User
19
Jun
Ich bin ein Second Life Aussiedler. Und bei dem, was ich bisher gehört und gesehen habe, sind die meisten Leute im OSGrid ehemalige Second Life User (ich habe im März 2007 angefangen) und hatten es wegen irgendeiner Regeländerung oder deren Ansicht zur Virtuellen Relität satt, sei es wegen der neulichen Änderungen, die im letzten Quartal 2009 durchgeführt wurden, den Preisänderungen zum Jahreswechsel 2008/2009, irgendeine andere Regel oder Nutzungsbedingung, oder einfach weil sie aus irgendeinem Grund von Second Life verbannt wurden. In meinem Fall war es eine Summe aus all diesen Elementen.
Die meisten Leute werden jetzt denken, dass OSGrid, oder jeder andere Open-Simulator-betriebene Grid einfach eine quelloffene und billigere Version von Second Life ist, und oberflächlich betrachtet ist es auch schwer, Unterschiede zwischen den beiden festzustellen. Die Welten sehen gleich aus, werden ähnlich gerendert, man (kann) die gleichen Viewer verwenden und den Avatar auf die gleiche Weise steuern, die gleichen Werkzeuge verwenden und viele andere Merkmale sind ebenfalls so, wie man sie von Second Life gewöhnt ist.
Darunter jedoch sind die beiden nur schwer vergleichbar. Ich rede hier nicht von dem Code – auch wenn es scheint, dass dieser ebenfalls komplett anders ist – sondern von einer komplett anderen Herangehensweise an Virtuelle Realität. Second Life und OpenSim haben beide ihre eigenen Vorteile, und Grenzen. Ein Vergleich, der mich überhaupt erst zum OSGrid gebracht hat, war Marcus Llewellyn’s Artikel ‘What is a Grid?‘. Grundsätzlich ermöglicht es Open Simulator jedem, den eigenen server (selbst wenn man hierzu nur den eigenen Heim-PC verwendet) mit einem bestehenden Grid zu verbinden, und somit kann jeder seine eigenen Regionen zu sehr geringen Kosten von zuhause aus betreiben, während in Second Life alles was man tut von Linden Labs gesteuert und festgehalten wird, und es fast keine (genehmigte) Möglichkeit gibt, die eigenen Werke zu speichern. (Das ist es, was überhaupt erst zu meinem Ban führte.)1
Es gibt also mehrere Dinge, die man im Hinterkopf behalten sollte, wenn ein Second Life Bewohner nach OSGrid, oder einem anderen OpenSim Grid wechselt.2 Viele davon wurden bereits von Zonja Capalini in ihrem Artikel “The Openspace fiasco: six months later” besprochen.
Zunächst: Ihr Inventar wird weg sein. Technisch ist es nicht möglich, Gegenstände von Ihrem Second Life Konto zu exportieren, außer den Dingen, die Sie selbst erstellt haben. Mehrere alternative Viewer bieten eine Exportfunktion für Werke, mit unterschiedlichen Graden dessen, was exportiert werden kann. Die meisten davon exportieren nur Gegenstände, deren einziger Schöpfer Sie selbst sind, und mehrere ‘copybot’ Viewer machen den Export von vielen anderen Dingen ebenfalls möglich. Diskussionen zur Legalität des Exports virtueller Güter sind häufig im OSGrid und ich habe darauf keine richtige Antwort. Persönlich habe ich für mich entschieden, dass es am sichersten ist, auf meine eigenen Kreationen zu vertrauen und ich versuche daher alles, was ich brauche, selbst herzustellen, was soweit ganz gut funktioniert.
Dies bringt uns zum nächsten Punkt: Sicherheit. Dinge im OSGrid (oder anderen Open Simulator Welten) zu erstellen ist nicht so ‘sicher’, was die Beschränkungen angeht, wie es in Second Life ist. Grundsätuzlich kann jeder, der eine OpenSim region betreibt, alle Beschränkungen jedes dort befindlichen Gegenstandes aufheben. Das ist jedoch einfach das gleiche Problem, welchem kreative Menschen auf dem ganzen Planeten gegenüberstehen, seit ihre Schöpfungen ‘digitalisiert’ werden können (und wenn diese Schöpfungen sowieso nur digital existieren, ist es ein Problem, dem man sich stellen muss); und ein restriktives System ist keine Lösung. Man muss wahrscheinlich eher die Tatsache akzeptieren, dass es unehrliche Leute gibt, die Ihre Werke kopieren werden, egal was ist. Und diese Leute sind keine Kunden, und werden auch nie welche werden. Sie werden Ihre Werke nicht monetär schätzen, aber eine Kopie ist noch immer das ehrlichste Kompliment.3 Und es gibt RL Gesetze um Urheberrechtsverletzungen zu begegnen. Es mag schwer verständlich sein, aber die “Sicherheit” in Second Life ist nicht einmal viel sicherer als gar keinen Kopierschutz zu haben. Man vertraut sein Inventar, sein Guthaben, seinen Serverplatz (Land) einem einzigen Unternehmen an, und dieses Unternehmen kann einen jederzeit verbannen, aus irgendeinem Grund, ohne eine Entschädigung.4
Schließlich ist die Community noch sehr klein im Vergleich zur großen Userbasis in Second Life, und die Software ist noch in Entwicklung und experimentell. Es liegt bei jedem selbst zu entscheiden, ob dies eine Herausforderung, oder ein Hindernis ist. Für mich ist es eine aufregenden Chance, die Grenzen der Virtuellen Welten zu erforschen und neue Wege zu schlagen.
