Ever wondered who’s the John Doe- or foobar if you prefer - of Second Life? That would be Aaron Allen if we look at the Top 10 for most popular names in Second Life.
10 Most Popular Avatar First Names
Aaron (1456 users)
Charles (1360 users)
Pablo (1102 users)
Rob (1070 users)
Ace (1019 users)
Adam (992 users)
Echo (979 users)
Craig (965 users)
Ryan (948 users)
Chad (943 users)
10 Most Popular Avatar Last Names
Allen (26669 users)
Oh (20986 users)
Beck (16536 users)
Hax (15266 users)
Aeon (14094 users)
Voom (13656 users)
Carter (12382 users)
Barbosa (11918 users)
Boa (11073 users)
Dagger (11018 users)
Strange SLast Names
And have you ever seen avies with the following strange Second Life last names? MLCAU, SkyNews, TM, Onassis, Lichtenstein, Folds? Or Google, GeekSquad, MadeVirtual, Xerox, Azure, Ware, Replay and Suicide. I’ll take a ‘Vint TM‘, a ‘Tupper Ware‘ and a ‘Coast Azure‘ alt, please? ;)
Original Second Life Name Combinations
Often I admire the creativity in the avatar’s name choice. Ever heard of for instance of Mr. Miss Coke Supply? I often meet avatars which I think of ‘now that’s a great name combination’. Sadly I must admit, I quickly forget those names again, it seems. :/ I assume there are others ‘tremendiously fun, original, …’ avatar names in Second Life. What’s the best avatar (name) you have ever met?
Gimme Lockjaw (by October Hush)
Want to see more Top 50 Avatar Statistics? Check out Obijan Technologies Statistics Page. The regions recently added is a fun one too. Upcoming - or recently adjusted - Second Life regions are for instance: Second Poland (Mature, created 2008-02-29, located 1065,1092), FIAT LATINO AMERICA (Mature, created 2008-02-27, located 958,909) and Egypt Nile Valley (Mature, created 2008-02-26, located 712,976).
Ow, and 78% of all regions in Second Life are ‘mature’. ;)
Where once the Liberty sim was, there now lays a barren, moor-like piece of virtual land: the dinosaur skeletons are gone. Is that a sad thing? Maybe. But the way they disappeared was awesome: the 575 attending avatars, spread over 4 sims, had a great time looking at meteor showers, acid rain and a huge rainbow coloured Greenie’s mothership crashing on the sim. It was an impressive show-off of what particle spam, megaprim litter and rezzers can do when they are not in griefer hands.
Feedback went from ‘Woot!’ over ‘Wow, that’s awesome’ to ‘Maybe a bit laggy’. Of course, the frame rate slowing down is something that can not (yet?) be avoided which such a large and script- and texture intensive show. Neither can you avoid that on neighbouring - full - sims. Very impressive was how a lot of avatars dressed for the occasion: some believed in taking all the necessary precautions and showed up with a helmet and gas mask, others came as dino’s that were able to escape from the sim, and most? Well, they were their colourful, beautiful, special selves. Because nothing is as much fun as sitting on a couch in the sky between a human and a rabbit whilst watching the apocalypse take place! ;)
What I enjoyed most out of the splendid show, great company and lots of things to learn? The photographing. I was a bit tired of SL snapshotting, I must admit. Being able to control everything - model, sun direction, weather, day time, pose, objects in or out it - is fun, but after a while gets boring. So it’s was pretty neat to have my cam focussed on a dino, but the snapshot failed because a meteor had to rezz right in front of the lens. For once, Second Life photography was about timing, good luck and catching the moment again. So luckily, the mother ship landing and meteor shower sequence was repeated a few times. More photographs by me of the SL Dino Destroy Event in the appropriate Flickr set.
If you have screenshotsnapshot SL photography or machinima footage or even your version of the Dino Disaster story, make sure to add it to Rezzable’s Flickr Group so everyone can enjoy it, or post a link to it here in the comments.
It is by no means and end solution, but simply (in my mind anyway) the easiest first step in what I believe should be a multi-pronged offensive strategy for securing more safeguards for IP within SL.
