SLART might survive the war. They filed the trademark way before “SL” was filed by Linden Research, Inc. (check the USPTO). They even got the trademark granted to them before LL got a permission to use “SL”. And LL did not file an opposition to SLART. So they are, very likely, safe from lawsuits.

Of course, nothing prevents Linden Lab from banning any and all avatars that use “SLART” somewhere, either in SL, or on a blog, or on a piece of paper. They can ban anyone not in compliance with their ToS. If they ban everybody using “SLART”, the problem solves itself — without LL needing to go through a lawsuit. (The SLART people would have to fight back, suing LL in order to get their avatars back).

It’s against this possible “threat to ban” without going through a lawsuit that we’re mostly angry about. The ToS gives LL too much power. It effectively allows LL to curb freedom of expression if they dislike it, and do so without appeal nor recourse. They’re not required to give your avatar access to SL, even you’re a paying customer. Bragg, no matter how illegitimate his trick of hacking LL’s auctio system was, required to file a suit against LL to get his avatar, his money, and (part) of his land back. This took months. Most people won’t care — if they get banned, they won’t fight back in court.

LL knows that very well.

Also, how many people need to be banned? 10 thousand or 15 thousand? Well, that’s just one day of new registrations. LL can safely do that without affecting the continued growth of SL…

And what about comments. Should we now state that we’re not responsible for opinions of pepole who comment and if they forget to put TM after the SL?

Dandellion, I don’t think that’s an excuse. We could fix our blogs that if they forget, the blog inserts it for them. Of course, then we should teach the blog when to insert it (My Second Life® vs. a Second Life avatar) and I’m not sure if my blog is _that_ smart. ;)

As for the SLBloggers logo:

• The logo itself is imho safe. It’s clearly a RSSsymbol-in-hand-holding-a-pen and not an eye-in-hand®. It’s clearly a parody too. (imho. I kept that in mind when making it.)
• As for the terminology ‘SLbloggers’, well, how do you like ‘Bloggers of SL™’? No? We are not selling anything dubious, I think the colour orange is far enough from the green that is associated with Second Life, so they must have way to much lawyers out of work before they come harassing us? If they ever do so, I will follow Miss Rheta’s example though, and change all reference to Second Life to Multiverse and SL to WoW. Luckily WoW photography doesn’t sound _that_ bad. ;)

Not that you have to worry overmuch about this. The one thing, after fuller examination, I may do is change the SL logo to the inSL logo on my own blog. Anything else, first they’ll have to serve me with a compliance letter; and I do doubt that they’re gonna hire a bunch of legal associates to go surfing through Technorati et al. to track down every single SLog and force compliance or cease-and-desist.

(Did you know you were a SLogger? Well, I guess it’s better than a slack– [WHACK!].)