The ban-hammer vs. the Blog-hammer

So after what was a very nice day of day of shopping and getting out in the sunshine and feeling like normal people for once what do I wake up to? My Partner Ivey crying her eyes out... Why? Because of being held pretty much at gunpoint by a blogger. My strong empowered girl reduced to tears over what? This. http://pennelopethiessam.wordpress.com/2010/05/16/to-post-or-not-to-post/ The avatar Pennelope Thiessam has decided that a sim ban, a personal ban done by ME for personal reasons is such an atrocity, censorship, outrage that her and her friends needs to attack, anyone and everyone she can. My partner, every store on my sims, the operator of 69L humpdays, and as far as I can tell anyone and anything she can. I wake up to things so bad that not only is Ivey in tears but she has unbanned Pennelope Thiessam from our sims. So you know what Penn, you win. Your Blog-hammer is clearly bigger than my ban-hammer. After I post this I am going in world to clear out my ban list, and then proply throw up. I guess I just have no right to have control over the regions I pay the lindens $780US a month to. A bloggers rights to tell me I have no balls are just more important than mine to not want her around. So I hope you are happy Ms Self Appointed SL Quality Control Coordinator, you win.

Wanna be a big time RL blogger and blog about SL?

Ok this is funny but it isnt. Wanna be a big time RL blogger and blog about SL? Let me hand you the template. You get the line, after the Colon : that's my comments, ready? here we go...

Remember Second Life? : Yep reword it however you like, This is your opening gambit because you know why would anyone remember around a million and a half players active today?

Next you do a line or two about from SL from 3-5 years ago. : You know the deal, Lag, copybot, virtual sex, wild wild west, whatever tired story you want to hook your wagon onto.

Get the word "avatar" and James Cameron in your post. : Yep just do it, Hey look I just did! Apparently the work done by Howard Rheingold, Jaron Lanier, Philip Rosedale, and countless others to bring virtual reality to life never happed. Yep it all came out a half an hour before the movie.

...fading into obscurity... : Apparently if you are not on the cover of every newspaper and magazine weekly you don't exist. Funny because last time I checked newspapers and magazines were having a hard time of it.

...because "whatever my pet project is" has a home in second life its all good. : Yep thats it, now just ramble on about how SL is useful to you and your readers.

Don't get me wrong, A couple of years ago, heck even a couple of months ago it was all much much more negative. I give Linden Labs their due with the 2.0 push, us "oldbees" hate the new viewer but if you are new or "back" you will love it. However SL 2.0 it way more than just the viewer, way more than I care to get into here, and it's all pretty good. So welcome back folks, we kept it all nice and warm for you.

Six impossible things before breakfast

Six impossible things before breakfast

I think James will be OK thanks.

Love it or loathe it James Cameron’s new movie “Avatar” worldwide box office today is at $1,347,224,441 (IMDB.com) and in the end will certainly overtake his previous blockbuster “Titanic” by a very wide margin. So with profits like that it seems so strange to me that anyone would be so worried about poor James and what might be going on related to it in second life. However that what is going on over at New World Notes, questioning an apparent Avatar related SL ad campaign, and resident created “Avatar-like” avatars and RP. By itself its fine, hell it’s smart to be talking about anything related to the movie this popular. However ladies, gentlemen and genderless alike, I give you the pure definition of ironic in the form of a screen cap…

Yes on the same page NWN questions SL about their Avatar-like ad campaign and all the questionable goings on in SL, they themselves have a for-profit and pretty obvious “Avatar-like” IMVU banner ad on their site. I’ll leave you all to make your own conclusions beyond this with one final comment. SL drama aside, I think James, his stakeholders and their billions in resources can figure out what they want to do as far as that ad and all the dimes and quarters bouncing around SL on their own. ;-)

SLFashionFails etc.

I’m going to keep this quick so I actually finish and post it. Last night I was made aware of a plurk account called SLFashionFails. This little gem of an account was set up, as far as I can tell, with the simple purpose to anonymously bash random fashion designers. As much as many have called this account harmless, it included very loaded statements that crossed the line IMOHO involving suicide, racism and gay bashing. Me and my “Lynch Mob” as anyone like minded has been labeled, didn’t find this account funny at all, so some of us reported the account to Plurk for violation of TOS and I am happy to say the account has been removed.

End of story right? Well apparently no. Aside from the “Lynch Mob” baloney, many seem confused why I care about this at all. This account was what I refer to as “Anonymous Hate” one of the nastier little afterbirths of the Internet. SLFashionFails was not a mixed bag of praise and criticism, constructive criticism, or light hearted look at SL fashion. SLFashionFails was only set up to post mean and nasty often line crossing comments anonymously. Beyond this little gem, Anonymous Hate is one of the more dangerous things around on the net. Why? Inside of all of us, you, me, your mom, ALL OF US is this nasty little monster that will say, do and think the worst of the worst. What hopefully keep us in check are empathy, morals, and simple consequences for our actions. Anonymous Hate ends all of that, say whatever, no consequences at all.