Nearly everyone in the fashion/builder/scripter community is aware of what’s going on in SL regarding theft. The question is how much does the average SL resident know about IP rights in SL? Are they aware theft is occurring? Do they understand the ramifications?
So the goal of this is to try to educate the larger public in SL as to what’s going on, provide information on what the consequences are for everyone and (most importantly) rally them to stand with content creators in lobbying LL for greater protection for IP rights.
What is interesting is how each ad has a rather personal approach: Mr. Serpentine - SexGen bed trial against Catteneo - stresses the fact that being a virtual thief, you do can get cought and can’t hide behind just an IP. He also warns that if things continue this way, we might in end up with having no content creators left: ‘Customers pay when content creators can’t devote time to making new products because they’re out chasing thieves or simply stop producing altogether because of theft.‘ Caliah Lyon - Muse Fine Jewelry - on the other hand asks us to not patronize the stores of thieves who rip textures, copy prims and steal intellectial property. She adds: ‘Stand with us and lobby Linden Labs for security measures that protect the I.P. rights of your favourtie builders, fashion designers and jewelry makers‘ and ends with a nice ‘please?’.
This is the first time such an campaign takes place in Second Life. Did you spot any of the other ads already? And where? Do you think this will help?
‘Sooner or later, all things come to an end’ is often said. And it’s true. Regardless how pretty something is, how much craftsmanship went into building it and regardless if it ‘wears down’ or not, you just can’t collect everything beautiful in life. Often we need to take though decisions: love it, but need to make room for something new, that is even better. Or that is a good cause, in the Dino’s case.
Rezzable will be hosting this year’s Second Life Relay for Life and is freeing up 4 sims to do so. Hence, our prehistoric treasures need to be returned to inventory. But we don’t believe in doing such things silently, and have decided to go out with a huge blast. Literally, that is. At 2PM SLT a disoriented Greenie pilot will crash the Mothership on Rezzable’s Dino sim. You may expect lots of flying rocks, lava overflow, explosions that would make any professional griefer jealous, toxic rain, panicking Greenies and dying dinosaurs.
You can watch this splendid spectacle safely from the comfort of a luxury chair on 2 Extinction! Observation Decks at neighbouring sims. Taking snapshots and filming machinima is highly encouraged. In exchange, we promise you a show like no Second Life resident has seen before!
We’ve seen those before, right? Paint-like on-line, web-based image editing applications. But never have I seen something like Phoenix before: it has layers, overlay modes, layer functions (drop shadow, blur, bevel, …), efficient gradients, different brushes, artistic filters, and so on and so on and so on … .
On top of that it saves overviews of your work stages - and of course, you can load previous ones -, you can access your files from anywhere and share them with about anyone. Share them means not just that they can look at it, but that they can actually allow other people to edit the layered file!
At the moment, Phoenix allows you to export to .jpg .png .bmp .tiff and some other file formats to your hard drive. No .tga, but .bmp will do just as well, no?
An example of a quick test drive with Phoenix:
(I was inspired by the beta invites,
which they call ‘early bird’ previews)
More examples on the Aviary website a.viary.com. Make sure to take a look at Meowza’s mechanical frog!
I have 3 beta invites for the Phoenix image editing application still available. Who wants them? Just leave a comment here with a valid e-mail address and I’ll send the invite to that address. All taken. Look into the comments for people who can get you some.
There’s a whole suite of Aviary AIR applications planned, - All of our tools are based right in your browser or as downloadable AIR applications. Our tools all communicate and relate to each other. To illustrate an example: You can import a swatch from Toucan into Phoenix, while doing complex bitmap processing of a 3D object developed in Hummingbird. Finally, you can take your finished artwork and lay it out in Owl as the DVD artwork for a music CD you and your friends put together in Roc and Myna and offer it for sale in our marketplace, Hawk. - as there are:
Penguin - Word processing software geared towards creative writers
Pigeon - Painting simulator
Tern - Terrain generator (minitool)
Horus - Font editor
Woodpecker - Smart image resizer using seam carving (minitool)
Rookery - A free, unlimited distributed file system network that anyone can connect to and store data in. It also powers our file search engine.
