OpenSim – Page 6 – Ciaran Laval

July 21, 2014

Authors In Second Life And Beyond Are Forming Good Virtual Communities

Book Island isn’t new to Second Life, it has been around since 2007 and claims to be the oldest dedicated literary sim in Second Life. They’ve recently welcomed back a renter by the name of V.L. Dreyer who is the author of The Survivors series of books.

The sim exemplifies what virtual worlds do well, community, it’s clear that there’s community work here with events advertised for a 500 word writing challenge, Open Mic where you or one of the regulars can read in voice, live literature where one of Second Life’s regular live performers reads.

Then there are events aimed at writers, such as an Improv writers challenge and writers chat. There’s also something called Promptly Erotic, which you will have to ask Freda Frostbite about!

I’ve seen communities such as this inside and outside of Second Life. Earlier in the year I took a trip to Opensim to look at the Hypergrid Stories Project. Indeed this community were so nice that even though Second Life isn’t part of the Hypergrid, it was included in the Hypergrid stories project!

One of the reasons for that is of course related to Second Life having an audience that it worth engaging with. This point arose recently in my blog post about Seanchai’s discussion of Second Life and Kitely. The discussion in the comments is quite interesting as we see that authors in particular are not happy with Linden Lab’s TOS but they still want to engage with Second Life.

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July 10, 2014

The Problem Of Governance In A Virtual World When There’s Only One Governor

On another question, its also unfortunate that in some countries in the EU that gambling is allowed, but because our servers are all in the US these residents cannot gamble. This is something we can fix and we’re working on it. In the meantime, unfortunately no gambling. – Zee Linden 1st August 2008.

The above quote from the then CFO of Linden Lab, Zee Linden (AKA John Zdanowski) was actually in relation to a discussion about Linden Lab annoying the life out of us Europeans by introducing VAT to our bills. Eventually a lot of us realised Linden Lab were the wrong target and I still find the law silly as it applies to Second Life. There are good reasons for collecting VAT for electronic services, but Second Life isn’t a good example. The problem is that the EU regulation simply isn’t flexible enough. However I’m not here to talk about VAT today, I’m here to talk about governance and in particular governance in a virtual world.

The VAT discussion was an example of laws applying to one set of Second Life users based on where they live. However this was only an issue for European residents, it didn’t apply to Americans. The gambling ban on the other hand applied to all Second Life residents, even those who lived in countries where online gambling wasn’t illegal. I should point out here that even in those countries, gambling in Second Life would have been questionable as it was unregulated. However even a licensed gambling outlet would not have been allowed in Second Life because Linden Lab are based in San Francisco.

Now if we go back a bit further in time to the Second Life Community Convention of August 2007 we can find an old Reuters interview with Philip Rosedale. This interview is interesting because it gives an insight into where Second Life was back then and what they were hoping for. However the section I want to highlight is this exchange :

Reuters: Is there a problem where German laws are more restrictive than American laws on ageplay? And likewise, American laws may be more restrictive than European laws on gambling. Are we moving to the lowest common denominator?

Philip Rosedale: No.

The lowest common denominator is just not what you want to do. It’s not going to happen on the Internet, and it’s not going to happen here. We’re doing what we can as a platform to try to make that the case.

If you want to apply a local jurisdictional law to people, we’re going to make it so you apply that to people who are individual avatars trying to go to one place. That’s what we’re doing with age verification. We’re making that a feature that’s tied to land and people, not a feature that’s tied to the whole system. When we’re confronted with a legal or regulatory matter where we need for legal reasons to enable a certain type of restriction on behavior, we do that as locally as possible and not have a lowest common denominator.

Reuters: So there may be code in the future where your avatar is tied to your real-life nationality and then based on that nationality certain restrictions may or may not come into play?

Philip Rosedale: Right.

If the local restrictions that countries for example are making on avatars, if those restrictions are well-published and transparent and in the public light, I think we’re going to get to a good overall set of choices. Countries will make the right choices about how they want to restrict people’s use in Second Life if they can see what other countries are doing rather than us being the sole decider of what’s right locally.

So we can see here that Linden Lab wanted to be able to restrict behaviour locally. However this is very challenging when Linden Lab are the only governor, more on that later but what fascinates me about this is that the new skill gaming policy is actually going to try and enforce this notion of restricting people’s access to areas and activities based on their local jurisdiction. This has been quite a long time coming.

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July 1, 2014

Licences, EULAs and Scares, Oh My!

Back in the summer of 2009 a new menace appeared to be on the horizon in the shape and form of BuilderBot. The tool itself in some ways had noble aims, it was designed to assist a sim owner in making the move from Second Life to the Opensim world. Rezzable were the team wanting to make the move from Second Life to their own virtual world, they had owned some very popular sims such as Greenies and Black Swan. The problem was that initial reports suggested BuilderBot would also take with it content not owned by the sim owner. This was explained in a now archived blog post by the Rezzable team :

Our intention is to make tools for serious builders. So now someone can more easily take a copy of their build off SL and archive, keep it safe. Taking stuff linkset by linkset is really slow and painful. BuilderBot allows for a significantly better way to handle content. You can then save versions of builds to make a sorta library and then use these versions to make new iterations. It is your stuff, so now you can take care of it. The risk is that rippers can also use the tool to take unauthorized copies.

Rippers don’t seem to care much about DRM and already they can use copybot to take (and sell usually) illegal copies of content. In fact there is really no way to stop this technically. It is more about not giving content thieves safe haven to sell and benefit from their theft. I don’t think this is any different that issues with music being copied or dvd films. It is just a reality of creating digital content and virtual content creators need a better way to address rather than just filing DMCA protests.

