Is 'THIS' the future of Second Life ?

...

OK, I don't get it.

That seems like a non-sequitur. Which particular open source fan solution are you referring to?

PS: "open source" definitely doesn't mean "everything should be free".

Well didn't you know that in my store I only sell copybotted N&B furniture Brianna?

Since we now have free accounts, the 2 week period does not mean you have to pay, but you have to verify. Saves that US$10

You would not have to wait 2 weeks to transfer stuff you made, you could choose to become verified right away. The 2 weeks are meant to give people a chance to try SL out without giving their real life data. As soon as they decide they want to continue, they can verify. After 2 weeks, they have no more choice.

So it is not the 2 weeks period that is the barrier here, it is the verification. I am convinced that a verification system stops the biggest chunk of fraud. People doing it now 'cuz they can', will think twice before they commit actual identity fraud. It would not surprise me, if 90% of the fraud would not happen anymore, but of course that is just speculation.

LOL!

I'll send you the scripting engine (full perm of course) to help your "affiliate" store get going.

Not really, number 5 is simply pointing they didn't steal from the creator. they used stuff off the web. So now it's the original creator's responsibility to go after the the host of the information. They can not go after the user because they have to prove they stole the content inworld, vs using the downloads from a website.

Problem is if they are smart said host is overseas and does not have to comply with a DCMA or provide information to someone requesting it.

I think the contention that they are "still a big problem" is probably over-exaggerated. There are undoubtedly instances of it still occurring, but I have not seen or heard of any evidence that it is a significant problem across the vast majority of content in SL.

I mean, I have yet to hear of anyone buying/selling bootleg Starax sculptures in any significant quantity, and I would expect his work to be a primary target.

This is not meant to say that copyright infringement (regardless of tool used) isn't happening, but it is at or below a threshold/background level.

I hate to say this but...

I think the content model is slowly dying in SL, and with the rise of new worlds we are going to see a few variations on a theme (which can all work)

Anonymous accounts = bad. SL will probably have to go back to a subscription service and not because of copybot (although that's a side reason). It's because hardware, storage and bandwidth has a price and it must be paid somehow. It doesn't have to be 500 bucks a person but it should go to "premium accounts only can have full access to the building tools."

Don't like it. Well do not despair oh anonymous creators who need a cheap place to create, you do have options. In fact some are there now and its called "opensim" in various flavors. But they will ALL COST YOU when it comes to hardware, bandwidth and storage.

TANSTAAFL = There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Get over it.

Opensim worlds have the ability to be more flexible in what content creators can DO, however. The cost is pretty low - you can get started on your own hardware - many of us have the bare bones to start a basic opensim grid for development purposes.

The idea of finally selling your skills as any competent graphic artist does, on a platform that costs what it ACTUALLY costs to host your sites. Which means the cost of land goes down, and therefore more is available to pay a content creator for design. I see these being much more viable long term for real businesses and not gamers. No microeconomy means that sales have to be performed with real dollars. No riches for botters unless they set up an actual store, and that's not very easy to do with real cash that can be tracked. People are much more cagey when letting go of real cash.

And you know what it costs, because you can see what you're using. I have sat down and really applied myself to learning how to set up and use these platforms and I have to say I am verily impressed, although it is still early stages yet.

The world of independent hosting companies (think Amazon S3 and Slicehost) may end up killing SL rather than Copybot. Because I can't sell high quality original content at rock bottom funny money prices to compete with the anonymous botters who steal everything under the sun and then try to compete against me in price: they use up too much of my time I could spend creating. But I most certainly can charge my full value and work as a graphic artist on worlds for hire out on the open Internet, so I get my pound of flesh first, as botters can only copy.

And yes there are new walled gardens on the rise, which claim to have better content protections than SL (like mycosm and Blue Mars) These may also work as long as they stick to the subscription models.

Can you say it again, a little less disjointed. It sounds like you're saying that people who aren't premium don't pay for servers. But people have been running surveys of their customers and finding 30%+ are not just not premium, they're NPIOF, so the land they're paying for (through rent or tier) is getting paid for by non-premium users.

