Remember remember the fifth of November

Gunpowder, treason and plot.

I see no reason why gunpowder, treason

Should ever be forgot…

I don’t know if 1605 conspiracy to kill King James I of England and some members of aristocracy has anything to do with this and if there will be any gunpowder barrels and fires on Linden’s sims, but the call is here and we should talk about content theft before we start the particle scripts.

While I wholehartedly support the action and the idea behind it, I’d like to chit-chat a bit about it with you.What always bugs me when content creators ask Lindens to protect the rights of the creators is how to effectively do it. First thing that comes to mind in the digital realm is to protect the data by tech means. But if I knew a way to protect digital data from copying and not to cripple it in the process, I would be hellishly rich by now. Many people are banging their heads about the case, and it doesn’t give much results. Actually, Second Life™ is one of the safer places to publish your digital stuff. Just compare it to good ol’ web where you have no protection at all. But, it’s far from good and satisfying.

Other way of protection, one that is usually applied, is protection by the law, which is how modern societies are supposed to work. But there is just one slight problem. It doesn’t work. Not in the publishing and media industries, let alone in the second life. While the big corporations can sue somebody’s ass for unauthorized duplication of digital material, that won’t be so easy in our world. Not only that the copyright laws are made to protect the monopoly of big corporations and not the artists and creators, but also because, in the case of big corporations, there is a huge amount of money involved. Even if you are big in second life, you are still working for L$ peanuts that hardly covers lawyers fee.

Sure, one can say that amounts of money in SL are not big anyway so the loses of creators, and profits of the thieves are not big either, so the whole case is not worth the fuss. But that’s not true. Loses of the creators are big. Maybe they are not big in terms of real currency but count the time invested in the process of making things, count the expenses. Last but not the least, count the right to get compensation for own work and creativity, no matter if that compensation is small or big. Other thing is, thieves do make a considerable amounts, especially if you consider the effort invested. Yes, they steal things that, in real currency scope, doesn’t cost much. They sell it for even less. But they steal large amounts of items from all over the grid and they sell it many times. Small price * many sales * many items = considerable profit. And then, that kind of behaviour seriously damages the economy of the grid. It’s not just creator’s loss. In the long run, it’s yours and mine as well.

One of the ways of fighting the content theft menace is educating the customers. It has been done before. Creators appealed to all of us not to buy stolen things. And it seams that kind of action gave some results. But there are two problems. First, you can’t get everybody in. I will join the cause, and as I know that buying stolen goods is wrong and even damaging to all of us, I won’t buy from the thieves. I guess you won’t as well. But you and me are the minority here. Because, there is a huge amount of people that are just quickly passing through second life, most of them came just recently. They don’t know about the content theft, nor about the bad things that happen because of it. Nor they would care if they know. They just came, they are short on money and they don’t know if they are going to stay. It’s just a game, after all. They will more likely beg for money and bitch about the freebies than to support creator’s rights. And then, even you and me and people who do care, do we always know if the item we’re buying is from the vendor of the real creator? I don’t think so. We avoid bad looking malls with full permission things sold too cheap, but there is no way to know if something we bought is an original.

SO, I’d like to hear from you. Is there some way I missed and that would end all this, bring some order and make both creators and shoppers happy?

She lived in her castle, somewhere at the mainland, with her girls, let’s say there was three of them. They were her slaves, lovers and friends. They were her only friends. As much as I gathered, the castle was secluded, maybe even hidden in the sky, and protected from entering. She cut herself off from the rest of the grid. She was leaving the place very rarely. Every now and then she had to go out to renew her clothes, probably get presents for the girls and maybe some furniture, but even then the sight of the rest of the grid was too harsh on her eyes.

I guess that many of you now show the exact amount of misunderstanding that I had at that moment. I was one year old, avatar at her peak. Grid was huge and colorful. All over the place there were people sparkling with ideas. Windlight sky was smiling at us. Life was an adventure. It just wasn’t right to sit home, somewhere in some dungeon, be it even most beautiful dungeon, with only three friends, be it the best lovers in the world. It just wasn’t right. But now I know better.

