Linden Lab is building a NEW virtual world

[Maklin Deckard]

> So you think SL can continue forever and still be competitive enought to matter in the future? 

Yes, IF LL does the following and earns trust / makes changes.   I've been here 9 years+ and my trust for LL and its revolving door CEO's is nearly nonexistant.

LL has a track record of overpromising and underdelivering, as well as jumping on the latest fad / shiny / company groupthink.  Examples.

 

• The Tao of the Lindens as illustrated by Philip Linden making decisions take ages for consensus rather than management made decisions.
• Refusing to actively fight griefers for YEARS until grid crashing became a fad and started costing LL money.  Some Lindens were actively friends with members of various groups causing issues with SL, others had a near-religious sense of hands-off anarchy they projected on the world due to lack of action.
• The corporate phase where they were your customer (like content creators will be in 2.0) and residents were to be just eyeballs for the corps...that lasted until the hype died and the corps moved on to the next big thing.  I believe LL even developed a walled-garden version of SL for internal corp use...how's that one selling for ya now?
• The OS phase, where a few rabid open source Lindens and their followers inworld managed to get the client open sourced...some good, much bad from this, including the drama that lead up to banning Emerald client.

LL has also shown a track-record of dishonesty and playing favorites. Examples:

 

• Back when sims increased in price, certain land barons 'discovered' this and that purchases would be grandfathered at the old price... It was only when it leaked to the general publicthat the offer was extended to all sim owners.  So as a resident I am supposed to feel good about 'content creators as your customers?'
• The homestead fiasco.  People were told there would be no price increases, then two weeks later, price increase.   Countless homesteads closed after that and there were lots of bad feelings towards the lab.

And a track record of  releasing broken and incomplete shineys, then rushing to the next project and denying bugs or promising fixes that never come or come years later. Examples:

  

• Mesh rolled out such that creators needed to include 3-5 sizes for each clothing item.   Only grudgingly, much, much later were additional AV bones added, even though they were mentioned in the initial descriptions of mesh implementation and got somehow dropped during development.
• Sculpts rolled out with broken uploads.    Sculpties worked find in Beta, in RELEASE, they were somehow broken and lossless sculpt files uploaded fine, lossy uploaded jagged and broken (I may have the types reversed, graphic artist I am not).   Sculpted gears I had used in beta suddenly were jagged and had to be reuploaded and builds changed at release.   LL's Devs at the time denied there was a problem over and over...it was somehow OUR fault as builders.   Then when the next patch came out, they were magically right again.   Stealth fixed to save face?

These are what I remember off the top of my head, I am sure others could add more.  Now you see why folks keep saying they don't trust you or the Lab not to screw residents in favor of content creators?   Or to release a SL 2.0 that is just as broken/buggy/incomplete as the current one or possibly even worse?   You really need to work on resident perceptions....of course content creators are going to fawn all over you and new SL2.0, you just declared them to be the new world's gods, but what about the rest of us?

 

Now, How could SL 1.0 be future-proofed?

Get the Lindens back inworld - I remember the Linden Village area, inworld meetings, Lindens just hanging around just talking to passers by.  I haven't seen a Linden since M was CEO and their inworld presence got cut back.  It was reassuring to have staff inworld...proof they used the product they created.

Ditch the TPV's - Figure out the best features of the various TPV's and implement them in YOUR client and OPTIMIZE, OPTIMIZE, OPTIMIZE.  There is no reason residents shound need a TPV to get MORE features, higher FPS AND less crashes than the official client.   Third party software should not hold back releases so they can implement features.   If you really feel you need TPV's, release new code even if it breaks their browsers and let them catch up.  I use firestorm, but losing it would be a small price to pay for faster releases (not that we have to worry about that, SL1.0 being in maintenance mode and all).

Incremental Graphics and Infrastructure Upgrades - To use MMO's for an example as they are the closest thing to SL, you could redo the graphics and optimize to fix the dated looks..  You could optimize the back end for current standards on a regular basis.   Instead you decided to build a product to compete with your flagship product.   This did NOT fill me with any degree of confidence or any great desire to remain a premium or use the Lindex.

 

If you did all the above, ESPECIALLY the Incremental upgrade of graphics and infrastructure, with gradual depreciation of things that just cannot be carried forward, I see no need for a 2.0 SL.   We could get there by evolution rather than revolution.

 

> We are going to do our best to make it  smooth, but if we have to make a crappy product with crazy complexity and poor user experience to preserve some very specific content compatability we don't want to cause those problems. 

