Toysoldier Thor

RiftRaven wrote: My Second life TOS search just caught this. It's having a hard time loading. Sometimes it loads, most of the time it dosen't. Renderosity Products NOT Allowed in Second Life www.renderosity.com/news.php?viewStory=16783 Thanks Rift for finding this updated news... as the fallout from LL's draconian TOS change continues to grow. I wonder how long LL Corp can sit quietly by and pretend that their ill-thought out TOS change was just a mis-understanding by all their User base and the related online community where the SL grid oftent gets sources of their own content. To add to LL Corp's naivity and stupidity in not admitting they made a bonehead move and they need to back out this TOS change, as many of these external sources of content continue to add BAN RULES against any use in SECONDLIFE, when they finally do smarten up and back out this bonehead TOS change, very few of these sources like CG Textures and new Renderosity will back out their ban. My prediction is that they will keep their ban on SecondLife permanent. So, the damage the LL is allowing their TOS Change to do to content sources into the grid will likely be permanent. Once again I have shake my head at the senior management at LL.... they are like a kid that puts their hand on the hot element... and not only do they remove their hand and re-touch it... they put their hand on the element and let it burn until they simply cannot take it any longer..... by that time, the damage they have done to their hand has become serious. this is the LL we all know and love.

Tamara Artis wrote: I am aware of it and following blogs and threads here and on SLU forum. Can't say that photos I make would be valuable for anyone else besides people who ordered it and until I actually see LL selling more items besides their old premium members gifts I will continue to do my work. It is good you are aware of it and have made your own personal assessment / actions based on your awareness. This warning goes out simply to make sure all SL Content Creators are now aware of LL's changed TOS that gives them full unrestricted rights to their content (i.e. the change from previous TOS wordings is that before the TOS explained clearly for what purposed LL would exersize their rights to your IP ... now they have removed any intent / purpose for their new found unrestricted rights). This new TOS might not impact you based on the value you have personally assessed of your IP and/or our believed risk this new TOS has on your IP and if you feel there is no risk then that is good. The only point I will mention is that you stated you will continue to upload your content into SL "UNTIL" you see that LL is abusing your IP rights. Unfortunately, if/when this happens, it will likely be too late for you since you have pretty much willingly agreed to the terms since you were aware of the TOS and you continued to upload content being fully aware of the risk. The reason many content creators / artists are protesting and fighting hard to force LL to revert / correct their TOS now is to ensure that in a year or two later, this TOS is not an option / risk for them to leverage. In situations like this, its best to be proactive and defend / protect your rights now while there is no risk then to try to fight LL when you will have little to stand on in the future. So, if you are willing to risk your IP or not, it would be prudent to help send a message to LL Corp by opening a support ticket, or blogging, or emailing LL staff, etc. that this latest TOS is unacceptable and must be backed out or better clarified as to LL's intent to use these rights. There are artists in SL that have been uploading images of their RL artworks which they make a RL living on these copyrighted works... and they are doing this with an understanding of the TOS that was in place. This warning goes out to these Artists that highly value their uploaded art and feel there is a need to protect it.

I am not sure if my fellow Artists & Photographers within SecondLife are aware of the serious issue / concernt that has recently been caused by Linden Lab with the recent change of their TOS (Terms of Service) on August 16 which I would assume most of you were forced to agree to in order to log into the SL grid. Often most of us do not read all the changes that LL makes in these occassional updates to their SL TOS and forces you to accept unless you do not ever want to log into SL again. Often the LL TOS changes are not anything serious to you as a customer / user / creator / artisan in SL. BUT... you need to know this the Aug 16th TOS has a very serious and downright boneheaded change that directly impacts any Artist or Photographer with a presence in SL and uploads their Copyright content into the SL grid. This issue has created a ton of serious concerns by all the SL Content Creators / Merchants as well as external sources of content (like textures) who have even begun executing counter-measures to LL's recent TOS change in order to protect their content from LL's new TOS. Basically, effective August 16th or when you accepted the recent LL TOS, you have given LL's full complete unrestricted equal rights to ALL your content that you upload into SL. This means that any of your RL art or photography that you uploaded into SL after Aug 16th is now fully available to LL to do what ever they want to do with it. This is what has been changed in SECTION 2.3 of the LL TOS... "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." You read this yourself and decide for yourself if you are now comfortable bringing in any more of your art into SL. I can tell you that many SL Creators have already decided that this change of TOS is far to dangerous for them to upload any more content (textures, mesh, sculpties, etc.). This topic has had very large growing concerns and discussions in the Merchant Forum of SL Forums. I would strongly suggest all Artists and Photographers educate themselves on this serious issue by reading up on this forum: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Merchants/Updated-LL-TOS-Claims-FULL-RIGHTS-to-ALL-CONTENT/td-p/2201477 Also there is an excellent discussion about this topic at: https://plus.google.com/101371184407256956306/posts/iGGJ3gnAhhc Personally, as an Artist within SL, I will no longer be uploading new artworks or mesh sculptures into SL until LL backs away from this draconian move. I have also joined many of my fellow content creators to get the word out about LL's content hi-jacking move in hopes that LL will bow to pressure and undo this stupid move. What are the thoughts of my fellow Artists and Photographers?

