Software

Through Sharon B's Mindtracks I found the 3 megabyte PDF, Metaverse Roadmap Overview.

I opened it up, and a few names popped out. Sure, the Second Life denizens were easy to spot (though many seem to be laying low after creating high priced virtual paperweights). But I know Jamais Cascio and Ethan Zuckerman through WorldChanging.com. Granted, it has been a while, but I have had more communication with them than most on things. We don't always agree, but we don't have to. They even had Baba Yamamoto as a reviewer, he who was banned from Second Life¹.

So I read through what all these 'industry leaders' had to say. When I read it, though, it seemed half prospectus and half advertorial. There is a lot of technology that can be merged, or as people in the US like to say, 'mashed up'². And generally speaking, there might be some value to some of it - though that value is ill defined and very subjective. Swimming in information is all well and good, but there is a reason that there is the phrase, "Too much information". While having the world at my fingertips is tempting, I really don't see how my life could be improved by many of these things - and I'm no Luddite by any stretch. This leads to whether we look at things as long term success or short term success. { Read more }

A business is suing a Second Life avatar for copyright infringement and trademark infringement, and since this impacts more than SecondLife, I'll write something of it here.

Case Specific

Generally speaking, as Eric Rice writes, a virtual bed is like code. And VintFalken wonders, too, how the bed was to be had. But then, if you read the legal filing (7.5 megabyte PDF), you'll find some interesting things.

Consider this timeline gleaned from the filing:

No later than in or about April, 2007: Alleged infringement starts.
June 11th, 2007: Eros filed an application to obtain a federal trademark registration (Serial Number 77202601)
June 25th, 2007, copyright applications were sent in.

Does it strike anyone as odd that the applications for trademark and copyright were sent in about a month after the 'infringement' started?

And in the legal filing, there is no demonstration that the objects are the same - they may look the same, but functionally speaking they may not be. That would have to be demonstrated (I'd love to be a fly in the courtroom for that.

Quoting Second Life sex bed spawns virtual copyright action, emphasis mine: { Read more }

Remember Landbaron Merlin? You know - that landbot owner who has been taking advantage of glitches and user error and making money while Linden Lab makes this gurgling sound:

[12:28] Jeska Linden shouts: Chaos Mohr: What is being done to address land database issues which result in things such as parcels being paid for and not transferring, parcels being sold to multiple people etc? This seems to be a major technical issue which keeps cropping up and hasn’t been fixed yet.
[12:28] Cory Linden shouts: These are likely symtpoms of the broader stresses on the central db and transactions..
[12:29] Cory Linden shouts: as I mentioned int he blog post, we are attacking these problems in two ways, to first identity weak spots in the current system and to build a better transaction system as well.

All that money being lost, and not even a warning to users on the SecondLife blog - but apparently someone found a way to get their money back. Remember Seargent Crossair losing 80,000 Linden Dollars (roughly $289 US)? Allegedly, he's been getting the nefarious Landbaron Merlin back where it counts - in the wallet. { Read more }

Well, here we go again. Some more people have lost money since the $2,000 US that was lost in one transaction. And after talking with people, asking non-leading questions, I keep hearing the same things.

Odd that I'm the one asking the questions but not someone from Linden Lab, but hey. It affects me more directly than Linden Lab, so I'm interested in understanding the problem. So are a few other people.

Here's an excerpt of a conversation with one of the latest victims of not only Landbaron Merlin, but a buggy land sale interface (posted with explicit permission):

[8:41] Nobody Fugazi: how did it happen?
[8:41] Nobody Fugazi: a transfer gone wrong, or what?
[8:42] Seargent Crossair: I was typing in the price and the screen jumped
[8:42] Seargent Crossair: land sold almost instantaniously for 8700
[8:42] Seargent Crossair: not 87000

I've seen the interface do this, as have other people. In fact, Muratus Losangeles (the guy who built the cool PC in SecondLife) got hit this morning when he was using CTRL-V to paste in prices... and the price did not show up right. Hardly sounds like 'human error'. Sounds more like 'application error' and 'network error'.

Not that we're seeing network errors at all - you know, inventory not showing up and other things in the open letter. Is it a strange coincidence? Is it sunspots? Or are these issues with network latency?

What if these issues are not human error? Has that possibility even been explored? I, for one, believe that some of these *are* human error but find it difficult to believe that so many people would be making the same errors. { Read more }

SecondLife is a hotbed of virtual microcapitalism and technology served up on a shining three dimensional platter. With it comes growth, anger and people playing limbo with business ethics - how low can you go? Some confuse the question of ethics with the a question of being a Luddite or not. Some say that they have the technology so it should be used any way that they see fit, some don't have that technology and disagree. Some just have no concern for the community which can glue a community together. It's all rather cool to watch and even participate in at different levels - part of the research I'm doing - but then things like the landbot dilemma come up.