Make it smooth, I really doubt you can, based on past rollouts of new features.   If you need to depreciate various pieces of older content, do it and explain why.   Don't depreciate the entire world, which is what you are doing.   Rewrite what you have to current standards.    I'd rather lose a fraction of my inventory rather than 9+ years of collecting, outfits, and memories...and possibly my AV name.

 

> A lot of what you have will be possible to move across and more specifics will come through over time.

You should not have announced this until you have specifics.    First it was no compatibility, maybe, now its a lot of compatibility.   Make up your minds.     It appears you announced early, shooting for some kind of PR boost, but all the vagueness and 'we can't answer that now' has just destabilized things for many.  

Quite frankly, and this is strictly me speaking for me, I will be staying with SL 1.0 until you pull the plug, then I will find another home that does not involve giving money to LL.  I have NO desire to have to rebuild my VR life and possessions in a 'like SL, only better' SL 2.0, not with LL's track record.

[Chic Aeon]

HOHOHOHO. 

You KNOW I wrote that before this thread became the hot seller BUT  I was tired and posted it in the wrong forum. It got lost and that is all well and good, but yep. You got it. We sort of knew that didn't we? 

 

AND we will certainly READ the new TOS of the new world. And it has been promised for a couple of months by Ebbe in various places that the TOS will be rewritten to better convey their actual intent (or something to that effect).

Many will be waiting .

 

 

 

[Chic Aeon]

Yes, actually you are correct and of course I KNEW that and later was talking in RL about it and had a lightbulb moment.

There is still of course a MORAL issue, but hey!  

*wink*

 

 

[Chic Aeon]

Remember Monty, you don't HAVE to leave.  I suspect that plenty of folks will not and I am having a difficult time understanding why people feel they must leave NOW when this is a two year out scenario.

 

If the majority of folks decide they like SL 1.0 just fine and enough content creators stay to tend shop, do customer service and maybe put out a release now and then you can enjoy the world as it is now. IF enough folks stay and keep spending and selling and making this a profitable venture for The Lab, it seems very unlikely they would pull the plug. That is just common business sense.

 

And to those of you who have said you were leaving for other worlds, I wish you safe journey. I have been to almost all of them and a content creator in several. Nothing compares to what we have here so far as content, activities, talent  and features. There might BE something in the future and you can bet I will be there (well there is the TOS to read first).

 

Until then .....

 

[irihapeti]

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Innula Zenovka wrote:

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Callum Meriman wrote:

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Ebbe Linden wrote:

Thanks Loki. I can't wait to see what you'll create in SL and then I'm just totally drooling over what you will be able to create in the next gen product! 

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More likely that Loki and the rest of us Kid roleplayers (or Goreans or Furrys or Kidnap/Rape roleplayers) wouldn't be allowed into the new world.

 

 

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What that Ebbe (or any other Linden) has said gives you the idea the Kid roleplayers or Goreans or whoever won't be welcome in SL2?     I'm asking because I may well have missed something, but I really haven't seen anything that suggests to me  they've already decided to exclude any particular group or groups.    

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what you said

Ebbe tells Loki that he is looking forward to what Loki will make in the betterworld. Callum tells us that Ebbe (the LL CEO) is wrong to say that bc wont happen

maaan !!! and I am that one gets called crazy person sometimes. jejejjejeje (:

 

[Pamela Galli]

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Chic Aeon wrote:

HOHOHOHO. 

You KNOW I wrote that before this thread became the hot seller

BUT  I was tired and posted it in the wrong forum. It got lost and that is all well and good, but yep. You got it. We sort of knew that didn't we? 

 

AND we will certainly READ the new TOS of the new world. And it has been promised for a couple of months by Ebbe in various places that the TOS will be rewritten to better convey their actual intent (or something to that effect).

Many will be waiting

.

 

 

 

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Well Chic all I can say is that anyone who put 2 and 2 together about the TOS and SL@  is a freaking GENIUS!  :smileylol:

 

It would account for the inexplicable behavior and mysteriousness re the TOS, wouldnt it, if they intended to just port over at least some of everyone's inventory for them?  

 

May be just wishful thinking :-)

[Medhue Simoni]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

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It would account for the inexplicable behavior and mysteriousness re the TOS, wouldnt it, if they intended to just port over at least some of everyone's inventory for them?  

 

May be just wishful thinking :-)

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I really do not think that is it.

With the little information that Ebbe has mentioned today, it seems obvious to me that some specific features will be in this new SL that will allow you to do things much better. Cause I know, kind of, what you make, I'll give an example of what you might want to do. Oven doors, and cabinnette doors would all be weighted to a bone, which works as their hinge. So your oven will have a skeleton. You could even put food on another skeletal bone, and just use animation to make the different food appear in the oven. You could give the dining set a skeleton, and have the chairs move in and out using the bones, or turn them in any direction.

