Creating Second Life Last Names

I love the sound of this for two reasons. First, when I first started playing SL, I was not planning on staying. I only wanted to see if two avatars who hugged in SL would have "pokage" (hair, etc, poking through the other avatar). Because of that, I wasn't very careful in selecting a last name. But I fell in love with the game and am staying.
Secondly, I'm getting married Saturday, and I would love to be able to have a hyphenated last name. I hope this idea is implemented and QUICKLY!

I think the current system is perfect. there are plenty of names to choose from. The fact that they retire, does indeed set generations. This adds more depth to SL. I for one would prefer the current system over either of the 2 options. Thats not even considering all the problems and additional work it would take to make the transition. If you want a new name make it- but a name dosent define you, you define your name, or something.

I do like some of the ideas mentioned! allowing for a name prefix, Mr. Mrs. Miss. etc..

an option allowing someone to "borrow" a last name so long as they are partners, then their name reverting back if there status changes, would be reasonable.

There just seem to be a ton of possible issues with the perposed options, that are frankly unnessessary.

I second this notion as there is already too much being sold in SL as it is. We pay for accounts, we pay for land, we pay for uploads of textures and sounds, we pay to rate someone! We pay for clothing, and objects, and everything else in SL. do we really need to pay for names?

As stated in several places in this thread, there are really a couple posible outcomes with this.

1) People can freely change their name to any last name they want for a modest Name change fee for processing. I think L$200 would do it. Even if the name is already in use, you can have the same last name. But you will have people coming up with names like Lindon or chunge just to confuse some people or con others with a name.

2) People buy a name with rights for a one time fee of probably US$25. they own the name, and no noe else can have it. it is unique to them, and they can not transfer or sell the name to anyone else. Down side to this is the name you have always wanted may be taken by someone else already, and someone with 5 accounts sucks up 5 really good names that everyone wanted.

3) You buy a name, and choose a rights option for a little more money say US$50. This sets that name you purchased into the names list for other people to buy at a cheaper price than if they made their own. Lets say they get to buy that name now for US$5. Then you get L$1000 for the name sale from the list. Now the name is still available for others to use, they get it at a cheaper price, you get a commision off it in L$, and we have name barons.

4) You have a basic free name that you picked when you signed up for SL, and "Rent" a name. a fee of L$250 a month is deducted from your account for last name rental. You can pick any last name you want, and people can have the same last name. When you stop paying or cant pay for the name anymore, you revert to your old original name.

5) Same as #4 but more expensive, and you own the rights to the name, can't sell it, no one else can have it, and when you don't pay to keep it, it is available for purchase again.

No matter how we look at it, people are going to complain, and get mad. There are always ups and downs to every situation, and there will always be someone who claims its "not fair." We just need to figure out which of these options would please the most of us, and go with it. Sometimes I wonder if you all over there at LL just like getting people all riled up .

Anyways, this is what I have come up with after careful consideration of all the options. Let the rocks be thrown now, and tell me how you all feel. What is your favorite option?
Lindens? do any of these sound good?

Yes make it so:


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Many small RL businesses, especially in Healthcare, Finance, Insurance, Real Estate, Human Service, Non-Profit and Employment Recruiting require full disclosure of identity, credentials and business references. Customers/clients just won't do business without knowing who they are dealing with.

For SL to attract these vast untapped service markets, LL must create an option where real life accounts are set up enabling real life identities - business names, corporate names, DBA's, sole propty., personal names, website linkage, etc. Once that is implemented, I for one, would be able to offer some resources within SL to my clients, small seminars, consulting services, multi-media presentations, etc.

Does LL have any plans to create the option for RL accounts within Second Life?

If not, what needs to be done to convince LL that this would be an EXCELLENT business decision!



Related Threads:

Real Life SL Accounts?

Robin L - Turn Key SL Business Ops!

Robin Linden's:
Creating SL Last Names

COUNT MY VOTE IN.. but just dont make the fee.. like a ridiculous amount.. maybe a annual fee of $10 USD? I would pay for that lol.. but I think its only right that partners have the same name.. and this proposal is a good way of going by it.. so as I said. count my vote in

Ummm....

