Purged of Intellectual Property... Is this fair?!

Well, I can assure you that it happens - and not so rarely. Chance agreed too In my 3 years, I've had to re-agree several times.

However, I don't know if it happens with 3rd party viewers as I never used one until 2 or 3 weeks ago.

Agreed on those forced TOS agreements which you have no choice but to "Accept" if you want to login. I haven't signed one in a long while as i mainly use 3rd party viewers

Take your pick from one of many items here haha

http://www.dca.ca.gov/publications/legal_guides/k-6.shtml

Phil, I agreed to the ToS in 2003, as well as any ToS required to login to SL (the ToS logging into SL just didn't come to mind), so I admitted my defeat to agreeing to ToS as the years passed.

However the argument still remains... Premium members should be rewarded, not damned. 6 entire years pass, and I forgot to update my billing, and they purged my inventory. As many have said in this thread, why not switch it to basic? If land is held, then lock it, even lock access to the account if need be, but to destroy all of a premium member's hard work is just wrong. I was a HUGE developer when SL began and have developed a LOT of items in SL, most of which was the first of it's kind.

I honestly didn't even hold any land, nor even cared for the tiny stipend, I was paying it just to be a "premium member", and never even played Chance Small, I only kept Chance Small because of the legacy behind the name, and the inventory it contained that I worked extremely hard to create.

The approach taken was not a "fair" one, and I assume (still do not fully believe) that all my inventory is completely lost, but I still think there MUST be an archive, or some sort of means to easily restore it, but I do not feel that Linden Lab or it's employees appreciate my 6 years of committed business with them, and are not willing to over look 1 billing error in 6 years and help me out.

O
M
G!!!

"CHANCE SMALL"...I just GOT IT!!! (And am now returning it...)

Well Chance has my sympathies for sure!

Linden Labs customer service at it finest......whereby it values "Free" griefing Accounts more than established Premium members with a long track record/ history.


It's not a case of what is legally correct (as per LL TOS agreement)......but what is morally correct imo!

.

I was only addressing the 2003 ToS part of your argument, Chance, and we are agreed on it

Chance, have you given thought to trying to appeal to the community at large to get back as much of your work as you can? If I knew the names of some of the objects you created, I would certainly go thru my ancient inventory and see what might pop up.

You might consider posting your plea on SLUniverse and Second Citzens forums as well, as many older residents seem to haunt those pages. Like me, many of them will remember your name and be more then willing to help.

You won't get back everything, of course, that way. But maybe getting even a little of it back would soften the blow.

A Tip for Everyone:
Want another way to back-up things without using those suspicious third-party viewers? Create a freebie basic alt & send your creations to them full perms. It's what I did before Second Inventory.

Good Luck, Chance.

Thanks Pie....great idea, and one I think my partner and I will implement this evening. Scary happenings in the SL vaults!!

Agree 100%.

Has anyone pursued Jack's information about LL no longer purging delinquent premium accounts? For instance, it would be a good idea for someone who Jack knows to cite Chance's recent experience and ask Jack when he thinks they stopped purging premium accounts. I'm thinking that it's just something that Jack heard, rather than something that LL actiually did.

Oh, I know Phil, was just making sure you caught where I said previously that I did accept the ToS upon login, I just neglected to remember that process.

I have offline IM'd Jack (from Chance) as well as provided a link to this thread, and am still awaiting a response.

I am currently in Seattle, and had contemplated the idea of visiting Linden Lab, for a "Look in my eyes and tell me my inventory is lost.", as I still strongly feel that there must be some sort of archive somewhere. If all of their servers currently died, 100%, where would they be? They MUST have archives somewhere, it would be silly if they didn't.

Now you're all going to LOVE this... I've been back in SL as Chance Small, and some people have been nice enough to TRY to give me some items, etc. However when they do, I accept it, and it doesn't show in my inventory... My inventory says "Loading" and wont load. Works fine for my other accounts. Also, my avatar was reset as well, and SL will not save my gender selection, or anything else for that matter.

I am now a basic account, and I can not call Linden Lab for support, and upon submitting a trouble ticket, I receive an e-mail stating that I can only submit certain types of tickets as a basic member, none of which are relative to my issue, and will most likely send me some sort of automated response.

