“There’s always been a struggle between art and commerce — and now, I’m telling you, art is getting its ass kicked. And it’s making us mean; and it’s making us bitchy.” ~ Judd Hirsch as Wes Mendell, Pilot episode of “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” (via Aaron Sorkin)

Yesterday, Grace presented a thought-provoking post on the current state (and future possibilities) of SL from a practical business standpoint. Part of it was a revisit to her previous post which narrowed down the market the Linden Lab “powers that be” could be aiming for through process of elimination. So far, Grace’s tea leaves are dead-on (mostly because she is less educated guesser and more professional-that-knows-her-stuff than the average blogger).

The bigger question, for me, is: what form will this impending (and necessary) “destruction” and restructuring take? Targeted wetwork or napalm? I can think of three historically tried methods for such endeavors:

Model One : And the Lord Spoke Unto
And your children shall be shepherds in the wilderness for forty years and shall suffer for your faithlessness, until the last of your dead bodies lies in the wilderness. ~ Numbers 14:33
Central Message: “Fuck All Of You.”
Probability: Low
Chance of Success: Risky
Prior Example: God and the Israelites

Linden Lab has the potential to go Old Testament on us. Let’s face it, they’ve got the keys to the kingdom (anyone who works with LSL should have no problem believing the world was created in six days or less) and they can lock us out of the car at any time. They could easily just decide to ignore the entire existing customer base, and refocus their offered content, and policies on all-new users. While it may seem like this is what they’re already doing, it’s not — it just seems that way because they keep changing their targets. Such drastic measures could net them a lower-maintenance user base. However it also means they lose the user-created content boon that comes along with those pesky talented haughty pain in the ass artist types. Even Lindens are able to see the difference between their avatars and the average user’s avatar. Unless they’re willing to hire high-dollar content artists (recent employment shifts at the Lab don’t point this way) they’re stuck hoping their user base can produce content that will woo new blood. Also they don’t have forty years, or whatever the digital age equivalent is.

Model Two : No, Mister Bond, I Expect You To Die
You spin me right round, baby, right round, in a manner depriving me of an inertial reference frame. Baby. ~ XKCD
Central Message: “Cream Will Rise.”
Probability: Moderate
Chance of Success: Variable
Prior Example: Babcock Centrifuge

Shake things up, give us a spin cycle, and hope the momentum separates the wheat from the chaff. It sounds like madness, but there’s some method to this type of approach. First of all, if you do it with economy, the people on the fringes (who are less likely to be desirable users from a business perspective) will flake off. This gets rid of users that don’t directly contribute to the in-world economy and the hobbyist creator who plugs the gird with low-level junk. What remains is the big spenders, the big earners, and the people with absolutely no quality of experience expectations who will put up with anything (interestingly, both cream and scum rise to the top). The costs to the community take the form of those individuals who contribute intangible value to an environment; from an “on paper” point of view, that’s often a loss companies are willing to take.

Model Three : The Jedi Mind Trick
“These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.” ~ Obi-Wan (via George Lucas) Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope
Central Message: “You’ll Like What We Tell You To Like.”
Probability: Worrisome
Chance of Success: Even More Worrisome
Prior Example: Apple, Disney, Blizzard

In many ways, Linden Lab has always flirted with this model, cherry picking what it wanted to present to the community as “the right things.” However, this has been done passively, with a focus on positive voice rather than targeted content. While the validity and ethics of this method is murky, there’s no question that LL has skilled up on PR over the last several months. The website looks and navigates professionally; newsletters are polished and purposeful; regardless of the chaos and ill decisions, the announcements are mostly on-target message-wise. (It’s sad that these are improvements for a seven year old company now that I think of it, but let’s ignore that for now.) By identifying the superficial things that draw in higher volumes of casual users and escalating the prices of things that problem users value, there’s a big two birds one stone benefit in this method from a CEO POV. But this will have to be done with finesse so that too many are not alienated too fast and they don’t end up with all their eggs in one bunny…erm, I mean basket.

