Drayke Newall

Do people read posts properly or just glaze over it? I said that they haven't changed it reasonably. I am well aware that they have added a few perks here and there however there are very few perks that benefit a brand new user or someone that really hasn't been in world for about 1 year. Apologies in advance for the long post but wanted to cover perks one by one. The weekly stipend hasn't been increased for a long time despite inflation within second life itself. For perspective, to just get a decent body and head it would take you half a year of stipends to buy the combo not including skin, hair, clothing etc. To furnish your house it would take around the same if you solely rely on the strip-end. To buy a clothing item it would take 2 weeks etc. May benefit a new user though they will certainly be complaining about having to need to buy more lindens to even start to have fun on top of their sub. The $L1000 bonus is after 2 months staying and then removed entirely. So at most a decent reward only after 2 months then nothing after. Encourages people to stay for 2 months only. Surely a better system would be as a reward for say staying 2 months then 6 months, then 12, then 24. Benefits a new user only once. A Linden home or parcel of land at 1024m². As mentioned this is the only benefit to keep people around. That said, also comes with the downside of having slow AR resolution, no resident to resident dispute management, no resident ban system (other than the slow LL AR system), a non customisable house structure etc. Additionally, private land can be bought for a cost usually of $L1 or part of the first week of tier, as opposed to the cost it is to buy mainland parcels from other residents or LL auctions that in popular areas can go for many hundreds of USD. Only major benefit for a new user though has many downsides and refer to last few paragraphs regarding value. Premium support of which after over 15 years of me being on SL I have never had to use. Sure, some people may however this isn't really a 'necessity' or a perk imo. Live chat comes into this as well. Wont benefit a new user who can get support from inworld residents, forums etc all free. Premium Gift of which over half are badly optimised or useless and usually end up as inventory filler. May benefit a new user however most gifts are pointless to a new user looking to actually customise their avatar or furnish their house with decent animated items. Access to premium sandboxes of which are on mainland therefore come with some expected lag, and even though your article states that it cuts down griefers I disagree as, 90% of griefing takes place on LL controlled sandboxes as LL are never online to police it whereas resident owned sandboxes have people online almost all the time to sort out issues. Not a benefit to a new user as the inworld search engine is built around how may people are on a sim at the time and therefore a new user wanting to socialise and build will go elsewhere. You have to scroll a fair way down if Sandbox is typed into search just to see LL sandboxes. Premium regions of which are to be honest boring and almost always empty which, goes to show just how worth while this perk is if none of those premium members are even there. New user will go once and never again as they go to places where people are. Empty regions is one of the prime negatives touted as SL's problem from new users. Free voice morphing of which isn't necessary any more (and never was) as it can be done with 3rd party software outside of SL voice system. New user wont use as they wouldn't even know how to use it or find the button. Increased group numbers - maybe a bonus but I've never gone over the 40 limit anyway but that's just me. If I have an issue with a product I directly IM the owner or their staff as per the request of 90% of their profiles stating to do or go to their stores regularly to see if anything is new. New user wouldn't need that many and wont need that many for quite a while. Better access to crowded sims. LMAO unless the 10 other free slots are already taken by other premium members and you don't click that teleport button in time which all other people are clicking non stop as well. New user would have just as much trouble at getting into an event as a basic user would not to mention would instantly leave SL due to the extreme lag at events. Better transaction history, maybe a merchant would need this however if they are relying on evidence for tax etc they would use a better system to track it all. New user wouldn't need this. Higher cap on IM's. Probably the only other worth while perk on the whole system. New user wouldn't need this but maybe they will. Name change. This latest addition is not a perk at all considering perks are usually free not an added cost. Highly doubt it would be needed by the new user. Sure, granted some people may find premium worth while but, the way premium has been organised or offered currently is to benefit only the existing long term user. If linden lab want to remove reliance on tier and make premium viable and draw the new user in they need to offer a lot more perks directed to the new user that are of value and not something they wont need for a while. Lastly regarding land and strip-end, to put it into perspective for a new user, they can rent privately a 1024m² parcel of land with 608 prim allowance for $L378/week. Using the prim to cost ratio of this parcel of approx. $L1.6/prim, this would mean that LL's 1024 parcel with 351 prim allowance offered in the premium package is worth approx. $L220/week. So against the actual offered LL land in the subscription a new user can get 257 extra prims which is far more beneficial than 351prims. Using the above: Linden Lab's land value (including the extra prims not awarded that the private parcel does for comparison) is $L1638/mth and strip end of $L1300/mth or a total of USD $11.04. EDIT 2: for those wondering the LL offered land price without the extra prims calculated in + strip end is $L2254 or $8.71USD. For the private parcel value of $L1646/mth and strip end of $L1300/mth the value in USD would be $11.39 totaling an extra $0.35. Given that the total cost of premium for one month is $11.99 both are still under, but as far as land and strip-end value goes prim to prim for an extra $0.35/month I get a better parcel of land (keeping in mind the subscription offers a parcel with 257 LESS prims), the strip-end, and a more dedicated and timely response for land support. So sorry, but unless my maths is wrong and it could be considering I had to convert land value to $L then no, your subscription to premium is NOT worth it for the new user when the strip-end and house/land is really all they need/want to start off with. Of course if you chuck in the IM cap and increased user count this would put a little more value on premium, but not for a new user and when a new user would go over or how much this would be worth to the user would be impossible to determine, especially based on (from what I have seen and based on LL never being able to rely on premium to remove tier reliance) basic users outweigh premium by a mile. EDIT: By the way i'm aware 1 year reduces the sub price to $8.99 but was using a month to month sub cost. The $3 difference is negligible.

