I’m honestly not sure how to react myself. I mean, my blog has been called “Sio’s Second Life” since 2004, and even linked to by LL occasionally. I guess it comes under the umbrella of prior-art, but not being a lawyer, I don’t know for sure.

I suppose I’ll end up renaming it and just not blogging about their laggy little world any more.

Isn’t this a ham fisted attempt to curb the use of “SL-blah” type names for things that may damage or dilute their overall brand.

Similar to Apple trying to restrict people making products with the name blah-pod etc?

I have read about bloggers worried about past content. I would also think that older posts (or photos that have the logo takien in it) with the fact that these are “time stamped” before this change took place would also be fine. You can’t really go back and rewrite history everytime someone changes something to a company. This would more relate to “Headers” and “Footers” on a website that are part of the main design or for advertising.

Basically, as long as you are not making money off of their name, their lawyers won’t come after you and you won’t need to worry to much about it.

With a possible blog strike approaching I’ll start casting my eye to other platforms so I’ve got something to think about during the big freeze…geez, sure hope I don’t STAY in one of them.

The Name Who Must Be Obeyed really doesn’t get it. Interesting, I made an aside comment on the 3DVIA Shape application for 3D modeling in my follow-up posts on this topic, and someone from the company jumped onto the blog and asked id I wanted to discuss ideas on how they could improve it for better integration with VW platforms. When was the last time a Linden did the same?

They have a right to protect their trademarks. They’re like seals of approval, and that has value. But when they’re sealing approval on something which is gaining less and less approval, they might be sealing their own doom. What galls me is how they’ve managed YET AGAIN to mismanage communication. I keep dreaming that they’ll properly set-up a proper developer’s relationship program of some sort, but they can’t even keep their current constituency properly informed and engaged let alone sketch out plans, schedules, and excite potential content partners and developers.

Philip must be chanting in a corner somewhere about the great nirvana ahead and trying to duck into the broom closet when the lawyers and venture guys stalk the hall, because someone isn’t managing decisions that are far more global that offering a useless logo to the masses (who the heck in meat space is going to know what “inSL” stands for anyways? May be fine for in world, but even on that front it’s a couple of letters being burped out of a broken prim, so not only is the whole thing poorly managed but the new logo is awful to boot).

OK…so if you had a choice…There.Com, RealXtend, or suck it up and just head for OpenSim?

And they should have never done this without at least publicly acknowledging something–anything–about the content theft issue before springing this. Even if it was just “we know it’s a problem, we’re looking into more robust solutions?” blah blah

Do they not have a PR department? Or if they do, should they all be fired for doing such a crap job? Does anyone in Linden Lab (now i forget if LL is tm or r oh screw it) realize or care at all how this looks/feels to the average resident? Or are they stuck in mute because the lawyers tell ‘em they can’t talk about it?

The whole thing leaves me with such a slimy feeling. Ick. Now I gotta go take (another) shower….