Phil Deakins

Alisha Matova wrote: I'm not so sure. Yes I agree that pirating is bad. But, RIAA's power play is disgusting. It shows just how powerful these corporations have become. They go to congress and get denied, so they pass some cash around and do it behind closed doors, instead. I think it is that, and the perceived loss of more freedoms that are causing discontent here. At least for me. I don't see anything negative or wrong about companies asking other companies, that are used for downloading pirate stuff, to help prevent it. I still have the view that the only people who have any cause to be disappointed with it are those who download or stream pirate stuff. The only "freedom" that's under threat with this is the freedom to steal, and that's a freedom that nobody should have. Are you in the UK Phil? I ask because the UK is far ahead of the US with surveillance and other Big Brother feeling practices. Is it possible you have become numb to privacy invasion and over powered government(or business) tactics? I certainly dont mean that in a bad way. I'm just wondering if it's a mater of perspective. In the US we are just starting to deal with new cameras and techie privacy issues now, and have our guard up. Maybe in a few years we will have no choice but to put up with it as well. Yes, I'm in the UK, but I haven't become numb to privacy invasion. I never see it, so it's not a matter of perspective. I don't mind our government making crime more risky by so-called 'Big Brother' methods - cameras, et al. The only time that such Big Brother methods would be wrong is when they are used in ways that aren't against crime. I honestly can't understand anyone's objection to a company doing what it can to prevent its goods being stolen. I suspect that there may be some misunderstanding of the way this will work. Some people may imagine strangers sitting watching what they are doing on the web - monitoring them. But that's not the case. It would be absolutly wrong if it were. I don;t know the way it will work, but I imagine it will be a case of logging the names of people who download/stream from specific websites, and then checking what they downloaded/streamed. Simple as that. I can't see any objection to that at all. It's not limiting freedoms, and it's not spying on people.

Locke Nider wrote: Phil Deakins wrote: Consequently this thread is a waste of time since it's premise is wrong. Then why reply? If I hadn't replied, the OP wouldn't have known how wrong his/her premise is.

You're premise is flawed. There were no MMOs back in the 80s or at any time in the 90s. There were MUGs/MUDs back then - the M meaning Multi- as in Mulit-user. - but no MMOs - the first M meaning Massively. I.e there were no Massively Multi-user ones at all. Consequently this thread is a waste of time since it's premise is wrong.

It's normal for the AR team to fail to do what they are paid to do, and you are right. Nothing has changed over the years. The only time I've seen quick action from them was when someone was using Linden-owned land for particle griefing. That happened a couple of times recently, and the AR team were quick to deal with it. Other than that, the AR team has been a complete washout as far as doing their jobs is concerned. I've had results from them by contacting their boss - twice - but not until I did that. Not even repeated ARs worked. I was at the point of ARing once an hour when I decided to contact their boss directly. Minutes later, the thing was dealt with. On one occasion I could have got a Linden to deal with it but I insisted to myself that the AR team will deal it, because they are paid to do it. And they did as soon as I contacted their boss. My attitude is that I pay for that service and I insist on receiving it. These days, nobody (users) seems to know who the AR team's boss is and, if I need to do it again, I'd contact the top (Rodvik) after giving the AR team a reasonable time to do their job. That's what I've recommended doing several times in the forum.

Triple Peccable wrote: Here my inaction story: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mainland/Farewell-Dobinson/td-p/1528457 I never have fully recovered from that. It still has me on the verge of tiering down to just a 512m plot somewhere, or even leaving SL all together. Your story isn't about griefing. It's a different thing altogether.

Since the "Breedable" category is only recently added, it's likely that at least some of the sellers of breedable don't know it's there, and anyone who flags breedables that are in the the wrong category would be doing them a favour because people who are looking for breedable horses, and see the "Breedables" category, won't look in the horses category. The only way that listed a breedable horse in the Horses category is beneficial is if it also listed in the Breedables category.

That's bad news. The only people for whom it is good news are those who download pirated movies and music. Your attitude to this matter is astonishing - unless you are one of those thieves, of course. Those are the only people who have any reason to be concerned, and the way you've gone on about it does project an impression.

Pussycat Catnap wrote: Consider the price you paid originally as something worth it if you were able to enjoy it for the time you did. That's the only sensible attitude these days. Most of us paid a fortune for land when we bought it, as compared to its value now. If it's provided an enjoyable passtime while it's been owned, then it was very worthwhile.