By the looks of it perhaps they aren't doing it for profit and its more of a system security feature. In this particular case and given that if you change your name and then think the next day you don't like it and change it again to another one the old name is technically removed from the pool however is still associated with your uuid (unless I read that wrong), perhaps this is the reason for the high cost. If it was free to premium users or too cheap, perhaps trolls who have a large amount of disposable income or time could remove all the names from the pool by doing the above.

Budgeting a certain amount of potential income from people forgetting or adding diverse incomes is different to relying on an income or relying on a certain aspect to be taken up by new users because of x perk. With the user name change being tied to a subscription model and the high cost yes, there is the potential for customers to forget to unsubscribe. I don't argue that. However you are dreaming if its going to be any form of substantial income in LL case or any more than those that already forget to cancel their sub. This is also the case in all those business models you state. Do they put into their business plan that x users will forget to cancel? Sure, they may as it is a by product of a subscription model, but I highly doubt those organisations wake up in the morning and think, hey lets start a subscription model and rely on all those that don't unsubscribe for our money. Maybe the word rely where you come from means something different but where I am from rely means depend or in other words a necessity you cant live without. You stated: They would have a larger income pool stated within their plan as well as a method of ensuring people stay on that subscription as long as possible (for positive feedback and word of mouth marketing) without the need to cancel (or forget to cancel) such as new updates etc. The business strategy of people forgetting to cancel would be the same strategy of the repeat customer. Can it happen sure, but you don't pin, rely, depend etc. your income on that. It is a possibility or a by product of a genuine revenue stream not one in itself as your statement quoted above implies. In LL's case they do not have a method of keeping people on their subscription model other than a house and the subscription model as of yet hasn't been updated in any reasonable form since its inception. Additionally if you pay for 3 months subscription in SL knowing that you have budgeted for that and to not forget, cancel your subscription a day later after signing up you loose your house or land the day you unsub meaning the very perk most people sign up for is taken from you despite paying for that perk for 3 months. I suppose this is LL's crutch to hope when people realise that they continue, who knows. In many countries such practices are illegal though and would have a high risk. That all said, my post was in relation to LL anyway. They want new users onto their subscription model. Do new users of SL sign instantly up to a premium membership? No. Are new users going to use a name change at $40 on top of premium to sign up to a subscription straight away? No. Therefore as I stated in my original post, LL relying on that income or they hopes new users will be drawn into premium and forget to cancel is ridiculous. Additionally any existing person solely without a sub currently wanting a last name change will sign up to premium, change name and cancel once that is done all in one swoop. There might be the few that stay on but given the high cost and responses to that cost in this thread it wont be many.