Whether they're paying for it by buying Lindens through XStreet, or by earning it in sales... it's not just premium accounts that are paying Linden Labs for the servers. And the non-premium accounts are not getting a "free lunch", they're working for it and making money for Linden Labs in the process. BECAUSE of the microeconomy. BECAUSE people are happier about paying in funny money, which is why so many online services, even the ones that don't have a microeconomy, use micropayments in credit chips. Even Microsoft's online gaming network does that.

I don't get the bit about "anonymous creators" (we're all anonymous here unless we choose to name ourselves) nor do I get what OpenSim has to do with it.

Mycosm does not look nor sound interesting.

It sounds more like a place for professionals to gather about and wait around for consumers to come along and buy. At least that is how the Mycosm article at Virtual World News made it sound: http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2008/10/mycosms-5-year-plan-building-a-community-one-step-at-a-time.html

Excuse my lack of understanding...

I do not see how the content model slowly dying. More importantly, i think I do not fully understand the meaning implied by the statement you make saying the content model is slowly dying in SL.

can you please explain what you mean in this paragraph:


I do not understand the implication of Amazon S3 or Slicehost or even fully understand that they do in the context of virtual worlds like SL.

I do wish to have a better understanding of the perspective you have and what you have stated in your post.

Thanks!

There is a difference. They are not paying for storage. NOBODY pays for storage on SL directly. Anonymous - well I mean people who haven't handed over payment info and pay for absolutely nothing. Which actually are a microscopic portion of SL content creators - most NPIOF content creators are alts of paying accounts as far as I can see, and they are vastly outweighed by content creators who have forked over for a premium account.

Now, when you have your own little dev grid up you can see that you use *hard drive space* for all your storage, non? Well... that's not being paid for directly in SL by everyone. It's being subsidized by premium fees, land fees and selling lindens collected from fees and sales of Supply Linden on LindeX. Those that pay are subsidizing those who don't.

This is all possibly going to go topsy turvy when Opensim worlds become more ubiquitous, and I see that they more than likely will. Long term, small private worlds with more sensible pricing schemes accessible by any viewer - I think they will kill SL until SL starts to charge for all their services directly like all the other upstarts are currently and planning to do. Long term I believe the real money for virtual worlds is going to be in asset storage, server rental and paying for design.

Premium accounts right now get nothing but a better support on the portal. I'd say that it should also have to go pay for your storage and building, and limit free accounts on their inventories. Then perhaps have a higher membership level where the upload fees disappear if you pay for unlimited.

Brilliant post Hypatia. I learnt a lot and it gave me fresh ideas on the subjects of annonnymous accounts, copybotting, content creator accounts and how LL could provide cheaper land etc.
Thanks for sharing.

As premium account holder all I got to say is : the free accounts are what keeps SL going.

Kill off them and SL goes downhill faster than your profit margins.

If they were not profitable LL would have closed down SL rather than expand the hardware.

All I see in this thread is a lot of folks wanting to put up artificial barriers to competition after they have established themselves. A dash of I'm premium so I should have more benefits over a free account.

The op has a legit problem, and unfortunately the only tools are the ones they have now.

DCMA, and reporting it to LL to deal with as best they can.

The way computers work, anything that is sent to the local computer can be duplicated by someone with barely any effort with few exceptions.

You have to offer more than just a product, the best stores are not the ones with nonexistent customer service and just empty racks of products...

Yea this.

I'm glad you got it.

Charging for storage means LOWER LAND FEES.

repeat after me people.

LOWER LAND FEES!!!!!

ok

and I do not want to stop free accounts, not at all. But they should have a limit on inventory, which will limit their building. It should be a sensible limit, but it should be a limit that prevents them from being a full blown content creator. I think they should be able to fool around in the sandbox and what not.

Nearly everyone I know who is a chronic shopper in SL IS a paying account. VERY few are no payment info. There are a few, but very few.

The way I read this, it seems to make the same error as that to which it's responding, by conflating payment and identity.

Eliminating free accounts at this point would lose much more than it could gain. That train left the station a long time ago.

But that doesn't mean we have to go out of our way to make it easy for people to copy content while at the same time concealing their identities. It is illegal, after all. Companies regularly erect barriers of identity confirmation to protect themselves and their customers from harm. LL can do that too. I think it should.

'No need to get rid of free accounts. Just clip their wings and prevent access to the commercial permissions system.