Art vs Commerce

While I do roll my eyes an awful lot over the-sky-is-falling circle, I have some sympathy. Linden Lab marketed itself, for years, under an idealistic banner of hearts, flowers, and rainbow-colored unicorns. LL slogans were pledges of cooperation with their user base; their medicine man made high profile claims and promises to the community of the wondrous things to come. It’s a lie to claim this was merely clever advertising; Linden Lab simply isn’t that clever. There were promises of good faith made to the user base from the company in both its early collective actions and aloud in the person of its Willy Wonka leader. Yes, those promises purchased huge quantities of goodwill and good press. But they were never practical and the user base, being mostly composed of adults who live in the very real world, should have known better. I understand and acknowledge my own disappointment and disillusionment of how far below the high water mark Linden Lab has settled, but such sentiments are the result of self-inducted suspense of disbelief, no matter how enabled by Linden Lab and its jester/king/whatever he is this week.

Yes, when you tear down a house to rebuild a new one, you lose the things that made the previous structure feel like a home to its inhabitants. It’s a painful process, but so is an unhealthy devotion to trying to squat in a condemned structure that’s threatening to collapse around you. If there is to be a reinvention, it must succeed in not only knocking down the walls of Linden Lab incompetence, but also the entitlement and unreasonable expectations of segments of the user base.

At any rate, given that most useful content in Second Life is almost entirely user-base driven, what does this mean?

History and literature are packed with instances of artists coming to terms with maintaining focus amid the distractions of the battle against power and commerce. Michelangelo, Beethoven, Henry Miller, Banksy all share(d) issues with authority and scorn toward the patron/business aspect of art culture while simultaneously having to woo favor to survive and maintain the tools of their trade. But artists have to face the hard truth, that most people don’t know or appreciate a quality experience of artistic expression when they encounter it. People will want what they want unless someone convinces them differently. Commerce does that better than artists. Always has, always will.

Real art does not owe commerce anything, but an equally important truth that often gets overlooked is that if art has no obligation to commerce, then commerce, in turn, has no obligation to art. It is only where their motives intersect that mutuality occurs. I’ve known a lot of artists and I’ve known a lot of businesspeople; I’ve regarded myself as both and neither, but mostly I’ve come to the conclusion that there isn’t a lot of difference between the nature of the two beasts. Creating art is a self-absorbed, ruthless and committed undertaking; so is the business of making money.

Unlike a lot of the SL “community” I don’t labor under the delusion that Linden Lab owes artists anything. I don’t even think Linden Lab necessarily owes its “community” anything more than consistency and a reliable product. The problem I have is that Linden Lab keeps falling on its face and dragging everyone down with them. They’ve taken a product with limitless potential and turned it into mediocrity. This offends me on a fundamental logic level, like the characters of Less Than Zero or the Kardashians.

But, Wait, There’s Hope

Commerce, art, and recreation all have intersecting bubbles in their Venn diagrams. That overlap has so much potential it’s almost unfathomable that in seven years, Linden Lab has been unable to get it together. Think about that length of time. If a team doesn’t make it to the playoffs in seven years, ticket sales sink; vendors find alternate sources of income, free agents jump ship. The fact that we’re even still here, still giving them a chance has to underscore the potential of the possibilities.

Second Life is a platform. It’s a tool. It’s a canvas. It’s a playground. Linden Lab is a company with one high profile product that is on the edges of becoming the biggest almost-that-never-was; a cautionary tale of squandered opportunity. The danger of losing an important stage in the evolution toward the inevitable emergence of virtuality is playing out and while it’s morbidly fascinating to watch, there is a fourth model that could stem some of the damage and growing pains.

The Fourth Model: Diplomacy and Recognition of Mutual Advantage
Central Message: “Let’s Talk.” / “You Scratch My Back, I’ll Scratch Yours.”
Probability: Unknown
Chance of Success: Hopeful
Prior Example: All around us, everyday.

This doesn’t have to be about art vs commerce; paper dolls vs gadgets; us vs them.

This transition is about a platform completely dependent upon its user base while simultaneously shutting out its user base. It’s about a user base so busy screaming about what they’re entitled to and what they felt they were promised that they’re losing sight of what is still to be employed and gained.