- Ein Artikel auf rezzable vergleicht die Merkmale von OpenSim mit Second Life. [↩]
- Ich verwende OSGrid als Beispiel eines Open Simulator betriebenen Grids. Mir ist klar, dass er bei weitem nicht der einzige ist. Jedoch ist er der größte und ‘offenste’ (was Beschränkungen und Regeln angeht) den ich kenne. [↩]
- Um eine unbekannte asiatische Quelle zu zitieren. [↩]
- Es ist verführerisch zu glauben, dass jemand mit so viel Macht und Verantwortung vorsichtig damit umgeht, ich musste allerdings eine andere Erfahrung machen. [↩]
9
Jun
Recently, after a while of absence, I started playing with the OpenSim software again. I dropped it in the past after the refactoring of OSGrid, which wouldn’t let me connect my regions to it anymore, and my technical understanding didn’t reach far enough to modify it. However, I wanted to finally post my animations on this sweet site and thus needed a place to take snapshots of them, and uploading them all to SL just for that purpose just didn’t seem very appealing.
I’ve been renting a region on OSGrid for a while now, and while I’m very happy with the performance and service, I still miss the freedom and playfulness my own OpenSim installation provided. It is, for example, quite complicated to change the terrain, or backup / upload / restore OAR files, and thus play with different scenes. And, of course, it’s more expensive. So I looked at the latest version of OpenSim again, which wasn’t available for my system (Mac OSX), so one thing led to another and I ended up with the Diva distro.
There has been much debate lately about new grids, and new places to go, and a growing nervousness on Second Life, which got me to think – like I sometimes do – about the conceptual direction of the 3d web. And to say it right up front: I think the whole ‘grid’ concept is mislead, and misleading. With the Opensim technology around, there are many grids now, that just try on the Second Life business model by offering a ‘cheaper’ and more ‘friendly’ alternative. Others have already failed at that, and it’s easy to see why: More cheap and more friendly simply isn’t enough to gain a lot of attention when on the one hand you lack at many of the other things that Second Life has – creations, interesting places, large communities – and on the other hand make the same mistakes that Linden Lab makes, and that is – keeping your grid a walled garden.
The Diva distro came hypergrid enabled out of the box (along with preconfigured megaregions, which I spent the first 30 minutes trying to turn off) and thus gave me my first real insight into what the hypergrid architecture is, and can be like. I have hypergridded before, by stumbling on the portal on Samsara in OSGrid and just trying out how and if it works. Back then, it seemed to be a promising, but rather unstable technology to me. With my own standalone being hypergrid enabled, I took a deeper look, though, and the sheer possibilities just took my breath away.
I don’t want to be part of a grid anymore that keeps me locked in. The OpenSim project finally gave us control over our creations, control over our avatar, control over our assets. I will not check these at the door anymore when moving through the metaverse. My assets, my avatar, my inventory, my private regions, they are mine to control and shall not be subject to the laws of grid operators – along with the very real danger of losing it due to arbitrary bans, change of policies, or financial losses.
I hypergridded from my standalone to my OSGrid region Ever 01 first, transferring some of my inventory from there and trying out what did and did not work in hypergrid. Even though some things were limited, asset transfers worked; slowly, but they worked. That also meant that for the first time ever I got things made by someone else and was able to use them on my private OpenSim installation. I could hypergrid to other hypergrid enabled grids and buy things there and bring them ‘home’ with me. I never felt so free in the Metaverse.
Why do we need the grid approach still? Even now, today, it is possible to run your own installation of OpenSim on your machine, and hypergrid around, meet people all over, chat, explore, buy things, have fun, and bring them home with you. And it’s all free. I mean, really free. Not just free of charge, but you’re free to use the software, the assets, the creations, in any way you want. With a little technical understanding you can edit them directly in the database, changing their properties, their permissions, basically anything.
And this is, by no means, a drawback of OpenSim, but actually the biggest chance this technology does have. On the net, all data can, and will, be copied. You will never be able to protect and control the distribution of your creations. Permissions checks, and walled gardens, are an illusion. Does this mean there will never be traction, there will never be an economy, there will never be money to be made? Of course not. The fact that things can and will be copied has been a ‘problem’ for the software industry right from the start, just as it is for the music, film, and media industries, yet nobody would claim these industries do not make any money. And with OpenSim, we’re part of the software industry. We can’t just act as if we can make our own rules and implement ‘unbreakable’ drm barriers when all the rest of the internet is much more creative in that respect.
I’m not saying there is no use for grids. Actually, they are very neccessary for the 3d web, but not in the way their business model envisions it. Grids are communities. They’re places for people to meet, to chat, to roleplay, to dance, to play, to have common experiences. But they will not be the places people will ‘live’. They will not be the places people will keep their assets, or where they will stay in private. There is no need to keep your inventory, your purse, your home, your friends, and your playground all in one location – actually, it’s contrary to what we are usually doing.