I am not sure if my fellow Artists & Photographers within SecondLife are aware of the serious issue / concernt that has recently been caused by Linden Lab with the recent change of their TOS (Terms of Service) on August 16 which I would assume most of you were forced to agree to in order to log into the SL grid. Often most of us do not read all the changes that LL makes in these occassional updates to their SL TOS and forces you to accept unless you do not ever want to log into SL again. Often the LL TOS changes are not anything serious to you as a customer / user / creator / artisan in SL. BUT... you need to know this the Aug 16th TOS has a very serious and downright boneheaded change that directly impacts any Artist or Photographer with a presence in SL and uploads their Copyright content into the SL grid. This issue has created a ton of serious concerns by all the SL Content Creators / Merchants as well as external sources of content (like textures) who have even begun executing counter-measures to LL's recent TOS change in order to protect their content from LL's new TOS. Basically, effective August 16th or when you accepted the recent LL TOS, you have given LL's full complete unrestricted equal rights to ALL your content that you upload into SL. This means that any of your RL art or photography that you uploaded into SL after Aug 16th is now fully available to LL to do what ever they want to do with it. This is what has been changed in SECTION 2.3 of the LL TOS... "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." You read this yourself and decide for yourself if you are now comfortable bringing in any more of your art into SL. I can tell you that many SL Creators have already decided that this change of TOS is far to dangerous for them to upload any more content (textures, mesh, sculpties, etc.). This topic has had very large growing concerns and discussions in the Merchant Forum of SL Forums. I would strongly suggest all Artists and Photographers educate themselves on this serious issue by reading up on this forum: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Merchants/Updated-LL-TOS-Claims-FULL-RIGHTS-to-ALL-CONTENT/td-p/2201477 Also there is an excellent discussion about this topic at: https://plus.google.com/101371184407256956306/posts/iGGJ3gnAhhc Personally, as an Artist within SL, I will no longer be uploading new artworks or mesh sculptures into SL until LL backs away from this draconian move. I have also joined many of my fellow content creators to get the word out about LL's content hi-jacking move in hopes that LL will bow to pressure and undo this stupid move. What are the thoughts of my fellow Artists and Photographers?

As likely most of my fellow SecondLife Creators, Artists, Merchants are as well, I am a SecondLife resident on Facebook. I have just under 500 SL friends. I have already made two large postings to my sphere of SL friend to inform them of this serious LL TOS Content Hi-Jacking issue, pointed them to this thread as well as the Google posted thread, and I have asked all my friends that care about the protection of their own content and the growth of new created content to share my posting. If you have a SL identity on FB, then do the same thing to make all your SL friends aware of LL's hi-jacking of resident content.

Luna Bliss wrote: LL really needs to clarify this. If they don't I think we can only assume the worst. Two clients of mine already decided to purchase sims elsewhere for their projects due the new TOS, though one really wants/needs the advantange of the large populus here. After contacting their attorney one said he's convinced the TOS means what it says - that LL owns all the content in SL now and can do what they please with it - and he's not willing to spend the time/money to develop sims here when the content won't belong to him. Thanks Luna for those further examples of the impacts that LL's recent content hi-jacking TOS is having to LL's SL service. It was also further validation coming from a legal source that this recent TOS wording means exactly as LL has expressed it. As I am sure many of you have already read on at least two of the large SL / Virtual World Blogging sites, LL Corporate has decided to make their "Official" response and explanation of this recent TOS change to these blog owners. After reading their official wording on the subject, I am sure many of you have the same frustrated and disrespectful opinions of LL's recent actions on this bonehead move they made. If LL Corp was communicating an official response to the community's anger toward their recent TOS wording, WHY WOULD THEY POST IT THROUGH EXTERNAL 3RD PARTY BLOGGERS?? This move alone screams typical LL Corporate incompetance. So as a corporation that has just ticked off a huge critical portion of their userbase as well as other critical sources where your service's content comes from. It stems from what they believe is simply a mis-understanding and mi-interpretation of their wording. So to ease fears and show a serious message to your userbase that they are all wrong.... the Corporation posts "comforting" "Take a Pill" official communications on 3rd Party blogger sites? They dont even post this reassurance on their own official BLOG / FORUMS community sites? If the "comforting" reassurance statement already held ZERO legal weight because it was not stated in the TOS, LL further reduces its value by only posting their response informally on some 3rd party blogger site? Yeah.... that move by LL presents a lot of confidence that they stand behind what they posted. When you read their response, it screams as a back-handed condescending apology to all those that have misunderstood, mis-interpreted, confused, and jumped to conclusions on the wording of their latest TOS. Basically LL Corp's response to this fiasco is that YOU ALL ARE DUMMIES AND CANT UNDERSTAND WHAT WAS WRITTEN AND SHAME ON YOU FOR ASSUMING WE WOULD EVER TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ANY ADDITIONAL POWER THAT THE WORDING OF THE TOS PROVIDES US. No where in their unoffical "carries no weight" responses to the public did they admit that they screwed up in how they worded this TOS by wording it in a way that clearly does not convey their true spirit and intention of the TOS. Their response is basically, we worded the TOS to take full shared legal control of all content for internal coprorate efficiency reasons and take a pill and trust that even though it appears we can now do what we want, you all should be ashamed by not trusting us to not abuse our new founded powers. Finally, their unofficial statements through 3rd Part bloggers carries ZERO LEGAL WEIGHT because LL Corp does not want to make these same re-assuring statements and clarifications in the TOS. So, LL's latest responses to the community not only changes NOTHING but it was a further insult and slap in the face to all this users by calling us stupid and blaming us for not trusting them.

