Let them eat cereal

No one is suggesting Cereal be hanged -- except for Cereal, who has done a pretty good job of it himself. The sum of it is this: Cereal wants to be able to flaunt international intellectual property law and the Linden TOS. Linden Lab has declared it's not going to stand by and watch if someone lets them know that he's doing that. Cereal is pissed off because he should be able to do whatever he wants, gosh darn, and how dare anyone tell him otherwise?

The responses you're seeing in this thread have more to do with his attitude towards blatant rule breaking and his total lack of accountability than they do of any interest in seeing him nailed for any particular violation.

Ooooh burn, you got me , you are so l33t. I will run in world right now and shut down my forum avatar business and pull down all the forum avatars I sell on SLEXCHANGE...............I'll even give back the thousands of dollars I made off of forum avatars. Oh wait, I am not doing any of those things silly me. Cereal is though and it is lame to do it and then cry woe is me! Im cool with sympathy for the devil but you gotta expect to get burned at some point.

Some consider the unauthorized use of another's IP to be as tacky as the unauthorized sale. If you decide to impose your paarticular brand of ethics on other people, be prepared for the more pious and ethical to preach unto you.

I was kinda hoping we could hang him anyways. Or maybe catapult him.

Except "The more pious and ethical" are most likely, in this case, not. "Moral highground" very rarely is, particularly when its a "back at you" form of it.

So, to sum up... LL requests that you stop using trademarks. This pisses you off, so to teach them a lesson, you will no longer sell your trademarked items and make money playing their game.

Yep, that'll learn 'em. Way to stick it to the man!

Or we could use a MASSIVE TREBUCHET and catapult his cars(tm)!

Dude, the exact opposite is hardcoded into Intarweb Forums. DUH!

Wow, the FIC may be illusory, but man do we got a Sardonic Post-Deflation Cabal going.

And panda, I negged you in categories that haven't even been implemented yet. Let's see there was:

1. personal hygiene - neg
   
2. material possessions - neg
   
3. community service - neg
   
4. music preferences - neg
   
5. SL associations - neg
   
6. RL associations - neg
   
7. place of birth - neg
   
8. Photoshop skills - neg
   
9. culinary arts - neg
   
10. kindness to children and animals - neg
    

Those are the ones I remember; expect a negative stipend this week.

I want to pose a few open-ended questions to Cereal:

1. Cereal, do you really feel having trademarked images on vehicles increases their sellability or value?

2. What conditions, if any, constitute a trademark violation that you would act upon if you were Linden Lab? (e.g. Where does one draw the line? What metrics?)

3. Would you be willing to pay a small royalty to auto manufacturers if that option were given to you? How much would be your limit?

4. Second Life is becoming the Metaverse - the new Internet. Do you have more/less/the same expectations of non-enforcement of trademark on for-profit Internet sites that use trademarked images without permission?

5. If someone started an Internet business and used images of your AV, your logos, etc as a very central part of their business, would you go after them?

As a level 1 FIC conspirator, I can attest that the minority of posters are FIC subversives.

This thread is funny.

I like Cereal Milk... but man, the zingers in here are top notch!

I know he doesn't have a legal leg to stand on. But I'm not crazy about the zingers. When someone is upset about something (righteously so or not), it pains me to see people saying things to make that person even more upset.

coco

That's really sweet, Cocoanut. That display of empathy makes my heart burst. Given his conduct though, and all his mean and nasty Grown Up words, Cereal doesn't need any skirts to hide behind.





I didn't see you swatting his naughty mouth for those posts.

Outside my house I have a beautiful, well crafted speedboat. It looks amazing, and it is even label goods. In sexy italics on the side, it says "Justice Monde". Yep, no knock offs for me, this is a Justice Monde original

My point is you don't need "BMW" or "Audi" to make a good car. If your cars are that good, it's you who did all the coding. Make your own name, your product is worth it You tell BMW or whoevers' cars you originally modelled yours off, that if they pay YOU a fat load of cash, you'll put their name on some of your cars... maybe.

Ignore the companies out there, you're more than enough without them from the sounds of it

Woo, I got SO BUSTED and then I got SO ZINGED. Whatever. I'm past that. If it makes you feel better to quote me line-by-line, if it makes you feel better to call me a thief after all my hours of hard work, if that makes you feel better about the fact that my creations were loved by many (including Linden Lab themselves for a while) while yours languished in obscurity, so be it. I'm not going to be able to stop you.

If there's one criticism you could level against me fairly, it's the fact that I've spent my SL residency charging ahead, "my way or the highway", and my blindness hurt me in some ways I didn't even realize were significant. I made a lot of enemies. And I think there's a parallel there between me and Linden Lab. Michael slighted me - not because he said I was violating the rules, but because he said it was up to the residents and that his company would uphold this kind of bullshit pseudo-vigilantism. And much like my actions, Michael's are going to hurt Linden Lab in ways they're not even going to realize are significant yet.