So, for myself, I want to be part of the larger Metaverse, that is hypergrid enabled, against all odds and security concerns. I want to be a free citizen of this universe of grids and standalones, of small home regions and larger grid clusters. Join me, if you want. My OSGrid region Ever 01 is up and running at all times, and The Loom (my private standalone) is on occasionally. Click any of the links to hypergrid there (provided you’re on a hypergrid enabled place).
Emerald, Onyx and the Client Detection System
There has been a heated debate recently about the most popular of all Second Life Third Party Viewers, especially regarding the integrity of its development team. While it is quite hard to distinguish rumour from fact, what happened is, to my very own conviction, this:
Early this year, Gemini Cybernetics released their ‘Client Detection System‘ (CDS). The system detects the use of certain ‘blacklisted’ viewers with griefing and copybot abilities. Once detected, the person who used the viewer will be stored in an external database and users of the CDS can ban all those listed in said database from accessing their land. It is being sold mainly as a tool for shop owners to fight copybotting (the copying of inworld assets). Representative and main merchant of Gemini Cybernetics is Skills Hak, who is also a developer of the Emerald Viewer (Screenshot). While the Emerald team states no involvement with the developing of the CDS, it is featured on Arabella Steadham’s developer blog and recommended by LordGregGreg Back (link broken, no cache available), another Emerald developer.
On March 4th 2010, Fractured Crystal went public (cache: screenshot 1, screenshot 2) with Onyx (access currently password protected) (link broken, no cache available, screenshot here), a project several Emerald developers (among them Skills Hak, Fractured Crystal and Lonely Bluebird) are involved in, and which deals with identifying and testing the exploits of ‘blacklisted’ copybot / griefing viewers. 2 months later, on May 7th 2010, Fractured Crystal admitted the Onyx project made use of bots (cache: screenshot), that scanned avatars all throughout Second Life for ‘stolen attachments’ (i.e. attachments, whose specifications have been registered by the creator, but show a different creator name on the wearer).
Finally, on May 11th 2010, the Alphaville Herald reported that a ‘secret’ database had been leaked from Modular Systems (who is hosting the Emerald project, along with Onyx), and soon thereafter published the names of all avatars the database contained. According to Lonely Bluebird (a.k.a. Phox Modularsystems) and Fractured Crystal, the database was used for testing purposes in order to track down griefers that attacked their Second Life regions, and contained the names of avatars who registered through the API on modularsystems.sl or visited their regions. Both the CDS database, as well as the leaked database, link Second Life accounts to the according IP adress and possible geolocation data, and store this information. Also, in the comments of the Alphaville Herald article, the source code and revision notes of an ‘Onyx’ client have been leaked. Subsequently, Phox admitted the Onyx team had been working on vLife (a copybot / griefing viewer originally made by Fractured Crystal) (screenshot 1, screenshot 2, just in case) besides Emerald, which later became the Onyx viewer.
While it is true that almost everything someone visits on the internet will record and store the IP adress, these databases are linking IPs with other information they gathered, apparently in order do make single accounts traceable, and they are doing so without informing anyone about it, and thus especially without the consent of the person whose data is being stored. It is a safe bet to say this is a violation of data protection laws in many countries. In addition to that, the fact that a large number of Second Life residents is randomly being scanned without any provocation puts the whole population under a general suspicion of doing something wrong and needing to be watched. There is also a certain strange twist to the fact that people, who have been creating copybot viewers and thus enabled copybotting, are now working on systems, which, for a regular fee, are supposed to protect people from the very same viewers their protectors made. In addition to that, they are still working on a viewer with copybot abilities.
So far, no official statement from both Linden Labs, or Modular Systems, about the implications of these events, and the future of Emerald and Onyx has been made.
[EDIT 13th June 2010: Obviously at least Phox ModularSystems is involved with the Gemini CDS as well, as I witnessed him today having access to the CDS database.]
[EDIT 28th July 2010: ModularSystems changed their website a while ago, so most of the links in the above article aren't working. All the developer blogs are gone, as well as all the blogposts regarding these events. I found a few of them in google cache and provide them as screenshots here.]
4
May
As an update on my previous post about the new Second Life Terms Of Service, I had received a reply by Mr. Kapor where he stated that the issues raised are indeed complicated, and all he can do for me is to pass on my concerns to the management of LL. I thanked him, but declined the offer, since I have lost all faith in Linden Labs. However, today I wrote another email, directed at the EFF itself. Again, it’s quoted in its entirety below.
Dear EFF,
judging from the blogpost at http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/fair-use-gets-fair-shake-second-life on April 2nd 2010, I think you are aware of the changes Linden Labs did to their Terms Of Service. Therefor, I am surprised, that some >minor< changes get your praise, while major changes are left uncommented. Linden Labs now stated that it only grants ‘licenses’ to their services, despite having claimed in the past that the users would ‘own’ their content, and the virtual land they trade. Linden Labs also made severe changes to their third party viewer policy (http://secondlife.com/corporate/tpv.php) which had put an enormous amount of liability on third party developers, up to a point where several of these developers simply quit developing. Furthermore, it reserves the right (section 11.5) to cancel accounts and restrict access to Second Life ‘for any reason’ and without compensation for any losses. Finally, the digital rights management system of the Second Life service is, by design, much more restrictive than neccessary, allowing for no ‘fair use’ of content at all. Even contents that have been licensed by their creators under a creative commons license (such as the popular art exhibition ‘the far away’ by user A.M. Radio) can not, by design of the Second Life permission system, be used in the terms of the license.