There have to be ways for us — the artists, the coders, the content creators, the fashionistas, the entertainers, and even the casual users — to open means of communication. Linden Lab either can’t or won’t invite us to the table. We’re going to have to find ways to engage them on a practical business level, to demonstrate that motivating our involvement will contribute positively to their bottom line.

So, our homework is to figure out what we contribute that they need and how to communicate our willingness to compromise what we want in terms so simple as to compel their assent. We need the right people with the right ideas to make the right proposals to the right ears.

Or we can just sit back, wait it out, and see which way the wind blows while we shepherd bunnies for forty years on the mainland.

“We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.” ~ H. P Lovecraft

Blog Entry Warning: Lots o’ Photos and Personal Blather. Run.

A few years back, when my SL businesses were flourishing, I officially opened The Freudian Slip. It was little more than some decking, beanbag chairs, and waaaaay too many poseballs, and my musician friends had been playing on it before the launch, but it was a good enough reason for a shindig and it netted me the blonde wench, so I call that worth it.

The Freudian Slip: First Draft

Back then, the Slip was parceled and planned to add to the dwell and traffic of my texture store, Esprit Decor, which, at the time, combined with ads for Linden Lifestyles, covered tier, musician fees, and still provided me with a healthy supplemental income. I paid L$5000 per hour to musicians who brought in 25+ and L$3000 per hour to those who brought in less than 25 listeners. We hosted concerts 4-5 days a week. It turned into a lot more work than I wanted, but what developed was a community that I was not expecting; the little gaggle of folk have been the main pleasure of my SL existence ever since.

Unlike a lot of venues, the Slip is about camaraderie. We prattle a lot. Sarcasm is our native language and there is really no end of it. Although we are fundamentally there for the music, we are also there for the repartee. As such, the etiquette of the place balks at text blocks of “woo hoo” and focuses on actively engaging those around you in humor and ranting. This tends to intimidate newcomers, and I only half-regret that; while I want strangers to feel welcome, I don’t want to change our habits to accommodate those who want to copy and paste scrolling blocks of text. There are lots of places out there with the typical club atmosphere; I believe there’s nothing wrong in establishing a venue that instead recognizes the unique opportunity SL offers to the live music community. IRL if you’re talking during a musical performance, you’re a dweeb, but in SL it’s just the opposite and I think that should be embraced.

As my circumstances changed, I retired the Slip from being a fully operating music venue. For one thing, I was unable to offer the fees I felt worthy musicians deserve for their time. Second, there stopped being a wealth of people I wanted to listen to. So the Slip became focused exclusively on performances offered by Grace McDunnough and Lyndon Heart, with old friends occasionally tossed into the mix. Although I still get regular requests from musicians to play, I generally decline them. Until I can come up with a profitable model to run a music venue, I don’t want to appear to be back “in business.” And keeping the place a delight instead of a job is fundamental to maintaining the pleasure of it.

When I redesigned the Slip, I wanted to keep its charms in mind while also providing a lush, immersive atmosphere. The grid is exhausted with ugly, cookie-cutter, mall-draped music venues; I wanted a showplace. Dwell and traffic now being all but useless, I moved the venue away from the stores and, with the help of a good friend who has terraform-fu, was able to seclude it. Starting with a blank slate of sand and hills, what developed has become something I am genuinely thrilled to share with friends and visitors.

The Freudian Slip - Bird's Eye View

The “center” of the Slip is still a dock where the main congregation of sits and dances are within chat range of each other and the stage. Nearly everything is sit-able — from the sacks and barrels of goods to the rivets and posts of the deck. The large pile of lumber serves as a dance machine with a simple “sway to the music” animation people can opt for.

Freudian Slip : Main Deck

I tried to get rid of all poseballs, with only couples dances being the monkey wrench in my gears. In the spirit of compromise, I changed the dance balls into butterflies (on land) and fish (underwater).

Freudian Slip - Fish Disguised Dance Balls

Freudian Slip - Butterfly Disguised Dance Balls

Placing an emphasis on couples (which I’m not sure is warranted, but we’ll see) I tried to make sure there were plenty of couples sits. I placed them into coils of rope and bags of jewels so that those coming to listen and lounge could snuggle and still banter if they wanted. For those who wanted to listen, but move off from the group, there are snuggle hammocks on the main beach, as well as up on the hill top over the cave.

