Avatars United

The Lindens in their infinite wisdom have decided to purchase another web property... AvatarsUnited.com
Its basically a Facebook clone for avatars from all sorts of online games.
At first i was a little negative on it...after testing some of the functions i found some major errors happening (unable to edit a blog post for instance!), but a couple hrs exploration later it had revealed some hidden functionality that could make the site useful - at least as a marketing tool.
So after creating a Group, a Forum, adding photos to new albums, adding blurbs, and managing to basically theme some pages...my side seems at least ready to go.
I am amazed how many friends invites i am getting... i figure there's approx 225 SecondLife Avatars registered so far (try a search for no name to see stats) and i have 23 on my friends list already. Seems everyones linking their networks fast. Either that or i have a friendly harmless name that people click when they see it :P
My profile is at http://www.avatarsunited.com/avatars/jubjub-forder
My first Group for updates on w hats happening at GARDEN WORLD is at http://www.avatarsunited.com/groups/gardernerific

Slowly the landscape changes

Living on the mainland in Second Life has certainly had it's ups and downs over the last two years. I started with a 512 sq metre and have slowly build it into a medium size set of connected parcels spread over 4 sims.One of the major problems with buying and building on mainland is "ad plots". Their are some valid uses for the tiny ad plots, but mostly they are used to extort large sums of money out of residents. An ad plot is a 16 metre sq of land... if priced at average pricing of land they would cost $60 linden or less (about 20 US cents). A few notorious people buy them cheap and sell them for prices up to $15000 LD (about $55 US Dollars!). And these extortionists are quite happy to hold these tiny parcels for several years cause the payback is sooo good.

Typical of these extortionists is their practice of "checkerboarding"..buying a plot of land..dividing it into ad plots squares and selling them. The picture at left shows a typical scenario..my land is in blue... 'for sale' land in orange.. red land is not for sale. This checkerboard prevents my land from being joined - which means i cannot build a large building there, or have a path from one of plots to another.

Recently the Lindens decided to do something about this practice of checkerboarding... however in typical Linden fashion it amounted to all hot air and bluster.

First they put a forum up for residents to air their views on what should be done about checkerboarding.. then after 65 pages of irate residents outpourings they decided 3 things.

1. Checkboarding is no longer allowed..report it as an Abuse Report (ARs are a joke system)
2. They realised the top 10 ad plot owners were responsible for over 40% of ad plots (duh) and will have a 'word' with them
3. They understood that it is the extortion aspects that pain the most people. They will address that sometime in the future.

Then closed the forum!

What a joke... a mere tip of the hat to the actual problem of extortion..forum feedback was ignored (people wanted price cap on small parcels), and they could have easily talked to the top ten ad plot owners at the start... and used their rule of "things that affect SL negatively" to stop the practice.

But they won't do anything like banning extortion on these ad plots - that would lower the average land price to probably less than $1 linden per sq metre and they already stated they want it at $8 LD per sq (currently 3.6 per).

SO... in the last 6 months the Lindens have;

• Limited advertising networks to 50 ads per person - which were mainly used by extortionists to force quicker sales - but also used by valid advertisers (like me) to advertise our sales and shops. Tough luck valid users!
  
• Tightened the rules on bullying a faster sale by use of ban lines or large glowing rotating prims, and instigated a rule where land set for sale cannot have advertising on it (extortionists already work around that one).
  
• Pushed the price of one very popular type of private island (openspaces) up 60% to force people back to the mainland.
  
• And now... Banned checkerboarding of land.
  

They do this to try and keep mainland alive...as they repeatedly state they see a thriving mainland as essential to a healthy Second Life (i agree).

None of the Linden new rules has addressed the core problem... all they have to do is make people want to live on the mainland ..and they never will while bullying extortionists are allowed to do their 'thing'.