Chic Aeon wrote: A must read for anyone who has been following this thread: https://plus.google.com/101371184407256956306/posts/iGGJ3gnAhhc That was a good read and provided some good assessments of LL's Bonehead Hi-Jacking of our content rights. I still think that with LL forcing a TOS agreement change upon content creators that few creators would accept if LL were to have handed them this TOS on Day 1 but now that LL's SL service holds our content hostage - they say... effective immediately, we have full rights to your content and if you don't agree to the TOS then you cant come into SL ever again. To me.. that is clear case of "Agreement Under Duress" and a form of blackmail. And if they are no longer announcing TOS changes to their customers (users... us) then that is yet another potential violate of law. Not to mention LL stating they now can arbitrarily take full co-ownership of all content that enters the system... like either legally awarded copyright license to an SL user of lets say the Nike logo or co-ownership rights to all the illegally ingested content in SL that LL takes little effort to remove from SL. I do think our best weapon against this draconian move by LL is to do exactly what we are all doing.... make them feel the pain for their decision and embarrass them into correcting their wrongs. We need to keep spreading the news on about LL's hi-jacking of our content rights so the userbase as well as the larger industry / online community are aware of this move by LL. This is a dangerous move by LL - they didn't do this for no reason. They are up to something and this TOS change is prepping them for this future action. This does not bode well for us.

I do agree that unless LL either retreats its TOS change on hijacking our content or places another statement that makes it clear what its only intent is for all these massive full unrestricted rights... more and more content creators will let their pre-TOS-Dated content sit in SL to rot as it makes what ever money it can... and focus their NEW content creation to other more IP friendly environments where our rights are respected. I create mesh and 2D art that I have enjoyed creating raw in SL (inworld photography) and bringing this virtual world photography back into SL processed to hang in my art gallery to be enjoyed and sold. I also create 3D mesh art sculptures. Although I can thank SL for kick starting my life as an Artist back in 2010, now that my art has moved out to RL where I am even doing my own RL art exhibits from this art, I cant take the chance of having LL hijacking my art because of this new TOS change. So until they change the TOS rules, I wont be bringing anymore art into the grid. Its harder to make that stand with my 3D mesh sculptures as they do make a lot of my recent revenue... so I haven't decided if I will bring my mesh art sculptures into SL. I can make amazing 2D wall art from my 3D sculptures while the models are in Zbrush. I just hope Rodvik comes to his senses and realizes that this recent TOS change is causing more harm than any intended good. It has created a ton of new negative press about SecondLife far past the immediate SL community. An, it will continue to spread as creators spread the news of LL's content hijacking and texture / content libraries place more bans on their IP's use on the SL grid. But sadly we know LL is not one that really cares about doing the right thing and rarely retracts a horrible idea unless things get so publically ugly that they really don't have a choice. So the best weapon we Creators have is to keep spreading the news of this latest LL Bonehead decision to others and help in making this bad decision viral in the community and industry. LL has a history of bowing to overwhelming negative press if it doesn't seem to be settling down. They hope we will all just shut up about it soon. We really cant let it get quiet.