As a sustaining member of the EFF and a strong believer in digital rights, I am worried at this single-sided report on Linden Labs behalf. I would like to hear your stance on the issues raised above and if, or if not, these will be discussed within the EFF or on the blog.
Thank you,
V
I do have higher hopes on this one, for at least getting some statement about why issues, that are relevant to the cause of the EFF get ignored while the small, but – admittably – sensible Machinima Policy gets praise. Stay tuned.
5
Apr
I’m unnerved. I can’t even explain why. All I know is that it’s related to the changes made to the Terms Of Service (and the third party policy along with it). However, it seems I am not the only one. As Tateru Nino wrote in yesterday’s Virtual Whirl: “… the new Second Life TOS has to be the single most demoralizing block of text that has crossed my desk in my life.” Even she is unable to articulate what exactly would be demoralizing about it. Same goes for Nicholaz Beresford, who was upset enough to leave SL altogether, even though he couldn’t point a finger at what exactly upset him.
All that got me thinking, even prior to reading Massively, Nicholaz’ post or Prok’s usual rant. I am living in a country that states in its own constitution that “ownership commits. Its use should at the same time serve the common good.”1 Also, our copyright law allows explicitly for copies of any work for private, non-commercial use. And I think what upset me is that all these rights are being counterfeited by ‘terms of service’ that got pressed upon the users without any prior communications or discussion.
Therefor, I had, somewhat in a haste and without taking time to voice my concerns properly, written an email to Mitch Kapor, both one of the presidents of Linden Labs and co-founder of the Electronics Frontier Foundation (whose member I am). The email is quoted here in its entirety.
Dear Mr. Kapor,
I write as a resident of Second Life, which I have been for more than 3 years now. During that time, and especially during the last few months I have witnessed several changes which have been conflicting with my beliefs in digital rights, and as I understand you’re both a director of Linden Labs, and a co-founder of the ECC, I’d like to hear your opinion on them, if possible.
From its onset, Second Life had several technical restrictions in place that made it difficult to share content in-world, and served as strong copyright tools for creators. Also, it lacked the ability to backup anything that was stored under each Second Life account. Now it is my personal impression, that this stance has become worse with time.
It seems to me that Linden Labs has been, and is increasingly catering to inworld businesses, whose interests are – just as any other person or organization profiting from selling copyrighted material – to restrict the use and distribution of that material as much as they can. For example, it is not possible to have several accounts in Second Life and share assets between them, as these are either non-transferable, or non-copyable. Or, it is not possible to make a backup or export of creations released under a Creative Commons license, such as the famous art exhibit ‘The Far Away’ by resident AM Radio.
While this issue has been around for long and was certainly discussed more thoroughly before, I am worried that with the recently updated Terms Of Service, things might go even further into the direction of a strictly copyright controlled environment. The way I understand the updated TOS, all we ‘own’ in Second Life are licenses. Either licenses granted to exchange services in return for others (like the inworld ‘currency’) or licenses to use certain content created by others, or even ourselves. We, the residents, no longer ‘own’ the world, and maybe we never did. But then, Linden Labs has been misleading us in the past by claiming that the world was not only created, but also ‘owned’ by us.
And while this direction does not only contradict Linden Labs original claims, it must certainly contradict what the EFF stands for. The way Second Life is managed now, it
1. only caters to the interests of copyright holders, not users
2. strips residents of any ownership rights, replacing them with ‘licenses’ which are revocable at any time
3. prohibits them from backing up any of the content they have acquired legally, or even made themselves.Dear Mr. Kapor, I highly respect your work and dedication to digital rights, and therefor would be most happy if you could give the matter some consideration and maybe tell me about your take on this situation.
With kind regards,
V
I believe this, most of all, sums my personal frustration with Linden Labs and the Second Life TOS up: They are way too restrictive in regards to a fair use of copyrighted material, and cater way too much to the constant demands of ‘creators’, especially those who thrive on in-world businesses. The technical restrictions of Second Life do never allow you to make legal copies of works for yourself, unless you are the creator of these works. This especially conflicts with works that the creators themselves have set free. Many of my own creations are published under Creative Commons, and I am not the only one; the popular exhibition ‘the far away’ by AM Radio, for example, is published under Creative Commons, too. Consequently, this means that the work itself, including all parts of it, may be copied by anyone and used, at least privately, for anything. I personally distribute a notecard along with my creations, stating the allowance of these uses explicitly. Still, the copying, and more importantly, the saving and exporting of someone elses work requires the use of a copybot client, which can very well result in a ban from the Second Life service.
Now, we’ve got a Snapshot and Machinima Policy, which was hailed by the EFF, but all in all unneccessary from my (but not only my) very personal point of view, as it regulates things that fall under a fair use doctrine anyway. It would be ridiculous to ask each and every creator of anything visible on a snapshot for their permission, just as ridiculous as it would be to ask every creator of everything appearing on a photograph in RL (starting with clothes, hair dresses, buildings, furniture, you name it).