Hawk - Digital content marketplace
Crane - Custom image product creator
Eagle - A smart online application that can identify complex data about an image based on the pixel patterns (i.e. which specific camera an image originally came from)
In your ‘basic’ form: no prim attachments, lousy shape, ugly hair, … don’t you ever feel like a digital version of a Playmobil figure? I guess this must have been inspiring for Implenia, a Swiss bulding management company: they have build an in-world replica of a Playmobil house, and hooked the two up.
The adapted PlayMobil house is in fact part of an experimental platform to explore new ways to bridge the gap between virtual and real worlds. A range of sensors and gadgets inside the house allow it to be monitored and controlled through an exact digital replica inside the virtual world Second Life.
If the front door has been left open or a light left on in the doll’s house it will show in the virtual version. It works both ways, too. You can control the real house — for example by cranking up the thermostat — via its virtual doppelganger.
The point of this elaborate set-up is to demonstrate a new way to monitor and manage buildings from afar, says Goh, a business design executive for Swiss building management company Implenia. “We have created a virtual gateway that allows you to link real buildings to virtual worlds.”
I’m guessing that the virtual PlayMobil house is located on the Eolus sim, but not sure. Anybody knows where it’s at?
Vint: ‘Mr. Feedreader, why did you not show me this earlier, useless piece of ****?!’
Feedreader: ‘Well, euh… I did not think you would be interested. Really. You did not feed me any feed that contains this. And euhm… you have no smart feed titled music.’
Vint: ‘Lame excuse. Really, you should have somehow known this was about Second Life.’
Feedreader: ‘But, I did not even know that it existed! There was no way I could know about this.’
Vint: ‘A big mouth now?! That’s it. No updates for you for a week! Not even important ones!’
Feedreader: ‘That’s not fair! Finding good stuff is not in my job description! I only filter information you tell me to filter!’
Vint: ‘Hush! Do I still hear you?’
Feedreader: ‘New blogpost from DesignMeltdown.‘
Vint: *ctrl+alt+del*
Did I really need to make such a fuss about missing a Second Life Parody of ‘I wanna be rockstar’ by Nickelback? Yep! Why so? Well, the lyrics are awesome and the singing is way better than I could ever do. But that’s not the main reason. Ever seen Mr. Foolish in-world? Always in a neat suit, looking all brushed up and resembling a 19th century aristocrat more than a virtual worlds pioneer? Well, I knew he could do many things. Probably almost everything there is to do in Virtual Worlds & Second Life. Excellent one-person sculptie sleeping bags amongst others. But I’d never, never, ever expected him to do this:
Did I say LMPAO already? *sings ‘I’ll need a SexGen bed With every move - And enough sexballs To keep my groove - Gettin every X-cite bit That’s ever been made for me‘*
‘Using a prim replicator one could purchase a no transfer/no copy object with modify permissions (many products are set with these exact permissions), then use the replicator to produce an exact copy that would then have full permissions.‘
Warns ‘d3adlyc0d3c, ex griefer‘ over at the SL Herald in an article about a ‘prim replicator’ sold on SLexchange. Yet at the same time I’m swearing over non-modify clothing attachments - often they need some realigning to fit my body - and I wonder if that prim replicator can have noble purpose too, or that it’s invented _just_ for stealing stuff?
Over at Prim Perfect Tenshi Saffia Widdershins blogs about a stolen (or at least ’seriously based upon beyond what’s permittable) piano and sheet music. And articles on the fashion blogs about ripped/stolen skins and clothes are ‘daily news’ by now. Protest arrise, sometimes the shop owners take the content down, more often they do not. Abuse Reporting does not seem to do the trick either, and not all AR’s - especially if you do not have enough of those, you need to mobilise your friends? - are followed upon.
So, I can’t help but wonder:
Is ‘theft’ in Second Life in the lift and happening more frequent as more and more content is out on the grid and getting an overview is more difficult? Or was it always there, but did Residents only recent became aware of it and started to protest: on the blogs and to Linden Lab to no avail?