I saw the introduction of Linden Homes a bit differently to the way you saw it. I know that LL said that it was intended for people to get used to having homes and move on to other land, but I put that down to LL trying to appease landlords. Imo, the sole reason for Linden Homes was to attract more premuin accounts. The idea of people moving on to other land was a sort of excuse and not in any way even a part of the reason for doing it - imo. Also, imo, it was a good thing to do, even though it had a negative impact on those in the landlord business, because it offered more to premium account holders. Unfortunately, that's where it stopped.

GothGirl Demonia wrote: As I have said Copyright infringement in Games like Second Life I find to be very bad and actually harm people. Sadly the past week I have seen a lot of it and it just absolutely makes me sick, however what people are talking about is Copyright infringement to the big industries like RIAA, SONY, and all these other game companies that are way bigger and make more bucks than any creator in SL at least to my knowledge. Are you suggesting that, because companies like Sony make a lot of money, it's ok for their stuff to be pirated? And that, because SL business owners make very little money by comparison, it's not ok for their stuff to be pirated? I hope you're not meaning that, because, if you are, you are dead wrong. GothGirl Demonia wrote: If you watch this YouTube then you will understand likely where I am comnig from, ACTA, SOPA, and PIPA must be stopped as a LAW, because it is plain out just stupid if I share that recipie with my family tell my young teenager how to bake a cake I would be thrown in jail for it. If I bought a music CD at store but made a copy of it, not to sell it make profit or give it away but for my family member I would be breaking the Law. If I used a license across two computers for any program that I only had rights on one of my computers let my family in the same house watch netflix on an account or anything like the such I would be breaking the LAW, and therefore could get years in prision for nothing. I don't know about the recipe bit but your CD example is correctly illegal, and shouldn't be done. You can't go around making copies of CDs and giving them away. It's piracy and is rightly illegal. It's not clear what you mean in your computer example but, if you mean that you have a license for one computer only and you use the programme on two computers, then you are breaking the law. If you want a license for two computers, buy it. Who uses the programme (watches a movie) on any computer you have a license to run it on doesn't matter.

Mircea Lobo wrote: Phil: How can you not see anything wrong with it? And how can anyone be so naive to imagine it will only be used for copyright purposes? If you read what I wrote, you'll see that I said,"If that's all that it's about". And I'll say it again. If that's all that it's about, I see nothing wrong with it. This will allow your ISP to spy on everything you do. If they spy your data they will be able to read your emails, IM's, how many times you called your boss a moron, how many times you sex RP'd online... everything. Theoretically, they can even spy on what you discuss with your co-workers, and secretly share private information with the competitor of the company you work for. Or if you access a porn website, they could tell everyone about it and the things you look at (even your parents or husband / wife). Next, if you access a website about something your admin dislikes, they can easily invent false claims against you to bully you. Imagine being cut off the internet because you are gay or accessed 4chan. Or going to school one day to find out the head teacher mysteriously knows you're gay or something you only said privately, then everyone finds out and you get bullied. Also, what do you think will happen to people who post bad things about America's leadership, the US army, uncover war crimes or government abuses, and that sort of thing... especially with the NDAA being around? All ISPs can already do all of that. You're forgetting that all the traffic between you and the internet goes via your ISP's equpiment, and, if your ISP wants to, for whatever reason, they can see everything you do on the web. So that's nothing new. They aren't getting any extra powers. If anyone thinks this won't happen because "they will be nice people and will only use this to catch thieves", you are more than naive. No, it WILL be used for this and much worse if it happens. I don't even need to point out what power hungry and control hungry characters are behind this. Then I'm happy being naive. Given the fact that they can already do all the things you imagine, but don't do it, it's more a case of you seeing 'reds under the beds' than me being over-naive. If you don't like an ISP's ability to snoop on your internet acivities, don't use an ISP; i.e. get off the internet or become your own ISP - it's not difficult but it does cost. But even if (just for the sake of pretending) this will only be used against pirates. Those pirates might have an online job, not to mention friends they talk with and other activities (unrelated to piracy). Cutting anyone off the internet at this day could cost many their jobs, and some even their lives. And then... being humiliated in spite by being sent to classes about copyright and scolded like a 2 year old by some internet provider? I would have no sympathy at all with pirates who suffer because of it. If anyone doesn't want to suffer from it, don't be a pirate. Simples. Who cares if a pirate loses his job because he's a pirate and his job is internet-based. Who's fault would it be, eh? I'd applaud it.  Alongside the practical consequences, this is also an insult to all internet users. We are being qualified as thieves automatically, and investigated prematurely to make sure we aren't stealing. Yes and the police force is there to assume we are all thieves too. Police forces shouldn't be on the look-out for crime or we are all being "qualified as thieves". Yeah right. I haven't read the rest of your lengthy post - it's just too lengthy. But I do get the impression that you protest too much. Perhaps you enjoy downloading movies for free and you wouldn't like to lose that facility? I can't imagine anyone else being concerned about it.