My point is tho, that you might not want to port your existing stuff over, because you'll want to do things in a way you were not able to before.

You did get me thinking about how we might thank our loyal customers in this new SL. 1 thing I thought might be a good way to do it, is to give those most loyal customers a voucher. For instance, I have many customers that own 4 or 5 of my AOs, or more. So, I might tell them that I'll give them a 5000 linden voucher in the new SL. I can't see why they would not be very happy. It's like winning a shopping spree. Or, maybe, if you are worried that people will have no reason to buy in SL now, you could tell every1 that whatever they spend from now until the new SL, you will give them a voucher for in the new SL.

See, the great part about making virtual items, is once they are made, it costs us nothing to distribute. This being the case, giving products away to loyal customers doesn't cost us much.

[Pamela Galli]

Yes if it turns out customers will not be able to port their inventory items, I am sure many merchants will find some way to incentivize sl1 purchases.

 

Since I don't script or rig, what you describe is okay with me as long as I can pay someone to do it.

[Medhue Simoni]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

Yes if it turns out customers will not be able to port their inventory items, I am sure many merchants will find some way to incentivize sl1 purchases.

 

Since I don't script or rig, what you describe is okay with me as long as I can pay someone to do it.

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This kind of rigging is as easy as it gets. You know I'll make a tutorial. Plus, if it's FBX, you could easily sell the exact same stuff for Unity3D.

[Pamela Galli]

Thanks -- every teeny scrap of information, even if only about what might happen, is another brick in the wall. 

[Gavin Hird]

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Ebbe Linden wrote:

Thanks! All I'm going to reply with here is that we're not in the content business. Our customers are the creators of content and expereinces. Without the creators SL and the future product/platform would be empty. 

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OK, I'll take your word for it – and also hold you accountable to it, hehe!

Be a good man and get that developer group going so you can start talking to your content developers under NDA (and, yes you can charge us a reasonable yearly fee for membership.) Such a group needs the relevant subgroups, developer forums, developer support (which is different from your normal support queue), beta programs, sample code and objects... and a yearly developer conference starting this fall!

If you mean it, and I know you do, get the TOS cleaned up as people have been begging for so the developers feel reassured their creations actually remain theirs (also in the legal terms.) 

For the love of God, please fix the Mac viewer.  If you want to be on iOS you need to completely rewrite anyway in Cocoa + Objective C / Swift, so get it started tomorrow. Some things needs to be fixed right away like when keys typed when uploading files or renaming  inventory objects are interperated as movement keystrokes and :matte-motes-evil: ...well you get the idea.  

For the rewrite of the Mac viewer, close source it and keep it that way till you have figured out the common code between the OSX and iOS version, and then you may release the Mac version to the public while the iOS version remains close sourced as you want full control over what is submitted to the App store. 

[Callum Meriman]

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irihapeti wrote:

maaan !!! and I am that one gets called crazy person sometimes. jejejjejeje (:

 

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huehuehue, so funny. Consider this:

With this brave new world that on Day 1, when the switch is flipped and the world's press enters cameras at the ready, fully aware of SL's past that ebbe Linden will be there proudly showing off that Dolcett area where BDSM'ers happily practice caniballism?

The press, of course then move on with ebbe proudly showing them the latest Gorean creations, the image of the Master and their kajira at their feet in chains being beamed over the world's newspapers and gaming press?

Rape and Capture roleplay of course will also happily be shown to the peoples of the world as just one of the many wholesome and family friendly activities that people can participate in from their phone in this brave new world.

Finally the darling of Fox news and Das Speigel: Perverted kids (whom are tarbrushed as ageplayers) and the (made up,, but click bait) implication that every single one of them is a paedophile lurking in the seedy corners of the V2 world, just waiting to get up to their devious "escapades".

Mmm, the new world carrying on the complete "vortex" of debauchery (in the Fox News eyes) of the old world - but this time able to be run on the iPhones of innocents at school.

 

Come on, really, it doesn't take blind Freddy to imagine this. Anyone who considers that LL wouldn't take a chance to clean this up and sanitise it in V2 and prepare it for mass consumption, PG or M rated in it's entirity, is fooling themselves. And sadly, Kid roleplayers as a despised group will be included with the Goreans and the BDSM'ers even though we don't deserve that.

