Linden Lab explanation alienates educators
by Tateru Nino 
Oct 3rd 2009 at 4:00PM
Filed under: Culture, News items, Opinion, Second Life, Legal, Academic, Education, Virtual worlds
When news broke about Linden Lab sending a takedown notice to the core Second Life education community Web-site, our colleagues over at the Metaverse Journal put a number of questions about the matter to Linden Lab.
The Linden Lab response to those questions yesterday seems to have generated a reaction among educators akin to pouring gasoline on a blaze, coupled with a vigorous fish-slapping. While there's a undeniably a spectrum of reaction to the Lab's response, most of what we've seen seems to cluster around the livid end.
You see, back when Wollongong's site kicked off, Linden Lab used to distribute its Second Life trademarks in a Web-site kit with a perpetual license and encouragement to use them. Even after changing their policy last year, Linden Lab has, for its part, encouraged the use among the education community of the terms 'SLeducators', 'SLeducation' (and occasionally 'SLudents') and continued to promote and tacitly endorse the education Web-site in question.
"Although making changes in response to intellectual property complaints can be frustrating, it ultimately makes our community stronger, more aware and respectful of each other's intellectual property, and a more desirable place for content creators and content consumers alike," writes Pathfinder Linden in response to the Journal's queries.
While that constitutes a non sequitur, nobody seems to be disputing that intellectual property rights are important.
Most of the argument seems to revolve around Linden Lab's apparent inconsistency of rules and licensing surrounding these particular properties, the possibility that Wollongong's particular descriptive usages has first-amendment protections under the Lanham Act that governs trademarks in the USA, and the feeling that Linden Lab is taking the most fractious of their available options.
"The change of heart can only point to an organization losing touch with what they claim is most vital - the creative people who breathe life into its flagship service," educator Kerry Johnson told us, "I found the PR-response to be a wasted opportunity for Linden Lab to open up a dialogue with users who might feel offput or disenfranchised. Instead, it was more of a patronizing wag of the finger."
And she's far from alone. More than one educator feels Linden Lab's response indicates that the Lab is out of touch or does not understand the nature of the communities that it purports to foster and ultimately convert into customers.
Dean Groom, co-founder of Second Classroom, observed, "As virtual worlds mature, education lends a lot of academic credibility to the Second Life brand. In the time this wiki has been around, it has prompted many academics to research and publish, and indeed has been used by Linden to promote it's commercial interests - which without doubt has led directly to Linden revenue."
"There is a two-way interchange between Linden and academia that is clearly not being recognised or understood. Educators are interested in Virtual Worlds, more than just one brand. Already this week, many educators with virtual world interest are seeing this as a further risk for investment in one proprietary solution. It seems a shame that someone who is clearly a great asset to Linden, would be treated like this. I can understand the policy; however, it's a bad policy in the educational context."
The simplest solution for the Lab would have been to simply send a letter permitting the usage (with or without specific conditions); Their trademark would then have been fully-protected under law, and with no fallout or loss of trust among the education sector. The Lab has taken this route before (which gained it a tremendous amount of positive media coverage), and that this did not happen is what is causing dismay and anger.
And that's really what it comes down to. Given two course of action available to it, the Lab chose the one least likely to please either itself or its supporters -- or anyone else for that matter. What the Lab's explanation accomplished is confronting educators with the need to remain free of ties to a single proprietary platform. That's not something that can be undone, even if the Lab were to reverse course now.
Only hours after Linden Lab's formal response, a number of prominent educators of all stripes began assembling and meeting on Second Life alternative, ReactionGrid in what became an impromptu convention. It remains to be seen whether that trend will continue.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jay said on 6:08PM 10-03-2009
/me hands his tub of Vaseline to the educators "I guess it is your turn to be reamed this time around"
/me looks to the other groups with distended orifices shaking his head sadly "Well, in a month it will be forgotten, the crack addicted will still play"
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skribe said on 11:52PM 10-03-2009
In a month you're probably correct. In 12 months however there will likely be a number of viable alternatives available. LL need to sort themselves out before their userbase abandons them.
Jay said on 4:35AM 10-04-2009
I said the same thing a year ago when the Lab screwed everyone who had bought an OpenSpace sim.
Others have said it about every other ass-raping or ill-planned action the Lab make... from stealing people's money by banning banking through to the land value collapses through to changing adult rules through verification.
