[Linden Lab why are you charging VAT to one customer while waving this tax for other customers?]

That poor horse...

[Elon Musk buys Twitter to bring back Free Speech]

19 minutes ago, Blaise Glendevon said:

I wouldn't admit to agreeing with Steven Crowder on the color of the sky. Maybe you should reevaluate your beliefs.

Maybe you should practice what you preach and be more tolerant of other people's beliefs.

[What do you want to look like, males?]

I don't want to look like a bodybuilder.  I want to look like Mike Ness of Social Distortion circa the early 90s or Dean Winchester from Supernatural.  Ruggedly handsome but not a model.  I'm just getting into mesh bodies after fighting it all these years and finding a face I like is a nightmare.  I had a system body and punk style I was happy with and trying to replicate that in mesh has been nothing but sheer aggravation.

[US Residents.. will the new SL sales tax effect your Premium Purchases?]

Quite frankly I'd be willing to deal with the sales tax had they not already increased the annual premium sub from $75 to $99 but they did and this is only adding insult to injury.  I'll be cashing out and going basic when my sub comes up for renewal in a few months.

[Preferred methods of communication in Second Life?]

31 minutes ago, Ren Toxx said:

Strangers insisting on talking privately for the sake of it, it’s already a red flag and therefore counterproductive, as far as I’m concerned—they might not go there, at least not at first, but they’ll find me all firewalls up precisely because they set the tone by insisting in privacy where it wasn’t in theory needed.

Alternatively, perhaps they're IMing you because they find trying to have an actual conversation in local, amidst all the other chatter going on, frustrating AF and it's easier to focus on talking to one person in IM.  Or maybe that's just me.

[Preferred methods of communication in Second Life?]

I prefer IM in general.  Local in a group environment.  I despise voice and have it disabled.  The few times I've enabled it have indicated that I have zero interest in listening to the people that love to use it.

[Music Club Peeve & A Bit of Overdue Ranting]

2 hours ago, Chris Nova said:

You don't have to be professional to take others opinions and ideas into consideration to create a better club environment. The OP gave some great pointers. My biggest gripe is all the super annoying gestures hosts do. Do you want people at your clubs to listen to that crap or the music? Because when I walk into a club and its nothing but gestures over the music, I leave. Instantly. 

Do you want people to listen to music or a talkshow? Thats another gripe I have is when the DJ consistently talks about whatever over the music. I am pretty sure no one is there to listen to a podcast, Jay.

There has to be rules. Rules for hosts and rules for DJs. These rules create a better environment for your patrons. No club has such rules which is why we all just pretty much...deal with it. As someone else mentioned, its been the same way since before 2010. I wonder why that is. So don't get aggressive when people come to the forums to complain.

I get tired of some in this forum not taking others gripes seriously and just blow them off as "attacks" and "trashing". Its why nothing has changed since before 2010. Club owners and their management are 100% the problem.

One more thing, saying "Those are my friends" is highly biased. You're part of the problem, Jay.

The problem is a lot of you seem to think the DJs working these clubs have any say in any of that nonsense.  Next time you're in a club with these issues look for the DJ application and read it.  You'll be surprised at how many rules and requirements they have for staff they're not even paying.

[Coders don't understand what builders want.]

I'm pretty sure the coders aren't the problem here.

[Secondlife declining player base]

1 hour ago, Sam1 Bellisserian said:

I don't think that LL uses the auto lock on threads otherwise people wouldn't have to berate others for resurrecting threads when they probably don't know any better.  I mean is it really doing any harm?

It's taking up valuable server space that's desperately needed for yet more political threads.

[The Women Are Marching Today!]

Interesting, it seems someone is doing a bit of purging in this thread.  Posts I wrote earlier are nowhere to be found but responses to them were left behind. I wasn't warned or given any notice that I have violated any rules so I must presume that someone is playing favorites behind the scenes.

[The Women Are Marching Today!]

20 minutes ago, Blaise Glendevon said:

This the dictionary example of a false equivalence. Abortion is the removal of tissue. Just like having a cyst or a fibroid removed. It is a safe outpatient procedure.

Women are merely "people with uteruses" and now fetuses are merely tissue to be excised without a second thought like a cyst.  This is why I laugh at you, your increasingly dehumanizing rhetoric is so abhorrent that it's either laugh or cry in despair at the worldview you espouse.

[listening without tipping: yea or nay?]

[How to DJ Legally in SL]

Yet again I'm amazed at the lengths some people are willing to go to in order to placate their corporate overlords.  Geoblocking is a thing, VPNs to bypass it are also a thing.  The internet was designed to survive a nuclear war, it's also designed to route around censorship no matter how valid one may consider it to be.  I personally consider that a feature, not a bug.

[How to DJ Legally in SL]

10 minutes ago, GoSpeed Racer said:

Wow, the amount of ignorance and ideological posturing on this simple question is mind boggling. Only a couple of responders had answers anywhere close to the desired response.