BuilderBot will grab a copy of everything on sim–so you need to be careful on what is rezzed. You can of course delete stuff that you do not have rights to. But it is possible to grab stuff that you were not intending to have in your OAR file–and accidents do happen.

Unsurprisingly Second Life content creators were not impressed. Rezzable changed their mind and decided not to release the product as originally intended. Shopping Cart Disco reported on the issue, as did New World Notes. In the Second Life forums concerned residents were trying to get the then Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon to intervene. Eventually matters settled down, but this did open a wider discussion about virtual worlds other than Second Life and the rights people have to content. Some Second Life content creators started to stipulate their content could not be used outside of Second Life, others were happy for their content to go to other grids. This was unchartered territory because prior to this it really hadn’t been much of a concern.

Opensim worlds have grasped this nettle to a degree. Kitely’s market for example has permissions for export, which means someone can export the content outside of Kitely. Second Life is not part of the Hypergrid and so has not had a need to set such permissions. However there still seems to be some confusion as to what rights people have to their content.

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June 24, 2014

Second Life Can Still Thrive With The Birth Of Linden Lab’s New World

Back in March 2009 Tateru Nino wrote an article for Massively : Give Us More Worlds Linden Lab. The general point of the article was that Second Life should not be the only virtual world Linden Lab managed. Tateru’s idea was that there could be multiple grids running on Second Life technology and that each world could have different characteristics. However Tateru also wrote :

One-size-fits-all doesn’t just doesn’t work in the mass-market. Otherwise there’d only be one kind of iPod. What the Lab really needs is a number of differentiated ‘world’-products, each offering something a little different.

In October 2011, I wrote a blog on a very similar theme : Multiple Linden Lab Grids For More Virtual Worlds. I also talked of Second Life technology being used for multiple use cases and that Second Life did not need to be the only club in town :

This isn’t to say I feel the main grid should close, the main grid is where it’s currently all at and Linden Lab should nurture and cherish what they have, develop it and make that product an appealing product to current and new users who want that level of freedom and creativity, it remains a wonderful idea. However in terms of wider appeal and getting others interested in their own controlled spaces, Linden Lab could well consider making Second Life the technology the option for those who seek it, rather than Second Life being the only product in town on their servers.

Now Tateru and myself were largely talking about multiple grids using Second Life technology, rather than virtual worlds running on completely unrelated technology. However with news of Linden Lab’s new virtual world plans making the news, I really don’t see why Second Life and the new world can’t exist at the same time. They will simply offer different options and appeal to different people. Obviously both worlds will also appeal to people who want to engage with both worlds but this is no different to how things are now with people who engage with one or more of Second Life, Kitely, Inworldz and Opensim. People are also keeping an eye on High Fidelity.

I’m a bit bemused at the reaction in some quarters to Linden Lab’s announcement on the new virtual world. People are talking of how problematic it will be to migrate. They are talking of how they should be compensated for their Second Life land. They are talking of how higher sales tax fees and lower land tax fees will hinder rather than help content creators. The reason I’m bemused about this is because Linden Lab have not announced that Second Life is closing and that people will have to move to their new world, indeed, as Inara Pey reported, they’ve said :

Does this mean we’re giving up on Second Life? Absolutely not. It is thanks to the Second Life community that our virtual world today is without question the best there is, and after 11 years we certainly have no intention of abandoning our users nor the virtual world they continually fill with their astounding creativity. Second Life has many years ahead of it, and in addition to improvements and new developments specifically for Second Life, we think that much of the work we do for the next generation project will also be beneficial for Second Life.

Now I can understand people being cautious about the future of Second Life, especially those who own a lot of land, but I can’t understand some of the outrage at this point in time. I would have a different point of view if Linden Lab were telling people they must migrate, but that is not the case.

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June 12, 2014

Share Your Favourite Virtual Cities With The Guardian

The Guardian is so famous for it’s typos that it has a nickname of The Grauniad, so much so that http://www.grauniad.co.uk redirects to The Guardian website. However, despite their support for The Liberal Democrats it remains a decent newspaper, more so probably for the left leaning types, but it’s a decent newspaper.

They have also long had an interest in technology and that has included Second Life. Back in 2006 Suart Jefferies and Victor Keegan were talking about their Second Life experiences. Victor Keegan’s experience would later turn a little sour as he got involved in a trademark case regarding use of “SLART” over Second Life art galleries.

However The Guardian has boldly continued to cover all sorts of virtual world issues and has now issued the following call :

we want to hear your favourite virtual places – from a beautiful view in GTA to that 20-million-strong SimCity megalopolis you’ve been building (or possibly destroying). What are the best game cities to live in? The worst? Perhaps you’ve designed one you think would be better than your own city?

Second Life users were quickly on the case using Guardian witness, which revolves around user generated content. 1920’s Berlin, New Babbage and Philomenaville have all made an appearance as favourite virtual cities.

Linden Lab have been tipped off about this by 1920’s Berlin owner Jo Yardley. Linden Lab have blogged about The Guardian call and in doing so, exemplified a degree of spotting a good marketing opportunity when they see one :

This is a great chance to share some amazing Second Life locations with The Guardian’s readers. Whether it’s a place you created personally, discovered (maybe through the Destination Guide?) and love, or just a spot you always find yourself returning to, the Second Life locations that ‘wow’ you are great ones to share to help show off Second Life to the uninitiated.

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