No. Sorry. The crack addicted SL player will still be there and the crack addicted educator will too. How can you turn up a grant to actually get your crack for free?
skribe said on 7:50AM 10-04-2009
That's because there were no viable alternative worlds for the addicts to get their hit. Very few addicts have the fortitude to go cold turkey. However, once serious competitors come online those that have been screwed by LL at least have the option of moving to them. Then you'll see substantial shifts in the market if LL continue to upset their customers. And wasn't the OpenSpaces debacle the kickstart for OpenSim?
Gwyneth Llewelyn said on 3:20PM 10-07-2009
Hmm "viable alternatives" right... :)
No, I don't think that the "push to OpenSim" was due to the OpenSpace debacle, but really because OpenSim starts to become a more mature technology :) (hey, my own OpenSim grid hasn't crashed in a couple of months! :) )
But I still think this is a case of the right hand of LL not knowing what the left hand is doing. Which is actually quite typical for LL; like most organisations, they have a certain failure to internally communicate things. This takedown notice by LL's lawyers should have been cleared by Pathfinder first, who obviously would yell at them "are you INSANE?". The problem is that the lawyers in this case most probably just got a list of every domain name with "SL" in it and sent a form letter to each one (yes, this is even possible to automate!). The last time I've checked, 2 years ago, there were over 5,000 sites which had "SL" in it, most of them totally unrelated to Second Life, but many certainly had a lot to do with SL. The lawyers might not even have seen the *content* of the site at all, or they would have noticed the disclaimer on the page...
Peter Miller said on 4:55AM 10-05-2009
Storm in a virtual teapot. I'm an educator and it hasn't alienated me at all. LL may have been heavy-handed but I suspect RL universities would protect their own proprietary positions in exactly the same way. That's not to say I'm not looking at my options either but this isn't a deal-breaker, much as some would wish.
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Vandell [XBL: Keazra] said on 12:45PM 10-05-2009
I've never seen a company hate their users so much as Linden Labs. It's like they actively want to ruin their product.
The #1 way to get customers angry at you is by attack the community.. this has always been the case (see: Spore, Securom, YouTube, Sims 3 pirating, etc.).
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KerryJ said on 10:46PM 10-06-2009
I don't think it's a deal-breaker, but it certainly is a wake-up call. And Peter, do you have permission to use Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft logo as your avatar?
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David Miller said on 10:32PM 10-28-2009
This was very disheartening. I am also an educator (college professor for 7 years and eLearning developer for 10) and the treatment of Jokay was appalling.
I have spoken at 8 venues in the last year. Conferences for the eLearning Guild and the TxDLA, online forums, and so on. My sessions and workshops deal with the use of Second Life as a film studio to create scenarios for use in eLearning. The company I work for delivers our eLearning to 70,000 annual users in 110 countries.
Rather than using Blender 3D or Studio 3D Max, Second Life works very well.
I approched Linden Lab about publishing a book on this. After FOUR months of going back and forth, I finally recieved an answer. Mind you, all my conferences, except for one are done on my own dime and I pay nearly $3,000 a month for the 12 sims I have.
So I don't consider myself half-baked with just a crazy idea. Finally, after a post on M's blog, I was answered. The Lab would need to review every single image and it's context! As you can imagine, myself and my publisher did not like the idea of the Lab having a full copy of the work before it is published. And if it took 4 months to get this answer, imagine what having them review 100+ screenshots and its text would take!
This is nothing at all of the magnitude of Jokay's treatment. Her treatment is a very clear signal from the Lab that the evangelistic efforts are not only taken for granted but unwelcomed. It's a shame, in my opinion, to treat loyal customers that pay you (Jokay has four sims I believe), so poorly. People that not only support your product but then use their own funds to share the joy and possibilities of Second Life with their peers.
Funny, within 6 hours of casually asking an OpenSim developer about textbook attribution, I received a full answer and a green light.
As to someone's mention of the Openspace debacle, for me it affected my outlook on Second Life. I had 18 sims at the time (12 OS) and after the date was announced for conversions, I converted 9 of them and lost the momentum I had is land sales. It's a bittersweet shame that after the conversion date, they changed the decision and allowed another year. I would not have lost so much money and so many wonderful residents.
One thing is for sure, Linden Lab is a private company and will do whatever they want, including dunping on fine people like Jokay. I would venture to say that Jokay has done more for SL evangelism than any paid Linden employee. She did it out of passion and perhaps the belief of Linden's mantra that it's all about user created content.
I installed OpenSim after the Openspace debacle and now am actively pursuing a presence in Reaction Grid (lol, already have a website and team of 5 people).
I still love Linden Lab and Second Life, but my rose coloured glasses have cracked and I see them as a service provider and not a "partner".
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