It’s inevitable, at one moment each of us gets that "seen it all" feeling. Older we get there is more and more empty sims, less and less places captures our attention let alone the imagination. Less and less friends we have. Avatars don’t die but they do go back to databases to never come back. We don’t have much nerves to talk to dozens of people to discover one that is worth another conversation. Our favourite club got closed. And that’s the fifth time that the favourite place has to be deleted from the picks. We have inventories with 30K or 50K items and no new pair of shoes can tickle the heart.

So, why doesn’t she doesn’t leave, you ask? Why doesn’t she join her late friends in the databases? Because she can’t. And that’s the hard part. Nevermind her lifestyle and fashion, she is a vampire. She is doomed to live. She loves her girls. And she loves second life, though there is not much left of it for her. But she loves the feeling of being on the grid. And she loves herself, I guess. We fall in love in our own avatars, that’s the essence of this world. So there she is, logging not so often as she used to, but more than she need to. Waiting to see how the story ends. If it ever ends.

So there I am now, three years old in this world of imagination and illusions. Naked, holding an umbrella, falling from the sky, as the tradition says I should do on my rezzday. That symbolism never fails. Sometimes it’s about the unknown that you jump into. Sometimes it’s the nakedness and the feeling that you exposed yourself to the end. Sometimes it’s the emptiness of the vast space around you. Let’s see what comes in the next year.

And now, even before I say the spooky word ‘copybot’, I hear some of you screaming about stealing and theft and copyrights and about the world crumbling down into hell.

And some of those screams and concerns are understandable although, IMHO, exaggerated. Yes, it is possible to use BuilderBot to steal someone’s work. But, how likely is that that is going to happen? We are talking about the whole sims here. And copying the whole sim is not the same as stealing a skin or hair here and there. You know, sims are pretty big. Hardly that copying the entire sim will go unnoticed and that there will be any doubt about the copyright infringement when the case comes to Lindens or the court of law.

On the other side, we get the great backup tool for free. And if you ever did some significant building, you know how desperately needed that tool might be. Not to mention the possibility of making the whole region on local sim (installed on your own computer and working off-line) then uploading it to the grid of your choice.

It’s the building tool against the stealing tool case. But it’s not up to the software developers to do the job of lawyers. And lawyers should not interfere in the job of software developers. You know that a knife, a simple kitchen knife can be used to kill somebody. That happens quite often. But that doesn’t mean that knife shouldn’t have been invented nor that we should stop using them for good purposes. If and when it is used for murder, there is law to deal with the case.

But let’s leave the knives and talk a bit more about digital tools. You know, digital stuff is terribly easy to be copied, multiplied and distributed around. It’s not only second life stuff, it’s text, music, movies… everything. And our society is spending enormous amounts of money to get some control over the process. Most of the time, those efforts are fruitless attempts made in the completely wrong direction. Instead of software protections that get broken the day after they are released, we need better system that will cover both creators and the consumers. So far, if one wants to be 100% sure that their item won’t be copied, they should make them of wood or stone, not bits and pixels.

So we don’t need the anger against the tool, we need better system to protect our intellectual rights. Or you disagree?

Lately people got a bit sensitive about lag, so (some of them) try not to wear attachments made of hundreds of prims and all the HUD gadgets they have. Some got a bit oversensitive so they bitch around to anybody that have ARC in yellow of god forbid in red. While some of the things we wear really add to the lag, some are just pure myth. You might want to check Rika Watanabe’s article about lag, but there is something else I want to talk with you here.Let’s say you’re an responsible avatar that doesn’t want to torture yourself and the others, so before you go to the busy event, you strip all the unnecessary things from your outfit. You wear your simplest hair, find some nice clothes that is made of nice textures on system mesh and no prims. You forget about jewelry, you might even go barefoot. Actually, that is almost expected from you.

If you have managed to teleport to this year’s Hair Fair, you probably saw vendors near each of the rezzing points that offer you basic clothes that cause minimum lag. Which was a nice idea. Or not?

Sure, it will make your walking a bit easier. But there is the other side of the coin. As Annyka Bekkers said:

expecting hair shoppers to go *bald* to hairfair is about as realistic as holding an AA meeting at a tavern

If you’ve ever attended a fashion show, in any of the worlds, you know that it’s not only about the fashion on the catwalk. It’s the audience as well. And while one might say it’s all vanity and that you came to see the things not to show yourself, it’s not that easy.

