  • Category names were messed up on some products. A re-index has "unmessed" this.
Linden Lab

On June 15 we became aware that some classified ads had gone missing.  Upon investigation, we discovered that all renewing classified ads had expired themselves.  We have identified the cause and are in the process of replacing all of them.  There are less than 100 that we believe have already been recreated inworld and we have a plan to address those.

To compensate for this inconvenience, we will be waiving classified ad fees for up to two weeks, depending on when your ad was set to renew. After this period your ad will be billed as usual on its expected renewal date.

We apologize for the brief disruption to classified ads, and will update this post when the ads have been restored.

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Linden Lab

[update] August 17, 2015: Magic Boxes have been shut down. Please use Viewer-Managed Marketplace (VMM) to list items for sale on the Marketplace going forward.

***********

With the launch of Viewer-Managed Marketplace (VMM), Magic Boxes and Xstreet will be retired. Merchants who are still using Magic Boxes to sell their items will need to manually migrate their listings by August 17, 2015, when Magic Boxes will no longer appear on Marketplace. We will leave Xstreet up until August 27, 2015, so that interested Merchants can pull their data before the site is shut down for good.

In summary:

  • Magic Boxes will stop working on August 17, 2015
  • Xstreet will be shut down on August 27, 2015

For more information on VMM and manual migration, please see the VMM Knowledge Base article or check out the VMM video

. If you have problems at any point with the migration, submit a support ticket under Marketplace Item Listing Issues.
Linden Lab

[update August 3, 2015] All Direct Delivery listings have now been migrated to Viewer-Managed Marketplace(VMM), and the VMM-enabled viewer is now the default Release download.


Thank you everyone for your patience during the migration.

****************************************

The Viewer-Managed Marketplace (VMM) Viewer is now a release candidate, and automated migrations will begin on July 23, 2015. Migrations will be done weeknights between 9:00 PM and 9:00 AM Pacific. Merchants with large stores (over around 5,000 listings) will be scheduled, and we will send an email (to the email address associated with your store) to provide you with advance notice.

For all Merchants, we will send an email at the beginning of the migration process, and another email once it has completed. Merchants will not be able to modify items in their stores during this time, but purchases will continue for any item that is not in the process of being migrated.

Once your store is migrated, you’ll need to use the Second Life VMM Viewer to manage the inventory in your Marketplace store. The VMM knowledge base article has been translated to all six supported Marketplace languages and will help you get up to speed on VMM.

If you experience any problems after your migration has completed, please file a support ticket under Marketplace Item Listing Issues.

In order to learn about VMM before migration starts, you can watch tutorials on our Official Second Life  YouTube Channel. Start with 

.

 

Linden Lab

The Viewer-Managed Marketplace (VMM) Beta is now available to all Marketplace Merchants. Merchants will still need the Second Life Project Viewer to use VMM. Please take this opportunity to try it out and let us know of any issues. We’ll begin automated migration about a week after the Viewer has made it into the release channel.

We’ve added some new questions to the FAQ based upon the beta migrations we have done. Please let us know if you have additional questions about the migration process on this forum or in JIRA. If you’re lucky, some of the Merchants who are already migrated may even chime in.

Linden Lab

We have just launched the Beta for the Viewer-Managed Marketplace (VMM), and now all merchants can begin trying out this new feature. VMM allows Merchants to easily manage their inventory on the Second Life Marketplace using the Second Life Viewer. Items no longer need to be loaded into the Merchant Outbox or a Magic Box and are instead sold directly from inventory.

VMM will allow all Merchants to stop using Magic Boxes while also enabling them to modify listing inventories directly from the Viewer. Merchants will still need to go to the Marketplace web site in order to edit listings, but with VMM, they will be able to create new listings, publish them to the Marketplace, and/or unlist them, all from within the Viewer. To help you learn more about VMM, we have created several

 and a Beta Knowledge Base article.

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We anticipate this Beta period will last for at least one month, but we’ll keep everyone posted as the timing becomes more definitive. The next steps after Beta will be:

  • Release VMM to all Merchants.
  • A month after the release, automated migration of Direct Delivery listings will begin. Magic Box listings will need to be manually migrated.
  • After migration has completed, Xstreet and Magic Boxes will be shut down.

Merchants may choose to manually migrate Direct Delivery listings before the automated migration occurs. The automated migration will take place during lower traffic times on the Marketplace, and more details will be provided closer to the migration period.

If you’d like to learn more about the new VMM feature and try it out, please view the FAQ on the wiki. We look forward to hearing your feedback on this Merchants’ Forum post or in the VMM JIRA project.

Linden Lab

UPDATE 2.13.2015
An updated Viewer-Managed Marketplace project viewer is now available. Please see this forum post for a summary of changes.