I repeat: I believe, in adherence to the constitution of this country I am living in, that ownership commits. It is not only a right, but also a duty to further the common good along with it. So far, there’s been a lot of talk about rights. I wonder when we will start talking about our duties.
- Translation by myself. [↩]
3
Mar
There is over. For some reason I can’t resist that pun, but it’s actually grave news for the Metaverse. There.com was launched in 2003, about the same time as Second Life. Both had similar concepts and shared common traits, such as an in-world economy and user-created content. Unlike SL however, There was aimed to be PG-13 rated and therefore open for everyone (where SL is basically an adult world with an attached Teen-Grid). When I joined SL, I had tried various other virtual worlds as well, including There (and I again did so after getting banned from SL). Personally, to me There had some really bad graphics (which were way worse than Second Life) and that put me off before I even got to know how the community was like, or understood that adult content was disallowed there. In hindsight, of course I’m glad I didn’t move there, as I would need to move again now.
However, I still have mixed feelings about this. Mike Wilson, CEO of Makena Technologies (the providers of There.com) wrote in the statement that announced the closing the very true and revealing sentence: “There is a business, and a business that can’t support itself doesn’t work.” The people who created content in There, or even had their own businesses based on There’s in-world economy, will lose their creations forever. There, like Second Life, is a walled garden, yet unlike SL there is no open sourced community that is working on a compatible virtual world. In short: Everything will be gone. And while There.com will try to reimburse recently converted Therebucks (There’s in-world currency), everything else will sleep the long sleep of cables.
This, once more, gives me opportunity to think about the concepts of virtual worlds, and which is the best route to follow. As long as your virtual world depends on business, it will rise and fall with the economy. It is nice to think it won’t happen to SL, as it is too big and economically strong, but the current crisis has brought even bigger giants down. I’m not saying I have reason to believe SL will close. I guess my point is just that, as long as it is in the hands of an economic business, its fate is doubtful. (Would the internet ever have grown to what it is today, if it would have been backed by a capitalist venture?) The new black is Blue Mars, which just launched its Beta a few months ago. Many people are putting a lot of effort and creativity into it now. Will it work? Will it survive and honour those that contributed? I would hate to put my heart into creating things there, only to see it close because of economic reasons. I wish it all the best, but it’s still the same fear as with Second Life, and every other business virtual world.
Many players of There will probably switch over to Second Life, and I welcome them with all my heart, and hope they will find a place that is just as great, or even greater, than There was. However, I would even more like to see them in OSGrid or in another non-commercial open simulator grid. Not just because every new face there is refreshing, but also, because I believe these are the foundations built to last. From what I have come to learn is that: If you don’t NEED to make business, don’t try. It removes a lot of pressure from you, and gives you more room to breathe. Also, only the things you share can never be lost. Because they can be shared back with you at any time. If you keep them to yourself, they are vulnerable to loss due to unforeseen circumstances.
THERE for: Welcome Therians. We salute you.
23
Feb
Linden Labs announced the new Viewer 2 today, along with (finally) clarifying its Third Party Viewer Policy. Now call me biased, but we’ve got this exciting new technology here, which focuses more on creativity and human interaction than anything else, and the release of the new viewer is (supposedly) monumental enough to give it a new version number, and the big news is – what? A web browser experience?
Wow.
Well, for the record, I do not know what the regular second life citizen does most of their online times. But from the focus of viewer 2, it seems that they don’t like anything more than teleporting, given the attention the management of teleports got.
There are some exciting new features, which I have to admit: New clothing layers, and the ability to apply an alpha mask on them. But… are these features groundbreaking enough to warrant a whole new version? Personally, for viewer 2 I had expected nothing less than a completely new rendering engine, the implementation of meshes and the ability to create sculpties inworld. So I’m sligtly underwhelmed.
With viewer 2 falling short of the mark, the bigger news for me was the third party viewer policy. While most of the requirements included in that document were to be foreseen and are somewhat rational, there are two things that stand out to me:
On the up side, there’s the fact that some of the most strange (and suspicious) announced policies didn’t make it to the final document. There is no requirement to “not facilitate the export of an entire Second Life inventory; and preserve the Second Life ‘creator’ name and information that the content was originally created in the Second Life virtual world”, as those features didn’t serve any purpose other than secure corporate superiority (and even in a really blunt way).
On the downside, there’s this really really, I mean really strange paragraph which I just would like to quote here in its entirety:
“[1.h.] Central to Second Life is the principle of shared experience. The services we provide through our viewers, for example, our Land Store, the LindeX exchange, and the Xstreet SL marketplace, are designed to enhance Residents’ shared experience. We may ask you to make changes to your Third-Party Viewer if it disables certain of our services, or if we believe it is inconsistent with the principle of shared experience or otherwise negatively affects the Second Life user experience. If we do, you agree to make the changes we request.”