One year ago, in ‘OpenGL, Copying and Stealing’, Cory Linden said the following:
One example is the concept of first use. Linden Lab is currently making changes to make it easier to determine who originally created an asset and its creation date. While much of this data currently exists, it isn’t displayed in the UI. By exposing this data, it will be much easier for residents in a conflict to be able to clearly determine which texture or object was created first, simplifying conflict resolution for all parties involved.
Another option – which we aren’t working on yet – would be to offer either a registration or seal program for creators who are willing to provide additional identifying information and who are committed to not infringing on other residents’ content. If the finder makes it easy to search for content and locations that participate in this program, then economic and social pressures combine to reward creators who respect copyright and punish those who don’t.
Yet another idea – again, we’re not working on this yet, just talking about it – would be to make copying of all content within SL trivially easy, but to track appropriate metadata about who’s copied the content and where it has been reused. Maybe even make that data publicly searchable. By making the act of copying easy, the incentives to go around or hack the system are greatly reduced and the community is better able to recognize and respect the wishes of creators. Plus, it would be much easier to implement important concepts like “undo�? which are incredibly complicated or impossible when trying to preserve uniqueness.
Even more early, November 13th, Robin Linden and her Lindens suggested some partial solutions. Not to prevent theft - ‘copying is not theft’, they say: ‘Ideally we’ll build ways that you can better identify your work as your own so that copying it is not profitable. For example, here are some ideas that we’re pursuing to help you prove your ownership of an idea or object’. As there are:
You may have heard us talk about “first use metadata”, that is a time stamp that is attached to your creations, including uploaded textures, that shows first use. First use is an important part of being able to claim copyright ownership. This work is started, and we are committed to completing it quickly.
We could work to reduce how much avatar/clothing data is downloaded, so that a copy can be made of the baked texture and shape but not the pieces. We’re interested in your thoughts on that option.
We can reduce incentives to copying content within the system, by preserving the creator attribution such as with creative commons licensing.
We could create hover text which would act like a garment label does, exposing both the first use metadata and also a brand name, reducing the incentive to copy by making it obvious that copying is occurring. If your work is “signed”, and clearly you developed it first, then the person who purchases the copy is not unlike the person who buys the fake Rolex off the back of a truck. Plus the signature becomes a recognizable asset and could be coupled with a landmark as a form of advertising.
678 Responses to “Copyrights and Content Creation in Second Life” that blogpost got before it closed. Proving this has been a hot issue for over two years now. In the mean time, Linden did not do much. Yes, I know, with any protection mechanism comes the downside that we lose freedom of what we can do with what we own. Ideal, we would have a Brave New Virtual World were nobody would even consider using someone’s else content without permission to make money. But it is not. It’s far from.
I don’t really have a solution for this, not a fool proof adequate one, though, but I would love to think in the direction of the ‘CC license’ direction. Let’s assume one can set a prim that way, that it can be sold, but only by the owner? Or we can tell a prim, that it can be sold, but only by the owner and the 1st buyer? What if we can tell a prim, that it lies in it’s nature that regardless of which object it’s part off, it will render itself useless, thus disappear, if the object were to be sold (again)? Probably that can be bypassed again, by duplicating the prim exactly. Can there be made a ‘prim will never run scripts except if the script is created by the original creator’ property? But won’t that make turning a nice collar into a decent AO and overall tool useless?
I think it’s hard - if not impossible - to find a solution to this within the content itself. Each and every solution would take away to much of our creating, sharing and economical freedom BUT that does not mean there is not a ‘human’ solution to this. What if Linden Lab finds a way to adequately handle AR’s involving ‘theft’? What if content using for malicious purposes is not only removed from the grid but also from the infrigning avatar’s inventories? What if there comes a decent punishment for publishing stolen content? Maybe indeed, ask verification by credit card for all avatars and just ban those credit cards, not the avies? Linden would need to put more Lindens on the job, to verify complaints - especially if they are not exact copies, like the piano - but at least they would not force their creators to look for other, more ’safe’ markets and worlds for their content. Because, honestly, except for a few, who’s going to take a theft/IP infrigning on a 1000L$ skin to court, as the costs would be higher than the earnings ever possible on the skin.