🙄 Never said that people wont forget to cancel their sub. I said a business relying on that as a way to generate money is not good business practice. Sure companies push for subscriptions etc. but the vast majority (I'm sure there are some dubious companies that do) do not create subscriptions or perks tied to those in the hope people will forget to cancel. Didn't mean it didn't matter to each person individually but meant that unique names don't matter. For a 'game' labeled as a Second Life imitating a first life where there are no unique names...

To give SL a fantasy or eclectic flair, all the old names backwards. Also has the bonus of allowing all those users wanting to have the old names access to them, but with more style and flair. Who wouldn't want to be Burrel backwards. So French sounding - Lerrub

That was slightly different though same principle I suppose. That said, I fully understand the 'noise' you suggest as me mentioning it in another thread got the same noise. People seem to think that you could get spoofed even today at the suggestion though that probability is 0 to none. LL should have learnt long ago that such noise in topics such as account security are just silly and should be ignored, they crumble to the few all to often and this has resulted in the many issues we still face today in SL. In another thread I used the example of Steam and how they conduct their system. They also have a unique username hidden from the general public however allow a person to change their display name (alias) to whatever they want for their profile, gifting, game market and trading. Certain members still considered this even now a different case to second life and argued that the money transferred between SL residents was far in excess and different to Steam and therefore was irrelevant. My point was if a mega gaming corporation such as steam could do it and allow gifting of huge sums of money I cant see why LL cant. The mere suggestion of forum users saying that Steam users transfer inferior amounts of money between users (through their game gifting or trading card system) than second life is laughable at best. I think a lot of the noise and issues people have is that they don't understand (or are ignorant) that second life is no different to any other modern computer program. I mean its even been argued in this thread that because "its second life" all other examples are different, such as those people arguing that every other company in history offers name changes for $10 so should LL (which it should). Only for these people to be shot down with the usual tripe of "this is second life the god of all games and software how dare you compare it to the mere viruses that other programs are". Such arguments are getting old and just show peoples ignorance in such areas. That is similar to Steam alias's. They have a drop down in the profile where you can select previously used alias's to quickly change between. I like the idea of that wearable asset. I would suggest it on Jira but I gave up offering feature requests on there as they were always knocked back with sorry we are to busy for that. Ended up giving it to Niran for their viewer instead to which it was implemented instantly. If your wondering one was the ability to use the obsolete calling card in your inventory as a method of allowing you to add contacts or people to the favorite bar on the viewer.

