Tag: #SecondLife

How long before your Second Life meets your First Life. The encroachment of Age Verification.

If you live in the UK you’ve no doubt come across at least one age verification prompt since December last year. That was when the relevant part of the Online Safety Act 2023 came into force. My first encounter with one was on the most surprising places; Bluesky. I could no longer receive or send Direct Messages (DMs) from within the UK, due to this law.

The law’s theory is that if we all provide ID, it confirms the conversation is between adults and not an adult communicating with a child. The law is very broad and the UK regulator is trying to influence every platform that allows direct communication between users, wherever they are in the World, to comply.

For those living in Australia its even worse because of their total Social media ban for under 16s. The implementation is bad, but I do agree with the sentiment that Social Media is bad for younger people. For me it’s just a way to share my blog posts.

Addition: The UK are discussing a Social Media ban like Australia, but they have the same issue as Australia is having now (legal challenges by tech companies); They can’t actually define the term “Social Media” so they wouldn’t be able to enforce it.

So everyone gets around the issue with a VPN, so age verification became required to get a VPN, in the UK. They snuck it in as an amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing & Schools Act, which also required each child to have a unique identifier.. Digital ID by the back door.

Both cases are like using a sledgehammer to crack a peanut, then taking fingerprints off the sledgehammer and the peanut.

Now of course the USA is following suit, with state after state passing or at least drafting equivalent legislation. At the time of writing I believe its nearly half of them so far, something Federal will probably come along at some point I expect.

How does all this relate to your Second Life? Well think about the Bluesky example I mentioned above. What if you replace DM with an SL IM? It’s direct communication. I wonder if Linden Lab have had a letter from OFCOM (Office for Communications, the regularly body in the UK) yet.

The great thing about Second Life is the feeling of Freedom it gives, to be whoever or whatever you want to be. Which is the sales pitch running through the YouTube videos the Lab have been releasing recently.  So what happens when Linden Lab are forced to request ID documents from the Second Life resident community?

As I understand it the US 4th Amendment prevents that, but what about the rest of the planet, as similar laws spread like a plague across the Internet?

I don’t look forward to what will happen. Will there be a mass exodus of Residents when the inevitable happens? Retention levels of new Resident signups has been a serious problem already, but will the next generation shrug it off as Age Versification will become the norm for them? 

Santa’s Saucy Servants?

We’re all familiar with “Santa’s Little helpers”, a group of elves or the like that help Santa get ready for his busy night’s trip around the world delivering presents.

But what about when he gets back, who’s waiting for him? What if it happens to be these ladies? Santa’s Saucy Servants maybe.

I’ll leave that up to your imaginations. If you fancy having a cozy little shack to hang out with your Mr or Mrs Claus, head over to the Christmas Expo!

Credits:

  • Santa Shack: LouChara Cozy Christmas Shack – Event Booth
  • Red Dresses: Via Fulo Natalie Dress – Event Booth

Event Links:

The Strawberry Witch of Enchanted Realms

As promised, more from Enchanted Realms event. I saw this outfit and knew exactly how I could picture it…in front of a Strawberry Moon.

Sized for Maitreya LaraX (and 5.3) inc Petite, Legacy, Reborn, Waifu & Perky

Encahnted Realms Arrival point: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/VennaCity/140/13/2001

Enchanted Realms is being hosted on the City of Venna Roleplay sim, you can read about it on their website : https://cityofvenna2025.wixsite.com/city-of-venna

Non Event Items:

  • Hair: Lavender from Raven Bell
  • EEP Lighting: Herb & Fable Strawberry Moon – Available by completing the Strawberry moon ritual from Herb & Fable – all elements are either available now or soon in-store.

Thunes Buys Tillia – Don’t Panic

Last night there was a meeting with a collection of bloggers,creators and Linden Lab employees to discuss the transition of Second Life payment processing from Tillia to Thunes.

The acquisition of Tillia was announced last year. Strawberry Linden put some of the most common questions back then to Brad Oberwager in an episode of Lab Gab, that you can watch HERE. It’s worth watching because it outlines most of what has now happened,as well as conveying Brad’s excitement and enthusiasm for the venture.