Darrius Gothly wrote: This may be somewhat off-topic, but it is an interesting coincidence ... if you believe that coincidences actually exist. As many of you know, I sell a service that is utilized by Land Owners as part of their rental operations. One of the statistics that I can derive from the database backing up the service is the "Occupancy Rate" of all rental properties covered by the service. Since this new change to the ToS, the Occupancy Rate has dropped to the lowest levels I've ever seen in SL ... EVER! Good to see you back Darrius. I thought you mentioned a few weeks ago you were closing up shop at SL. Hope this means you you are not! I don't think the stats correlate but can you clarify... you are are saying that your Occupancy Rate is in the BEST state it has been in ever? As far as I understand the term "Occupancy Rate", it is the percent of rentals available for rent. So an occupancy rate of 3% means that only 3% of all rentals are open and available to be rented. This is not good for those renting but it is good for Renters as it means they are near capacity. Low occupancy rate can be of because a very good / healthy quickly growing economy (clearly SecondLife does not fall in this category) or the economy is so bad that Renter are shutting down and reducing the total capacity which forces renters into less available spots. So please confirm your definition meets mine.

Another thing about this LL High-Jacking of our IP Content TOS change.... I have to ask..... WHY NOW? The rules in the SecondLife TOS pertaining to the level of access and usage rights LL has to our IP have been in place and stable for a very long time. It was well understood and accepted and all was good. So what triggered LL Legal to decide now... after all these years... that they need a TOS agreement that would increase LL's legal rights of use of our IP beyond what it has been all these years? This is more so what scares me about this TOS change. Its the timing of this change that LL Legal all of a sudden needs to have more access to our IP content. To me, unless LL Legal was bored and needed to "keep us looking busy to justify our salaries at LL", I fear that there is an up-coming need for LL to access our content beyond what they have needed in the past. Since LL is known to be bringing out new products, games, services.... it would be a valid assumption to think LL has something coming out outside of the SecondLife grid whereby the SL content is compatible to this new product/service. As such, they needed to set the stage and ensure they have the agreement from the SL content creators (even though in my opinion the agreement is under duress) to allow them to populate / use our content freely for this new product / service. There had to be a reason for this change in TOS.... to me, this would be the only reason LL Legal would be wanting to create such a storm / anger with its SL customer base and the industry. I guess they feel this new product / service getting fast and large ingestion of amazing content is worth the risks of the TOS policy on the SL grid.

I would agree that this latest LL TOS change whereby LL Legal has decided its in the best interest of the company to force all SL customers/creators give full non-exclusive rights to LL for any current/future purpose is getting a lot of negative press out to the industry that is often the sources for SL's content. And by LL biting the hand that feeds SL's lifeblood, they are just putting another nail in the SL coffin. Unless LL Corp. wakes up and quickly rescinds this bonehead legal move upon its sources of content, it will become established legal / TOS practice at these sources to add a clause saying "NO CONTENT FROM THIS SOURCE CAN EVER BE BROUGHT INTO THE VIRTUAL WORLD OF SECONDLIFE FOR ANY PURPOSES". This is very similar to how because of the USA Homelands Act, many corporations in Canada have common established rules that many American online business whereby a company's corporate or client information would be store is not allowed as a service due to violation of client confidential / privacy concerns. Its just now established common practice. The same will start entrenching for LL's SecondLife and any content that in the past was allowed to enter SL for its own benefit. ANOTHER THOUGHT... Regarding the topic of how all us Content Creators of SecondLife were basically forced with little feasible option but to accept LL's new TOS changes... I would think it could be easily argued in courts that our agreement to LL"s TOS changes would be akin to "Agreement Under Duress" to LL's new Content Rights grab of our IP. Many of us Merchants have invested countless hours/months/years into creating and uploading content into the SL grid and spent a lot of money to create this content - often for the sole purpose of uploading it into SL. We did this under the long standing TOS understanding that LL's only access rights to our content was purely for the ability to operate the SL Grid. This has been a long strong established understanding. Now LL makes a draconian change to the TOS rules whereby they DICTATE that "YOU WILL AGREE THAT WE HAVE FULL RIGHT TO USE YOUR CONTENT FOR WHAT EVER PURPOSES WE NOW AND IN THE FUTURE WISH TO USE IT FOR". If you do not agree to this new TOS - which LL forces you to agree to prior to the next time you log into the SecondLife grid, you are no longer allowed to gain access to all your investment, and content that is in the grid or on the SL Marketplace. So its basically, agree to us having full access to your content or you will never have access to it ever again. Are you OK with these new TOS changes Mr. Ms. SecondLife Content creator? Basically, I can't see how this latest TOS change can hold any form of legitimacy in any court. As far as I see it, this was an agreement to LL's service agreement that we were forced to agree under duress. As such, in my opinion, the entire TOS is pretty much invalided and LL would likely face an onslaught of this form of challenge the first time LL ever tried to use our content for ANY purpose other than what they use it for now. Thoughts?