The Marketplace is screwed so you should decide never to use it again, and to buy everything inworld. And tell your friends to do the same. The only thing that the marketplace is good for is finding items and then going inworld to buy them.

Nuhai Ling wrote: If SL were to shut down the first thing I would do is curse at not cashing out before my lindens were lost and then Google the law firm filing the class-action lawsuit to try and get some of it back in equivalent USD! ^^That, except it would be the money in my $US account I would be wanting.

Am I missing something? I just read the first few paragraphs of the first article and, if that's what it's all about, I can see nothing against it and everything for it. The only people who may be concerned are those who download copyrighted material, which they shouldn't be downloading anyway. My first thought is that it sounds a hell of a lot better than the heavy-handed practise of suing such people for large amounts of money, as has been happening. My second thought is that it could catch some people who aren't aware that downloading the latest movie for free is illegal, but, even then, they'd only get a warning to start with. It all seems good to me.

Ceka Cianci wrote: but it wasn't so bad after awhile..i actually kind of liked it after they fixed it and the camera buttons.. They didn't fix the camera buttons/controls. They changed them but they never made them small enough to be permanently showing; i.e. to be practical. So they didn't fix them. There's such a lot of wasted, and totally unnecessary space in the current cam contols. They are ever so slightly translucent but so slightly as to be hardly noticeable, so they are effectively still solid. And the size of those two arrow buttons is both ridiculous and stupid. Whoever designed it has no concept of the way that people actually use the cam controls. Which means that LL is stupid company for allowing people to design such things without knowing how they are actually used in practise.

Lord Derryth wrote: Here's a simple answer for you. They made SL open source which is why you see avination and InWorldz. They didn't make SL open source. They only made the viewer open source. InWorlds, etc. use a reverse engineered version of SL.

ollieoutie89 wrote: they havent fixed SL in a while. theyr letting it run into the ground and its frustrating! do they just not care for their users anymore? Apart from at the very beginning, Linden Lab has never shown any care, or even interest, in their customers, imo. I don't see LL as letting SL "run into the ground" though.

Where else would anyone hang out if they just want to socialise in general at any time of the day or night? I can't think of anywhere other than Welcome Areas and Infohubs; i.e. centres of people.

The sidebar was singly the worst thing about the V2. I hated the V2 but I'm happy with the V3 and I started a thread to sing its praises (as compared to the V2) when I first used it, even though they still have no concept of what the camera controls should be like to make them usable. I'm sure there are more changes than just the sidebar bit, if there aren't, it's still a HUGE improvement on the V2. ETA: If I'm not mistaken, translucent floaters are very big improvement over the V2, so that's changed too. My not infallable memory is telling me that the V2's floaters weren't transucent and got in the way far too much, adding to the ridiculousness of the viewer.

I use the V3 for my main av and I find that right clicking on an object with unloaded textures causes the whole thing to display instantly. So instantly that the texture(s) must have been downloaded but the viewer simply didn't display it/them. You could try that.

They were originally planning to make the server/sim code open source too, but decided against it. I think that making the viewer open source has turned out well because of the extra features that were added to thrid-party viewers, some of which made it back into the LL viewers. Also, it forced LL to abandon their idiotic V2, because most people were using TPVs because of it.