Is there anyone around who could explain me what they mean with ‘shared experience’ here? Other than that really charming way of explaining what they mean when they use the term ‘ask’ (obviously ‘ask’ = request = force someone to do something), I just can’t get my head around how the ‘principle of shared experience’ (whatever it might be) would be connected to the Land Store, for example. (Again, obviously, ‘sharing’ here isn’t really ‘sharing’, i.e. giving something or a part of something to others for free in order to enjoy it together.) I really can’t say I understand that paragraph, but it certainly reads like ‘if your viewer disables some of the services we use to make money of, we’ll force you to either re-enable them or gtfo‘.
Actually, right now I’m wondering what anyone at Linden Labs did the past year or so.
Second Life and the culture of denunciation
When I joined Second Life in March 2007, it had a ratings system, which basically allowed anyone to rate any other resident, with the results showing in the according residents’ profile. From the start, I was feeling extremely uneasy about this concept. The fact that an anonymous and unknown group of people would decide on the impression my profile would portray to anyone at all times was terrifying to me. Luckily, Linden Labs dropped it shortly thereafter.
Ratings can serve a good purpose. They can give the uninitiated an idea of wheter or not something or someone is good at what they claim to be good at. They work well with product or service reviews. They can also give orientation in an anonymous community about whom to trust and whom not to trust. That’s why they work well on eBay, showing you wheter or not someone already has a history of successful transactions.
The reason why they are a bad idea on Second Life, however, was that SL is not a clearly outlined experience as eBay. The SL ratings could mean anything, you could get good ones for being an exceptional griefer with the right peer group, or bad ones for being a Mentor, asking people to behave on Orientation Islands. So, I was happy to see ratings go, even though I noticed that people seemed to have loved them, for some strange reason. It was only much later that I found that, while the technology of ratings might be gone, the mindset behind them prevailed.
Second Life is no democracy. It is not a government at all, but a corporate entity. However, it feels like a governed environment, and the fact that Linden Labs themselves are using governmental terms like “land”, “resident”, “economy” certainly consolidates that experience. Thus, residents see Linden Labs as the entity governing their virtual lifes, and this ‘government’ is far from being a democratic Rechtsstaat, as there is no separation of powers (the same entity of people making the rules are also judging and executing them), no clear set of laws (the TOS and CS are much too unclear and do not give a clear notion about consequences and how actions are taken), and no review of decisions by independent organs (while you can appeal any decision, the appeal is being decided on by the same people who made the original decision). In all aspects, it resembles a totalitarian police state. And strangely enough, as with all police states, people are contributing to it.
One of the first things you learned when becoming a Second Life Mentor was how to file an abuse report. Before I became a Mentor in Spring 2008, I never heard the term ‘abuse report’ at all, nor was I aware of the according option in the viewer. Abuse reports are a tool which enables anyone to report anything they see as a violation of some sorts to Linden Labs, and again, while the tool itself is reasonable and useful, the way it is handled is questionable at best, as abuse reports are secretly reviewed, decided on and executed, in most (if not all) cases without a previous hearing of the reported. I, too, have reported several ‘violations’ of the service, most of which were griefer attacks (sim crashing attempts through prim litter or particle spam) or ageplay incidents (childlike avatars in clearly adult oriented places), and I am ashamed of it now. I did not know the residents I reported, and while I trusted the Lab to deal reasonably with reports, I can no longer do so, and wish I could have found a more civil way to deal with it. The thought of having reported an innocent person and put them through an ordeal with an organization as rigid and unfair as Linden Labs is not something I am proud of.
But I am not the only one. There are large groups in Second Life dedicated to ‘peacekeeping’, which means dedicate their online time to ‘hunt down’ alleged griefers and report them. Not only are there large numbers of self-proclaimed police groups in most communities, but also groups which are large (and ruthless) enough to keep entire databases on Second Life citizens, monitoring and collecting data about them (which was leaked recently and can be found here).
I don’t know why this is happening. Maybe by playing sheriff (or deputy) we feel more secure and safe and on the ‘right side’ of the fence. I just don’t think it makes for a healthy environment when there’s mistrust, and fear, and judging people by numbers, ratings, database entries and group membership rather than getting to know them yourself. But from my personal experience, it’s not advisory to trust Linden Labs to know you, or take a closer look at who you are and what you did in the past. As Zonja Capalini once pointed out: “If you are absolutely forced to do business with the Lindens (which I obviously won’t recommend, given my experience), don’t even think there will be somebody there who knows about you and about your business.”
25
Jan
Disclaimer: I had wanted to write this article for a long while now, and am still hesitant to do so, but I believe it’s of interest to the public and may help others who might run into the same situation as myself.
I joined Second Life (SL) on 31st March 2007. I made myself a couple of avatars back then, which I deleted shortly thereafter, so my main avatar in SL was Shyft Sands, registered on 1st of July 2007. At the time of the events of this article, I had one other avatar, going by the name of Vanish Tomorrow (VT). However, all my assets were with Shyft Sands, VT was simply used to keep land tier low.1 I was quite engaged in SL; I joined Second Life Mentors in 2008, I had a fair share of creations and ran a small business, I owned a whole mainland region worth of land, distributed over several regions. I performed as a musician and DJ inworld at a number of events (most importantly on the Burning Life festival 2009). I never made any kind of profit. Most of the things I did, I did for free, simply because I enjoyed doing them.2 I had my place inworld, I had a small circle of good friends, I had (and still have) a wonderful partner, and I had sufficient tools, land and prims to build to my hearts content.