So let me ask a couple technical question regarding this bonehead move by LL Legal.... Question #1 Lets say a creator decides his content is too valuable to him (or her) that they cannot toerate the risk that this new LL TOS applies to his content, or that this TOS change now makes his license agreements he has made with external IP owners invalid / revoked for use in SecondLife. As a protective response, he decides that he need to remove his IP / licensed IP content off the SL grid. How would he request for LL to remove ALL instances of his IP that is distributed on the grid? Would LL even honor a request by the IP owner to remove all content? Remember that since LL's new TOS says they have full shared rights of all content on the grid, the IP owner would have to request that even content he has sold to others on the grid would be removed. Would a DMCA against LL even make sense? Question #2 Is LL now Co-Liable to all IP content that is brought into the SL grid illegally? i.e. if a resident brings in a disney mesh model, texture, etc. and Disney comes on to sue.... is LL also liable now or do they just get to enjoy the full benefits of the ill gotten content with no legal liability?

It has been proven many times that within LL, several department can and do make criticial customer impacting and corporate impacting decisions that were poorly thoughtout and myopic. The LL Legal team is one of those departments that has ZERO understand of nor concern of LL's reputation, business health, and certainly LL's customers. They stick their heads in the sand and blissfully perform the purist corporate legal things they know. But what is so amazing is that that these myopic departments appear to be able to execute such draconian bonehead move without any internal review and approvals by the other departments in SL who's job it is to protect the reputation of the company, maintain and attract new customers, grow the corp products / service. It has been proven once again that a department like Legal can autonomously make such wide ranging and seriously impacting decisions. Clearly it seems like Rodvik had no voice in this becaue you would think he would have had enough common sense to say "What are you Lawyers smoking down there when you thought this up?". So now, since LL internal had not notice or voice in the legal team's decision, they learn of all the impacts to the Legal team's bonehead move. They realize how ticked off LL's content creators are of the change. They realize that their TOS change is causing retaliatory IP protecting actions against this draconian TOS change. They are already being forced to explain and promise to their customer that we all misinterpreted the change and we should not fear these TOS changes. And I suspect in the coming weeks, LL will be forced once again to clean up and back track on the stupid decision they initially made when they realize that this issue is not calming down and it continues to make LL and SL look bad. But as is also commonly known about LL's management, instead of realizing quickly have bonehead a decision they publicly made and reversing their decision, they wait and wait and wait in hopes that it will just go away and things will calm down. During this waiting period, they tick off their customers and partners and others in the industry that further hurts their product. This LL will never change.

There are other discussions about it, in teh SLF and other forums. On Hamlet Au's blog today, as well as on Inara's, there is a statement from LL saying, no, they do not intend to steal our content. Yeah but as has been said all over... LL's non-TOS promises and assurances have ZERO WEIGHT. If they truly mean what they have posted informally... then why dont they put this in the one document that overrides all other official communications from LL... the TOS This is becoming LL's BONEHEAD MOVE OF 2013.

If any of you creators of SL content have not heard of LL's hijacking unrestricted rights to your content in the TOS you agreed to in August, there are a lot of good discussions and blogs of it. But I would suggest you read a blog posting from Nalates where she does an excellent full talk about how serious this is, what the possible impacts this will have on both the creators and the future of the SL grid, what you could do as options to protect or not protect your controlling IP rights to your content in SL, and options to make Rodvik and LL possible reconsider there draconian move. http://blog.nalates.net/2013/09/12/second-life-tos-change/ There are other excellent posts to help you understand what LL has done to claim unrestricted full rights to your content like the blog from Inara Pey http://modemworld.wordpress.com/2013/09/11/tos-change-and-content-rights-lab-provides-statement/ You all would be wise to know what LL has potentially taken from you in the future... so at least you wont be surprised if LL business conditions change and they decide to fully leverage their full rights to your content.

I recently been made aware of the draconian arbitrary new full rights claims that LL Legal has taken on all content that comes into SecondLife. Basically the new clauses in LL's TOS states with zero confusion that LL has claim their full non-exclusive rights in any way you can dream up to the content that any creator of SL has brought into the SL grid or content that someone has brought in from from other external sources under their licensed terms with these external sources. And since LL's TOS also states it is the document / agreement that is the final say between LL and its customers / users / residents, nothing any LL staffer tells you, or forum/blog posting LL makes, or written statement of interpretation made by LL to promise us that they would never use their powers for evil hold any weight since LL has not made these comforting statements of clarification in the TOS. This new utterly disrespectful draconian arrogant and even legally questionable new TOS claim by LL of our IP content as well as the IP content of other external IP owners is quite obviously stirring up a quickly growing hornets nest among content creators as well as even external content sources. I understand there has already been an external texture library source that has responded by banning any users from bringing its content into the SecondLife grid. What really shocks me is that in this Merchant Forum where the vast majority of participants in this forum are CONTENT CREATING MERCHANTS.... that there is no discussion or expressed concerns that LL has just claimed equal full rights to your content if you have brought it into SL. Did I miss something here in this forum?

