Stagecoach Island defects to ActiveWorlds

By the way, using Linden Labs Logic (aka "LLL", common name "bull feces" there are currently well over 106 Billion people living on planet earth.

Is there a particular reason you're still here then? Or do you just lurve das trollens?

Uhh yes it does. It's total logins in the last 30/60 days.

World of Warcraft, There.com ActiveWorlds, wiremesh, blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Your entire future post-history, condensed into one simple post.

No, no, don't thank me. Your not following up will be thanks enough.

Or adobe atmosphere.

ActiveWorlds was a predecessor to SL that hit the market about 9 years prior to SL. At first look it is rather similar to SL, but as my first look was yesterday, I can't really compare the two reasonably. A number of AW players had joined SL who may be better able to speak to the differences.

As far as the subscriber numbers for SL go, the player number (now around 100,000) includes - if I recall correctly "all registered accounts that are capable of logging into SL at present" - which I believe was stated by Robin Linden. If my recollection is correct, this is almost certainly a number that has been chosen to show SL in the best possible light as it counts every basic (free) account that ever took the time to register which hasn't been banned because those accounts never go away if they were only registered. That is of course if LL is accurately reporting that number - which given today's Stagecoach Island debacle - is cast in a bit of doubt. Those numbers also include alternate accounts, so even if scrupulously accurate with regard to the definition is also likely inflated.

Using the number of simultaneous logins (which currently peaks around 4,000) and a variation of the Department of Labor's survey question when trying to measure unemployment rates asking those 100,000 accounts: "Have you logged into SL within the last month?", I expect that a much more accurate figure would be somewhere under 10,000. But like almost everything related to SL, we are reduced to guessing.

Ricky, your "Second Life Answers" question was very well put, but as yet has not been answered. I expect LL to be more silent than monks on the matter and that Ruben Linden's post in this thread is the last public statement we'll hear on the subject.

Finally, I know you have at least a few clues, and please remember the words of the theologian Richard Pryor who said "You don't get old being no fool" who, I may note passed away a month ago to the day. *edited*

It would be reassuring to other content creators not involved in this unfolding story if LL could clarify their position. Does LL's use of user-created content, or right to grant use of said content that users own the intellectual rights to, extend beyond SL and the promotion thereof?

As an unattached third party, it looks (so far) like the potential violation of intellectual property rights occurred via the actions of Swivel- not WF, Bedazzle, or Linden Labs. However, it would still be incredibly helpful and reassuring to all present and future content creators if LL could weigh in with a statement from LL Legal. There are all kinds of ridiculous suspicions and scenarios that can arise in a situation like this (such as, "Could/Would LL choose to legally defuse the situation by claiming that they gave usage rights to Swivel in order to prevent bad press from scaring off future corporate clients?", and I think the major content creators would be relieved if they had a _meaningful_ weigh-in from the legal department.

This kind of meaningful weigh-in would also make it clear who the players are in a future dispute of this manner and what LL's role and/or responsibilities might be in it. It would also allow content creators to better know where they stand in such a dispute and what their rights are, or what they ought to be.

If anyone else can add anything more cogent to that, please do so and reaffirm the need for LL legal to make a statement on the forums to, at the very least, a hypothetical and not all-inclusive situation similar to the one presented in this thread. SL often seems like it is on the fringe of copyright laws, and the users would know better what is expected of them if they understood more clearly what to expect of LL in these kinds of instances.

To most users, the TOS represents a legal catch-all to cover the ass of Linden Labs, but it does not represent an efficient or respectful two-way communication between you and the content creators in Second Life. Please reciprocate our desire to know your stance with some well-thought human intervention and not a copy of the terms of service.

Thanks.

And good luck, Cubey.

Nods prak I re read the thread and see where me and Cubey went off track. Thanks for the extra clarification

This entire situation with WF/Stage coach island still has me shaking my head. The obvious things I thought were done. Were not done. I assumed everyone was either under contract or agreement with each other and this was all done in a timely and professional manner. As a content creator I am very much interested in the outcome and the process. Perhaps lessons will be learned so the same mistakes are not made in the future. If that much happened I would feel some reasurance.

Mar

Your right Cristiano there were a lot of misconceptions over the past couple of days in this thread. I hope if ppl miss much of this thread they read the quote above. I for one was under the assumption that Bedazzle contracted the sellers on the island. I feel bad for those folks. It's just not right that all this transpired the way it did. I'm sorry if anyone misunderstood my points as well. After much thought I would like to say that I fully support those who's work is now in AW. Reguardless of what was done or what wasn't done. I sincerely hope that all parties involved come to some sort of settlement in this matter. That is adequet to those involved. Cubey I know you were angry and I well so was I, you have my apologies. As I misunderstood that you were not a part of Bedazzle the official group as I had assumed you were. Good luck to you.

Mar

Well I emailed Reuben 2 days ago (he was the contact for merchants who'd been asked to put out items for sale for this project) regarding when to expect L$ payment for items sold on Stagecoach Island, as was to happen when the project Beta finished, and have so far heard nothing at all back from him.

I do hope they're not burying their head in the sand here. I find it amazingly unprofessional that they never actually informed Bedazzle about all this having known since the end of November that the project would not be extended beyond Beta, so I wonder what hope the individual merchants have of getting an answer out them regarding the payment agreement for themselves?

Has there ever been any such professionalism displayed that brings this hope to you or is it more along the lines of unprcedented "gee, I really hope Santa brings me a pony this xmas" contrary to any past experience or reasonable expectation?

Having had this pointed out to me in world I've just ploughed through the lot.

