I sat down this morning at work, the first day back after the easter holiday, switched on my PC, sipped my coffee and then in a scene reminiscent of the closing stages of The Usual Suspects the scenery around me told its own story.
There in front of me were logos for AMD, Microsoft, Nvidia, it all suddenly made sense. The evil empire wasn’t on the march to silence the minions, we weren’t all being told to be silent at the back, we were being asked to treat the Linden Lab brand as, well a brand.
Indeed, just like Microsoft insist on people who sell services on the back of their name require people to correctly use logos and refer to their products.
Stunned I reached for the batphone to apologise to Catherine Linden for getting the wrong end of the stick. Alas the batphone didn’t know the number and it was 1.15 am in California anyway.
So I will apologise here to Catherine and Robin, not that Robin was directly involved here but I’ll owe her an apology sooner or later so I see this as a buy two get one free kind of offer. I completely misread the aims of this branding issue.
Then when I sit down and think about it more, I realise how very wrong I’ve got it. Inworld if you’re affiliated with someone, such as -UK-Couture, Sensual Designs, Vindi Vindloo, Wrong, Reaction, Ravenwear, Ava Choo or Strokerz Toyz to name a few, you have to abide by guidelines, you have to display logos, you have to word any advertising in such a manner to make it clear that you are not actually representing those inworld business concerns directly. This is all Linden Lab are doing with this branding center.
Linden Lab are saying you can use certain logos to show that you sell products or services within their world, but you are not to represent yourself as being an employee or direct representative. This is pretty standard practice when you think about it.
The confusion I believe stems from the wording of guidelines, where they start talking about how to refer to their products in text. People were concerned that this meant we could never say certain things, but common sense needs to prevail here (which I was lacking last night). When you see articles and stories in the press about companies, do you also see trademark symbols all the time? Even Information Week don’t abide by those rules and they aren’t being threatened with legal action every week.
Linden Lab are trying to avoid misrepresentation, they aren’t trying to silence anyone, they are highly unlikely to send in the lawyers if someone says “second Life sucks, Linden labs are rubbish”. They just want business to work with them in a fashion that is pretty standard for business partnerships all over the globe.