I feel it is now time to seek legal advice and take action.

Try this, from the other thread?



If this only partially works, and you can see your inventory in the beta grid but not in main, you might be able to save the stuff you made yourself using the Emerald viewer.

Don't worry about the precise ticket type, just file a basic ticket with the details of your problem.

Brilliant idea. Will Emerald also backup the scripts? If not, will anything?

I can't login to that grid as Chance Small, doesn't let me, even though it'll let my other accounts. Was an awesome idea though.

Chance, if your inventory is stuck like that, it might be the indexing of your inventory and other settings from "way back" that is still messing you up.

This seems to persist across reinstalls, uninstalls, you name it ~ the only way it seems to rebuild itself is if you go to Documents and Settings, User (whatever your user directory name is), Application Data, Second Life directory and delete all of it. Maybe back it up or something first if you want. And ah... if you are on a Mac it would be the equivalent for... however Macs do it.

If you do that and log in, the inventory indexing should rebuild (I think).

Best of luck. I'm also pretty sure that if anyone could help you at Linden Research, they would try to do so.

I've never logged into my Chance Small account on my laptop (mac), and the issue still seems to persist. When I get home, I will try your suggestion on my Windows machine and see if that works. Thank you for the suggestion.

Well if you had kept paying for 6 years it wouldn't be fair at all. Most of your 2003 stuff is going to be outdated in look & function anyway, welcome to the 21st century.

Someone else brought it up at office hours today, and Jack said the change happened two months ago. I pointed out that one month ago their support docs and billing support people were both saying the deletion policy was still in effect, and Jack (of course) went on to other topics without responding.

FREE TEXTURE UPLOADS TO PREMIUM CUSTOMERS!!!

YES PLEASE!!!

Today I actually added up all those $L 10 charges for ONE of my commissioned designs...
I had deluded myself into thinking that the cost of uploading textures was not a factor.

I had ignored all the 'oh, only another $10L' thoughts, and I had never charged customers for the texture imports I pay for... And then I discovered that for ONE recent commission I had uploaded 400 new textures, costing me $L 4,000... and the final house only cost the buyer $L 90,000 and a month's dedicated work from myself.

During that month my tier fees, premium fee, shop rental, advertising and VAT had cost me $L 113,100 ($ 435 US) (I have an island which is my sandpit and display shop). Time spent on a commission is time taken from making new items to sell. I also pay my Island Manager to 'keep shop' whilst I am busy building. Bless her.

My textures are all hand made by me, so in my 8 hours per day 'working time', if I am not online building you can be sure that I will be sitting at my computer making textures. Each texture takes between RL two hours to three days to make.

So if I was able to upload textures for free, I could at least delude myself again into thinking that I stand a chance of ever making a RL profit from 8 hours per day spent learning how to make lovely things (and sell them) in SL, instead of a shockingly expensive and time swallowing hobby for the last 3 years.

I am working in SL for effectively one tenth of the RL minimum wage per hour, or one thirtieth of what I *should* be earning in RL. I really thought that I would 'get in early' into this wonderful new medium of virtual reality, train to be good at it, and eventually make my RL living out of it, whilst sitting at home enjoying myself doing what I love to do.

..but RL is offering no work for Architects like me, and has offered very little for the last 3 years. Thus it was time to look critically at whether there is any point in continuing working here.

NOW I find that there is a seriously high risk of all my built work getting lost, if I should be unable to log into SL for a few months (eg illness), BECAUSE I am a premium customer!

Now, why did I become a Premium customer 3 years ago? I am struggling to remember...

Something has to change.

Best wishes from Ainee Kohime

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Hermetic%20Palaces/118/119/26

Thank you for that. It's a real shambles, isn't it - I mean Linden Lab in general.

Emerald does not back up scripts, only prims and textures, but there's an easy work-around:

Open your script, select all, copy, open Notepad or the text program of your choice, and paste the script into a new Note, then save. Name it something identifiable; "CreationName/ScriptFunction/PrimPlacement". Done.

It's not a perfect soultion, but at least you have your scripting work saved in a way that you can get it back in-world after catastrophe.



sentimental value

sen·ti·men·tal val·ue
noun
Definition:

value based on emotional association: a value placed on something because of its emotional associations rather than its monetary worth