Access to the commercial permissions system is a high value product. I believe LL are underestimating it’s value and it’s importance to the future of Second Life.

There are lots of other virtual worlds on the way, based on other new technology. And for good reason, there will never be another virtual world that lets anonymous accounts build, set permissions and sell.'

Once you can work offline you don't have to care about it. Just upload it when its done.

The fact we can't work offline on a sim locally and store our design work offline is probably the biggest fundamental blunder LL made. It makes this whole "I need an unlimited inventory in SL" argument moot for beginning content creators, those who need a starter sandbox to experiment with the tools. Hell these days I look for ways to reduce the amount of stuff I keep in inventory on SL.

It can't go on forever as it is. Land fees can't keep going up to cover for the fact that LL doesn't charge flat out for storage. New worlds and opensim grids are slashing the cost and distributing it much more sensibly, and as they become more feature rich and stable it's going to only get worse in SL landwise. Especially as workable models for carting your inventory across Opensims far and wide is taking form now.

Content biz foots the bill of a significant portion of land fees in SL, as much as you pretend to say it's not. It is. And I predict the asset biz has a future, if someone dives into it. Once it happens on the open Internet, I suspect SL will dwindle further in land owners as people move to cheaper hosting options out there are on the intarwebs, with more control and privacy. (and privacy was what drove the demand for openspaces as well)

And the content creators will have to move to service them.

If you have better suggestions I am all ears. I'm done debating it, we'll see what comes down the pike. I do worry about SL long term future. It won't hang onto content creators of any kind inworld longterm at the land prices it charges now. It could if it spins off the asset model into its own entity and charge its worth, and it is worth something.

viva la asset servers liberation

hmm ok thanks for that...or not.

Nobody pays for ANYTHING directly in SL, not CPU time, not network bandwidth, nothing. Storage is no exception. You do pay for *some* storage and CPU time directly in tier and sim rental, but most of the CPU time, all of the network bandwidth, and so on, that's all handled indirectly. It's infrastructure.

You don't pay for the road going by your house, the power plant outside town, the airports and freeways. That's all infrastructure.

And hard drive space itself is a small part of the cost of infrastructure. I work in storage, myself... it's amazing how cheap it's getting. If it wasn't, companies like Google would never be able to afford it.

But the SL population isn't divided up that way, into premiums who pay LL money and non-premiums who get a free ride. MOST of the people who pay Linden Labs money are not premium. They're people who buy money on LindeX (3.5% to Linden Labs, kaching), own sims (you don't need to be premium, and that's $300 a month per sim, kaching kaching), and even the ones who are Premium are paying more for tier than for the Premium account itself.

Actually, it's the other way around. More and more services are providing free access to customers and skimming profit off the transactions, just like Linden Labs does. Because there's more money to be made indirectly... and successful companies don't charge based on what portion of the money goes to infrastructure, or to R&D, or to customer service, they charge based on what makes them the most money.

So long as Linden Labs gets that LindeX kaching, sim rental kaching, xstreetSL kaching, why would they piss off the vast majority of their PAYING users by crippling their non-premium accounts?

Nobody pays for ANYTHING directly in SL, not CPU time, not network bandwidth, nothing. Storage is no exception. You do pay for *some* storage and CPU time directly in tier and sim rental, but most of the CPU time, all of the network bandwidth, and so on, that's all handled indirectly. It's infrastructure.

You don't pay for the road going by your house, the power plant outside town, the airports and freeways. That's all infrastructure.

And hard drive space itself is a small part of the cost of infrastructure. I work in storage, myself... it's amazing how cheap it's getting. If it wasn't, companies like Google would never be able to afford it.

But the SL population isn't divided up that way, into premiums who pay LL money and non-premiums who get a free ride. MOST of the people who pay Linden Labs money are not premium. They're people who buy money on LindeX (3.5% to Linden Labs, kaching), own sims (you don't need to be premium, and that's $300 a month per sim, kaching kaching), and even the ones who are Premium are paying more for tier than for the Premium account itself.

Actually, it's the other way around. More and more services are providing free access to customers and skimming profit off the transactions, just like Linden Labs does. Because there's more money to be made indirectly... and successful companies don't charge based on what portion of the money goes to infrastructure, or to R&D, or to customer service, they charge based on what makes them the most money.

