Stroker sues Linden Lab
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Stroker Serpentine, best known for creating the SexGen line of erotic furniture in Second Life, is suing Linden Lab. I'm concerned.
Perspective
Certainly, I have a lot of sympathy for Mr. Serpentine. He has to deal with rampant piracy. People across the Grid make illicit copies of his products, and sell them, even under the same trademarked name. That's wrong. Linden Lab, demonstrating its usual level of customer service, really doesn't do anything about it. Complaining to them is a waste of time. The one time they did try to remove an infringing item, they accidentally destroyed every working copy of his bed in existence. If that happened to me, I'd explode.
Except—it did happen to me. Literally the day after I released En Garde, Linden Lab made a change in the LSL scripting language that broke the game.
I accepted it as part of doing business in Second Life. Second Life is a horrible, buggy, unstable platform, and it's been that way for years. It will never get better. The best you can hope for is to find some way around all the ugliness. So when Linden Lab broke my game, I started coding a way to fix it.
Fortunately, Linden Lab fixed it before it could release my patch. And En Garde has gone on to become very successful. I didn't stress out about it too much, and my blood pressure didn't go up.
If I were really the creator of SexGen, I don't think I would get too upset over copyright violations. By most accounts, Mr Serpentine has made over a million dollars selling beds in Second Life. A million dollars. If I felt I was getting irked over people copying my stuff, and I had a million dollars, I'd just book a week's vacation in the Caribbean.
The Class
One thing puzzles me, and I haven't seen anyone talk about it. This lawsuit is being filed as a class action. Class action lawsuits are meant to consolidate plaintiffs when you have thousands of people who have been wronged. It streamlines the legal process and makes it possible for people who wouldn't otherwise be able to sue to gain redress.
But if you read the complaint, the class of people who are allowed to participate are creators who have registered Trademarks and Copyrights.
How many people in Second Life are selling goods with registered trademarks and copyrights? Registering a trademark costs a good bit of money. Copyrights are cheaper, but you still have to file the paperwork. I'd bet there's less than a dozen people, not counting corporations like Coke and Adidas, who actually own registered trademarks on items they sell in Second Life. So who's going to join this lawsuit?
I see a lot of people cheering for Mr. Serpentine. But I think a lot of that enthusiasm is borne of the frustration people have felt when dealing with the brick wall that is Linden Customer Support. Would people be so encouraging if this becomes a battle of Linden Lab versus the Fortune 500?
The Remedy
Policing IP infringement is hard. It's hard even when you have a simple website. That's why almost any website, when given notice of a DMCA violation, will immediately take down the indicated content. It's easiest to punish first and ask questions later. Determining if something really is infringing takes work. A human has to investigate the claim, see if the person filing the complaint truly has the rights to the IP, determine if the claimed work infringes (maybe it's Fair Use?)... nobody wants to do all that. So they just take it down, hopefully inform the other party, and let them sort it out in court.
The situation is even worse for Linden Lab. To investigate a claim they'd have to walk around in a virtual mall. Maybe the infringing item is one vendor among one hundred on a wall of vendors. When I'm shopping and I know the item I'm looking for, it can take me ten minutes browsing through the store to find it. I don't think they can simply ban the account either. If someone is selling one infringing item in an otherwise legal store, does that justify banning them? I don't think so. There's too many people complaining about Linden Lab banning them, and being unable to reinstate their account, already. It would be too easy to frame someone for infringement.
There is one solution that Linden Lab could take to resolve this situation. It would actually reduce their enforcement costs. But it's a solution I fear, because it is so simple and obvious -- and wrong. Linden Lab could remove all ability for people to sell items in-world. All purchases would have to be done through XStreet.
If everything was sold through XStreet, then Linden Lab could enforce DMCA takedown requests exactly like everyone else. If someone is selling an infringing item and they get a complaint, then they take down the page. Simple and easy, and nobody could fault them for negligence, because it's exactly what every other website is doing.
Linden Lab takes 5% of every sale on XStreet. So if that became the sole place to purchase items, then every content creator takes a 5% hit. Or they pass that on to buyers.
I sell items both in-world and on XStreet. When XStreet was independent, I accepted the 5% fee as a part of doing business, and a reasonable surcharge for the additional exposure they gave me. When Linden Lab took over XStreet, I grumbled a bit but didn't do anything. If XStreet becomes the exclusive marketplace, though, I will have to raise my prices to compensate.
Frootcake Tournament at Events Inc
Sunday, September 13, 2009
NonsmokerGirl Tulip is running a Frootcake tournament at Events Inc (SLurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/North%20Norway/217/27/22). The event runs from Sep 16th to Sep 23rd (one week, Wednesday to Wednesday Noon SLT). The scoring is standard Frootcake tournament style: players are ranked based on the Local Customers for games played on the Event Inc tables. Prizes will be awarded as follows:
- First Place, 1250
- Second Place, 1000
- Third Place, 750
- Fourth Place, 500
Can't Stop Tournament at Confessions
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Confessions is running a Can't Stop tournament through June 18th. The Can't Stop table is just around the corner from the teleport landing (SLURL). It's a standard Local Champions tournament—the standings on the local board determine the winners at the end. I just visited and there's only a couple names up, so anyone can steal first place with just a few games right now. Each game costs $40 to play; the winners will be awarded prizes at 5PM SLT June 18.