I recently been made aware of the draconian arbitrary new full rights claims that LL Legal has taken on all content that comes into SecondLife. Basically the new clauses in LL's TOS states with zero confusion that LL has claim their full non-exclusive rights in any way you can dream up to the content that any creator of SL has brought into the SL grid or content that someone has brought in from from other external sources under their licensed terms with these external sources. And since LL's TOS also states it is the document / agreement that is the final say between LL and its customers / users / residents, nothing any LL staffer tells you, or forum/blog posting LL makes, or written statement of interpretation made by LL to promise us that they would never use their powers for evil hold any weight since LL has not made these comforting statements of clarification in the TOS. This new utterly disrespectful draconian arrogant and even legally questionable new TOS claim by LL of our IP content as well as the IP content of other external IP owners is quite obviously stirring up a quickly growing hornets nest among content creators as well as even external content sources. I understand there has already been an external texture library source that has responded by banning any users from bringing its content into the SecondLife grid. What really shocks me is that in this Merchant Forum where the vast majority of participants in this forum are CONTENT CREATING MERCHANTS.... that there is no discussion or expressed concerns that LL has just claimed equal full rights to your content if you have brought it into SL. Did I miss something here in this forum?

Not sure why I am not getting thread notices anymore but... I do see that the fix for $0L TXs on July 29th seems to be working as I do now see them in my main SL TX log.

CommerceTeam Linden wrote: Thanks for the feedback on the L$0 transactions not appearing in the transaction history. You are correct; these are not appearing. We will address this issue as quickly as we can. Thank you!! That is what we wanted to hear Please inform us when this change has been put in so we can confirm.

Couldbe Yue wrote: I'm genuinely at a loss here to understand why it's so important. The transaction history is useless for marketplace transactions anyway since it doesn't tell you what has been sold, so you still need to go into the SLM transaction history. we'd all like them to do stuff properly but really we're usually happy with them doing least amount of harm as possible, which is what they have managed to do now they've fixed the payments. It's like the way they "fixed" the image problem.. at least that's fixed for most people now.. except for people like me (and Czari iirc) who still have a rogue picture. LL have never given any evidence they take pride in their work, certainly they've shown a healthy interest in making sure nothing ever gets finished (mesh, windlight, and a myriad of other things anyone?) so why beat them up over something that doesn't really give any kind of real improvement to our experience? There's a long line of other things I'd rather they *ahem* "fixed" before that.. Well based on that thought process, why don't we tell CTL to stop posting ANY transactions executed in MP to the main SL TX log? As you said, the main SL TX log does not provide any important details on the MP Sale TX anyway that can't already be found on the ever trusted MP system and its logs. So why should LL CTL make things overly complex and post some TXs to the main log and not others. This only makes the main SL TX Log inconsistent since it reports EVERY SINGLE TYPE OF LL / SL ACTIVITY THAT HAS OCCURED BY AN SL ACCOUNT .... EXCEPT $0L MP TXs. IF Posting MP TX's in the main SL TX Log is useless according to you, then LL should not post ANY MP TXs to the main TX Log. Of course I do not agree with your position on this since there is value in having every single SL Account activity logged by the central TX Log. First of all, if we don't get CTL to fix this bug now - we all know that CTL will never ever ever go back and fix this bug later. As mentioned, until June there has been one thing that has been 100% consistent about the SL Main TX Log... that is that every single activity executed by an Avatar - even activities as basic as recording a transfer of a free prim inworld to another (that gets recorded as a GIFT of $0L) is posted in this TX Log. The one thing you could count on in SL (which is not much that you can count on with LL) is that the main SL TX Log will capture a record of all activities - even if its summarized. This bug now breaks this 100% consistency. The Main SL TX Log has often been used as a valueable auditing tool in the past - to validate that the LL CTL team has once again screwed something up. Why? Because we could compare the MP TX log with the SP Main Log. Now with this BROKEN system, we are starting to lose an invaluable transaction validation troubleshooting tool. The next thing will be that CTL will decide..... hmmm the Merchants had no problem with us dropping $0L TXs... now lets just drop all forwarding of MP TX records to the main SL TX log. We all know how the CTL thinks.... so dont be naive in assuming that this will not be their next step. Its just POOR PRACTICE ! They need to fix this BUG .