There were some things that I was sceptical about, though. Ever since I joined SL, I felt uncomfortable with the simple fact that this very advanced (and, in my eyes, really important and revolutionary) concept was controlled by a single company, in whose hands all the inventories, all the infrastructure, all the money transactions, all data and – along with all that – all policies and decisions lay. I was not a notorious critic, I never went public with my opinions about their policies or anything else, I simply tried to be wary, and help others be aware of the risks and policies they would have to deal with, when they joined or lived in SL. All in all, however, I believed Linden Labs (LL) to be aware of their power and responsibility, and I trusted them to deal wisely and carefully with the money and virtual property they were entrusted with.
Over time, I saw a couple of changes happening, which enraged residents to some extent, and I noticed the company and community to change as well. I never was too affected with these changes though, I simply noticed them. I made it a habit to watch the SL blogs for upcoming changes to policies, as well as stay informed about them through several in-world groups I belonged to. That way, I had heard that by November 4th 2009, usage of the CryoLife client, which allows making backups and copies of textures and objects, would be disallowed by LL.3 As the fact that I had no control over my own inventory, that loss of inventory (sometimes loss of the whole inventory) had occured to several people I knew personally (as well as myself), and that I could not transfer things I bought for myself (some of them several times, as I have had several avatars) on to a new avatar of mine, if I ever should retire Shyft had been bothering me all the time I was in SL4, I thought that this would probably be the last chance to make backups of my own things as good as I could, and so I downloaded the CryoLife client on November 3rd 2009.
It wasn’t hard to get actually, all it took was to ask google about it. Being a Mac user, I had to run it on a virtual windows environment on my machine, and I tried it a bit. I was mainly curious about what it could do, and got intrigued by some features I had never before seen in SL or thought possible. I read about CryoLife on the Alphaville Herald and still was amazed that it could do what it was notorious for doing: I could open and save any texture on any avatar I encountered (including myself), I could backup .xml files of any object that was rezzed inworld, and re-upload them. It was a backup tool, but could also be used as a copybot to get assets without the consent of their creator or owner. I experimented a little with it, teleporting all over the grid (using VT for that) and tried to find out how it worked, and what it could copy. Many, if not most shop owners already had installed a defense mechanism which identified CryoLife Users from their shop as soon as they teleported in, but it seemed the client worked over great distances (actually as far as the drawing distance would rezz objects). I copied some avatars and objects just because it was interesting to see what other avatars consisted of. I never gave anything of these things away, or used it for myself, and I never intended to.
On November 4th 2009, while still trying the client out, VT was disconnected from SL. Up to that point, I had thought that when LL stated that “Residents who use third party viewers with the functionality described above to violate our Terms of Service or Community Standards, will be warned and then suspended from the service”, they meant that residents would be warned and then suspended from the service. If they gave me a warning, I never received it. I need to add that the email registered for VT was obsolete at that point, so if LL tried to contact me via VT’s email, I am to blame that I didn’t get it. After this incident, and after I found that I was unable to log in as VT, I thought about what happened, and how I should adress it. VT was a premium account, and paid 25 US-$ per month on tier fees, and I was not sure what would happen about these fees or the associated land holings, would they not be paid anymore. I could not access the VT account on the SL-site either, it simply told me to contact them via phone to verify my account. So I did.
After going through the verification, the call center told me that the only thing I could do to get the account back, was to submit a ticket to LL. So I did. I submitted the ticket, using my main avatar Shyft Sands, stating what I did and what happened and asked what I would need to do to re-enable VT’s account, offering any help neccessary to undo whatever I had done wrong. As a ‘reply’ to this ticket, my account Shyft Sands got terminated as well, and I was permanently banned from accessing SL through any computer I accessed it with ever since I joined (and, probably, from any network I accessed it with, too, but that’s unconfirmed). I got a statement from LL, stating that they had reviewed my appeal, and found that the permanent closure of my accounts was “was justified and correctly applied”. There would be “no refunds or exchanges for any unused time on your subscription, Island purchases, Linden Dollars, or inworld objects, items, or content.”. The ticket was signed with ‘Customer Support, Linden Lab’. It did not tell me, which part of the TOS or CS I violated, nor did it tell me how this conclusion had been reached and what I could do if I felt unjustly accused.
I made myself a new avatar the same day, using my correct RL name, as well as the very same credit card I used for Shyft Sands. I could not access SL using the native Mac environment, but found that I could log into it without problems using a virtual windows machine (of which I can make an infinite number using virtualization software; however, operating SL is awkward, not only because of windows). I got in contact with my partner and friends, telling them what happened and talking about how to deal with it. It was a serious blow to me, and the first thing I worked on was to try to keep damage as low as possible. I found that I could still access the beta grid using my old avatars, and thus make a backup of my inventory, especially of my own creations. Also, the land holdings were still there, as they were group owned, and obviously would remain with the group as long as the tier was covered. Also, some of my objects which were still rezzed in-world, could be taken by my partner, as she had the ‘privilege’ to edit and take my objects. (Not everything could be transferred that way, though, even if the original object was transferable.) On the bottom line, I lost all my inventory, and was forced to access SL in a way which made it hard to enjoy.