^ How to fail Master of Business degree. That statement is just flawed. You a pinning your income on the hope that someone will forget to cancel their sub? LL have stated that they want to make premium subscriptions the new way for them to remove their income dependence on Land, and this is not the way to do it. Even if the name change was separate from premium it is still to expensive. You also seem to think that new users (who are or should be LL target for premium) are going to think "oh hey I want a unique user name in SL even though I can change my display name. I'm new and might only stick around for a month but hey ill spend $40+ to ''TRY' premium". The only people this name change is targeted to is older users. You say LL would like people to give sub's a go and yet they haven't changed in any good way since their inception. Sure, they have added a few pointless bonusses, however adding the requirement to BUY a new name with a subscription only is bound to end up with the same low uptake of subscriptions as has always been the case. As far as the years stats no, it will produce very bad stats as it will show a large uptake of premium and then a huge drop in one go. To a shareholder it would be a negative and an effective way to show the shareholder that LL don't know how to generate, increase and keep income flowing steadily. Makes me wonder who is actually coming up with these ideas in the Lab. I also find it amusing people in this thread saying that a large portion of second life users wanted the last names reintroduced as if the amount of votes on Jira equate to a large subset of users. Considering the touted monthly unique login's LL promote, I would dare say the more correct way to say it is a large portion of forum users or SL meeting attendees wanted it aka, hardly anyone at all. It would be different if they sent out a survey and asked the entire userbase about it... maybe they did and I missed this survey? There were so many other ways LL could have implemented a good system to provide both user wants/needs with a genuine way to keep a name change a regular income for them to further reduce tier reliance but, they failed once again. Taking over a year to do it as well as the resources they could have done better. Seeing as I know the inevitable posts of how will come, here are some ways they could actually make money from it better whilst also make the system more secure and also easier for the user: Make username changes part of a LL online store removing the pointless need of premium. Charging less for it. $40 is insane. I think, like usual, all those in the USA keep forgetting that once currency exchange rate and fees are taken into place it is a lot of money for some. e.g. as an Australian it is $60 plus an additional $2-5 dollars for the foreign transaction fee not including the premium requirement. Rather than spend the time on reintroducing a last name, they could have spent less time and resources in just hiding the username all together for sl residents and make the display name the one everyone sees. Then charge a linden dollar figure (say $500L) to change the display name rather than the 30 day requirement. This makes it more accessible to more people as well as makes it a more reasonable cost for long term income generation. It is also more secure and brings SL into the more accepted way of username - display name separation in other games, virtual worlds etc. But hey, people will pay $40 for it, and glad they have the opportunity for that ever elusive claim of a unique name (like it actually mattered in a virtual world) I suppose...

I doubt they will, as it wasn't a subscription perse as suggested in this thread. It was more of a reward for Beta Members where they were offered, for a fee, a once off life membership. It was only offered directly after the beta for a short time as far as I am aware. To be honest I also hope they don't do this as this is one of the reasons why much of the mainland is vacant. The situation is that many of these life members hold land on the mainland and because by right they don't pay tier they in essence don't have to log into SL ever. Consequently all those people that don't log into SL anymore, still have this land linked to their account. Additionally you also have to remember that back when these memberships were offered mainland was the only land available so premium was taken up. I don't see however, any bonus land on mainland linked to a premium account being of any benefit as an offer as, the increase to 1024 did very little to bring further members in on the current subscription. Not to mention there is still the outlandish price of actually buying land on the mainland since LL have failed to update or even use their Land Auction for many years. Perhaps it may have been different if residents could only abandon land to Governor Linden and not sell it directly as this would make it somewhat more affordable.

I certainly hope not as that is just ridiculous considering outside of America dynamic IP addresses are common.

You seem to think I am suggesting that it is the downloading speed that effects fps or that streaming does. I don't think this. What I am saying is that when the world is grey and has no textures populating it you have a higher fps due to no textures being present and when textures start to load there is a subsequent drop in fps (minor) due to those textures now populating the screen. It is the same as what Nalates said in that fps can in some cases go up due to no textures being loaded and once loaded/loading the fps reduces. I never said grey textures were bad for fps just that they can affect it, granted marginally and only in the first instance of scene loading. I don't argue either that once the packet has been sent that you wont receive the rest at a reduced rate of speed. Distance does however matter as far as how the initial download speed is determined (ping is the test of how long it takes for something to be transferred over a distance aka latency, the further you are away), as the further you are away from the source the slower your download speed is https://blog.httpwatch.com/2008/08/14/the-surprising-effect-of-distance-on-download-speed/. I was using latency to describe the distance which whilst theoretically it isn't, the higher it is the further you are away. It is why here in Australia if we download something from the USA our download speed is reduced based on many factors, not due to the actual speed of the download itself but due to the fact it isn't a single round trip and also because of TCP issues, software restrictions etc. as mentioned in the link before mentioned. All in all what I am say is, that the longer it takes for your internet to download the textures the more time you will see a slight increase (in some cases) in fps due to SL being grey and no textures being present. In the case of benchmarking done by the OP, to compensate or to remove any of this effect and solely focus on the cpu rendering a specific scene, they should have already had those textures within their cache so that it is loading directly from his system and not any potential effect caused by latency/download/distance (what ever you want to call it). It is also why I asked him originally if he cleared his cache before hand to determine whether there were any other outside effects contributing to fps fluctuations.