Last night’s Zoom call was to bring people up to date and share the latest, so we could pass that onto our audiences/readers.

What happened?

Tillia got sold and a company much more suited to operating it acquired it. Thunes is a global financial services provider, Tillia was simply created to allow Linden Lab to legally operate it’s own currency (Linden Dollars) and process credit cards.

What’s going to change?

Immediately for most residents, not a lot. On Wednesday (or the next time you visit after that) you will be asked to check a box on the website, acknowledging the change of the company name from Tillia to “Thunes Financial services LLC”. In the future it should lead to more options for buying Linden Dollars and cashing-out to your bank or other accounts.

An analogy Brad used was a local coffee shop, that I’m going to paraphrase.

If you pay with your card the receipt may have a reference to “Square” (a common card processing company in the US), if the coffee shop changes their card processing company to for example “SumUp” (a card handler common in the UK) your receipt may have a reference to that company, but the price of your coffee doesn’t change.

So the change to Thunes is like that. Tillia is being renamed but all your details and transactions are exactly where they always were, like the name on the coffee shop changing, it’s still in the same place. (If they’d tried moving any of it, that would have been the risky part for everyone, so they didn’t.)

It’s possible you may have to re-enter your credit card details, or check some boxes to reconfirm payment or payout methods and that’s it.

The LindeX exchange remains under the control of Linden Lab, Thunes cannot change the price you pay for Lindens.

Right now you may be thinking “what about fees?”, and rightly so. Linden Lab intends to make fees more transparent, by showing you the fee breakdown. Showing how much of that fee they have to pay to provide you that particular payout option. This then allows you to better choose what method you want to use.

What happened in the call?

I’ve now taken part in several of these calls, but this one was different. I’ve seen Brad excited, enthusiastic,angry and range in-between. This time,as someone pointed out in the call text chat, he looked a little scared. Don’t be mistaken though, this was not fear of things going wrong with the switch over to Thunes; they’ve been working hard for months to make sure it goes smoothly. What he’s worried about are the emails he receives.  Every time he puts himself on the line to change something for the better in Second Life he usually receives at least 50 “You’ve ruined SL!” type emails, some of which get very personal.

Given the internal and regulatory scale of this change (think lawyers in 48 US States all having to agree to it), I can understand his emotions.

The example of the “Potato1” support case was mentioned, which Bloggers heard about last week during the call about account security.

So if your password is something like “potato1” please change it, for everyone’s sake. We don’t really want a forced grid-wide password reset on account of you folks.

A final point that came up around fees that charities have to pay (just like everyone else) when cashing out the donations residents have made. Those fees can’t be waived, someone has to pay them somewhere, and Brad said he may well do that, out of his own personal pocket, not Linden Labs. With a slight caveat of “maybe not if it was a Million Dollar donation”.

A Message to copybotters and Second Life Content Thieves

There was another Zoom Call with Linden Lab yesterday. This one was a little different though, since it wasn’t just the Blogger Network this time, it was Creators as well (90+ attendees). What’s so big that they want to tell all of us at once? Well, Content Protection apparetly:

This call will bring together bloggers and creators to focus on a crucial topic for the Second Life community: content protection. Protecting the integrity of creator work is at the heart of our platform, and we want to share updates and gather your feedback on this important issue. This session will focus on our commitment to and actions in protecting creator content in Second Life, including legal enforcement efforts, advancements in tools and processes, and our ongoing collaboration with the creator community. While challenges remain, we are dedicated to transparency, continuous improvement, and working together to shape a safer, more supportive environment for creators.

(quoted from invitation email)

What does it mean?

Well it means, lookout copybotters and other content thieves. The below doesn’t just apply to objects like mesh clothes or bodies, it’s any content such as animations that are included as well.

In the past Linden Lab hasn’t pursued instances of content theft, beyond a stern letter and a DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) takedown order. Which obviously isn’t much of a deterrent.

That’s about to change. Dramatically.