Sorry Merwan, but I personally don't see this doing SL any good at all. you are talking about SL working to develop services for RL businesss. Have you forgotten what SL was created for? look at the name. Second Life! Detach from the Real world, and create an alternate one. if you want to hold virtual seminars and such, there are many ways to create your own VRML web site where you can create avatars, and build a VR world in your web site. From there, you can do just what you asked about. Please keep RL business out of SL.

If you like, I am a Chief Information Officer in RL, with many resources for virtual communications, and presentations worldwide. Come talk to me if you are really looking for this type of information infrastructure.

There are lots of RL business in SL already!

Thanks for the offer - send me your RL contact information if you wish, to [email]merwan.marker@gmail.com[/email].

There's nothing wrong with the system as it is. It's worked for us in the past and will continue to do so. Let's concern ourselves with things that REALLY matter.

The issue of Own a Second Life Last Name is a bit complicated. When people "own" something which can be tied to "Intellectual Property" (namely, trademarks), we're threading on thin ice.

While I would love to be able to "reserve" a very creative and original last name, and I certainly don't oppose the notion of "name barons", I would also like to point out the issue that arose with registering DNS domains, some 15 years ago. At that time, what would become Network Solutions, simply "sold" the right to a domain name, independently of the legal claim someone else had over that name. The stories about the sale of the "coca-cola.com" domain and the lawsuits that followed remind me of the problems of allowing people to register what they want (more recently, though, Coca-Cola allowed things to be registered like the vintagecocacola.com domain, so this definitely shows a change in attitude - but it also envolved legal disputes).

In my own country, Portugal, something interesting happened with "microsoft.pt". A tiny company in the mid-eighties, before Microsoft was a huge monster expanding internationally, registered a national trademark - "microsoft" - and a company name with that name. Microsoft, of course, had the allowed time to contest that claim on the trademark, but Uncle Bill wasn't aware of this until much later, when the name was accepted and Microsoft tried to register their company - and later "microsoft.pt" - in Portugal. They weren't allowed to do so, and Microsoft Portugal was established under the business name "MSFT". Under Portuguese law regulating the Internet domain names, they would be able to register "msft.pt" but not "microsoft.pt" - this meant, of course, appealing to the law, but with no success - since at the time of registration of the national trademark "microsoft" by another company, Microsoft did not have its own trademark registered internationally, and did not contest the claim locally, so the national trademark had precedence (btw, a similar thing happened with Apple here...). Of course, all this was sorted out after some years of legal battles (guess who won?), but it was definitely messy.

Similar "horror stories" about abuse of legal trademarks for "Internet names" which are sold on a first-come, first-served base have encouraged most of the countries (although not all) to establish a more restrictive approach. People would need to prove their claim on a "name" before being able to register it - either a company/entity name, or a legal trademark. Some European countries, for instance, are very restrictive on the allowance of names; Germany, as an example, has always demanded people to register their names at the central repository of trademarks, and a domain name has the same "legal value" as any other trademarked name.

Now this is definitely too cumbersome for LL to handle - ie. having a bureaucratic approach to validate the legal right to a SL name - and too expensive to mantain, so I'd expect LL to do the reverse approach, the one commonly used in the US: let the users sue each other if they're violating IP, LL is just a "registry" and not an "arbitrator". This is the "cheapest" approach, by shifting all the burden of legal claim to the users.

Of course, I'm not too happy about that. As SL grows, and assuming that the ratio of non-US residents stays about the same, what we'll see is a growing difficulty for non-US residents to "claim" names easily, even if they have the legal right to them (registered trademarks, company names, etc.), just because it's too expensive to fight legal wars in the US. I mean, people still complain about paying US$9.95 for a lifetime account; these are the same people that definitely won't be able to pay the legal costs of proving the right to their names in an US court.