Freudian Slip - Hammocks

Freudian Slip - Couples Ropes

Admittedly, I went a little crazy with landscaping. The “Slipwreck” provides an amazing off-Sim backdrop, trapped upon rocks with breaking waves. I can’t stop taking photos of the damn thing.

Freudian Slip - Slipwreck Stormy Day

Freudian Slip - Slipwreck Sunset

Freudian Slip - Slipwreck Aurora Nights

Moai stand like sentinels from the shore, and there are runic stones and other tribal markers amid the tiki posts and lush foliage. I filled them with “fly” animations for fun, and I have to say, they are some of the best sculpts I’ve ever seen.

Moai @ The Freudian Slip

Freudian Slip : Birds of Paradise

Freudian Slip : Menhir Tribal Monument Stones

I wanted to keep a hint of the old Slip, so I placed our pet Squid (he’s actually an octopus named Squid) out lurking in the water and kept the compass rose cog-style stage, even though it no longer rotates.

Freudian Slip - Stage

Although I was bullied into disposing of my music monkeys, flamingos, and toucans, I added “Skelebard” propped up on the cannon behind the stage — as a warning to those who need to be kept in line.

Freudian Slip - Skelebard

There is even a hidden treasure cove for explorers who want to find a little nook to sequester themselves into.

Freudian Slip - Cave Exterior

Not a gifted builder, I’m much more of an assembler. Pulling from the depths of my inventory and from some of the more gifted content creators on the grid, I was able to create my own little slice of paradise.

Eventually, I may be offering the space for event rentals — I put a Tiki Hut DJ pavilion on the main beach for casual parties and such, but for now, I’m just genuinely happy to have a music venue that looks different from the rest and that feels, once more, like home.

Freudian Slip - Party Pavilion

Freudian Slip - Tiki Hut Hammy & Birdcage

It’s a public space, and anyone is invited to explore, snuggle or hang out. The music stream is set to a Beatles-only channel and I recommend sunset until the aurora borealis appears in the sky, at which time, midnight is mandatory.

Where Did She Get Those Wonderful Toys?
(In No Particular Order)

Dock Crane
Fish Buckets
Fish Traps
Menhir Tribal Monument Stones
Net Maker Rack
Runic Dolmen Stones
Rustic Warning Bell
Sail Maker Rack
Laufey Markstein
T R I D E N T

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Nordmaar/110/125/500

Assorted Palms
Palm Hammock
Tobias Novi
Tree House Designs

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Mycenae/102/91/32

Lock Stocks
Rustic Suspended Cage
Suspension Post
Treasure Chests
Ashade Sinister
Shade Fantasy Outfitters

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Crooked%20Earth/182/81/38

Shipwreck
BETLOG Hax

https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&MerchantID=84453

Naima Coraline Barrier
Naiman Broome
Las Islas

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Las%20Lagunas/233/220/22

1 Prim Wildflowers
Birdcage
Hammock Tree
Oriolus Oliva
The Golden Oriole

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Verdigris/63/68/71

Mermaid Sculptures
Pumpkin Tripsa
Chakra Nova

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Rafail/128/66/2508

Birds of Paradise
Logan Bauer
Arctic Greenhouse

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Alternate%20Reality/142/141/55

KALAMA Palm With Egg Swing
POIPU Tiki Hut Dancefloor & DJ Booth
Hatzfeld Runo
Tiki Tattoo

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Tiki%20Tattoo%20Cove/10/173/421

Aurora Borealis
Various Plants
Kriss Lehmann
Botanical

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Straylight/183/52/25

Tiki Posts
Sally Seattle
REZOLUTION

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Deco/241/23/21

Moai Sculpts
Astolpho Majestic

“They might have split up or they might have capsized
They may have broke deep and took water
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters.”
~ Gordon Lightfoot, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”