From now on, if you’re found to be creating copies of other creators’ items, you won’t just get asked to take it down. Your Account will be Shut Down. You may have a store with a thousand items that you genuinely made yourself, it won’t matter. It will ALL go. That DMCA letter will be accompanied by a Cease & Desist. Meaning you will now incur liability for anything you do after that date.

They’re going even further though. If you are teaching people how to illegally copy Second Life content, the Lab will be after you too.

If you’re one such fraudster you’re probably thinking “I’ll just create another account”. But did you cash out some of those ill-gotten gains with any of your avatars? In which case the Lab knows your legal identity (required to process the transaction) and will go after the Individual person, not just the Avatar.

Here’s the contentious part of their change of approach; If you knowingly buy copied stuff (to maybe save a few L$) you could be in trouble too, potentially losing your account.

So the key points here are:

  • Linden Lab will now consider such practices as theft from the original creator and act accordingly
  • If people are creating, teaching others to, or buying copied content the Lab will be after them.
  • Account and all content will be deleted, even any legally created stuff.
  • Focus on the legal individual, not just the avatar account.
  • Action will be taken against websites hosting any copied content
  • If you upload Second Life content that you didn’t create, to another platform or game, you’re accountable not the platform and will be legally pursued
  • There will be a new category of support ticket added for reporting alleged instances of content theft
  • Open Source viewer doesn’t mean an Open platform
  • Action will have an “Immediate and Chilling effect” (Philip Rosedale)
  • Action from the Lab will be “egregious*, don’t be the one I find first” (Brad Oberwager)

*Extremely bad in a way that is noticeable

How are they going to know? Well if I told you their intended methods, they wouldn’t work.

Of course these things are complicated and there could be issues, but the key point for content thieves is this:

THE LAB IS NOW ACTIVELY LOOKING FOR YOU.

Speaking your Mind, a conversation with Brett Linden

Sometimes speaking your mind can land you in a lot of trouble, or it can get people to listen. My post “Not very early (or equal) access“, was one of those times. I had bloggers giving me positive feedback, that I’d said what they were thinking, then folk saying on social media I might have upset people.

My thinking was that someone had to say it and what’s the worst that could happen?

Fortunately in this case, it got someone to listen. This was not just anyone though, it had Philip Rosedale, Brett Linden and Brad Oberwager listening.

On Tuesday night (4pm SLT, Midnight for me) I had an email from Brett Linden inviting me to discuss the contents of my post in a Zoom call.

Obviously I replied immediately with my ascent. I knew if I left it until my morning, it’d be another 18-24 hours before it might get looked at, and this is part of the issue that needed discussing.

Brett had reached out to discuss further the points I’d raised in the post, which I was pleasantly surprised at. The main issue was that a couple of prominent bloggers appeared to have got early information about Project Zero, Second Life in a web browser. This as you can imagine, annoyed every other blogger in the Blogger Network and outside of it. I had it confirmed by Brett that, yes, they got an embargoed “advance briefing” before Christmas, but they didn’t have early access to the browser platform. Now rather than me trying to pick through facts made available to me, I’m going to quote from a follow-up email:

We try to engage and respond to all bloggers who reach out to us directly and we do separate meetings and outreach all the time to other bloggers either proactively or in response to their inquiries. Both Inara and Hamlet do in-depth daily “news”-style reporting on Linden Lab and as a result we are in frequent communication with both of them since they are publishing almost daily to a fairly large audience. While they did get (and honor) embargoed advance access to “Project Zero,” that was not meant in any way to disrespect or diminish how we view the importance of the larger blogger community.

To be clear, our outreach strategy on any news and information that we release will not always be the same – bloggers will frequently get early access but there will be times that we do not pre-announce some news and/or a major media outlet (e.g. New York Times, etc.) might also be the first to break a story.  I want to also acknowledge that as a business we make decisions that not everyone will always agree with – but I hope that the big picture and context of our commitment to more and frequent open communication and transparency isn’t lost in translation. In the last three months, we’ve made progress in holding more community meetups and direct one-on-one meetings, and we have several more lined up for 2025 — so this is an evolving process and we are learning as we get feedback 🙂 We will continue to try to be better at communicating and so I appreciate your candid thoughts on how we can do better.