So long as Linden Labs gets that LindeX kaching, sim rental kaching, xstreetSL kaching, why would they piss off the vast majority of their PAYING users by crippling their non-premium accounts?
Land fees *aren't* going up. There's been ONE increase in fees for standard sims in the three and a half years I've been in SL.

NOBODY has a product that is even vaguely competitive with Second Life. Noboy. Not There, not Active Worlds, not Blue Mars, and not OpenSim.

Short-sighted.

Never heard of working in-world, and/or paying an alt?

NPIOF does not mean squat re: expenditures. Pardon my imagery.

(Huge wardrobe, paid high rent in SL for months - gee, how do I manage that? NPIOF - means I'd be targetted in proposed 'sweep'.)

And that's why SL is a game and not a serious business solution, in the long term. Because in Real Life Internet, we pay for for these things on the wider web in an entirely different, easily accountable way, with much more control over what we use and pay for.



I do pay for them, they are paid for out of this money I pay to the gubbermint called TAXES. And gubbermint passes laws to build and pay for them. And ostensibly they are supposed to tell me what these laws are for.



Bandwidth and hardware are also part of the equation. And it is a limited resource, costs have gone down but they have not gone away, all the while SL does not cut the monthly fees. The costs are still significant on a large scale. The costs may be lower on average if it were distributed better. We pay far more than what is normal for land fees in Second Life - when you compare it to costs for actually renting server time in a farm. But the fact is that at the size of Second Life's data needs, a smaller amount of people are paying disproportionately for the services a larger part get to enjoy. And that smaller amount who pay a lot is complaining about it, well... no surprise!

TANSTAAFL still. Someone is paying for the storage that the high usage totally free accounts are not paying for.

It's true, and no amount of whining is going to make it not true. People will limit themselves when they realise its not an unlimited resource that can be copied like software. Hardware, bandwidth and servers are all TANGIBLE cost, and at the size of SL, its a real big cost!

And the way that content theft plays into the equation is this: without people who can make money at good content and people willing to buy that content, we have fewer people renting land for shops, less Linden trading hands - the upload fees are worthless because surprise - Supply Linden can't sell them without buyers.

So any collapse of funny money will make it quickly a problem.



They don't have to be premium, although it would be a way to push the premium membership more. They merely have to spend a certain amount of money and have valid payment information. And I still think the idea to have unlimited uploads (waiving the upload cost totally) for a higher subscription fee is not a bad idea. It is better by far than the crazy idea to make some sort of 500 dollar "content creator class" which will shut out most small time content makers.

I am thinking on the model of sites like Wordpress. Where you have a small site for free, but if you want more storage that can be used commercially well guess what - it costs money. Not tons of money, but it does cost. Why are SL cartoon content creators somehow different from any other business on the Net who has to pay for infrastructure? I know its NOT different, not at all.

And as long as we keep thinking about "the SL population" as it is now, the more we've got blinders firmly planted on the head from seeing a different better way to do things. Because for SL to remain profitable in this economic climate, we can't keep going on as it is now. The costs need to be distributed better and not shouldered mostly by people who sell and pay for land - and seeing what I see in the estate I help manage - a good 40 percent abouts are content makers of some capacity. That's a BIG number. LindeX volume is down and the price of funny money is going up - your dollar buys less lindens - that is deflation and its a BAD thing for sales.

That land biz horse is riding out of town with the bad economy and cheaper competition on the rise and there's no bringing it back. THE LAND BIZ IS WAY DOWN and ITS NOT GETTING UP.

I do not think the microeconomy is workable long term without much more stringent measures in place to deal with theft and making happy renters - and the fact that storage is not being paid for directly (the *totally* free accounts are getting a free ride), and the way to deal with theft is partially social, partially technological - the technological solution being to limit what totally free accounts can do. Stealing content so you can open your $1 dollarbie store, then cash out and pay LL for your land, is not a good thing for the SL economy long term. The fact is that content creators can't really deal with this kind of fraud. It's all well and good to talk about the DMCA but I was part of 3d content sites long before SL. The way we handled it is to take away the selling rights of abusive accounts.