After the initial shock waned, we had to think about how we could go on. I thought it pointless to appeal to LL any more, as the two previous tickets did not have any positive effect. So, the first impulse was to start with a new avatar, and keep my head down and be more cautious. At the same time, I started looking for alternatives to SL, only to find that there weren’t any that were appealing to me – all of the alternatives lacked at one or more aspects. Either the graphics were bad, or the interaction and creation tools were too restrictive (or not there at all), or the terms of service or setting was not what I was looking for. What I wanted, was an open, virtual world, where I could do whatever I wanted, as long as I would not violate RL laws.5
- I’ll probably explain the concept behind this in another blogpost regarding land and tier, for now you’ll have to trust me on that. [↩]
- In fact, I paid a monthly sum of 195 US-$ to Linden Labs for tier fees (in addition to two premium accounts). [↩]
- I really can’t find the blogpost that said so, as it’s impossible to find anything on the SL Blogs anymore. The closest I could find was the post on LL’s third party policies. [↩]
- my inventory consisted of around 14.000 items for which I paid between 500 to 800 US-$ over the course of 2 years, including one of the few complete collections of Primout Cars [↩]
- And, given my above explanation, I do believe I didn’t break any RL laws – at least not those relevant to the country I live in. And yes, I know the law. [↩]
25
Jan
The closest thing to what I was looking for was OSGrid, which I joined just a few days after the incident on 9th of November 2009. I have to admit, I was sceptical at first, as the project appeared to be very bleak and years and years behind of SL by number of residents, performance of the grid, technology available and in-world creations and economy. It took me a while (and still does, I think) to open myself to what OSGrid is and the different approach it takes on virtual reality. As of the time of this writing, however, I am certain that OSGrid and the Open Simulator project is what I really need and had wanted SL to be all along.
My one base belief is that more free is always better, both for an individual, as well as for society as a whole. The web itself is built around free and open technologies and software, so I am most certain that the future of the web will always take the path of freedom. For a long time I had assumed that LL knows about this, and will eventually open up and become free (just as M Linden stated in his new year’s blog post), but despite all their claims at being open, I had to realize that LL can not, and will never become open. This is not because they’re evil or misguided or plain ignorant, it is due to the nature of their business.
Linden Labs is a webspace provider. They make money (a lot of money, in fact) by renting out servers. That’s the core service behind the Second Life software. In the end, it all revolves around land tiers, and land is nothing else than server space, and tiers are the rental fees for that server space. Linden Labs controls all land in Second Life, and will never open that market up to others (as their competitors will be much cheaper and much better). And most long-term residents own land. Even if they don’t rent it from LL directly, they will pay indirectly for it, as their landlords will have to pay their tiers to LL. In fact, the biggest businesses (and most profitable ones) in SL revolve around land trade.
Even if you don’t have any land for yourself, you still contribute to it whenever you buy something from an inworld store, as the shop owners will have to pay tier for their stores. Actually, to be a profitable business in SL, you’ll have to overcome a certain ‘critical mass’ that will cover your land tiers first. Only then, you’ll make profit. (Not many of the shop owners I know make much profit beyond covering their own tiers. I certainly never did.) Every other aspect of the service serves to bring people to eventually pay tier to LL. And to understand all the improvements and changes that were and will be made, you have to keep one thing in mind: LL’s business always comes first.1That’s not as heartless as it sounds when remembering that LL is a capitalist venture, and it’s the nature of such to strive for revenue and nothing else. But this also means that: a) there will never be any changes to the SL service which will threaten this business model (which means, there will especially never be a way to rent server space from someone else than LL for use in SL) and b) no matter how things are being promoted on the blog or website, in the end, the driving force will be to further LL’s business. It is not, and never has been, about the residents, unless it means that these residents will in one way or another be drawn to spend some more money on SL.
To make some kind of comparison, think of LL as the AOL of virtual worlds. AOL had the same business model when the internet became mainstream, giving its customers all kinds of content on their own servers, and offering them everything the web had to offer through their own services. Needless to say, in the end the customers didn’t want that protected and walled garden, and left off to the wild spaces that are the real world wide web, and LL knows that the very same thing will happen, once SL starts to open up. Therefor, I think it’s safe to say: they never will.
And that’s alright, because others will. Just as the WWW is based on free and open technologies, so will the future of virtual worlds be based on free and open technologies. Any closed source, proprietory approach is eventually a dead end, as it will lead to a secluded portion of virtual worlds, which will keep some people entertained, but will never further the development of the internet, no matter how good the services are. And for this reason, I decided to stick with the service, that works on building an open sourced and free platform for the virtual reality to come. It certainly will move beyond Second Life, integrating technologies and services which LL will not. Simply because it can, simply because it doesn’t have to make business considerations and fear for losing its hold on it’s ‘product’. As there is no hold. It’s with us all.
- Some examples for this are the openspace pricing changes of early 2008, the acquisition of XStreet SL in 2009, which was a threat to tiers, as the marketplace offered merchants the ability to sell their goods without needing to have a shop inworld. [↩]