Massively^™

Monday is a special day. Firstly, it's the fifth anniversary of Second Life -- though not the birthday, a fact which Linden Lab kind of drummed into me in 2006, when I made that mistake myself; The birthday is in March, the Lab insisted at the time, though the anniversary is in June.

The Lab seems to be changing that tune and calling June the birthday nowadays. We're not sure if that's a concession to popular misuse, or if the Lab has become genuinely confused over it. It doesn't really matter, though. Monday's a special day for more than just that.

Monday's the first day after the 90 day grace period on trademark use has expired.

As the Second Life blogger's strike comes to an end, Linden Lab has clarified the clarification to their new trademarks policy. This clarification is a good one. It is quite clear and well set out, and hits all the high points in a clear and deliberate fashion.

Despite any prior assurances to the contrary, yes, Linden Lab will apply the Terms of Service (section 4.4) to external violations of the brand center guidelines to ban accounts as a last resort, though it does make allowances for basics such as nominative use. This extends the Second Life terms of service to activities outside the virtual world for the first time, and for anyone who has logged in to Second Life since March 24.

The inclusion of section 4.4 of the Second Life Terms of Service has caused considerable fear, uncertainty and doubt among the users, even leading some to refuse to log in, so that they do not accept those terms in their current form.

On the face of them, the clause essentially makes any breach of the Brand Center guidelines a breach of the Terms of Service. Linden Lab's representatives say that they would not treat external breaches of those guidelines as a Terms of Service breach -- however, legally their statements to that effect fail to hold water.

We're still waiting on answers to our queries to Linden Lab in the wake of their altered trademark policies. We're assured that we might get some sometime soon.

In the meantime we thought you might just be interested in seeing the list of extra words that Linden Lab have trademark applications in for, and that you might suddenly start to see Brand Center regulations and usage guidelines on.

There are two basic pieces to Linden Lab's virtual world. There's Second Life Grid, which recently got a name of its very own, which is essentially the platform, technology and company behind it.

Then there's the other bit. The part where Linden Lab so often says the real value is. Second Life, says the Lab, is the community, the content. All those people. That's the real value, it says.

So, if so many users (the exact number isn't important here) are what is described by the marks SL and Second Life (as distinct from Second Life Grid, which describes the underlying platform) -- if that endless creation of and remixing of content and communities is called Second Life -- why don't the people who Second Life actually are get equal time with what is, essentially, their own collective name?

This-evening, Linden Lab issued a policy clarification to the recent changes to allowed trademark use as a part of the Second Life Brand Center announcement. It doesn't actually directly address any of the questions that we put to Linden Lab, so we are resubmitting those, and it raises a couple of extra ones which we will add to the pile.

The new policy appears to seek to clarify nominative fair use as being acceptable -- after all, you can't effectively talk about Second Life or Linden Lab without using those terms (well, you could say Linden Research Inc's unnameable virtual world, if you were desperate).

No, that's not a typo. It's Sciamachy Moran's rather clever play on words to describe how he feels about Linden Lab's new brand center and the new inSL trademark program. We've spent the last couple days catching up with Second Life users in-world, and checking out what they have to say on their blogs and assorted forums.

There are people saying positive things about the change. We counted only eleven positive comments among the mass of material.

When Linden Lab chooses to shake things up, it doesn't do it by half-measures. Easter Monday saw an announcement by Linden Lab that they were introducing a new Second Life logo program, and changing the terms under which various words and images are presented.

Unfortunately, we technically can't show you the new logo, since by all rights we have to go through the application process first. Actually, after reading all the terms and conditions a bunch of times, we are not sure that we're even allowed to mention its name. It's inSL, anyway. We'll let the company lawyers sort through the paperwork.