I will grant you that there isn't a massive fps difference, but as Nalates has stated grey renders quicker than a texture and therefore can have an impact on fps which was my point and is why I stated speed as well as latency matters as these all constitute how quickly your textures are streamed to your PC. This is because the textures themselves are generally similar to a streaming service as until they are streamed over the network and rendered the fps can and generally will change accordingly depending on how far you are from the servers and how quick your internet is. Whilst yes SL is not a full fledged streaming system such as Stadia, it still does stream content to your pc of which can effect fps. Although as Nalates states it is a temporary effect governed by how quick your scene renders with faster connections and lower latency meaning you may not even notice it. Living in Australia however with a high latency and reasonable internet it is noticeable to some degree. This is also why I responded to @Bas Curtiz as it was he that said that slow internet speed does not effect fps which it can. That said, I do agree that their is no tie to internet speed and the cpu or the system as far as fps goes.

Please don't edit/respond in quotes to answer makes it extremely difficult to reply as the quote box replies empty otherwise. Point 1 - You are benchmarking cpu's to find out which one is better. You cant do this without a base of which you do not have. Yes, if you want to compare cpu's you have to have exactly the same base. So as you said 40 alts on your own sim or control the environment within a parameter. That is the only way you can identify how each cpu performs against each other. If you don't have the exact same base your data would be skewed. Point 2 - Controlling the environment is making sure the base across all systems are the same. You are benchmarking, not testing real world situations. Every one knows that when an avatar enters a sim or is on the sim there is an FPS drop. That tells nothing as to a performance of FPS across multiple cpu's. You say there is a difference in fps, but how did you determine this? Seems like all you did is tped to random locations on the same system and that's it without taking into consideration anything else. If an avatar has a higher ARC setting then that will effect the fps and skew fps data. Point 3 - if texture loading, size of texture etc. doesn't have any effect on your fps or cpu then why talk about limiting avatar ARC or limit avatars to max 40 in an area like that club? What is it about an avatar being in the sim do you think that reduces FPS if texture loading or textures don't matter? If texture loading doesn't matter why do you see an increase in fps once textures on avatars have loaded fully? Point 4 - No I saw a fps reduction when there were avatars present and higher fps when there wasn't. you showed the same locations but at different times in different conditions i.e avatars on the sim or loading in etc. How can one determine what cpu is better when the base test field is different across multiple systems. Granted the OC'ed cpus where higher in most situations but anyone could have told you that was going to be the case. Point 5 - No i'm not trying to compare at all I simply said that on my system that is inferior to yours runs second life in all situations far better than yours. You say location and viewpoint matters, yet fail to see how avatars within those same fields rendering don't? Point 6 - You say that internet speed doesn't matter as far as FPS goes yet according to Google Stadia not only does speed matter so does latency and that is with a standard game with no custom content. But hey its Google, what do they know. Let me put it this way, my system has a non oc gen 1 ryzen 3.7GHz CPU, rx580, 32 gig of ram, a normal HDD for cache and with a 250ms ping I can run at 20-30fps with your graphics settings in a full club sim loading all 70 avatars on that sim. I can also run 120+ on a sandbox sim or generally any other sim. and 40-60fps on a mall sim depending on where I look due to high res textures being present in certain areas. But apparently textures don't matter for fps so *shrug* As to your offer, I have better things to do than try and work out which cpu is better for second life, and to be honest don't care as I am with @cheesecurd. Any person that buys a pc solely for SL and not other things is just silly and ridiculous and to be honest apart from the very rare circumstances just wouldn't happen. Especially considering that content creation within SL requires those additional high end software. That's said, even with your skewed data if someone buys a cpu you recommend at a higher price that doesn't necessarily perform better for other programs etc based on a 2-7 fps difference they are just silly and is why I posted in this thread to show how skewed your results are. If most tech reviewers etc are saying Ryzen at the moment is better across the board, cheaper and next year is only going to be better and with those tech reviewers switching from intel to ryzen, that should say it all.