Since 2007 I have managed an oline radio station that has been legally licensed over the years via Loudcity, StreamLicensing, Sonixcast, and Torontocast. After the rates skyrocketed in 2016 I jumped from an American company to a Canadian one. My rates went from $30 to $75 a month! I found  a Canadian entity where the annual cost was about $100. I now pay $8 a month for licensing, an auto-dj with 20gig storage, 500 slots, and 3 mount points. A nice bargain indeed!

Working with a Canadian company means my stream is one channel on a larger station (Torontocast). My website is hosted on their server and any external webplayer is too. As far as streaming into SL is concerned the viewer is not considered a music app (Like Tune-in, Deezer, or Nobex). It's mre akin to VLC Foobar, or iTunes. You can plug in a URL and that is not "illegal". SL parcels are not websites either nor are they public.

Generally speaking you can do whatever you want in SL streaming wise, but the moment you have a noticeable web presence, you can be targeted.

If the OP would like to know more, they can PM me here or inworld.

I hope all your listeners are in Canada or else you're also violating music industry "laws."

 

From their website

All TorontoCast streams are Licensed by SOCAN under tarring code 22f and are under the ownership of TorontoCast. The SOCAN license covers Canadian listeners. Additionally, there could be licensing obligations in other territories potentially according to those territories licensing laws.

[How to DJ Legally in SL]

5 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

My car can drive 140+ kmh as max speed.
My countries laws say that max speed limit is 100 kmh on the motorways.
So can I justify to drive 140 kmh because I think 100 kmh is incredibly slow?

You know I'm getting real tired of you conflating actual laws with whatever bull****** propaganda the music industry uses to scare people into submission.  You're not going to goto jail for not paying their "licensing" fees.  They may sue you but that's a civil, not criminal case.  As for what you can do, you can do anything you want as long as you're willing to accept the consequences.  Some of us are clearly less worried about them than others here.

[How to DJ Legally in SL]

10 minutes ago, Finite said:

The reason those places can file a copyright claim is because musicians sold their music to them to distribute and to protect their works from the type of piracy you seem to support to promote your own brand of distribution. It's really not much of a high horse to be on to be honest. And I've literally spent the past week listening to great DJ's nearly every day. I'm not seeing any dying scene. In fact it's better than I can recall. Some are even implementing visual effects into their shows. Which for me is awesome.

"Every time I try to get out they pull me back in..."

I'm not supporting piracy, refusing to pay outrageous royalties intended for ad supported internet radio stations isn't piracy.  I used to the term "pirate" stream earlier as a comparison to pirate radio which also isn't piracy, it's illegal because they lack a broadcasting license which is a different matter altogether.  And I'm glad you've spent so much time with great DJs, now go ask them if they're paying royalties and to who.  As for dying scenes, I don't know what scenes you're in but the ones I'm in have been dying for years.

[How to DJ Legally in SL]

43 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

My 0.02 L$ on this:

Here in the NL the music industry is even after barber shops and dentist waiting rooms where they play music to entertain/relax waiting customers. That counts as public performance even if you have just a radio station on.
When you buy music it is for private use.  Public space and streaming is always public performance, even if it is for less than 25 people.

The main reason I don't DJ in SL.
I loved doing it in RL when I was a teen and a young adult. I never had to bother about royalties. That was covered by the venues.
But in SL the DJ is the one that is streaming, so responsible for that stream and I guess in the end responsible for the royalties.

I'm going to make this my last post on the topic.  I had hoped other DJs would chime in here but as usual whenever this subject comes up the majority of SL DJs would rather stay in the shadows than argue over this bullsh*t.  Yes, the DJ is responsible for the royalties in SL because God knows the venues certainly aren't paying them.  They're not even paying the DJs, we're lucky if they pony up for a club stream for everyone to use rather than expecting every single DJ to run their own stream on their own dime. 

So basically it comes down to this, most SL DJs are running private "pirate" streams because they're not paying royalties to an industry that would drive every single one of them offline if they could. We know the risks and we still do it.  Why?  Certainly not for the money, that's for damn sure.  We do it because we love the music and want to share it with others who are as passionate about it as we are.  For this we are branded pirates and compared to copybotters.  It's no damn wonder the music scene in SL has been dying over the past 6 years given these conditions.  Sure there are a few popular clubs left, the ones that somehow survive on advertising or are running as a labour of love by the owners.  The rest are either dead or dying and it's a damn shame because we've lost a lot of good DJs and the music they spun along the way.

[How to DJ Legally in SL]

20 minutes ago, Chassie Rowley said:

Buying CD's is still the same. You own a physical COPY and not the actual contents of the compact disk. I know people who would buy a vinyl album and transfer it to cassette for playing in the house or car while keeping the vinyl as pristine as possible. You are doing nothing different except for formats. That's acceptable.