In addition, Chez Nabob is setting up an intellectual property rights awareness campaign which will launch towards the end of this week with a series of about seven ads featuring several of SL’s most well-known content creators. The object is to try to educate as many residents as possible about the issues, costs and consequences of content theft and IP rights violations.
Probably not the end solution, but a noble initiative. I just hope they don’t think they can ’sensibilisate’ the thiefs. But maybe some of their customers?
Maybe this is just me getting old. Or maybe this is just what was bound to happen. But sometimes it feels like Second Life is become as much a ‘rat race’ as First Life:
Write up blogposts if you find something new and interesting. Find something new and interesting you’re sure the others will be interested in too. Get things done - in time. *hides from Sho* Talk to people who are insulted if you do not IM ‘hi’ to them for two days. Have no time left to people that are interesting and inspiring and that you have not talked to for weeks. Drop & refuse interesting projects because you run out of time. Postpone kick-ass projects because you can not get hold on the right people. Reply to all IM’s. Reply to all e-mail. Reply to all Flickr mail. Keep your inventory sorted. Change outfit once a week. Remember where you had written down that ***** password again.
For others this might be even more complicated, almost all of the above and then add to it:
Need to keep scripts working, product updates released. Paying shop rentals and figuring out which shops to ditch, and were to find great new ones. Keeping up with all the latest SL improvements (and down-provements). Managing staff, which probably also suffer from all of the above. Finding staff. Developing new product, ideas, textures, … . etc, etc, etc
And it gets even more chaotic when First Life mixes in. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining: either it’s our Virtual Brave New World that changes or else I have definitely sought this myself. Just having a little bit of problems adjusting to all this, and sometimes I even long for my dancing pole over at the Paradise Lost. Things were simple back then: just 5 dance animations to choose from.
Anyway, that’s as far as the explanation with my second entry for the Koinup ‘Exoctic’ Contest goes. ;) The photograph is taken inside something that said ‘help power the grid’.
Sunday was Second Life Blogmeet hosted by GoSpeed Racer-day and this meeting up at Sailor’s Cove was - as the lady says -, a success. I ended up staying waaay longer than I planned, IM’ing with people I talk not enough to on ‘regular’ days, getting to know new blogger’s, and doing all kind of crazy stuff.
Most in-theme Blogger and Flickerite was probably Mylena Aquitaine, who with the catfish-look took ‘nautical’ to a whole new level. She stood and danced bravely: defeating lag and ignoring all sushi-remarks. Alhough I have just meagre building skills, the lady deserved a decent fish tank, I thought. And in the end, well, she makes the whole bowl look good. ;) Runner up was probably our own personal mermaid that Veyron became for the occasion. A close match with Mr. Fugazi’s penguin.
New bloggers? Yes, as always people I did not meet in SL - or not even read about - showed up. Amongst others:
Miss Pia Qi from the ‘Silks Caravanserai‘. No need to say, it’s all - or a lot - about lovely Silks?
And then there were also the ‘old SL bloggers fossiles’ present: Miss Zoe Connolly, Her Red Hawtness Codie, the lovely Lillie Yifu, Mr Wrath Paine, … . Noticeably missing from this Second Life Blogmeet were Miss Myg and Mister Alex. They claim illness as an excuse.
And we did not even go home empty handed: during the late hours, Mister Crap Mariner gave out clockworks and wind-up’s for all who favoured one. Yeey! I now feel fully automated and even more cute! ;) And Mr. Popinjay took me a lovely photograph. I look like one of the though, film noir girls here, no?
Where once the Liberty sim was, there now lays a barren, moor-like piece of virtual land: the dinosaur skeletons are gone. Is that a sad thing? Maybe. But the way they disappeared was awesome: the 575 attending avatars, spread over 4 sims, had a great time looking at meteor showers, acid rain and a huge rainbow coloured Greenie’s mothership crashing on the sim. It was an impressive show-off of what particle spam, megaprim litter and rezzers can do when they are not in griefer hands.