Ok Rob that’s a cute opinion you have there but doesn’t this mean you are against freedom of speech and all forms of Anonymity on the Internet. Nope, I am a huge fan of Anonymity where it is needed. Live in Iran and want to talk about the sham of an election they just had and not see members of your family dragged away with bags on their heads? You Need anonymity. Are you in an abusive relationship and need to connect with others in your situation for support without getting kicked in the teeth again? You Need anonymity. Have an avatar in SL and don’t like something you see on one of the fashion feeds and want to say something about it? You know what? YOU DON’T FUCKING NEED ANONYMITY! You just don’t. Worried about what people will think about you after you say something? That’s a clue you shouldn’t be saying it.

As far as freedom of speech, give me a break. Online social networks and blog systems while free tend to have standards and Terms of Service. They pretty much all tend to be against hate speech in general gay bashing and racial references made things very easy to report this account. But doesn’t freedom of speech mean anything anywhere? NO it doesn’t. Screaming “fire” in a crowded movie theatre is the classic case, but freedom of speech does not mean you are not accountable for what you say.

-Sigh- and as I am writing this I have been called a Nazi for my efforts. If Aeon only had the slightest clue to what that term really meant. Ah the ignorance of youth, I truly miss you.

Do you "copyright violation"?

While I am THRILLED to see the birth (rebirth) of general awareness’s of copybot/copyenabled viewers/IP theft, I am less than thrilled to see its unfortunate afterbirth. Yes, the self appointed IP police/witch hunters are back with gusto! Now before I slice into them, let me defend them a bit. We have two flavors of “copyright violation” here in SL, In-World and Real world. With in-world the case is usually one SL designer, generally well known, gets copied by some bottom feeder and tries selling or giving away the copied items. In this case people that know what a designers stuff looks like can do a lot of good, spotting ripped items and reporting it back to the original designer.

On the other hand, there is now a new call of “copyright violation” by 3rd parties on anything and everything they see from the real world, and this is where it gets dangerous. Without contacting the copyright holder, you simply cannot assume you know how they intend to defend their copyright. Some copyright holders may be appalled to find that their properties are being sold in SL, others my see it as fan art and not find the SL micropayments any threat to their bottom line. Supposed random removal of Star Wars and Muppet content from inventories was brought up recently on another blog. While I’m not going to go into the issues focused on over there I will look at the assumptions that either content is automatically a “copyright violation”.

In the case of Star Wars, as others have pointed out, copyright holder Lucasfilm is pretty tolerant/turns a blind eye to most Fan Art/ Fan websites, even when these sites include banner adds, that could be generating SL levels of profit for the owners. So one might presume that Star Wars content in SL would far into that category of fan art in the eyes of Lucasfilm, something they choose to shed a blind eye on. On the other hand, and much to my surprise when I looked into it, I found that Lucas no longer owns the Muppets. The Muppets are currently copyright of the “Muppets Holding Company” a Disney owned property. At least in the past Disney is not known for being tolerant of unlicensed use of their properties in any way shape or form.

Of course without contacting a copyright owner the best you can do is guess what their intentions are. So when a Linden or any 3rd party decides that this or that is a copyright violation without contacting the copyright holder, they are wrong to do so. Some companies have no issue with fan art as it is free Guerrilla marketing for them, and isn’t a threat to their bottom line. With Lucasfilm’s general attitude and assuming they have no intent to sell “official” StarWars items in-world, they may choose to turn a blind eye to all the virtual Star Wars goods out there. Disney with regard to the Muppets I would think less so, but you never know.

An even bigger problem here is one of inconstancies with how the Lindens seem to handle RL copyrights takedowns. It seems anytime you hear about one item being removed you have no problem finding it somewhere else. A while back a friends shop received an official takedown notice for some Harley Davidson themed items. Fair enough she took the items down. Of course today I have no problem finding Harley Davidson items on the Linden owned Xstreet.com. If the Lindens intend to lead by example here they are doing a poor job of it. This in turn is causing a lot of this new wave of embolden witchhunts, from I assume otherwise well meaning individuals. I’m really afraid with the direction this is heading. We have enough of a headache with copybot and all its spawn. I hope people can take a step back, gain some perspective, focus on the real threats to the SL economy and let everyone defend their own copyrights as they see fit.

Bad blogger, bad blogger, no more

Bad blogger, bad blogger. That has really been my mantra for not blogging more, like forever everywhere. Recently I took a step back and took a look at what and how I do things in SL at the general prompting of a good friend. -winks at my good friend Shelly, the quiet angel on my shoulder- Her actual request was for everyone to look at how positive/negative you are in plurk, but it made me look at just how positive/negative and effective I am in general.

I looked and my blogging and it comes up short. I have a good/bad, OK Bad habit of over thinking a concept and never going to press with it. I literally have dozens of half baked posts that I have spent hours on that have not been posted because I never found them to be finished enough.

That ends today.

I have to rember that blogs are made for just putting it out there. While I tend to be in awe of bloggs that are amazingly and perfectly put together, an unread or unwritten blog might as well not be there. So my precious few followers or anyone backtracking to this momnet. Yes this is the moment that damn burst. Ok so enough, I have have tonnes to do, and time is never on my side. ;-)