Without seeing contracts etc. it's pretty hard to know what's going on, although Bedazzled seem to have knowingly given permission to use their content elsewhere so that bit seems clear. Cubey wasn't asked to permission to use his stuff elsewhere at any point so might well have a case if he chooses to chase it.

I agree with Cali's interpretation of copyright law as it's applied over here - which makes me wonder if it's different in the states, it could be.

It would be interesting to see what lessons LL will admit to have learnt from this, if any. The comments about the need for high end machines for SL are fair comment and downtime and other issues too. For a cutting edge product those things might be acceptable for more casual users. They are acceptable to us, we stick at it after all! But if was running a business using SL as a major training venue (which has it's attractions) the downtime and the issues are a big potential problem. I might still go for it but I would seriously think about it.

On a slightly happier note, you can estimate the population through capture-recapture. Find someone with lots of friends (in the calling card sense). Get them to look at the numbers of friends on line, total friends and who is online they are. At some other point (it's usually a week later) repeat. Some clever maths will give you an estimate of the number of residents in the population. This poxy browser doesn't support tabs or multiple windows (I'm at work) but wikipedia must have a capture-recapture population equation on it.

This is why a contract for work for hire typically includes a provision in which the contractor warrants that he/she/it owns or has rights in all content created for or licensed to the company that becomes the author of the work under the Copyright Act of 1976.

If Bedazzle made such a warranty, it may have forgotten that the license granted by all content creators for the use of their works in SL may not extend beyond SL (such as to AW). If so, Bedazzle may have to deal with a counterclaim from WF for breach of that warranty. Making the case more complicated for both parties.

It would be extremely valuable to be able to examine a copy of the Bedazzle contract with WF, if it is not itself subject to an NDA.

What happened to Cubey's content makes my stomach turn. I'm certain that if I ever got the chance to contribute to such a project I would be very trepidatious because of this. I'm guessing other content creators feel similarly. The way that Swivel and LL handled this has made the loss of Stagecoach Island a bigger setback than simply losing that one project.

Original Authors have much greater rights in work in the EU and other part saof the world than they do in the US, many of the provisions of copyright law have been internationalized, but not this one.

Anshe is happy when her customers are happy and she has a hell of a lot of responsibility. Linden Lab should pay attention to her, not for her own sake, but for the sake of hundreds or rather thousands of people who benefit from or even rely on her services in one way or another.

I had to try it, and it's TRUE. lol. And people think the Lindens are fascists.

--Jamie

I am not trying to add to the confusion or stir up trouble here but as a content creator I have a question reguarding the rebuilding of WF in AW.

Something is bothering me here. I know how long it takes to create objects and how long it would take to create a city. I noticed in the pictures that the objects sizes and shapes seem a pretty close match. How were the objects themselves re-created in AW. The time it takes to create that many items does not seem to me to be possible unless they had a team already established in AW to recreate the shapes and someone who knew texture placement. Am I missing something here? If anyone can explain this I would be grateful.

How long for example did it take Bedazzle to build the original WF island including texturing?

Was there a way for LL to give WF the entire island to transfer into AW?


Mar

Because prim objects tend to be simple forms, and because typical polygon-creation tools are so varied, assessible and powerful, recreating the objects probably wouldn't have been much of a problem. In fact I was looking at Cubey's comparison shots yesterday specifically to gauge polycounts (having realized that AW's meshes are relatively light compared to many videogames today) and noticed that in some cases the parts probably took only minutes to recreate. More difficult would be texturing the pieces imo, but then I hate UV-mapping.

AW uses Renderware as the main graphics engine. In the early days of AW (I sound so old...) the only way to create models was to manually write an .rwx file using notepad or your fav text editor. For simple shapes this was actually easier than it sounds.
Around 1998 ish they introduced suport for TrueSpace files. As TrueSpace supports creation of primitives (boxes, spheres, etc..) it is relatively easy to reproduce most SL objects in TrueSpace and upload to AW.


The important part to remember is that there is no way to directly export an object from the SL universe and import it into AW. You HAVE to manually re-create the object, so there is no excuse along the lines of "Oh it got transfered automatically by mistake..."

worlds.com (like AW, based on renderware technology) had these kinds of corporate sponsored builds. Take a look over at their homepage:

www.worlds.com

aerosmith world
bowie world
hanson world
some sort of blair witch world sponsored by the studio.

These worlds all date from last century and if you were to sign up and explore them, you'd find mostly tumbleweeds blowing through them. That gives some kind of indication as to how compelling most users find this kind of content.

Wow! Long thread. . . .

OK, here goes with some clarifications:

1. Bedazzle was hired by Swivel to create the content for Stagecoach Island
2. Vendors created clothing, attractions, etc. for the island.
3. Shortly before launch, we all realized that a single group would need to take ownership of the vendor items in order make the process of maintaining/modifying the build possible
4. Linden Lab, acting on behalf of Swivel, negotiated "buyouts" of the content to compensate the vendors for the right to use their content for the BETA period. These vendors were also promised the $L for any sales that resulted during the BETA period (this has not yet been paid and is a very small # due to limited participation)
5. When Swivel Media ported the content to ActiveWorlds, they confused Cubey's content with content created by Bedazzled. I believe Cubey and Swivel and working out a resolution to this now.

Thanks for the clarifications, Reuben. I thought this was probably the result of some miscommunication rather than something deliberate.

See my view on this on the Brace blog.

coco

Seems like part of the communication problem might start with a comment like:

"3. Approximately 20 vendors created clothing, attractions, etc. for the island."

From what I've read, it seems as if the vendors didn't create items "for the island". They merely made content they were already selling on the main grid available for sale on the island; after which a "buyout" (which sounds limited) was negotiated.

There's a big difference between the above quote and what I've just said.