Prizes are as follows:
- First Place $2000
- Second Place $1000
- Third Place $500
New Tournaments for Can't Stop and En Garde
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Tyr Akina and Aries Oh are running a Can't Stop Tournament on Saturday May 30th.
Sign up at the Game Parlor in Dragon Nest. There is a $50 sign-up fee to join, but the more people who enter, the bigger the prizes. Right now the winner will receive $1250. There are also prizes for Second Place ($750), Third Prize ($500), and Fourth Prize ($250).
All games played on Saturday are scored in standard Local Scoring format. At midnight Saturday/Sunday, the top 4 scores qualify for a final three games to be played on Sunday.
Nonsmokergirl Tulip and Fruitcake Altstatter are running an En Garde tournament for two weeks, from June 3rd through June 17th.
Sign up by paying $100 to the Yellow sign-up board at Paradiso Mall. This tournament runs on the World Ranking system, so you can play games on any En Garde set anywhere, as long as you've registered for the tournament. Guaranteed minimum prizes are $1500 for First, $1000 Second, $500 Third and $250 Fourth. Your tournament placing is determine by your World Ranking as of the end of the tournament.
Server Migration
Saturday, May 23, 2009
The server glitches that brought things down for three hours on Wednesday have been continuing, with short interruptions on Friday and today. So my hosting provider Linode is migrating my server to new hardware. This will hopefully take less than an hour, and then the server will be back up and more stable. I'll update this post when the migration is complete. In the meantime, be aware that any games you play will not be tracked, so they won't count towards your ranking points.
UPDATE: That went considerably faster than expected. Everything should be back up now, and hopefully more stable.
Will the Lindens shut down En Garde?
Friday, May 22, 2009
The latest pronouncement from Linden Labs is that they are going after camping chairs. People who try to artificially inflate their traffic stats by using camping chairs will be warned that they are in violation of the Terms of Service.
This is a continuation of their previous policy banning traffic bots. Traffic bots are almost universally despised as a drain on the server resources, providing no benefit to the population at large. So that move was largely applauded by the residents. Camping chairs, however, have a larger base of supporters. And this move leaves some people wondering—if camping chairs are banned today, will games like En Garde be next?
I don't deny that En Garde can be used as a traffic draw. In fact, I promote it as a key feature. I added features such as Local Scoring and Teams to give people more reasons to visit a particular site. Rez a copy of En Garde on your land, and people will have reason to stick around.
But I don't think anyone has any reason to fear that En Garde will become illegal. And that's because: It's All About Appearances. Linden Lab is concerned with the image of Second Life, above all else.
Consider, for example, the Linden Lab policy on gambling. Many people are confused by the Lindens' confusing and contradictory pronouncements on gambling in Second Life. Casinos across the grid were shut down, and games like poker and slot machines vanished. Yet other games where people can wager and win money, like Zingo, are still thriving, even though winning at Zingo takes arguably less skill than poker.
The policy becomes clear, though, when you think about appearances. How does it look to someone else—someone visiting Second Life for the first time? Everybody knows what a casino looks like. Everybody knows how a slot machine works. You can see poker games twenty-four hours a day on ESPN. "Everybody" knows that's gambling. It looks like gambling. Zingo, on the other hand, isn't well known outside Second Life. If a newbie wanders into a Zingo game, they might be puzzled over it, but nobody is going to be offended.
Now consider camping chairs, and the appearance they give to Second Life. Imagine you're a newbie. Hey, there's a space with lots of green dots! There must be a lot going on there! You teleport, and indeed there's a crowd of people. Some of them are dancing, or sweeping up the place. You greet them, "Hello! Does anyone want to chat?" but they ignore you. Nobody, in fact, seems to be talking at all. After a few more frustrated attempts, you try another crowded place, with the same results. Second Life seems to be full of avatars doing nothing, affording no chance of interacting with another person. Camping chairs make Second Life seem dull and lifeless.
En Garde, to the contrary, is a fantastic spectator sport. I often enjoy just watching people play. And of course, in order to play the game, you have to actually be at your computer. So if some new player is curious about the game, all they have to do is ask. I've had some people tell me that En Garde is the only reason that they still play Second Life. En Garde makes Second Life fun.
So, don't worry about having an En Garde game rezzed on your land. The Lindens aren't going to ban it.
Server is back up
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
The Procyon server got rebooted, and for some reason didn't come back up in a good state. So everything was down for about 3 hours. I've got everything back up and running now.
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