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On another note, while we are all focussing on MySpace controversy these days when, frankly, the biggest problem I see is the new video-based social networking sites like YouTube. Recently, when I allowed myself to be distracted by the mostly harmless (and pointless) videos on YouTube I ended up randomly clicking on various videos in the related playlists. After doing this for a few minutes it didn't take long before a video appeared of a minor wearing very little clothing and "shaking their booties" at the camera and sometimes much worse. Some of you may think this is no bad thing but when the child in question is around 11-13 years old it gets quite disturbing, particularly when these videos would be invariably commented on by 45 year old men be telling these children in no uncertain terms exactly what they wanted to be "doing" to them.

When I saw reported this incident to YouTube, thankfully the video and the account of the abusive commenter were, thankfully, taken down within 24 hours but just in case you think this an isolated incident once you click on one of these videos that's when all the other ones will start to show up in the related playlists. You could spend an hour as I once did just clicking through and reporting these videos and perverts to YouTube but you will soon realise that there are literally thousands of similar incidents on YouTube and that you, on your own, have no chance of making an impact on the overall situation. I do see this as a problem and, sadly, the solution is often only when companies like Youtube and others--with their eyes mostly on corporate and shareholder profits--come under the threats of media exposure and government intervention (as happened with MySpace).

The answer, may be for such websites to have separate domains and membership for minors and adults as is the case with Second Life - http://teen.secondlife.com/ (if you agree, please write to such websites and your political representative). This immediately removes most, if not all, of the problems currently associated with sites like YouTube and MySpace. But if membership is to be mixed then it should have a strict child-safe content policy throughout and be much more closely monitored by staff and volunteers. After all, it is only too easy for children to get around such flawed and utterly ineffective concepts as "mature content walls" requiring nothing more than mouse-click confirmation or fake date-of-birth to get around (which can be observed happening way too often!).

Personally, I cannot see a valid reason why a child should socially network with unfamiliar, untrusted adults or why any adult would want to be able to socially network with children unless it be for nefarious purposes. This would never be tolerated anywhere off-line so why on-line?

Sun and IBM are not collaborating on this. Sun is using its Darkstar gaming server to deliver Menlo Park 2.0. IBM is using a private island in Second Life. No connection - just a similar initiative.

No they were banned due to Linden Lab's new policy on age-play. Linden Lab is a private company so they can ban whoever they want for whatever reason they want. http://blog.secondlife.com/

Someone already linked to the Linux client in another reply, but you should know that the Second Life server grid is built on Debian GNU/Linux.

In addition, the client (i.e. viewer), is open source licensed under the GPLv2. AND they have announced they will open source the server grid code as well. Seeing how the grid is built on Debian, it may even become a part of the Debian package repository so any Debian install can become a Second Life grid node with a simple apt-get install second-life-server.

Granted the code is still coming, but this is fairly exciting news for the GNU/Linux crowd nonetheless. At least I would hardly call this a Microsoft Windows-centric project.

Someone already linked to the Linux client in another reply, but you should know that the Second Life server grid is built on Debian GNU/Linux.

In addition, the client (i.e. viewer), is open source licensed under the GPLv2. AND they have announced they will open source the server grid code as well. Seeing how the grid is built on Debian, it may even become a part of the Debian package repository so any Debian install can become a Second Life grid node with a simple apt-get install second-life-server.

Granted the code is still coming, but this is fairly exciting news for the GNU/Linux crowd nonetheless. At least I would hardly call this a Microsoft Windows-centric project.

Yeah, really sucks, because right now they have nothing to put at http://secondlife.com/community/linux-alpha.php , which is a totaly waste of an .html file. Please don't look or anything, don't want you to waste your time trying.

Unpacking an archive and clicking an icon is absolutely impossible to deal with nowadays...

Well, since the client code is released under the GPL, there is no reason to expect anything else for the server code. Of course they could use a more restrictive license, but from their press release and comments on their website I'm thinking it will be GPL.

They also offer a commercial license for those who prefer it.

Ah, you missed the boat. There already is one .

Pardon me, but "throwing it over the wall" is not even remotely accurate. While I wouldn't characterize our effort as being 100% fully-collaborative yet, we're working in that direction. We have frequent releases, an active mailing list, and have incorporated a number of patches submitted by the community.