Have a nice life, guys, and try not to think about the fact that every minute and every dollar you invest in Second Life is a minute or a dollar you're never going to see again.

Dude if you just quit and pull your product line, what do you get from that? You should have never bothered to make anything at all, cause then you could have used the time for something else. It's all wasted time unless you slightly rebrand your cars and keep going. You don't want to just walk away from all your hard work, and just quit. Nah, you say you've always pushed forward, and made enemies cause you won't fold and compromise, why fold now?

Make your own brand name, rebrand your cars, and make ten times the profit you did before by signing real life contracts for people to use your brand name for branded clothing and stuff in SL...

Or not, cause you could just quit. But it's all good to me, I don't really buy cars in SL.

Before this thread goes spiralling into the annals of Locked Threads, I'd like everyone to stop for just a moment and have a look at what is going on, again, in this thread.

Once again, we forget that these are discussions of ideals, not people. Sure, Cereal Milk here is martyr for a day. Whoopity-flipping-doo. All this "attack and defend the person" war does is royally piss everyone off, to the point of a thread locking.

Despicable.

Now, I'm not a perfect angel myself, and that's saying it lightly. I usually avoid these threads like the plague because they spiral heavily out of control, missing the point entirely. If people here have a private beef with Cereal, or other posters, or themselves, great - if we're going to have a good, clean discussion here, it's going to be without judging people at the bottom line of it.

Personally, I'd like to see these discussions have some meat on their bones, instead of becoming the public soap operas they are. Seeing as I've known the sharp end of this myself, I feel many here know where I'm going with this.

So let's try again, shall we?

----------

Personally, I'm of the mind that everyone should have the right to learn. Be it by disassembling a branded TV or going under the hood of their SUV, we all should have a right to what makes these things tick. If we don't in some form, competition quickly becomes monopoly, and the whole process spirals to hell.

Clip to Second Life.

I feel that we, as a community, should have the right to understand our world. In that light, the tools, and how to use those tools, should always be free. This goes without saying, and despite some strikes against freebies, freebie and LL provided tools are really what drive our world.

But here's the catch. What happens when someone feels they should pursue the work of someone else?

Now, in general, I'm okay with the role model concept. I also support choice, including the right to make bad ones. If you feel like selling replicas of someone else's work, knock yourself out. But don't expect sympathy, from me or anyone else, when you get caught.

The only sustainable way to really do business in Second Life is to build your own empire on your own terms. I doubt I need to cite names or stand higher on my soapbox here to get that point across. If you have a good idea, great! Run with it.

Now, what I see here is a mix of good ideas with a batch of mistakes, and a hell of a lot of snide remarks from most* parties. Is that good for advancing the issue? Not really.

Rather, this should serve as a learning experience for all involved: In the long run, immitation doesn't pay. Innovation does.

That is all. Feel free to continue the usual drama.

Just checking, you don't mean me right? Cause I didn't want to criticize or beef up anyone, I just wanted to say Cereal should keep going, but with a slightly different brand on the side of the cars. My two cents.

And judges everywhere persist in proving them wrong !

As for the topic at hand, I still think it's up to the brand owner (through LL) and not unrelated SL residents to tell Cereal whether he should stop selling the cars or not. In fact the first thing that should have been done is asking them for permission, from the moment the first texture bearing their brand was made. This is mostly an honor system we have here, I wish we could keep it that way.

The criticism that I level against you is that you are substituting your idea about how the world ought to work with how it does.

Not as if this wasn't explained to you and you declined to listen before but I'll try and lay it out for others to not follow in your footsteps:

1. trademarks and copyrights are different
   
2. linden lab is holding itself as a common carrier not policing content
   
3. under the DMCA, LL needs a sworn statement from the copyright holder to take action
   
4. for trademark violation, if LL is made aware of it by anyone they must act to protect it
   
5. LL was made aware of your trademark violation
   
6. they had to police it
   
7. you acted like a jerk about it
   
8. you were given multiple ways on how to rectify it
   
9. you didn't rectify it
   
10. that was pretty dumb
    

If you were half as beligerent on the phone to LL as you have been here *I* (not them) would have banned you for obdurate stoopidity. Your spitefulness is amusing a few of us, please continue. But if you are going to leave, please really do so because we really don't like people who grandstand for a cause where they are so clearly wrong to just about anyone but themselves.

So which was it? Did you see a return or didn't you? Try not to argue with you own self in the same thread as it hurts your credibility.

You forgot to neg my momma!

Alright lads, I want a good clean fight!

Let the "Yo Momma" jokes commence!