Linden Lab has released the figures for the third-quarter performance of Second Life.

If you want the short version, it wasn't a growth quarter. Q3 2009 figures were not really very distinguishable from Q2 2009. There's actually nothing wrong with that. Growth plateaus are occasional and inevitable and generally represent a good opportunity for engineering and support to catch up a little with the service.

Mark Kingdon, Linden Lab's CEO, has been a bit of a mystery figure since his appointment about a year and a half ago. While he has not been uncommunicative, it's been hard to get a very good sense of the man at the helm of Linden Lab, his passions, interests and direction.

We were very pleased, therefore, when he took the time to sit down with us and answer a whole grab-bag of questions, about himself, about Linden Lab, and – of course – about Second Life. Bear with us, because we've got a lot of ground to cover.

Linden Lab, the company behind the Second Life platform is launching the open beta of Project Nebraska today. Project Nebraska was the working title for what is now called Second Life Enterprise, a standalone Second Life solution for enterprise use.

This "Second Life in a box" solution, is actually in two boxes. It consists of a combined software and hardware bundle, including two 1RU rack-mount servers, prepackaged as an appliance and configured to provide virtual environment and voice services, ready to use with standard Second Life viewer software.

But that's not all.

While Linden Lab allows you to submit a DMCA notice via post or fax, there is a third option that's valid while you're waiting for the promised new DMCA process to come along.

While many service- and platform-providers insist that they do not accept emailed DMCA notices, if you submit them correctly, the provider is lawfully obligated to accept them. Interestingly, a proper DMCA notice by email can actually give the recipient more surety about the identity of the submitter than faxed or posted notices.

Remember Kevin Alderman (known in Second Life as Stroker Serpentine), CEO of Eros LLC who is one of the plaintiffs who have filed a lawsuit against Linden Lab for negligence with respect to security and failing to act in accordance with their obligations under the DMCA? Well, it can't be a good week for either him or for the Lab.

During Linden Lab's Burning Life event in Second Life this year (a sort of living pop-art showcase and party that draws many spectators) persons only presently known to the server logs left a cache of copied content, including at least one of Alderman's latest products, and a whole swag of other content belonging to other designers – free for the taking.

It isn't really Burning Life's fault, but if you had to place the stuff somewhere where many people would take it, none-the-wiser that it was unlawful content, that would be the best place at this time of the year.

Linden Lab have installed a new account setting for Second Life users, where an account can be marked as a 'scripted agent' (which you can call a 'bot' if you prefer). At present, it isn't actually known what effect the marker has, or to what use it is being put. At some future time, we are told, it may be used to exempt accounts from contributing to the Second Life parcel-traffic system.

Right now, though, it's sort of like being asked "Would all citizens who have firearms and do not use them to break the law, please leave your name at your local police-station." That is, there doesn't seem anything actually wrong with the idea, but you've got to wonder why it is being asked at this time.

Yesterday, Linden Lab made an announcement regarding third-party (or after-market, if you prefer) viewers that has so far elicited a vociferous response from some of the more outspoken Second Life users, and those involved in after-market viewer-development. The announcement largely revolves around upcoming policies that have yet to be decided.

This is compounded partly by there being two announcements. One directly emailed out and one on the blog, both of which carry somewhat different information. The announcement is a lead-up to a series of "brown bag" sessions which are advertised to determine the details of the scheme.

While it has been called Viewer 2009 once or twice, almost every Linden Lab staffer who mentions it calls it Second Life 2. Once on the drawing-board as a major overhaul of Second Life both at the server and at the viewer (client), the idea of a huge developmental jump was abandoned some years ago, and all of the features slated for Second Life 2 were added to Second Life 1, incrementally.

Well, except for the last item on the list, the user-interface. Essentially Second Life seems to now everything SL2 was originally planned to be, sans the new interface.

Last week, as you might recall, we covered a tale that really caught people's interests, and warmed the hearts of many a Second Life content-creator; That Linden Lab had run a bit of a sting, which neatly suckered a bunch of copyright infringers, resulting in their banning.

In the wake of that, a number of readers (indeed quite a lot of you) wrote in to tell us that you had heard that the bans of most or all of the those involved had been reversed within a day or so. While people do indeed circulate all manner of rumors, that would certainly be quite an interesting turn of events, so we got some legwork done to see if we could get to the bottom of it.

Numerous Second Life content creators are warning their clientele that the Web-site virtualget.net (which has been apparently been operating for a couple of months now) is a credit-card harvesting scam. Whether that's correct or not, the site appears to be using the product images and product descriptions and trademarks of numerous Second Life content creators without their permission. The original images and text appear on Linden Lab's Xstreet SL virtual goods shopping Web-site.

Numerous DMCA notices are reportedly being filed by content creators at present. We attempted to contact virtualget.net (anonymously registered in Singapore) for comment, but none of their email addresses appeared to be functional -- One email address was restored to function when the majority of the site was taken down a short time ago, but we received no response. Linden Lab, who has an intellectual property stake in the matter, was not available for comment either.

Users of Kaspersky protection software found the Web-site marked as a phishing site several hours ago, presumably based on user reports.

Update: The operation seems to have disabled access to much of the site in the wake of numerous DMCA notices filed by content-creators.

	Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.

Now, we must admit that we find this one both amusing and appropriate. In short, Linden Lab has sent 50 or more Second Life users who were using the after-market NeilLife viewer on the spank-bus to ban-town. Not just for using the viewer, but for copying content that they shouldn't ought to have.

What's clever is how Linden Lab caught and detected them.

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.

Jokay Wollongong, one of the premier promoters and supporters of the educational uses of Second Life, and keeper of the largest single resource for Second Life educators, suffered something of a reversal this week, when Linden Lab decided that that very same resource, sleducation.wikispaces.com, infringed on their SL trademark (which has now only been registered for nine days), and sent Wollongong a takedown notice.

That's something of a surprise considering Linden Lab's ongoing endorsement of the site on the Second Life Education mailing-list. The site, which has been up since late 2006, documents over 100 case studies of educational projects in Second Life, as well as providing key community resources and information for educators who are just getting started with virtual environments.

Over the last few days, Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon, and Lab director of Marketing and Communications, Catherine Smith have been in Europe, where Kingdon is reportedly seeking office-space for Linden Lab in Amsterdam. The office is intended to start as a small marketing headquarters for Linden Lab.

At NIMK, Catherine Smith told De Hoeksteen Live! that Linden Lab was planning to launch the new office in January next year.

Linden Lab's marketing efforts for Second Life hitherto have largely focused on placement of speakers at conferences and events, and – prior to 2008 – on minor registration incentive programs. More recently, efforts have focused on the revamped Web-site and assorted press-materials and white-papers.

With the lawsuit pending against Linden Lab, you'd think now would be a pretty poor time for them to mess up on handling IP rights infringement. You'd think that, wouldn't you?

Second Life user and content-creator, RobbyRacoon Olmstead, recently discovered one of his items had apparently been duplicated in infringement of his creator-rights. He obtained one of the copies, verified the matter to his satisfaction, and reported the matter to Linden Lab who suspended Olmstead's account the following day. Seriously, how much worse could the Lab have mucked that one up?