Eventually the content creators of any worth are going to migrate elsewhere to platforms that can offer more money and protection. Not necessarily more DRM, as you can see on Renderostiy, DAZ and Turbosquid - there is no DRM at all - but people make more money and in real cash, yes. And it will get better by dealing with theft. Nobody has a right to an account or vendor rights on a private service, you can be denied for any reason. So I say get down to it!

Hell tonight I dealt with some goon who copied my personal skin off my av at an event I was at. If it was by some misguided moron to "get me back" for my opinions in this thread, thanks for driving home my point for me about freebie accounts with unlimited rights and the problem of pseudoanonymity -- I have obviously struck someone's false sense of entitlement nerve. Means I am on the right track if someone is trying to attack me inworld over it.



I saw the first dot.com boom and I am watching another one underway with publishing. Free doesnt pay the electricity bills, and that microeconomy horse is developing a gimp leg!



are we on different planets? 2006 was a huge increase in sims. Last year was a significant increase in openspaces and there are a few more hikes on the horizon, with a possible retirement of the grandfathering on private sims. On top of that the price drops on buying into sims have merely raped the balance sheets for those who bought while the price was higher - as there is no relief on monthly tier fee AT ALL.

While the folks over on Opensim based grids plan on the inevitable hemmoraging from SL when the next price hike strikes. You should read the mailing lists over yonder at opensimulator, its instructive. And I can have a whole sim for a LOT LESS MONEY and only pay for what I use. If I am a resource hog then I am forced to pay more. I figure I give it a year and its a significant competitor, especially with the Hypergrid work. And yes, I have Opensim running on my LAN in several flavors, so I know what I speak. I am testing it pretty frequently now.

I actually like the work being done on Opensim, tho I am not very trusting of some of the grid operators. I can see that if I just spring for a decent hoster and solid storage provider, I can deal with all my "grid needs" myself and pay for what I need, without the need of "grid gods" to bug me. It puts the responsibility on me. And I really really like that direction.

And if I dont let you have free access to the storage I pay for, well, TANSTAAFL. Its mine and I can't afford all this "cheap storage" you're telling me about on the level of Second Life, Google and Amazon. If you want your own storage well go find someone who will give you some for free. Some do. And some charge for it. Amazon charges for their storage. its not "free". It is *cheap* though. A hell of a lot cheaper than LL premium fees.



Not _YET_. I am running OpenSim right now in a few flavors (Modrex, Opensim and Rexserver) and I tell you what, you better worry. It's way better than I thought. It is ABSOLUTELY USABLE for offline building. Its absolutely usable for doing art builds and I expect small businesses and the education crowd will prefer this sort of inexpensive solution for rapid visualisation, which most cannot afford to do on the SL platform due to exhorbitant land fees and by now, most don't want because it hasnt kept up in technology features. (yea, I mean meshes, and RealXtend haz em) And I see that on the mailing lists I am on, a lot of people from the education crowd. It's good fun, all over again!

And Blue Mars threatens to take out the proprietary high end on Windows platforms if they are successful. I see a situation developing where I will have to be active in many places. It's not necessarily a bad thing. I welcome competition. It will be good for SL to have serious competition. I welcome it. Bring it on

Look, I have been around this virtual worlds game for over 10 years. This isnt the first VW I have been in, and I am quite certain its not going to be the last. All of them were revolutionary in some way. SL is also revolutionary, but I am quite certain its not the last revolution, not as long as it remains fixed to "status quo".

This is again the funny money problem. What part of "land fees are too high" do you not understand? It wont take much to end your inworld job, once a competitor with better pricing for those who are willing to part with cash comes along.

And alts can be easily dealt with by simply putting them all under one account. If it is a paying account, all the avatars should fall under it. The way it is currently done is bad and most of the techy lindens know it and have said as much.

Why the huffy tone. When did I even SAY I was talking about land fees?



Huh? But at any rate I never said I had an in-world job, only that some do.



"Dealt with"? *shiver*

Why a need to "deal with" alts, at all? Have you proven they are the fly in your ointment? You've also completely ignored my point that alts do NOT drain the SL economy but rather help it along. Those no-transfer goods do not buy themselves.

Why give Lindens *ideas* on how to further regulate the population?