*** JOIN US THURSDAY, JULY 22ND @ 6PM SLT FOR THE RELAUNCH OF THE FREUDIAN SLIP LIVE MUSIC VENUE. GRACE MCDUNNOUGH WILL TAKE THE FIRST BLUSH OFF THE COMPASS ROSE, FOLLOWED BY LYNDON HEART WHO’LL KEEP GETTIN’ IT ALL DIRTY WITH BOY COOTIES AFTER HER @ 7PM SLT. DO NOT MAKE US COME GET YOU. WE’RE PIRATES; WE’VE GOT LIQUOR AND SWORDS. http://slurl.com/secondlife/Seven%20Veils/44/127/26 ***

The Wreck of the SS Freudian Slip

It was oft whispered in the ports that dared allow them harbor, that the rag-tag coterie was doomed, being as they were steered by the obvious runt of the litter. Still, the winds generously billowed the sails full, the tides of wet goddesses rocked and cradled their passage, and there was progress toward some manner of destination, even if none were sure where such a journey might end. Fortune, of course, never leans too far too long in any one direction, but the idle comfort of a string of luck led them like children toward a sense of entitlement that the fates could not resist rolling against them.

The endless days of sun-beamed arcs bouncing off the rolling waves eventually led to sea blindness and a peculiar madness of false vision began to infect the crew. The only sanity that clung between the margins of the voyage came when the moon escorted the stars across the velvet midnight, blocking out the charlatan mirages that danced like ghosts on the spray. The artful dodgers of the bevy recognized the need to dispel the mounting tension, and trespassed down into the hold, returning with tapped casks of rum, whiskey, amontillado — all the others could hope to distract from the tedious delirium of the every day drudge.

No one was certain who heard the first lilting note, but it was not long until they were all awash in awe and wonder.

It was the Siren; her call vibrated across the distance like the kiss of a forgotten lover, passion-trapped within a bottle and finally able to wrest the cork from her stained glass prison bars. She called to them in ways none had ever heard, nor could they put words to all she inspired as they huddled against the masts and rigging, straining for some vision, some shadow that might quench the thirsts no spirits could sate. Secret and distant, she denied them, calling from the inky dark, and from the salty air itself, taunting and luring, drawing them closer. Closer. Closer.

When she tired, or perhaps when the Mistress moon merely tricked her back into her bottle, the troubadour replaced her honey-soaked verses with the crafty skills and pleasures of his trade. Familiar chanteys and rarely-heard canticles wove a patchwork spell, stitched from the same siren cloth which swaddled the lot of them into the stupors of drunken revelry. Unable to contain the need to catch the power of the rattle and hum, some dove into the unforgiving waters, arm over arm, flailing toward the echos that meshed, interlaced, plaited together like the sinuous coils of raw hemp that flanked the decks.

Before long, the very planks and rigging seemed to rein themselves toward the unknown cove of haunted songs.

The water-logged pages of the journal end there, leaving us to merely speculate about the fate of the SS Freudian Slip. Some say she made a cold, early grave of the briny floor at the edges of the world. Others spin wild tales of a treasure cove where the ancient faces of kings carved in stone and brightly painted totems hold court amid a lush and living landscape. But the story traded most often over mugs of foamy-headed ales casts the crew as the enchanted captives of a pair of pirate specter bards, tethered to the wreckage and rocks that serve as brig and stage; entangled forever by roots and tendrils none can sever.

Some Thursday nights, when the unsuspecting pass too close to those waves and rocks, the echos spill out over still waters, and just as twilight coaxes the horizon to accept the weight of the sunset back within its shimmering embrace, comes the intoxicating lullaby of Her.

And if you stand upon the deck long enough, the blanket of night will wash brilliant with color as He follows, melting the wick into the depths of the wax and daring those who hear to lean just a little closer for one more song.

“In the last days of Vaudeville Theatre, they sued Marconi because radio was killing Vaudeville, where you had to pay to go into a relatively small room to listen to music and voice. But it didn’t kill music, the outcome was a thousand times more music, making a thousand times more money, reaching a thousand times more people. But in the short term, there was panic.” ~ Cory Doctorow

More than any other topic about SL, I am exhausted with content theft. It is always there, somewhere, in my twitter feed, friends’ blog links, or sneaking up on me in the form of an insanely rambling notecard dropped on me by a designer I’ve never heard of (or worse, one I’ve heard of but can’t stand).