 

LL are not going to be the facilitator of Hardcore pornography on a range of diverse devices including your phone - which can be used in places like public transport, and in the same vein they are going to avoid allowing topics like Gor, Harcode BDSM, Rape & Capture, and Kid roleplay. All of these and Loki's wonderful creations that (although completely innocent) are potentially click-bait topics.

I believe we will see a repeat of what SOE have done with Landmark. You may dissagree, time will show. Will I be right in my thoughts that V2 is a perfect time to make sure that it's family friendly and able to be widely adopted without the chance of some innocent running across a bit of Priest King sanctioned mysogony or will you and your "jejejejejejee" mocking be right and the entire ecosystem of SL, including the undesirable parts be transplanted?

 

As a kid roleplayer, I actually hope you are right and I am wrong.

[DesperadoReprise]

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Magnus Brody wrote:

 

  My stupidity is proudly all my own work.

 

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Magnus Brody wrote:

 

 geographical location has an

affect

upon intelligence. 

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Apparently so.

 

 

"that's a stone-cold fact"

[DesperadoReprise]

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Callum Meriman wrote:

Personally, hearing this and knowing people for what they are,

I will likely stop buying and creating in SL now. It's clearly headed towards being a dead world.

People are going to leave for both this one or for High Fidelity.

I don't mind that I have purchased tens of thousands of dollars of inventory over the last 8 years and will lose all that, it's always been clear that the game would close one day - they all do. The inventory had nice use and has no regrets attached.

Just a shame that it's dead money.

But now, knowing that

(1) the new world will be fully closed (2) content creators are going to be urged to leave SL (a loss of new content for this world) and (3) that inventory is unlikely to come over then that's it for SL purchases.

Sorry content creaors but ebbe has made it 100% clear that anything bought from this point has a VERY short lifetime. And once the content creators go from SL, nothing new is here.

In the sunset of this game, I'll sit on my island with my friends, spend more time in OpenSim and increase my assistance to teh opensource high Fidelity project. (For me the choice of worlds is a partly matter of personal ethics, a fully commercial world is unappealing to me personally, just as Apple products are compared to opensourced Android)

I am sure there will be a few people who follow ebbe and flow into the new world of the Lab, but there will also be those who leave for high Fidelity, I'm likely one of that group, not just ont he issue of opensource, but once burnt by the Lab with this loss of inventory I won't trust them again.

In the end, with only the landbots in SL the lab will close it, erase the asset servers and destroy the code. SL11B is the last where people had hope, from now,

anyone who buys any digital content in SL is doing so knowing it's a VERY limited life left on it.

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Agreed.

"the stage was set"

[DesperadoReprise]

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Ebbe Altberg wrote:

All I'm going to reply here is that we are not in the content business

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He lied, of course. The ToS was changed specifically so LL would own ALL the content in SL.

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Pamela Galli wrote:

 

 I think the TOS may have something to do with this.

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LL can take possession of any and all content in SL V1 and do with it what they will. If they want to pre-emptively "dress" the new world to entice sign-ups (on a subscription basis, naturally, with your home address and retail profile mandatory before you are allowed entry) they can quite legally set up villages of Pam's dwellings, filled with Pam's furniture, without Pam receiving a cent in compensation. The range of free avatars would also be almost unlimited, with infinite clothing wardrobes available for no cost. How could a naive n00b turn down that sort of offer?

 

 

And it's too late for creators to stop this from happening.

And you're asking why I'm angry, Ebbe?

Apparently your insight is as lacking as your willingness to show minimal respect to your customers by running your posts through the spellchecker.

"stole your dreams and paid you with regret"

 

 

[DesperadoReprise]

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Callum Meriman wrote:

 

As a kid roleplayer, I actually hope you are right and I am wrong.

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Ebbe has conspicuously ignored my question regarding this critical element of participation in V2.

Go figure!

The initialism for the new world will still be SL, but it will stand for "Sanitised Life", making it easier to persuade corporates to advertise or sponsor stuff then.

"the lawmen cleared the people from the streets"

 

[Gavin Hird]

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DesperadoReprise wrote:

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Callum Meriman wrote:

 

As a kid roleplayer, I actually hope you are right and I am wrong.

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Ebbe has conspicuously ignored my question regarding this critical element of participation in V2.

Go figure!

The initialism for the new world will still be SL, but it will stand for "Sanitised Life", making it easier to persuade corporates to advertise or sponsor stuff then.

"the lawmen cleared the people from the streets"

 

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If they plan version 2.0 for a family audience, having participants acting outside their legal age group will obvioulsy not go down very well with authorities in any country.

 

[DesperadoReprise]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

Well Chic all I can say is that anyone who put 2 and 2 together about the TOS and SL@  is a freaking GENIUS!