***********************************************

The new Viewer-Managed Marketplace (VMM), now available* on Aditi, allows you to easily manage your inventory on the Second Life Marketplace using the Second Life Viewer. Items no longer need to be loaded into the Merchant Outbox or a Magic Box, and are instead sold directly from your inventory.

VMM will allow all Merchants to get off of Magic Boxes in addition to supporting modification of listing inventory directly from the Viewer. While Merchants will still need to go to the Marketplace web site in order to edit listings, they will be able to create listings and list or unlist them from the Viewer.

If you’d like to learn more about the new VMM feature and try it out, please view the FAQ on the wiki. We look forward to hearing your feedback and have created a VMM JIRA project to capture bugs and feature suggestions. For more information on how VMM works, see our Beta Knowledge Base article.

*NOTE: Currently, purchases will fail on Aditi. Since the bulk of the functionality for VMM is related to creating and modifying listings, we have made VMM available while we resolve the purchase problems. We will update this blog post when the issue is cleared.

Guest

Earlier this week, we rolled out a few changes to the Account Management web pages for logged-in users at SecondLife.com, which were aimed at improving these tools for users. One of the changes we made updated the Transaction History page, and we heard lots of feedback that not all of the changes to that page improved our customers' experiences or met their needs. So, we quickly reverted to the old Transaction History page.

We'd like to get some additional user feedback on the new Transaction History page so that when we make the changeover, the functionality best matches what Second Life users want and need. Once we are ready, we will post instructions on how to review the new page and provide feedback. We will not take down the old page until we have had a chance to review feedback and make appropriate changes to the new page. Check back on this blog for more details as they become available.

Guest

[update April 18, 2014] Thanks to those who have provided feedback on our Knowledge Base Article and icons. We have added examples to the documentation and have updated the icons to no longer use copyrighted materials. If you have additional suggestions or corrections for our the article, please add them to BUG-5778.

*****

As Second Life has evolved, so have the avatars that inhabit the virtual world. With the introduction of fitted mesh technology for avatars, it has become more complicated to determine whether or not a piece of clothing will display properly on your own avatar.

In order to make this easier for shoppers, we have worked with Second Life content creators to define a way to clearly communicate this to customers. We have arrived at a scheme that can be used for inworld sales as well as those on the Marketplace and ask that Merchants standardize on this model, and we are providing icons for use in both locations.

This scheme defines and provides icons for three types of avatars:

  • Classic avatar: original default (non-mesh) Second Life avatars.

  • Standard mesh avatar: a classic avatar wearing a rigged mesh attachment, created using the standard fitted mesh model.

  • Custom/branded avatar: an avatar of either type (i.e. that does or does not use mesh) that is a custom size or shape, requiring custom-made clothing to fit it. A brand name for the shape will help users easily identify which clothing fits which custom avatar.

By using these standard terms and icons, both avatar and clothing creators can make it easy for their customers to understand which clothing will work best with their avatars.

For more information on this model and how to use it, as well as downloadable icons, please see the Knowledge Base article.

We’d like to thank the content creators who provided us feedback on this project.

 

Linden Lab

As we’ve blogged about in the posts linked below, US law requires that institutions like Linden Lab collect documentation from Second Life users that meet certain transaction thresholds:

These documentation requests can sometimes be confusing, and so to help the users who receive them better understand what’s needed and why, we’ve created a list of FAQs about these requests here:

As noted in the FAQs, if you receive a request for documentation from Linden Lab and have additional questions, please open the request in your Case History in the Support Portal and reply to the Case.

 

Linden Lab

In addition to required tax documentation (which we blogged about in November 2013), US law separately requires that institutions such as Linden Lab obtain, verify, and record information confirming the identification of account holders who submit a certain volume and/or amount of Process Credit Requests.

We have recently begun emailing users who need to submit this information. If you receive such a notice from us, you will need to follow the instructions and provide the required documentation within thirty (30) days.

These emails are being sent through our Support system. If you are among those individuals who need to provide this information, you can verify the request in your Case History in the Support Portal and reply to the Case if you have any related questions.

Linden Lab

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) requires Linden Lab to collect and retain Form W-9 (for U.S. residents) and Form W-8BEN (for non-U.S. residents) at certain transaction volumes. If you reach the transaction threshold and we do not have your completed and signed W-9 or W-8BEN on file, we are required to withhold funds from your account (at the current rate of 28% of your gross amounts received). Additionally, for U.S. residents with 200 or more transactions with a total amount in excess of $20,000 in a calendar year, we are required to file a Form 1099-K with the IRS reporting those transactions for that year.

If you are required to submit a W-9 or W-8BEN form to us, we will email you before the end of the year with instructions on how to do so. Please follow the instructions to complete and submit the required Form W-9 or W-8BEN within thirty (30) days of receipt. You will only need to complete this paperwork once unless your information changes from year-to-year. If you do not receive an email from Linden Lab, we do not need you to complete these forms.

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