Feedback went from ‘Woot!’ over ‘Wow, that’s awesome’ to ‘Maybe a bit laggy’. Of course, the frame rate slowing down is something that can not (yet?) be avoided which such a large and script- and texture intensive show. Neither can you avoid that on neighbouring - full - sims. Very impressive was how a lot of avatars dressed for the occasion: some believed in taking all the necessary precautions and showed up with a helmet and gas mask, others came as dino’s that were able to escape from the sim, and most? Well, they were their colourful, beautiful, special selves. Because nothing is as much fun as sitting on a couch in the sky between a human and a rabbit whilst watching the apocalypse take place! ;)
What I enjoyed most out of the splendid show, great company and lots of things to learn? The photographing. I was a bit tired of SL snapshotting, I must admit. Being able to control everything - model, sun direction, weather, day time, pose, objects in or out it - is fun, but after a while gets boring. So it’s was pretty neat to have my cam focussed on a dino, but the snapshot failed because a meteor had to rezz right in front of the lens. For once, Second Life photography was about timing, good luck and catching the moment again. So luckily, the mother ship landing and meteor shower sequence was repeated a few times. More photographs by me of the SL Dino Destroy Event in the appropriate Flickr set.
‘Content theft steals the clothes of our backs‘ is the main message of this ‘content theft awareness ad campaign together with an occasional ‘Be proud of the skin you’re in… unless it’s stolen.‘ As mentioned in the post where I wonder if content virtual, yet real, thievery is in the lift, or Second Life Residents are just more conscious of it, this ‘awareness campaign’ was organised by Chez Nabob:
What is interesting is how each ad has a rather personal approach: Mr. Serpentine - SexGen bed trial against Catteneo - stresses the fact that being a virtual thief, you do can get cought and can’t hide behind just an IP. He also warns that if things continue this way, we might in end up with having no content creators left: ‘Customers pay when content creators can’t devote time to making new products because they’re out chasing thieves or simply stop producing altogether because of theft.‘ Caliah Lyon - Muse Fine Jewelry - on the other hand asks us to not patronize the stores of thieves who rip textures, copy prims and steal intellectial property. She adds: ‘Stand with us and lobby Linden Labs for security measures that protect the I.P. rights of your favourtie builders, fashion designers and jewelry makers‘ and ends with a nice ‘please?’.
‘Sooner or later, all things come to an end’ is often said. And it’s true. Regardless how pretty something is, how much craftsmanship went into building it and regardless if it ‘wears down’ or not, you just can’t collect everything beautiful in life. Often we need to take though decisions: love it, but need to make room for something new, that is even better. Or that is a good cause, in the Dino’s case.
Rezzable will be hosting this year’s Second Life Relay for Life and is freeing up 4 sims to do so. Hence, our prehistoric treasures need to be returned to inventory. But we don’t believe in doing such things silently, and have decided to go out with a huge blast. Literally, that is. At 2PM SLT a disoriented Greenie pilot will crash the Mothership on Rezzable’s Dino sim. You may expect lots of flying rocks, lava overflow, explosions that would make any professional griefer jealous, toxic rain, panicking Greenies and dying dinosaurs. 
You can watch this splendid spectacle safely from the comfort of a luxury chair on 2 Extinction! Observation Decks at neighbouring sims. Taking snapshots and filming machinima is highly encouraged. In exchange, we promise you a show like no Second Life resident has seen before!
We’ve seen those before, right? Paint-like on-line, web-based image editing applications. But never have I seen something like Phoenix before: it has layers, overlay modes, layer functions (drop shadow, blur, bevel, …), efficient gradients, different brushes, artistic filters, and so on and so on and so on … .
Sunday was Second Life Blogmeet hosted by GoSpeed Racer-day and this meeting up at Sailor’s Cove was - as the lady says -, a success. I ended up staying waaay longer than I planned, IM’ing with people I talk not enough to on ‘regular’ days, getting to know new blogger’s, and doing all kind of crazy stuff.
And then there were also the ‘old SL bloggers fossiles’ present: Miss Zoe Connolly, Her Red Hawtness Codie, the lovely Lillie Yifu, Mr Wrath Paine, … . Noticeably missing from this Second Life Blogmeet were Miss Myg and Mister Alex. They claim illness as an excuse.