Cortland Swindlehurst wrote: " spam is not about the receipt of "unwanted" advertising, as you put it. It's about the receipt of "unsolicited" advertising, such as emails, phone calls, letter box junk, notecards, IMs and LMs." First, you can't assume everyone knows what "spam" means -- SL is quite international now. The rules should be specific, Linden should clarify, there are differences of opinion in this thread. (unless spelled out then it's subjective, my personal view of spam is copypasta type text and someone keeps pasting it over in local or ims it over and over to same person -- and this is just what the TOS mentions, that key word "repeated," it's repetition that makes the Spam) It's true that different people have different ideas about what spam is, and there is no absolute meaning, other than it's a brand of luncheon meat Nevertheless, I think there is a general global opinion as to more-or-less what it is. "Spam" really isn't a word to use in the ToS or in the legal system. As you said, specifics are needed for those. "Repeated" is repeating the act, and not repeating the recipient. Handing the same ad to 7 different people is repetition, but not necessarily spam. Handing it to those 7 different people without ascertaining whether or not they want it, and without even having any contact with them at all in advance, is repetitive spam. Secondly, the word "unwanted" is what appears in the AR drop-down box. It says "unwanted," not "unsolicitied." Language matters here they mean different things -- for a thing to be "unwanted" that requires you tell the person you don't want it. So somebody keeps imming you, you ask them to stop, and if they keep doing it then at that point it is unwanted. Even here you should block and not do AR, my opinion, save Linden some labor for serious AR's. The thing about "unwanted" is that you had no idea whether or not any of those 7 actually wanted the ad, and it would be safe to say that some of them, perhaps all of them, didn't want it. If I'd been one of them, for instance, I wouldn't have wanted it. It's unrealistic to assume that everyone that an ad is passed to, unsolicited, actually wants it. That is, unless they are in the same field. E.g. a new company starts to make pens and sends an ad to pen sellers, but who didn't know the new company existed. Handing out ads to anyone in sight is globally considered to be spam. There's no real difference between that and sending it to a list of random names, such as spam email shots. Only the quantity is different. But you must inform the person it's "unwanted" or there's no way for them to know -- they can't read your mind. You don't have to read anyone's mind. You have to assume that it's unwanted unless they tell you differently. Assuming that a random stranger actually wants your ad is wrong, because many or most of them won't want it, so you have to ask first. If that's too much trouble, and if you don't want to spam people, you have to find a different way of promoting the place. If we ban "unsolicited" IM's then that means people can't IM any strangers if it connects to any kind of promoting -- which includes every interesting sim on the whole grid, except infohubs and Governor Linden's mansion and that cool beanstalk. But you can IM strangers if you want to promote something to them. IMing isn't spamming. Sending advertising IMs out of the blue is spamming. Earlier in the thread I gave an example of a stranger IMing me out of the blue just yesterday (or was it the day before). Her IM asked if she could ask me a short question and I said "yes". Then she sent a pre-prepared ad IM that concluded by asking if I was interested. She did it without spamming me. I don't know what your LM is for but suppose it's a new club. You could IM strangers, simply asking something like, "We've just opened a new club. May I send you an LM for it in case you ever want to visit?" That way, people can do the same as they can do with leaflets in the RL street - accept it, say "no thank you", or just ignore it.

Cortland Swindlehurst wrote: Lastly.. despite liking access to the Blake Sea.. I need to move back to a private estate. I actually had a friend warn me aobut Mainland, he said "Mainland????? what are you thinking...." Now I see why. There are people sitting around filing AR's. I've never had anything but mainland, and I've never had any problems with it. There are pros and cons with both mainland and private estate land, but ARing isn't one of the cons.

Peggy Paperdoll wrote: What you did is considered impolite and/or rude. But as far as a violation of anything of importance it's nothing (and I still don't think it's a ToS violation until it's repeatedly sent... Leaving the OP out of it, but keeping the fact that an unsolicited LM was given to 7 different people... How do you define "repeatedly"? What you've written suggests that it's ok to send an LM to every single user but not to send it to any user more than once. If that's what you're saying, I disagree. For me, "repeatedly" means the act, and not the recipient. For me, 7 different people, who neither asked for it nor agreed to receive it (unsolicited) is "repeatedly". For instance, suppose I wrote a bot that TPed around the grid 24 hours a day, giving an advert to every avatar it came across, but not giving more than one to any avatar. It would hand the ad out to many thousands of avatars, and I'm sure that most people wouild consider it as repetition. Or suppose it wasn't a bot but it was a person/avatar spending hours every day doing the same thing, or sending the ad to avatar names on a list. It would be repetedly spamming in many or most people's eyes - imo.

Cortland Swindlehurst wrote: "and he seems like quite a piece of cake so weigh that when you decide if he actually went to the trouble (AR'ing is not hard but it must be complete which takes a few minutes and some thought)." Thank you, if people can just say "ya he sounds like a jerk" then I'll shut up in this thread. People did say words to that effect early in the thread A comment about something you said in your previous post:- It's we people who use the word "spam" to describe the receipt of unsolicited things. The ToS doesn't need to use that word. Also, spam is not about the receipt of "unwanted" advertising, as you put it. It's about the receipt of "unsolicited" advertising, such as emails, phone calls, letter box junk, notecards, IMs and LMs. LMs may not advertise in words, but they do mean "come to this place", so they are effectively advertising.