Darrius Gothly wrote: CommerceTeam Linden wrote: For those concerned about L$0 transactions not showing in the Second Life transaction history: these transactions have not been removed, and you will continue to see L$0 transactions in your history. Due to the nature of the payout issues we have been working to correct, there are some missing L$0 transactions from the history from June 25, 2012 through July 15, 2013. These transactions will not be recoverable in terms of your Second Life transaction history. You should see all L$0 transactions after July 15, 2013, 11 am PT. If you do not see L$0 transactions that should be logged in your Second Life transaction history after July 15, 2013, 11 am PT, please make sure you have checked the box “Include L$0 transactions?” If your L$0 transactions are still not showing up, please file a JIRA. We continue to work on paying out the remaining missed payments, but the majority of orders have been paid out at this point. Yes, they have been removed. Not a SINGLE ONE has appeared in my Main SL Transaction History since you released the latest "Fix" for the payment sources. That's a 100% failure rate ... guaranteed and verifiable. Yes, I know about the "Include L$0 transactions?" checkbox and it is ALWAYS checked. In the JIRA that I originally filed, I showed a screencap of that page pointing out (both in the description of the problem and the screencap) that the option was checked ON. When people "Buy" Freebies from my in-world store .. those are showing up just fine. But none of the Freebies purchased through the Marketplace are showing up. I think that pretty much indicates that I have the various options set properly. So go back and tell your programmer to double-check his/her work because the story they're telling you .. it ain't true. (And it might help if you check for yourself too .. since I'm getting the feeling that they're quite adept at pulling the wool over your eyes. Every time you come in here and make a statement like the above that is so obviously false, it just makes you look stupid .. and that's really NOT a good thing for a Department Manager to be doing.) Oh .. yeah ... and I won't be filing another JIRA. I've filed enough of them over this issue. Just go back and reopen one of the ones already filed and closed by you (or someone on your team) and work from that one. EXACTLY WHAT DARRIUS POSTED. We are not stupid.... we are complaining about this because its clear that the LL Programmers have developed code that was NOT DESIGNED TO TRANSFER $0L MP SALE TX's TO THE MAIN SL TX HISTORY FILE. So whoever you are that posted this CTL message to us Merchants in this thread - why don't you first check your facts before posting facts that are simply not true. CTL HAS NOT FIXED THIS PROBLEM. So either you are trying to send all us Merchants on a problem deflecting / deferring goose-chase to buy you some time, or worse yet you have ZERO clue what is going on by your Programmers that are outright lying to you. The only $0L Sale transactions I get are from those sold INWORLD. I have had several MP $0L TXs in the past few days and none of them show up on the main SL TX log. So..... stop it with the "PLEASE FILE A JIRA" its a waste of everyone's time. We have all learned that the JIRA system is all but useless now. FIX THE PROBLEM.

Totally agree with you Darrius.... It just keeps making everyone that follow's LL's CTL actions shake their heads. This has been the attitude of LL's Sr. management regarding the Merchant community and the hugely critical e-commerce activity that... "We all should be lucky that there is revenue to be made out of this gaming environment called SecondLife - so don't think we are going to treat it with the level of respect that the rest of the world treat e-commerce. We will operate the handling of e-commerce transactions which ever way is convenient for us - even if our solutions do not conform with common well-accepted best practices of payment / sale transaction handling or e-commerce services." Therefore, in this latest incompentent decision of simply throwing away the $0L MP Sale Transaction records from the main SL transaction history file, it fits perfectly with this attitude from CTL. They likely knew full well that their new payment processing system couldn't handle the $0L transactions and instead of making it a priority to ensure they were address properly... they simply said "mehhh - its not big deal - who needs to know this anyway. DUMP THEM." Shakes Head

Amethyst Jetaime wrote: You get capped at 25 items. That includes IM's sent to email, notecards, inventory offers and group notices. So its possible you could be getting 25 IM's that go to email, then lose the other things. Luckily with groups you can look in the notice history and get what you missed, including any attachments. If however you haven't been sent 25 things it should be there for you when you log in. If its not, then you have a problem. I haven't noticed this myself so if it is a bug it may not be effecting everyone. SORTAAAA LUCKY... as it has now been over a year that the bug exists in the SL Grid where group notice attachments are broken many times - regardless i the notice is sent to you while you are online or after you log in and go to the Group's notice tab and try to open the attachment. It will just shade out and not offer you the attchment. This bug has been EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING and has even changed a lot of the dynamics of how many club, venue, store notice posters use group notices... i.e. if you are going to attach a LM... it would be very wise to also include the SLURL in the text of the notice since many of the receivers cannot open the LM attachment. This bug has been reported countless times and LL is fully aware of it... but it is just not a priority for them to fix.

