Ciaran Laval

March 26, 2019March 26, 2019

Unicorn Technologies

The European parliament today voted to approve new copyright rules for the internet, the headline points are :

Internet platforms are liable for content that users upload
Some uploaded material, such as memes or GIFs, now specifically excluded from directive
Hyperlinks to news articles, accompanied by “individual words or very short extracts”, can be shared freely
Journalists must get a share of any copyright-related revenue obtained by their news publisher
Start-up platforms subject to lighter obligations

The headline points don’t sound too bad on the surface but the reality is that the technology to ensure compliance with this directive simply doesn’t exist. Technology isn’t going to be able to differentiate between parody and copyright, this is Unicorn technology territory and it’s extremely disappointing that so many MEPs have completely ignored this.

March 5, 2019March 5, 2019

Fantasy Faire 2019 Store Registrations Open

On March 1st Sonya Marmurek announced that registrations for Fantasy Faire 2019 are now open. There is no deadline for registration but the sooner you get your application in, the better.

Fantasy Faire 2019 in Second Life runs from April 18th – May 5th and the setup for creators begins on April 15th, so you will want to have your applications in well before then. Three of the regions are already sold out.

The Fantasy Faire Store Registration 2019 page provides you with all the fine details on costs and requirements.

March 5, 2019March 5, 2019

It’s Time To Hit Pause On The EU Copyright Directive

The European Union is currently in a bit of a crisis, it’s not just Brexit, which is a whole steaming mess for those of us in the UK to endure, there’s a lot more cause for concern, as exemplified by French President Emmanuel Macron’s address to the citizens of the EU via a number of newspapers.

Liberal leader Guy Verhofstadt has warned of a nationalist nightmare, so there’s plenty to be concerned with, but this is not a political blog so I’m not going to explore those avenues here other than pointing out that all doesn’t seem well.

One thing politicians pretty much worldwide get accused of is not listening to people and we are seeing a glaring example of that when it comes to articles 11 and 13 of the EU copyright directive.

Mona Eberhardt and Odysseus Giacosa have jointly posted The EU Copyright Directive: the answer to many SL users’ prayers, but also a mortal risk for Second Life itself. I don’t agree with everything they say but they highlight some of the key concerns relating to articles 11 and 13 of the directive.

February 22, 2019February 22, 2019

Fantasy Faire 2019 – The Press Release

Fantasy Faire 2018 raised L$12,500,000 (US$50,000) for the American Cancer Society as part of the Relay For Life fundraising efforts in Second Life.

Fantasy Faire 2019 is just 55 days away, scheduled to run from April 18th until May 5th the event will be a magical extravaganza of all things fantasy in Second Life.

Details of the exact activities, locations and applications will appear over the next few weeks, you can keep your eyes on the Fantasy Faire 2019 website for the latest details.

Below the cut I will post a copy of the official press release related to this year’s event.

November 5, 2018

Flickr Flounders

Flickr recently announced some changes to their free account offering, in a blog post Why we’re changing Flickr free accounts Flickr announced “Beginning January 8, 2019, Free accounts will be limited to 1,000 photos and videos. If you need unlimited storage, you’ll need to upgrade to Flickr Pro.”

If you have a free account on Flickr and have more than 1,000 images, Flickr will start deleting them for you in February until you are down to the new limit.

The Flickr blog post also states something that is a tad misleading “It’s also more closely aligned to Flickr’s past (before 2013, Free members were limited to 200 photos), and we liked the idea of returning to our roots but with free space for five times as many photos as before”.

This isn’t strictly accurate, whereas only 200 images would appear in your photostream, you were not restricted to 200 images, the images were not deleted, they could stlll exist in groups or remain embedded on blogs and forums and if you upgraded to pro you would be able to freely access them again. This actually acted as an incentive to go pro, the curtain would be withdrawn from your Flickr photos and everything would be there.

An unfortunate set of circumstances have led to this situation, the main one being Yahoo’s ridiculous 1TB of free storage offer back in 2013. That really devalued Flickr pro, but it also encouraged people to freely upload.

Continue reading “Flickr Flounders”