So in other words you converted Second Life into your 'supposed' perfect world situation (of which you technically didn't). This in itself will skew your benchmarks as Second Life does not exist in a perfect world situation. A game with completely optimised content will but second life cannot. Additionally whilst they might eject people over a certain ARC at that club you cannot guarantee that all people rezed within that area (i.e. entire sim) were all at the same ARC level at each time (irrespective of you changing it to load only 40 avatars). If you want your test to be valid you would need to ensure that every one of those avatars in the club have exactly the same arc level as well as the same textures, mesh, objects, scripts etc and control people coming in and out so that each one is exactly the same. The same applies to every sim you went to. Furthermore in all situations you haven't controlled the environment and therefore fps is affected accordingly. This is evident even in your latest videos where you have lower GHz cpu's at 140 fps and higher OC versions at half the non overclocked cpu's due to having avatars in view and not in the others etc. Did you clear the cache before each time or was this a fresh login after a cache has been cleared? Did you clear the cache before each teleport to a different sim? Did you take into account the loading of inventory into your calculations at first startup or not? Did you take into consideration the simulator time and fps at each sim and work that into your calculations. How about turning on AO and Shadows in your viewer as well? Where was your cache located? What storage device was your cache on SSD, high RPM HDD, Normal HDD or M.2? Active scripts in some of those sims are different to some test cases and looking at that Avatar impact board at the club goes to show you your test environment is skewed. The way you tested this was as if someone was benchmarking and upon each time they changed systems they rendered a different scene in blender or they had one system play only BF5 and then the other system play only Minecraft. Coming to the conclusion that because PC 1 rendered BF5 at 110FPS and the Minecraft system rendered at 200FPS the Minecraft system is far superior. As a non oc'd gen 1 ryzen owner I can tell you now that the amount of time it takes your ryzen test pc's to load textures etc., is way less than what it takes mine. My FPS with no shadows and AO on is 80+ yet somehow yours is as low as 30 at times with no shadows and no AO on at near empty sims? Additionally I can have shadows on and still get 50fps in a moderately occupied sim. This all with a ping of 280-480 and using an older Rx580 at 8g compared to your titan. In other words, something is very wrong with your tests. Completely wrong and you only took their statement as meaning upload/download speed. Firstly you cannot just limit the download/upload rate and think that that is all that matters. You have to account for latency, packets in and out etc. There is far more to it that that. That said, if you have managed to overcome the internet tied to fps issues then Google and their Stadia team are desperately waiting for you to contact them.

Yeah thought the wording was a little odd and couldn't actually find the relevant full documents to look into it further. That said, perhaps they (the journalists etc.) cited it to emphasise what has always been a grey area within Second Life as to who owns copyright and thought it necessary for the Judge to acknowledge that LL have stated that copyright is owned by the actual creators. As far as its relation to the topic goes it justifies that if someone does copy a in world product directly in or out copyright does exist. How that is determined and dealt with however is an entirely different matter. @Jagix Linden Thanks for that. I have edited one of my posts to say deleted as it responds to an off topic part of the thread and seems you missed it. Leave it up to you whether you want to remove it completely or leave as is.