Couldbe Yue wrote: Darrius Gothly wrote: [...] Furthermore the sale of Freebies is still not being recorded in the SL Transaction History. The fact that the former error still exists indicates that your code is unreliable and prone to causing massive follow-on errors at times of elevated load. The best recent example of this type of failure is the cross-linked listings issue that arose when you rolled out Direct Delivery. Take the time NOW to find and fix this error before it turns into another massive mess like cross-linked listings. The fact that Freebies are no longer recorded IS AN ERROR! It is not something that you can just slough off as "not essential". It is quite essential. Back when Marketplace was first released, I had a conversation with Brodesky regarding the recording of Freebie sales. At that time we discussed the pros and cons extensively ... and Brodesky convinced me that it was very important to have them included. Because they have existed all this time, many people have come to depend on their presence when building and maintaining their customer records. To eliminate them now would be a great disservice to your customers. I think you'll find it's not an error but a design decision. The transaction history has a unique set of properties (can't show anything more than the first 500 transactions, can only show the last 31 days, cant show the full order details from a marketplace sale so you have to go to the marketplace transaction history to see what it was etc etc) that leads me to think that removing the 0L transactions was a deliberate decision and not part of the change to payments. In the end, this little pseudo-fiasco was actually fixed in a timely manner. I can't even remember the last time that happened. It may be that declining usage of SL is finally focussing their minds on their customers but on past performance, I doubt it. Sadly, as stupid and inconsistent a decision as it appears to be, I am afraid our fine strategy planning folks at CTL have removed all $0L sale transactions from MP sales to the main SL Account Transaction History ON PURPOSE. If one would remove any strategic thinking, "good practice accounting" thinking, "best practice" thinking, and thinking that would service the best interests of a customer, making the deliberate decision to not include SOME of the MP sales transactions (those at $0L) into the customer account's master transaction log would be something you (and CTL) would do. It makes no sense but likely in some LL Junior Developer's brain they thought... "Hey, Why are we wasting our time reporting MP transactions into the master transaction history file? Who really cares about these kind of transactions anyway?? Lets spend more development time to come up with a way to stop these annoying transactions from filling up the master TX file. I am sure all the Merchants will thank us for this wise move.". Then, since the LL programmers and developers seem to make all the product functional decisions at LL, there was no one at a more strategic Sr. level to hear this latest "GREAT" idea and tell them... "That's a stupid idea because the Master TX file is already capturing ALL other inworld transactions - even those when one avatar transfers a cube prim to another. We do this for audit tracking and even troubleshooting purposes. So why the heck would we remove actual MP Sale $0L TXs from this master file??? As such, NO you will not remove $0L MP TXs." So as messed and limited as the Master TX file already is (ie. lacking details that are found in other TX files and a stupid 30 day history limit when other TX logs go back months), CTL has just further polluted and reduced the value of the Master TX file. As frustrating as this is to watch CTL decision making with no common sense, sadly I would have to agree that Couldbe is correct. What is really frustrating is that no one from the CTL who has been reading this thread and has heard these complaints about the $0L TXs missing has any guts to openly and clearly clarify with the Merchants that "THIS IS NOT AN ERROR - IT WAS DONE ON PURPOSE - AND HERE IS THE REASON WHY..." They have posted on this thread but purposely avoided any chance of explaining this error that all the merchants are asking CTL about. They would rather we all sit here and speculate and rant and complain how CTL's new payment system is broken (which to us merchants it truly is until the $0L TXs are restored). This is the CTL we all know and love. --||-

Commerce Team, FIRST of all considering the severity of this issue - i.e. your new payment system is not transferring payments entitlted to Merchants (not YOU ) at time of sale - your level of communications should be PROMPT & FREQUENT & TRANSPARENT to the Merchant community. I know history has shown without flaw that its one of the only departments in LL that hides in the bowels of LL and is scared of their customer base, but this is a serious issue and LL Commerce Management should treat this as serious. Merchants are not children and you are not paying them until "some unknown time in the future". Rodvik has all but destroyed any value of what was a powerful problem reporting, tracking, and communications system - the public JIRA system so all JIRA tickets go into a black void. LL is closing merchant tickets with no resolution or payment. And we hear from the Commerce team once every couple days. SECOND tell the community exactly what the bug is and what transactions are causing the problem. Why are some merchants experiencing it and others not? Why some transactions and not others? If Merchants knew then they could decide if they want to halt selling these items. Commerce Team... BE OPEN AND INFORMATIVE! THIRD I hope that as part of the "FIX" that Commerce Team is puting into their flawed payment system is to return ALL Marketplace Sales Transations into the reporting back to the main SecondLife Transaction History. THAT MEANS... PUT BACK THE $0L Freebie transaction. This is an important auditing feature to align MP Sales with an avatar's main transaction records. Why was this removed ???? Will it come back ????