When we want just to see the things we use web, not second life. Point of second life is to be present, and that means to rezz the avatar. And avatar has an identity that is, beside the other things, presented by its look. So what’s the point if we all go there dressed in the same textures? Being somewhere as yourself is not a matter of vanity as much of the proper use of the medium. In that case we could watch the machinima as well and see how the new hair styles look like. But most of us escaped here from the world of television and passive looking. We wanted to be present, we wanted to interact. We also wanted to be ourselves, not just a generic avatars. And "being as yourself" doesn’t mean just having the name tag above the head.

So one is facing the challenging job these days. Since it is not comfortable nor well mannered to go to the busy places with too heavy outfits, it’s advisable to have an outfit for laggy places ready. Short hair, primless clothes made of good textures. Take it as a challenge, to look good and to look like you but with simple and resources-light stuff. Sure, it would do a great deal if fashion bloggers would pick up the idea and teach the young generation that it doesn’t take hundreds of prims to look good and stylish. And that each occasion has appropriate way of dressing.

Oh and yes, that DCS’ should be detached and MystiTool put to sleep. Thanks.

OK, no problem. Let’s take it step by step.

First, open the inventory, switch to "Recent Items" tab.

Then, open the filters subwindow. It’s in the File menu of the inventory window.

Here you can choose which type of objects will show. it works for both "All Items" and "Recent" tabs, but we need the later now. Spot the field that says "Hours Ago" and "Days Ago", right above the "Close" button.

Click it to increase the value until your shopping pray appears. That’s it. ;)

There are two main reasons why circle-shaped, divided in segments menu is much better than the linear one.

As you know, one can change the menu item’s text via script. That is, you can make your object to have "Eat" instead of "Sit" as the upper left item and "Choose food" instead of "Touch" in the upper item. Everybody older than a week knows the mechanic of the world and knows that "Sit" doesn’t always mean sitting. Most of the times it means teleporting. We all know what to expect from the combination of the menu text and its position. And we all know whether we want to touch or sit on the object, no matter how those functions are named and what they will actually do. But now, with the changed menu, we’ll have to think what’s the name of the function that triggers what we want to do and to search for it between all the options. Related to this is the other problem. Not quite intuitive, right?

With pie menu, you don’t have to search for things. It’s just a slight move of the mouse away. And that slight move has a distinctive direction. Not "n items down" move, but left, right, upper-left… you get the point. When you search the item in the linear menu, you actually have to read. In pie menu, you do it instinctively. It might seem like insignificant difference, but those insignificant things that bypass the reading and make things accessible unconsciously  are what makes great interfaces.

There are couple of things to say about the content of the new menu as well. One of the things that were weird in the old one (and that will stay in the next generation) is the "Appearance" option. That is not meant for simple appearance interventions like changing your clothes, it opens the tools for creating and changing your shape and creating new clothes and skins. Yes, you know that, but you wouldn’t believe me if I tell you how many new residents have problems with this. How often we do that? Even the creators. Not often enough to have it right under the fingers. But, if there is an available spot (though I’m sure it can be used better, let it be. But why then "Edit", which is not creator’s tool only, and which is everyday thing, will be completely removed from the new menu? It simply doesn’t make sense.

So, while the new interface is still in the Linden’s workshop and, hopefully, might be changed, please say your concerns and give more arguments, either here or on JIRA. And of course, vote! Thanks.

OK, those shoes are really looking good. But feetlight! I still can’t believe.

I really don’t understand why anybody would want to put a light on own feet. And have in mind that I’m one of those that are very favourable of feet and toes. Yeah, we all have our little fetishes. And mine is now supposed to have it’s own source of light. Only problem is, that source of light is one of the six available and something will have to be turned off because of that. I hope you already know what am I talking about. If not, please, please! read how having too many facelights is damaging your second life experience. And while there is some reason to have ONE! facelight, to get rid of those ugly shadows that exist due to low number of polygons of our faces, there are no such shadows on the feet. So only reason to get something like feetlight is vanity. Or stupidity. Or both.