Was the case Evans v. Linden Research. Scroll down in the below link and it states "Second Life users own copyrights in the virtual land and items that they purchase or create." https://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/78423.html or https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=c01952e1-054d-4dcf-9bab-6e49a15d1157 Of course it comes down to interpretation of that particular line and perhaps it is taken out of context by the above links, not sure as the referenced documents are no longer available to peruse. The case was also based on LL old SL ToS so this may also come into play. So kitty that attacks tail are those that are on topic and the two in the box fighting are the for and against of Gender Pronouns?..... Runs.🏃‍♂️

Did you even read the article I posted? It specifically states that the copyright extends to the building itself. Even the Wikipedia entries of American architectural copyright as well as the official (i.e. the actual law) Architectural Works Copyright Protection Act states the same that a constructed building is copyrighted as a architectural right that cannot be copied however can be photographed. It is the same in Australia. Ill even post the full explanation from the article below not just part relating to the protection of a constructed building: "In 1990, Congress passed the Architectural Works Copyright Protection Act which explicitly provides copyright protection to original designs of architecture in virtually any form, including architectural plans, drawings and buildings themselves. This means that a builder may be liable for copyright infringement if the building itself infringes another's plans or building regardless of whether the plans themselves were copied. Therefore, builders, architects and owners should not attempt to mimic other architectural works in any form. " I have already said I have been party to such lawsuits of which the outcome is that a constructed building is copyrighted. To be honest if you cant accept, my professional opinion, an article explaining copyright law in relation to architecture a general Wikipedia entry on it or even the actual Protection Act itself, then I'm sorry but I am lost for words and have to begin to wonder if you are trolling me.

Well once again can only say what it is in Australia as I don't know how many other design professions exist in America in relation to architecture or how the AIA have formed their laws. Here it isn't restricted to a registered architect, a building designer, drafter or even the average joe down the road with no degree has copyright of a design if they created it. An architect/designer here also has the right to sell the copyright to the client or a builder etc. for a fee which can be 10's of thousand's of dollars. Not sure if this is the same in America but presume it is.

Well I would disagree that it is legal as the design is copyrighted and that extends to the building. There is no such thing as reverse engineering in architecture. This is why architectural copyright it is often misunderstood as Architects have specific laws within copyright that are different to all other forms of copyright. For example architects have been using a grant of license of use well before it became the norm in software or even Second Life and this always causes issues as our clients think they own copyright of the plans when they are for construction even when they actually don't. I have been trying to explain this as well as I can however seems I am doing a terrible job. Here is an article that perhaps can explain it better than I can https://www.archdaily.com/328870/the-10-things-you-must-know-about-architectural-copyrights/. Take note of section 1 of that article where it says: "...the Architectural Works Copyright Protection Act which explicitly provides copyright protection to original designs of architecture in virtually any form, including architectural plans, drawings and buildings themselves." I cant really explain it any more than I have as every post I have made in here is generally the same and as if I am banging my head on a brick wall. People need to grasp that there is a completely separate copyright law distinct and not part of other copyright that is unique solely to architects. BTW, Im an architect and deal with copyright related issues regarding architectural design all the time.

What if someone walked through the building, liked what they see and then proceeded to replicate that building based on the physical building without seeing the plan. I.E. they drew the plan themselves based on what they saw.? Who owns copyright then? All correct apart from the fact that in architecture a design patent allows for the patent of the façade or an interior design, generally not the layout of the building. Additionally, of course copyright is of the physical works, however the design is protected due to this as well. I assume you are implying by saying copyright must be a tangible item that anything created in Second Life doesn't received copyright? If this is the case the please explain how you would argue against the ruling of a Supreme Court Judge saying differently. Your basis for this bold statement is? Also have you attended copyright claims based on architectural design in RL as I have? I pose this question to you. If I created that same design and was the first in SL to do it based on a old canceled project plan I had in RL (irrespective of whether it has been built in RL) and then proceeded to create all the mesh etc in SL and then claimed that the design is in its entirety the club. Meaning, that the now covered courtyard, covered streets and all buildings are designed to be utilised as a open air club whereby each building serves a different function in relation to the club such as one for the delivery of beer, another for pizza, another for a motel situation as is done in pubs over here in Australia, etc. Then that the courtyard is the dance area and the streets are not for vehicles (which looking at the original would be the case as well) but for tables and chairs of club patrons. Then finalise that design statement that it is on a single plot of land and designed for that plot of land specifically. What part is copyrightable in your expert opinion? EDIT: As to your ninja edit while I was responding, I agree they are your opinions as are mine, however whilst I respect that you deal with copyright and trademark issues as part of your RL job (whatever that is) and understand that, it is also difficult for people that are within this specific professional field that would have (without trying to brag) a far better understanding of how the specific laws apply to that profession. Whilst sure, I admit I can be wrong at times and are most certainly happy to be proven wrong, unless you are in the same professional field with experience in such copyright claims then you are going to have to bring in a lot more evidence to argue against it. I'm sorry if that sounded rude or whatever, tried my best to make it sound civil and like I'm not "up myself". ("up myself" etc. is aussie slang for thinking much higher of oneself than others do if you were wondering).