The second suggestion, Start a New Second Life Last Name, is slightly better, but also not perfect. Let's assume someone wants to register the surname "King" and create an avatar called "John King" (which may even be his RL name). So far, so good, until Stephen King (whose name is trademarked) finds out that someone else has registered that name. Now Mr Stephen King will have to get his lawyers to press LL to disallow that name. Of course, the same applies to other registered, trademarked names, like Mickey Mouse, Harry Potter, or Darth Vader, or celebrity names like Marilyn Monroe, Jennifer Lopez or Brad Pitt.

Even if we're talking about a few exceptions (and not the rule), I'm not sure if this is a wise choice for the future, unless LL wishes to attract attention in terms of PR (even bad PR is sometimes preferred than being unknown). Already trademarks are violated every day, in a limited scale, at webistes like SL Exchange; Apotheus was much more careful at the beginning by screening out blatant violations, but there are so many new items coming up for sale these days, that it's plainly impossible to keep track of them (as an early adopter, I managed to appreciate the effort of keeping these trademarked items off SL Ex - yes, I admit one item I had clearly violated a trademarked brand - just to see half a dozen people using that very same brand some six months ago competing with my own products...). There is even a "Jennifer Lopez" avatar for sale - and now you would even be able to match it with that name! What will Ms Lopez' lawyers have to say about this, when SL really grows big anough to attract attention?

With 150 or so new residents per day, how can LL possibly track abuses of IP related to names, brands, trademarks? The answer is, it can't. It's simply too expensive to do so.

So, what would be feasible for having either of those two approaches working? US and international law do not allow copyrights on "names", so it means that you should trademark your own name (since US juridiction applies to LL, this means filing a claim with the United States Patent and Trademark Office - you can do it online). When registering a new "last name" LL should do a check on their database to see if the name is "free". If not, the applicant should prove that he is actually the person listed in the USPTO as having a claim on that name (say, by simply returning the URL to the appropriate entry on their database).

This would certainly help to prevent too much abuse - at the very least, LL would be able to claim that they did their best effort to prevent abuse by searching for trademarks. I expect that doing searches on the USPTO and checking on the results is not too much work to ask (1-2 hours of web programming...) to ensure that, at the very least, people are disallowed to use already registered trademarks.

This does not address the issue with "similar names" (ie. people registering with "Jenifer Lopez" - since "Jennifer Lopez" is a registered trademark, but spelling it with just one N is an un-trademarked name), but these are fine in terms of law (unless someone sues!) and probably "safe" to accept, although it will lead to "name cluttering" as it was already explained by Jellin Pico and others in this thread.

My apologies for the long post. Of course, having had some copyright & trademark issues in the past - in RL and SL - this is naturally an area that makes me itch all over and the only thing I can recommend is "caution".

What about the ability to buy rights to your name, but only in full?

For instance, I could register and buy the rights to "Pendari Lorentz" but not just Lorentz (or Pendari) alone.

I think this would help the issue of a common name getting taken. And I personally do not want to see any old last names come out of retirement. I think Loki rasies some good questions on this issue. And for the most part I like the idea of allowing people to create their own name. I just would prefer it if the registration of a name had to include the full name as I stated above.

Cool idea, but will we see Joe Pepsi and Frederica Viagra one day? urrrgh

If we are made to pick from a restricted list of last names in order to promote having normal, namey sounding names, why are there last names in the list like Malaprop and Backbite?

Ignoring the concepts of want/don't want, right/wrong, copyright infringement, trademark infringement, etc etc... I have one primary thought on this matter:

When SL is still lagging, teleports don't work, prims are moving off sim on their own, Officers have no way to send notecards or IMs to everyone in their group, items don't link properly, inventory lags to exasperation, etc etc etc etc....

Spending codemaster time so someone can have a special last name seems to me way, way down on the priority list. There are a lot of things far more important (imho) that need more immediate attention. I have never agreed with SL forcing last names, but I think any coder time that might be derailed for changing that right now would be a disservice to the community when so many other things need attention and are more urgent.

Just my 2cents.

For my part, I would leave the naming system as it stands, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

But for new suggestions, I'm not hot on either proposals.