But wait. I haven't explained what a landbot is, what it does, and why it's such an issue for so many. The picture, to the right, is NOT a landbot. That's me in my cool Furious astromech avatar (props) next to a land sale sign to create a snapshot for this article.

What A Landbot Is

A landbot is a modified SecondLife client which follows a script and purchases land. This can continue throughout the day - scripting it's way through lists, teleporting to the best deals and buying them. This is what real estate folks in SecondLife have been doing way before I came along, and what they will be doing into the future. It's a test of patience, judgement, fast decisions and good organizational skills.

It can be as complicated as a real job, I've found. Finding the buys is a big part of SecondLife real estate. The market pricing is pretty well controlled by unspoken understanding, so if you want to make money you have to find the better buys and price them to the market. That can mean sitting around twiddling your virtual thumbs or even popping off mid-conversation. Fast when fast, slow when slow, it isn't always easy finding deals. { Read more }

As I noted yesterday, the mixed reality event Synthetic Environments and the Enterprise was held within SecondLife yesterday. I attended, and overall it was a great experience. I took plenty of pictures which you can see here

Helen Cheng started things off with a demo of and dissertation on World of Warcraft as related to social interactions and group cohesion (though I do not recall her saying the latter). It was odd to see another virtual world from within SecondLife, and even stranger to see real people poking and prodding it like a specimen of anatomy. Seeing real people from within SecondLife made me think up the phrase 'reverse muppetism'. To see the reverse muppetism twisted again seemed... strange. I suppose I could get used to it. In the future I may have to.

Geoffrey West then made some opening remarks - I missed bits and pieces of this as the video stream was fought with on my end as well as on the server side. I wish I had heard if he mentioned allometric law or power law in relation to synthetic worlds. That would have been pretty cool, though I expect it would bore the snot out of those less mathematically inclined. { Read more }

Tony Walsh manages to break down a post by Prok into one line¹:

...If Linden Lab moves away from renting proprietary servers and instead turns towards an open-source server model, what will happen to the holdings of users who have invested in virtual real estate?...

Ownership

OK - let's clear the air. Just like SecondLife economic statistics, 'owning' virtual land is not - and never has been - like owning real estate. Why? If you buy something, you don't continue making payments on it - and in every scenario of 'land ownership' in SecondLife, you end up making payments on it.

If you own it, are you really dumb enough to pay rent through land tier or, literally, rent to some other SecondLife user? If you disagree with Linden Lab about something, can you demand your little slice of hard drive space and processing time? Try it. Go ahead. I'll be right here when you get back with a sad expression on your face.

There you are. See, you don't own it. You rent it, and because you rent it - you get to see just how silly the initial costs of virtual land have become. When you think about it, you realize that paying for virtual land is paying for glorified web hosting. Instead of a domain name, you get a plot of land that comes with coordinates and server space. The perception that anyone actually owns their server space only benefits one group of people - those that invest in virtual real estate and create economic bubbles.

Consider that at 9000 Lindens, the initial cost of a 512m plot being resold right now, is roughly $33 US - and that the 'rent' on that, per month at the lowest tier, is $5/month. A piece of 'First Land' costs 512L - 1 Linden per square meter - which is $1.89. The actual cost of renting 1 square meter for Linden Lab is less than 1 Linden per square meter, plus about 2.6 Lindens per month². { Read more }

After getting tired of trying to explain the difference between SecondLife and a game, I decided to draw pictures. Pictures tend to have a more direct effect on the brain, for some reason.

Off to the right there is a classic MMORPG. The game (blue) encompasses the virtual world (green), and it all exists within the Real World. Simple, and to the point. Generally speaking, there is one 'game' within the MMORPG though there can be many quests.

When virtual items became valuable enough for people to actually pay real money for them, there was a cross between the game and the real world.

Pretty simple, actually.

SecondLife, on the other hand, is a little different. Like many newer virtual worlds, it has business transactions which connect it to the real world - and in SecondLife, this is encouraged whereas in other virtual worlds it is not, or is not encouraged as much.

Thus we come to the representation of SecondLife - which allows games within it, as decided by the users - such as role playing and role playing and whatever else can be dreamed up - I've seen chess. Then there are simulations, and there is business. Business transactions happen both in world and outside of the world - payments related to SecondLife may never enter the SecondLife economy. Money in the SecondLife economy circulates, and is sometimes even invested. The key here is that while a game may exist within a virtual world, a virtual world may contain many games.

Perhaps these images will help the mainstream media better understand why calling SecondLife a game is inappropriate and demonstrates a lack of knowledge on the subject on which they have chosen to write. { Read more }