I wouldn't be able to tell with music as its not an area I know much of. Whilst yes, they sound the same you have to take a more qualified professionals word for it that they aren't, though what I do find interesting is that modern era songs seem to run into copyright issues a lot more than classical music. Though it could just be that I haven't heard all classical music to verify this or they are in the public realm. That said, once again that is music and not design and comprises a different from of creativity. It is still prevalent within even architecture or design that if you change 10% of a design it is enough to void copyright but this isn't the case and is also why design wise, as I mentioned on the first page, design intent comes into being as the form of argument. Design intent, whilst still difficult is far less a greyzone than simply changing the plan or copying. In essence, it is proving creativity and that you spent time making that design from scratch. For instance an easy way to prove design intent is to show a timeline of concepts and how the plan evolved over time into its final form. This allows any person to see that what started off maybe as a series of circles with connecting lines or squares led to changes upon changes to the final design. It is also why in painting it is the style and composition that is used to determine copyright not the subject such as a building or person. The above is also how one would argue against a copyright claim regarding design. If they can prove an evolution of the design from a form that doesn't look like the claimants design then it would be hard to sue for copyright. It would be a different story if you go from one design into a completely new design that looks identical to another plan from someone else, changed only slightly and you don't have the in-between design changes from one to the other from its original basic form. There is also the issue as to what is perceived as unique as opposed to common practice. For example, speaking as far as architecture goes, there is only so many ways you can design a basic 3 bedroom house and therefore other areas such as façade, aesthetic and reasoning comes into play. It is also why you see replicated floor plans of homes and no lawsuits being filed as it would be near impossible to determine any form of creativity within that plan unless there is a specific element within a plan that is central to the design. This is also why it is necessary to be able to define an element and style apart from design intent. A column for instance is a necessary element required for construction and therefore would be hard to copyright. As would a Doric or Corinthian column as this was a style of a building element that was used by an entire civilisation. It would be like trying to copyright the use of the style Baroque, Victorian, Modern Contemporary; or in a furniture design capacity Chippendale and Queen Anne style; or in a painting capacity Cubism or Late Modern. It wouldn't be possible. Design intent however as in I designed this building this way due to x,y,z or placed those windows there due to x,y,z is a lot easier to determine from a person simply copying.

No, a trademark is for the use of words, logos, animations and the like. A design patent is for the aesthetic (outside) of the building, however still has to be unique against any copyrighted designs. An architectural design is copyrighted just like a book or a work of art and extends to general drawings and blueprints, preliminary plans, sections, elevations, floor plans, construction plans, rough models, models of internal support, models of external appearance, photomontages of the building against backdrops, computer-generated images of a design, and constructed buildings. As mentioned in one of my previous posts copyright of items within SL is possible and was ruled as such by the court.

So how does an architect copyright his design once the building has been built with mostly parts that are bought such as doors, windows, walls, roof etc?

I'm sure LL would have loved that to be the case instead of being dragged in and having an injunction imposed on them in the infamous horses vs rabbits lawsuit.

The thing is it has happened before. LL have lost cases involving who owns virtual land or not and additionally have also lost as far as virtual goods ownership with the judge specifically ruling "Second life users own copyrights in virtual land and items that they purchase or create". So the precedent is there, despite what many other users lawyers state.