How about just giving out numbers? I want #6!

It the naming systems works similar to domain names on the web, then the name we see is just a reference to a DNS like number in the system. So why is the present system so restricted? Why not let people have free choice of what they want to be know under? It would make it easier to spot the immatures and the juveniles out there because they would be the ones with the immature and juvenile silly names.

Ban lists? not a problem if the systems works using the user's key, which I'm pretty sure it does. Correct me if I'm wrong on this.

Whatever the outcome, some will like it, some won't. But chances are that if you expand the freedom of choice in this matter, there will be an increase in problems, griefing, dramas, copyrights disputes and increase in name calling...

Do we also assume that this last name creation would include existing SL last names that are currently closed for people who want to become part of a family?

This is a great idea. i chose my name only cuz Yiffy went well with Yaffle. Its not my actual personas name. And the name Yiffy meens Cyber in furry terms. And im not all that cybery infact im a artistic person who enjoys nightwish and video games hehe. It would help me to be more unique if i could use my personas actual name in SL rather then use a personal group's title to display it. But i dont want other people to use my name unless there family. If we did infact use our User ID keys for more then scripts we could have a name database setup like ICQ. our Key is our real ID and we can change the nickname. and our calling cards would update accordingly. But only difference is we pay for it. If it was free, people would be changing there name every 5 minutes and griefers would have a new toy.

EDIT: also all submitted names should be judged by lindens so we dont have Mr Viagra walking around with a... well you know.

As a recently married Avi, it would be nice to be able to take the name of my husband. So as you are considering the creating our own last name option, perhaps you would consider giving avi's who want a name change for personal reasons the opportunity to do so even if we have to pay a small fee.

Any idea when we'll see Feedback on the Feedback?

Would be nice to know if/when we can expect this highly anticipated feature.

I honestly don't see the point in having to select your last name of a list of curently avaliable names in the first place. It seems these proposals are work-arounds for people not being able to have whatever last name they like. With that in mind why aren't last names completely user arbitrary like first names?

Great idea...as long you allow the option of renaming existing avatars. I've used all my accounts and some are defunct;this way I could restart from the scratch without being restricted from creating a new avatar since it will be already in game...Please do so ASAP;I'm pretty sure that would make people happy!

N.B.: I prefer the second option; a family name is something public,not a trademark...

I totally agree with these statements plus I'd hate to see a bunch of stupid last names running around, at least a semi normal last name makes up for a corky first name!

I concure your concurence is concurent,

The one and Only Waves Lightcloud.

I only picked this name because it was the only normal sounding name I could find. I'd prefer a last name.. Hell, I'd prefer to change my avatars name period. I don't like being WolfDemon. It was an old irc nick, and my original choice of "Mike" was already taken by every damn last name I could find at the time.

I like both ideas and would enjoy seeing each implemented. I especially like the idea that if you register your name, the only people who can have it are those you extend the invitation to share it.

On the flipside, there should be a mechanism to dissolve those relationships. We all know the transient nature of relationships in online worlds (though it is changing, and almost everyone now has at least one example to speak to).... and whatever you paid to have, you should retain control over.... make invitations revokable, like land permissions.

Edit to add: I agree with the idea that this should not be a high priority, but understand LL's interest in finding additional revenue streams.

I also agree with the idea that names should be vetted in some fashion before being registered, even though that will likely mean additional cost to LL (impacting estimated revenue from the idea).

Finally -- I think any such plan should allow for renaming of your existing characters -- especially if it is intended that new characters can choose their last name for free or for a reduced fee.

ooo, yes please. I really like this name changing idea. I came to sl because a freind in There was trying the free trial and told me it wasnt that great etc... I just wanted to try it out, not expecting to actually get into it and end up loving it more than There... so now im stuck with Lost Thereian ! ...Dumbest choice of a last name lol, and currently there is no way to change it. I have other ideas for a last name and I think this would make sl more enjoyable for myself and others, instead of just choosing from a list, and being stuck with it.