And even if you like your feet that much that you want them extra lighted, why having that light on open shoes without sculpty toes? This is not 2006. But hey, it’s cool to have a new feature and to shine in the dark, right?

What really bothers me here is the creator’s point of view. With resident’s proven vanity and need to be trendy, sales should go well. Though that pair of shoes should go well even without stupid addon like that. But shouldn’t creators improve our experience? I don’t expect every resident to know that each attachment with light kills one light in the building around thus ruining the view, but creators should know that. And this is not the only case where one product actually ruins the experience of the customer. Just think about all the resizing and color changing scripts that never close and sunglasses with radars and what not. Since when sunglasses are supposed to lag you and shoes to make your environment dark? Should designers think beyond how their product will look on the poster and how it will really feel and make us happy? Am I asking for too much?

Yes, the main grid is reserved for people older than 18, but that doesn’t make the whole world adult. And yes, that is good. Frankly, when I heard that for the first time I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t. There are so many things in second life that are perfectly acceptable no matter how old are you and whichever your stance towards sex and violence is. Otherwise you would never hear a story about SL avatar being dressed up by her young daughter. Nor you would enjoy amazing builds, exhibitions, learning events… You wouldn’t even be able to go to a cafe for a cup of nice harmless gossiping. And if you can’t imagine the world like that, go to Red Light Center and see if that’s the world you want to live in. What makes second life so great is the opportunity to play Mario Bros AND to have sex on the pool table AND to choose which of those (or both) you will do tonight (many thanks and kisses to Isle Lunasea and Raven Haalan for the pic). But not only that PG content is good on its own, it’s a significant part of our cybersex lives. 

I already wrote why sex content in second life is not just porn. Not only that there are many other things to do in-world beside cybersex stuff, but cybersex gets a completely new dimension thanks to all the "side" activities. If you have ever encountered an avatar that is here just for cybersex and nothing else, you know what I mean. And whether we engage in "adult" activities or not, second life is also a place where we make friends, create, learn and experience many other things, things that are not reserved for the adults nor for those who are fond of exchanging sexual fantasies in the virtual world. Negating that is the same type of violence as it would be to negate the existence of the adult content.

Other thing that’s been talked about is the percent of content that counts as adult. It probably started by Linden Lab’s estimation of 5% which caused lots of laughs in certain circles. And it caused counter-estimations going as high as 85%. But both numbers are pointless. How can we say how much adult content there is when nobody don’t know what "adult" is? Both numbers are just silly figures. My guess is that Lindens fired that up to fight against the mainstream media stories of Second Life as 3D porn world. Why, for the grid’s sake, some people have the urge to counter that? Like that saying that 85% of second life is related to sex would make it better. It won’t. It only might attract more noob-looking freaks with prim genitals and bad spelling and cut the amount of the other content in the future. We should know better than that. Or maybe the urge for drama is stronger than common sense and common interest?

And that urge is impressively strong in this case. We hear calls for protests, ranting all over the blogosphere, swears and insults… like Lindens personaly want to get rid of everything adult and take a candy from us. Which is far from truth. Think for a second and you’ll see that Linden Lab has no interest in shoting down one of the strongest industries of the world. And if you’ve ever talked with any of them you know they are far from puritan freaks. So stop whining and behave like an adult. Second life will keep it’s naughty content, and it will keep its PG side as well. And that’s for the best of the both, if it makes any sense to talk about two sides. After all, it’s just one world with huge diversity as it’s best feature. Please keep it that way.

But in the aftermath, it seems that everybody is pissed about them.

Well, not everybody. Noobs are getting their free stuff and look less bad. And that’s it. The other two groups, customers and creators, are fighting the war over the freebies.

I must admit I’m having hard time writing this. I’m trying to put down what’s happening and it simply makes no sense. Designers are giving some of their stuff for free. You enter the shop and there’s a pile of boxes that you simply can take. Usually, there’s a huge sign over the pile saying they are for free. And even more often, the freebies are advertised in the shop’s description. But, creators themselves are saying they are ruining their business: 

It’s unsustainable for business owners if there are thousands of high quality freebies on the grid, as it leads to a culture where a large number of users refuse to buy anything and live off freebies.