When the issue began, I was outraged at Linden Lab’s indifference and short-sightedness. Over time, my feelings have shifted to less disgust with LL (there are so many things they get wrong, how can you be outraged at all anymore) and more disgust with those individuals in the SL creative community (and blogging community) who behave in a ridiculously stupid manner about content theft.

No matter the repulsive antics, however, I come up against the reality that content theft is still a serious issue that threatens the SL economy in may ways. Putting aside the crybaby tactics, the melodrama and the police-state protection measure attempts (that never work, it’s worth mentioning) there does need to be dialog on the topic, and it should include someone from Linden Lab who has a commitment to getting this handled in a way that provides help to the creative community without limiting too much user freedom. Assuming anyone like that still exists at Linden Lab and holds the authority to do more than order refills for the soda machine.

Years ago, I had a three-day debate with Grace about content theft; we kept hitting walls while we volleyed solutions.

First, you come against the fact that anything which can be manufactured indefinitely/at no cost has a difficult time establishing and maintaining a market value. This corrupts the conceptual value of virtual goods with consumers (social morality does not place as much stigma on stealing a stick of gum as it does a diamond ring, and the stick of gum can boast a larger physical value than anything sold in Second Life). Now, to be certain, the time, effort, and skill that goes into creating most objects in Second Life has costs and value, just as every software-based product does. But how many people have not-so-legal copies of one program or another on their computer as they’re now reading this?

Second, you realize that DRM never works and that most companies have been spending billions and raking their middle-men minds out trying to find a method that does work. You also look at history and must concede that every time content creators have tried to stifle invention and technology in the name of protection, they’ve been wrong. TV did not kill the movie industry. The VCR did not kill movies and television. Despite what the music industry claims, MP3s have not stopped most people from dreaming of being the next American Idol. Markets shift; technology opens more doors than it closes; those who try to police progress are always wrong.

Third, you hit the problems with trying to police stolen content without infringing on the innocent and the rights of non-abusers. I am not of the opinion that everyone should be treated as a potential criminal for the “greater good” of something. No-mod items which should be mod (like clothes or hair) piss me off. We shouldn’t have to contact a creator for a “fitting.” The SL consumer is already at a huge disadvantage on most items. We can’t try on most clothes before buying them. We can’t trade-in most objects. There is no longer anything that passes for a second-hand market. We can’t back-up our inventories for data loss. Trying to force the SL consumer to accept that we shouldn’t even be allowed to tailor our purchases to our avatars really fries my yams — especially when making something no-mod is not a protection against anything (excluding scripts, obviously). You don’t stop someone from stealing your textures, sculpts, or shape settings by making something no-mod, you just slow them down, make them use better tools, and piss off a lot of ordinary consumers in the process. There are now content creators who embed scripts in their items to NOTIFY them when you rez an object that’s intended to be worn. Not long ago, a friend of mine rezzed a shoe to leave it out as a prim decoration in her virtual dressing room and the content creator IMed her in a tizzy to accuse her of rezzing it to copybot. Nothing sells a brand like a rabid content creator acting like an idiot and accusing an innocent consumer of criminal activity. Morons.

Fourth, there’s the statistical issue. We don’t know how much stolen content is actually happening, so it’s hard to sell the need strenuously. It’s largely anecdotal guesswork based on a lot of crying from melodramatic hens who, unfortunately, can rarely be trusted to offer sound testimony.

Fifth, you have all the joys of documenting and filing DMCA paperwork and the international issue, coupled with the fact that so few content creators use the system that’s in place to protect them.

Sixth, Linden Lab should not be in the position to judge content disputes. It’s a bad, bad, bad, bad, bad idea. For them, legally, as well as for the community in general.

The list goes on, but for every problem, the main question still stands: how to solve it?