Cap prices on small parcels and then there is no value in the extortion.. a very simple solution

Follow up to the DMCA - a reply from the Lindens

Yesterday i sent a reply to the lindens regarding their comment on the DMCA which contained the following…

…my DMCA contained the specific name and location co-ordinates and i also supplied screenshot via AR the same Hour.These are the lines in my DMCA faxed to you…
—————-
The allegedly infringing work/s I am referring to has/have the following
details (name followed by co-ordinates )

Js Buddha - Rusty    at Utopia Islands North (81, 222, 21)

The AV mentioned was removed (i presume for other reasons) and the buddha statue sat there for 4 days for sale… and after filing another AR as well and getting no response…  i asked the owners of the rented plot to remove it to prevent it continuing to be sold.

 today they replied..

“In addition to identifying the allegedly infringing material, your DMCA notification must also identify the material that you own.
Please submit an updated DMCA notification that includes a region name, coordinates, image, or other information sufficient to locate the material that you own.”

Its now obvious they don’t bother reading the emails or DMCA’s  they receive.
I had Ared the item - clearly indicating the stolen content (its part of the AR popup to click and ID the object).
I had identified the name of the object, region and co-ordinates in the faxed DMCA
I had again AR’ed the object 4 days later
I had again identified the object in my reply email (see text above) 
AND i had told them the object had been removed!!!

Dunno what’s going on in Linden land..perhaps they employ people that cannot read english 

Yet another DMCA

Got IM’ed a few days ago by a couple of guys letting me know that my rusty buddha had been copybotted and was displayed on one of their renters land. How did they know to IM me? They had bought the same buddha a few weeks earlier and the renters version did not have me as the creator.

Judge for yourself - do you think they copied from mine?

It was the most obvious copy i have ever seen, more fool me for thinking that such an obvious item would not be copied

So… i follow the Lindens DMCA process… filed an Abuse Report and then faxed off my DMCA claim to them within the hour with details of the thiefs names, position and name of item etc.
Day One: nothing done
Day Two: nothing done
Day Three: nothing done, but i look up the names and they are no longer in the database.
Day Four: nothing done - buddha still there …BUT..the guys who told me originally of the theft, IM me again saying the thief has returned under a new alt..and asked them to return anything on the land to him cheeky bs’td. So i filed another Abuse Report indicating the banned person had reappeared under a new alt = Matthias Dexler (not that it will acoomplish anything).

So now it’s SIX days later, and the Lindens Email me this…

“After having reviewed your notification, Linden Lab was unable to act on your notification because: You did not provide information reasonably sufficient to identify the copyrighted work(s) that you claim to have been infringed. Specifically, you did not provide a region name, coordinates, images, or other information sufficient to locate the material that you claim to be infringed upon.”

Ok, so i provide name of thief, thiefs alt, region, co-ordinates, name of object and its not enough! WTF???
I go back to the land..buddha gone…i IM the land owners (the guys who told me) they had removed it yesterday to re-rent the land to someone else and ’cause they didn’t like the buddha being stolen and for sale. Why didn’t we do that in that first place i hear you ask? Cause to get rid of thieves in Second Life… you must provide evidence.

The DIGITAL MILLENNIUM COPYRIGHT ACT OF 1998 states that “Upon receiving proper notification of claimed infringement, the provider must expeditiously take down or block access to the material.”

6 days is expeditiously? since when?

And i have one more point to make…. i asked for the following…

“I wish all instances of the infringing sculpt maps, textures and the Buddha statue be removed from the sim named above and from Badkill Heron’s, Mattis Sparta’s, suppe Burnstein’s, and Erich23 Kaestner’s inventories”….

basically ’cause while those people still have the buddha..they can still sell my stolen property. The Lindens don’t do that..they simply remove the displayed item..leaving the thief to just rezz it again if they choose..and then i have to track it and file again.

BUT i believe the Lindens violate the DMCA act by not removing it from inventories..it clearly says “..block access..” and they fail to do that. People have pointed this out to them before..but it will take someone suing them to force them into it I suspect…but when someone sues, and eventually they will..it will open a huge can of worms for them..and may result in the whole system being sued out of existence. There is so much copyright theft in there its just not funny..just no-one has seriously forced the issue thus far. Personally if i was the Lindens i would cover my ass anyway i could.

Oh and the names of the AVs?… Matti Sparta owner, Badkill Heron creator (thief) have both been banned (but not due to my DMCA) and now he has returned as Matthias Dexler.

Keep Matthias Dexler off your land..he has copybot and will use it.