If you read comments on that post and many other blogs that deal with the freebies, you’ll see that many creators passionately hate freebies, even if they have them in their own stores. They expect increased sales if they put freebies in the store, but they don’t get as rich as expected. It probably works for some and not for the other, but that’s the trick of marketing in the meatspace too. Some things work for some and fail for the others. But if it doesn’t work for you, just delete those boxes and go with something else. Don’t whine around about customers that picked your promo stuff and haven’t bought anything else. Sure, some creators expect that nobody else give freebies around because that lowers everybody’s sales, especially those whose priced products are inferior to somebody’s freebies. But that’s too childish to discuss about, right?

There is also the other side, the customers, and when you see the logic of some of them, you start understanding some of the designers’ protests like the most recent call for ban of the freebies. While most of us see a freebie as a gift and promo stuff, others see it as something that is mandatory for every creator and expect it when they come to the store. Which is also childish. If somebody spends their time using skills and talent to make something, they have the right to give it or to sell it as they see fit…. and I feel extremely silly having to write obvious things like this. But apparently, it’s not that obvious as it seems. And it doesn’t end in being childish. It goes further to being rude and sending IM’s with insults to the creator because they are not giving anything for free. It’s amazing what some people allow to themselves.

So, it’s not about freebies, it’s about people. While on both sides there are some who are enjoying the free stuff around and benefit from it, there are some whose ideas and manners are more suitable for a cave than for a virtual world. On both sides as well. And there’s not much we can do about it.

But still, there is an appeal that creators, at least temporarily, stop giving free things around. Will that help? No, not at all. First, not everybody will join the action. No matter how hard you try you can’t reach the entire creating community, let alone persuade it to join the action. Second, rude consumers won’t get the message. They are the last to get any message. What to do instead?

Well… maybe spreading the word will have some effect. Remember the panels explaining about stolen skins? Those never solved the problem, but they did a huge job nevertheless. Also, you might want to have a handy notecard as a response to those that send you rude IM’s and request your stuff for free. This won’t solve much as well, but this is not a short-term thing. Culture is never built in a day. 

Which is reasonable, after all. Linden lab has no direct interest in you giving your data to Aristotle. But they are interested in you pulling out your credit card. That’s the first step for you to buy some L$ which makes the Linden biz running. We all know that, we all enjoy that. Only problem is that they don’t scream that verification-via-payment-info loud enough. Nobody needs more drama than we have already.

One thing that is striking me is that so many residents feels like Lindens are working against them. Which I might find understandable. There were some bad and not so tactful moves in the past. But in this case… it’s not about Lindens. They want all this less than we do. It cost them money and makes them additional work. But they have to do it. Sure they don’t want to be sued. Nor do we. But there are some freaks in this world that don’t find nakedness natural and never find sex beautiful and divine. And those poor sick bastards will use any force of law to ruin other people’s fun if they can’t have some themselves. So please, know your enemy.

The biggest problem about all this will be the definition of what "adult" is. Sure, sims aimed for explicit sexual role-play, Xcite! stores and similar are the easy case. They will be on the new continent and flagged as adult. And they will be free from prudes and "ur hawt, let’s sex" noobs. They’ll most probably profit from that because of the targeted surroundings. It will be bad for creators and resellers of low-quality content, as the competition will be in the walking distance. But I can’t shed a tear for the bankruptcy of resellers of freebie cocks. But what will happen with "gray areas"?

One thing that is mentioned in Linden’s F.A.Q. as adult is photorealistic nudity? What everybody is interested in is whether that includes skins? It would be simply dumb to have all the skin stores on Pornsylvania. That would completely counter the idea of having designated adult area, right? Solution might be to blur or cover some bits of skin photos on the vendors, but does anybody buys the skin without checking those bits? I doubt. And hopefully Lindens know that too.

One more question that is often heard is how nudity in own home will be treated? Will people will be allowed to be naked in their own homes or have erotic art hanging on their walls? Will having sex on own bed in own home will be considered abuse of the ToS? I don’t know. Probably nobody knows. But, if somebody fills abuse report against me because of that, be sure I’ll do the same because of breaking my privacy. And I want you to do the same. Sorting the content geographicaly is one thing, peeking through the curtains to enforce one’s ideas over the whole world is another. I love my world to be free.