At the time of my debate with Grace, I was firmly in the camp that a third-party organization needed to be established to act as arbitrator. This was the way eBay disputes used to be handled, once upon a time, and it worked fairly well. The idea, loosely would be to have an established Linden-Lab approved protocol which would be included in a revised SL TOS making it so that anyone offering items (free or for sale) agreed to arbitration in cases of potential content theft. This arbitration process would be focused solely on the removal of the content from LL’s databases and would not stop any wronged party from seeking civil recourse. The system would be self-funding, as the accuser would have to pay an arbitration fee, and the defending party would have to also pay one to dispute the accusation. After an established process of review, the party who was found not at fault would be refunded, and offending items would be removed from the grid into a “holding” database (rather than just being deleted) not only to provide for an appeals process, but also to maintain records for any civil legal issues. Obviously, this means the third party organization would need to have a liaison with Linden Lab to execute matters of authority.

I still believe this third company, provided it be headed by responsible individuals with fair and established reputations in the business community, could perform their services with acceptable levels of transparency at a modest fee. They could easily work in tandem with SL. Yes, there would still be sour grapes and crybaby antics, but there would be a system to weed out most of the trouble.

However, I no longer believe this alone is the best solution. This kind of review process would only work for textures that are somehow watermarked by their creators or can be identified as unique to a particular individual, and many concerns extend beyond this point. Specifically, the ability to import non-borked meshes will bring with it a whole new dawn in the need to protect content. As such, the entire way that LL handles offered content needs to be addressed.

So why not simply make it so that free accounts are unable to create transfer items, place items for sale, or mark items as free to the community? Why not make it so that anyone trying to distribute virtual goods must have a confirmed payment to distribute anything? (Please note, I am not talking about the useless age-verification, I mean an actual credit card / paypal account / other payment method transaction on file).

This accomplishes a few things.

1. It cracks down on anonymous theft in a big way. It forces someone who wants to circumvent the system and steal content anonymously to commit credit card or payment fraud, making their actions a matter for authorities.
2. It makes it so that anyone filing a DMCA or looking to take legal action will not have to shell out ridiculous amounts of money chasing a phantom just to file a C&D or other notice.
3. It invests those people who want to create and distribute in the community.
4. It gets rid of a bunch of badly made crap from the grid.
5. It provides a real (and fair) line between paid and free accounts. Everyone on the SL grid is supposed to be an adult, and adults (crazy cat people aside) understand that with privilege comes responsibility — it’s rule of society 101.

There will be casualties and unexpected consequences. For every protection, there is a compromise. I’m well aware that creators with multiple accounts will encounter issues (although I do think simple ways to link accounts can be established for concerns like this). When you look at the horrible ways many content creators are trying to address content theft on their own, or you consider how Linden Lab might handle this otherwise, or even when you realize the implications of “in the shadows” projects like Modular Systems’ Onyx, you start to see the benefits of making a transparent compromise with minimal impact.

This system would preserve the ability of free accounts to make things for themselves, to experiment and build, to offer art for exhibition, etc. These would all be good things to encourage new residents who need time to “skill up” before entering the marketplace, etc. It also provides for artists or educators who don’t have any interest in the money game. Performances, lectures, etc will not be affected. Most residents, being straight consumers, likely will not be hindered at all. I personally do not know a reputable content creator who doesn’t have a paid account.

IRL, if you want to go into professional business, you need a business license, articles of incorporation, financial records, etc. There is some record of transparency with the proper authorities so that anyone in the public with a grievance can know who to address. This process, if nothing else, will verify who the parties are in legal matters and protect Linden Lab from having to fight lawsuits with consumers (gestures of good faith also go a long way in most courts).

Making it so that in order to distribute content, you need to have a paid, verified account, is hardly a draconian gesture. I think having this simple protection in tandem with an open protocol for handling disputes (and possibly collaborating with a third party arbitration organization) should be on Linden Labs not-so-distant to-do list. And I hope something like this is on the table for discussion before importing meshes becomes a reality.

“May your home always be too small to hold all your friends.” ~ Traditional Irish toast

The decks of the Slip have been dark too long and so we found the first ready excuse to put some shin in our digs.

Grace and Lyndon will be performing all-original sets and it should make for a special night.

You can find the Slip in any general SL search, located on the Seven Veils Sim.

Be sure and pencil us in for a music-filled night!

Optional Play-At-Home Drinking Game: Take a shot every time Grace swears or giggles and Lyndon forgets a lyric.
Disclaimer: Management is not responsible for loss of memory or waking up beside strange avatars for those who engage in the optional play-at-home drinking game.