Finite is correct "It's not attitude though. It's a fact. Read the fine print when you buy a CD. By broadcasting the music you are redistributing it.".

The ***** of the bunch is always the small print.

I'm sorry I didn't really clarify what I meant by my earlier statement by my distain for the "you'll own nothing and like it" future.  I know I don't own the music either way.  I was thinking more about how media is moving away from physical to digital distribution and how in the process it's entirely possible for customers to buy a "license" to digital media only to have access to it stripped away with absolutely no recourse because they only had a "license" which could be terminated at any time by the media conglomerate that sold "it" to them.  That's why I buy physical media.  I'm not playing their game.

[How to DJ Legally in SL]

1 minute ago, Finite said:

It's not attitude though. It's a fact. Read the fine print when you buy a CD. By broadcasting the music you are redistributing it.

I swear to God it's corporate overreach like this that will slowly push me into becoming a communist.  My playing music over a stream to a few people is no different than playing the CD to a group of friends in my house.  Granted, I know the music industry would love to charge us for that as well but until then they can go f**k off and fight it in court if they wish to waste the time and money for the 1000L in tips I might make on a good night in SL.

[How to DJ Legally in SL]

5 minutes ago, Chassie Rowley said:

You did not buy the music. You purchased a license to listen to it. The publishers still own it.

Not to attack you personally but this attitude is just one of the reasons I have and will continue to tell RIAA to go f**k itself.  It's also the reason I buy CDs and rip my own MP3s instead of buying digitally.  I'm not buying into their "you'll own nothing and like it" future.

[How to DJ Legally in SL]

5 minutes ago, Finite said:

Idk of any but this is right from their own website.

"

In the United States, most Internet only radio station’s (webcasters) pay royalties for sound recordings copyrights through what’s known as a “statutory License”. It covers public performance rights and allows the radio station to play any type of music in the United States.

Webcasters are defined as “non-interactive”, meaning they fall under the statutory license which covers pre-programmed shows that listeners cannot skip or select their own music. To obtain a statutory licence in the United States, you will need to contact SoundExchange:"

I would argue there's a distinction to be made between a SL DJ and a "webcaster" as they define it.  We're interactive, not pre-programmed and we can skip or select our own music at will.

[How to DJ Legally in SL]

1 minute ago, Alwin Alcott said:

It's using other's work without paying = copy and stealing
You did purchase the music for OWN use in a private setting at home.

The amount of listeners is irrelevant, because a stream is publicly accesabe on the internet and "could" have millons of connections. Yes its absolutely small in SL, but with the thousends of "DJ's"... its less innocent for the music industry.
Again, copybot as example : a individual copybotter isn't a huge problem, but 40k online at at time would be a very serious issue for a virtual world/community

Dont get me wrong, i did it too, but like speeding tickets... everybody does it, doesn't make it right.
 

The amount of listeners is entirely relevant.  The server supports 25 listeners total so there's no possible way it could have a 26th connection much less "millions."  As for thousands of DJs, I think you're vastly overestimating the number of active DJs in SL.  Is the music industry losing money due to "unlicensed" DJs?  Maybe.  Are the artists?  Nope.  They see so little of the money from license fees it may as well not exist for them.  Again, go ask them who the real thieves are in the business.  It's not the DJs.

[How to DJ Legally in SL]

2 minutes ago, Finite said:

I hear your point but people actually get paid to sweep for these types of things and there's software that does it as well. I had a video demonetized on Youtube because there was a stream playing music in the background lol. I'm not a youtuber or anything and just posted the video to share with friends and other people in SL. I have 1 follower and the video I have with the most views has 78 views. You likely wouldn't get sued or anything. They would have to prove damages which would be pretty hard, but they can certainly have your stream shut down and I am sure whoever you're streaming with has a policy where you wouldn't get a refund if that happened.

Youtube is different, they have algorithms in place to scan uploaded video for copyrighted material and take action.  (Sometime this action is completely at odds with reality but that's another story.)  Unlike Youtube there are so many different Shoutcast providers, spread across so many countries that I'd actually like to hear of a single case of one being taken down for playing "unlicensed" music.

[How to DJ Legally in SL]

11 minutes ago, Alwin Alcott said:

not attacking, but isn't this the same as being OK with 40 k of people logged in at any time on SL with a copybot viewer?

No?  Who's copying anything here?  I bought the music, I stream the music to less than 25 people on a server.  Where's the crime?  The music industry would love for you to think it's a crime but ask the actual musicians who the real thieves are in this situation and it won't be the DJs.

[How to DJ Legally in SL]

Given the small size of the typical SL crowd I can't imagine paying royalties to anyone or anyone caring either way.  We're not running advertising supported radio streams here and the tips we make are miniscule in comparison to what RIAA and ASCAP would demand of us.  If you're worried about being sued, don't do it.  The rest of us will carry on and RIAA can go f**k itself.