 

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Thanks for the compliment, Pam.

But I thought we'd discussed this in CAC a while ago.

"stole your dreams"

 

[DesperadoReprise]

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Gavin Hird wrote:

 

If they plan version 2.0 for a family audience, having participants acting outside their legal age group will obvioulsy not go down very well with authorities in any country.

 

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As will just about any form of "adult" activity.

"another showdown"

[Johnas Merlin]

I hope the SL 2.0 TOS does not include;

2.3 You grant Linden Lab certain licenses to your User Content.

[..]you agree to grant to Linden Lab, the non-exclusive, unrestricted, unconditional, unlimited, worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, and cost-free right and license to use, copy, record, distribute, reproduce, disclose, sell, re-sell, sublicense(through multiple levels), modify, display, publicly perform, transmit, publish, broadcast, translate, make derivative works of, and otherwise exploit in any manner whatsoever, all or any portion of your User Content (and derivative works thereof), for any purpose whatsoever in all formats, on or through any media, software, formula, or medium now known or hereafter developed, and with any technology or devices now known or hereafter developed, and to advertise, market, and promote the same. You agree that the license includes the right to copy, analyze and use any of your Content as Linden Lab may deem necessary or desirable for purposes of debugging, testing, or providing support or development services in connection with the Service and future improvements to the Service.[..]

Which prompted cgtextures.com to blacklist SL usage of their content since this change.

[Gavin Hird]

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DesperadoReprise wrote:

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Gavin Hird wrote:

 

If they plan version 2.0 for a family audience, having participants acting outside their legal age group will obvioulsy not go down very well with authorities in any country.

 

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As will just about any form of "adult" activity.

"another showdown"

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100% on that!

[Gavin Hird]

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DesperadoReprise wrote:

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Gavin Hird wrote:

 

If they plan version 2.0 for a family audience, having participants acting outside their legal age group will obvioulsy not go down very well with authorities in any country.

 

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As will just about any form of "adult" activity.

"another showdown"

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Which is probably the main reason why non-mesh content will not transfer. We saw this with the "migration" to Zindra - even the most general of general sims were littered with adult content, and it was impossible to clean it up as they had hoped at the time. 

[DesperadoReprise]

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Johnas Merlin wrote:

I hope the SL 2.0 TOS does not include;

2.3 You grant Linden Lab certain licenses to your User Content.

 

[..]you agree to grant to Linden Lab, the non-exclusive, 

unrestricted, unconditional, unlimited, worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, and cost-free right

 and license to 

use, copy, record, distribute, reproduce, disclose, sell, re-sell, sublicense

(through multiple levels), modify, display, publicly perform, transmit, publish, broadcast, translate, make derivative works of, 

and otherwise exploit in any manner whatsoever, all or any portion of your User Content (and derivative works thereof), for any purpose whatsoever in all formats

, on or through any media, software, formula, or medium now known or hereafter developed, and with any technology or devices now known or hereafter developed, and to advertise, market, and promote the same. You agree that the license includes the right to copy, analyze and use any of your Content as Linden Lab may deem necessary or desirable for purposes of debugging, testing, or providing support or development services in connection with the Service and future improvements to the Service.[..]

Which prompted cgtextures.com to blacklist SL usage of their content since this change.

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Hahahahaha!

The ToS is likely to become even more severe and restrictive.

Whether it's actually enforcable - particularly retrospectively - should a class action take LL to court is another matter. It may be that the threat of wholesale theft and reuse of content from V1 creators subsequently excluded from V2 will instigate litigation. That would stop V2 in its tracks.

"duelling"

[MBeatrix]

I don't know what is going to happen, but I know that with a few words Mr. Altberg may have shot to death an economy that took years to be built and thrive.

I will try to keep doing in SL what I've always done in my two and an half years in it, but I won't be buying any more products that may or may not be portable to the new platform.

We may lose part of our assets, but that's ok, it's only virtual goods. What the Lab will be losing isn't something virtual, though — I do believe they will start losing quite some real money.

About moving to some other platform and start all over again... Well, just not for me — if I ever intended to do that, I'd already had moved to any other existing grid.

[Innula Zenovka]

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Callum Meriman wrote:

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irihapeti wrote:

maaan !!! and I am that one gets called crazy person sometimes. jejejjejeje (:

 

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huehuehue, so funny. Consider this:

With this brave new world that on Day 1, when the switch is flipped and the world's press enters cameras at the ready,

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Why on earth do you think "the world's press" is likely to find the launch of SL2 of any particular interest?      Strikes me it would have to be a pretty slow news day.