It was a good conversation and I came away feeling that they really are trying to be better and their hearts are in the right places.

Something I learned is how many Lab employees make up the Marketing team, which includes all the Labs socials. I’d pictured something like the scene of a corporate office block, a sprawling mass of cubicles covering a whole floor, with Strawberry in a corner office. It’s actually just two of them; Brett & Strawberry and they’re only human.

If you think back a year or even just six months, these things didn’t happen. If you told me back then I’d have a one-to-one call with Linden Lab Marketing, I’d have been very skeptical indeed.

There’s a saying that comes to mind here “To respond is to give importance”. The fact they reached out and responded to me, a small blogger with minimal reach compared to others says a lot about their commitment to improve.

So the way I see it now, they’re making leaps and bounds in their communications with the community, there’s just been a couple of stumbles along the way. Which, after yesterday’s call, I’m more than happy to forgive them for and give them a hand up. Especially since the other stumble (the early release of financial numbers while the bloggers were under embargo) wasn’t actually on them.

With that out of the way, onto what else he had to say. With Philip now back at Linden Lab, 2025 is going to be focussed on “Putting the Lab back into Linden Lab”, as in a testing and experiments place where you try stuff to see what happens and if anything goes BANG or not. So far we’ve seen two ventures that are part of this initiative; AI Character Generator and Project Zero browser access, with varying results. (When a friend gets ejected and banned from a store group and region, because of the actions of their AI bot, in their absence, I’d call that a BANG for sure.)

There is another forthcoming Zoom meeting that is apparently going to be something big, because it’s not just the bloggers that are being invited. So anyone reading this, that’s previously received an invite to a Zoom call with the Lab, don’t ignore the next one.

Not Very Early (or Equal)  Access

Last night, Thursday 2nd January, there was a meeting between members of the Second Life Blogger Network and Linden Lab executives. I didn’t attend this meeting(although I did get an invite), but I’ve heard enough that I didn’t really miss much (apart from watching Philip Rosedale almost dancing in his seat with excitement apparently). This wasn’t because the topic of discussion (browser based access to Second Life) wasn’t interesting, more due to the fact there was a public announcement barely hours later.

When Bloggers are promised early/advance notice on upcoming features, maybe that notice should be more than a matter of hours? What good is advance notice if they have no time to prepare content before an almost immediate official announcement?

If I’d attended the meeting, it’s quite unlikely I would have got a post prepared with proper test screenshots and meaningful comment, between the time the meeting ended and the public announcement was published.

This brings up a equality (or favouritism) issue among the bloggers. It’s my understanding that at least one prominent blogger had published their post on the subject (which was quite lengthy and included screenshots) while the meeting was still in progress, strongly suggesting they *did* have much earlier knowledge than the others at the meeting.

It makes me again question how much respect the Lab has for the Blogger Network, or understanding of fast moving social media.

During the Zoom meeting held on 6th December we were told about the financial investment amount that the Lab had put into Second Life and were told categorically not to disclose those numbers, to my knowledge no-one did. We were led to believe there was going to be a “big reveal” of the numbers in the New Year, I also thought maybe it was a test to see if we would keep quiet/could be trusted. However on the 19th of December these figures became public, primarily via a store owner creator releasing it everywhere after a meeting with the Lab. The next day (in my timezone) we were emailed to say “yeah, you can talk about it now”, a bit late maybe? Were we an afterthought? At 4.46pm SLT, probably. Since Second Life is a global community, spanning many timezones, I have a suggestion:

If you have some news to be shared, specify a date and (crucially) a time at which the news can go public and also when the related public announcement is going to be made. The details of which should be communicated to all parties at least 72hrs in advance. Doing that would get around the issues mentioned and we could all be co-ordinated in our posts and announcements.

I believe Philip said they will look at a discussion on the platforms use of social media, but since I wasn’t present I don’t have an exact quote. I look forward to seeing what comes of that.