Pardon me, but "throwing it over the wall" is not even remotely accurate. While I wouldn't characterize our effort as being 100% fully-collaborative yet, we're working in that direction. We have frequent releases, an active mailing list, and have incorporated a number of patches submitted by the community.

Just in case you don't recall, it's not like there are no adults in the "Teen Grid" (nor are Linden Lab employees the only ones). Then again, reaching out to teens there isn't easy either; your group must pay to have its own island, and get a background check from Linden Lab, and even then you'll never get to walk on the mainland.

Actually, there is a Linux client, although it's still in alpha. There is also a MacOS client, and as far as I know, it runs just fine.

Some people have funny ideas of what constitutes "open source" and "transparency" I suppose... from http://secondlife.com/corporate/sysreqs.php:

System Requirements

The following hardware and software is REQUIRED to run Second Life successfully. If your computer doesn't meet these requirements, you may not be able to participate in Second Life: PC Minimum System Requirements: * Internet Connection*: Cable or DSL * Operating System: Windows XP (Service Pack 2) o OR Windows 2000 (Service Pack 4) NOTE: Second Life does NOT currently support Windows Vista * Computer Processor: 800MHz Pentium III or Athlon, or better * Computer Memory: 256MB or better * Video/Graphics Card**: o nVidia GeForce 2, GeForce 4mx, or better o OR ATI Radeon 8500, 9250, or better Mac Minimum System Requirements: * Internet Connection*: Cable or DSL * Operating System: Mac OS X 10.3.9 or better * Computer Processor: 1 GHz G4 or better * Computer Memory: 512MB or better * Video/Graphics Card**: o nVidia GeForce 2, GeForce 4mx, or better o OR ATI Radeon 8500, 9250, or better

Second Life is not open source software,

Assuming they get the non-profit discount, the island cost at least US$980 up front with a recurring fee of US$150 each month.

Second Life | Land: Islands.

Too much? Good deal?

Since the members of Second Life already protested about a virtual tax in the past, slapping an extra real-world tax on top of what they are already required to report as income would be sure to cause an uproar.

While the "Linden Dollar" has a market value in the real world, as long as it isn't being bought or sold, just bartered inside the virtual world, there is no sale to be taxed. It's the world "dollar" in "Linden Dollar" that might twist people's attention. If it was "bottlecaps" or "Flanian pobble beads" it's true barter nature might be more obvious.

Actually, Linden has recently said that they intend to build a new continent and make all that land available to the unwashed masses. http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/02/20/first-land-p rogram-to-end/

SL seems it should be useful though the best I've seen has been billboards to teach SL prim building, and an outdoor class on fountain making which was chaotic but neat somewhat. The teacher can pull out models from his or her inventory to show. I do have a serious problem with all the skankiness in SL (I avoid it all but it fills up the search dialog). There are beautiful places however, so a private island seems the answer there.

There are other systems perhaps. I have not used it but Squeak (language) has an online moo type graphic system with hyperportals, avatars, animation, joint editing of a document, simulations, etc. and it is aimed at education from young children and on up. I do not know how easy it is to build things. It would seem that a custom SL client might also be a very attractive way to use SL, but I don't know if I could trust a course to it if you can't run your own server. But yes I can say that I have learned useful things in those two examples in SL above, the online book and the live class.

If anybody knows other real alternatives post here.. I have had an off and on idea of building something for this kind of situation myself (custom software) but perhaps there is something out there. Of course for test taking there is, so it would seem the OP wants an interactive class. So long as everyone is sitting, no craziness is going on and people aren't chatting in class it might be useful. I also believe you can stream from a website now.. I'd be interested in seeing a tool that lets you do this from your own computer, not just prepackaged streams. I was wondering if a SHOUTcast stream could get through to SL and then I found this link, the answer is yes. It would definitely be cool if you could get each participant a similar voice stream and mix them on the server.. anybody?

Anyone know of other richer virtual worlds for education? I know mainly of experimental things, like a gardening simultion for children in a CAVE environment.

It's still being worked on, and, in fact, there have been some recent developments that have moved this work forward significantly. See this entry by Babbage Linden on the Official Linden Blog from last month for more details. It involved finding a memory leak in the Mono runtime which would have caused memory usage in the simulator code to grow unacceptably over time. LL personnel like Babbage worked closely with Mono team members to resolve this.

The LSL Wiki http://www.lslwiki.com/ went down permanently in mid-January when a new, more stable wiki was started as a part of the official Linden Lab Wiki http://wiki.secondlife.com/.

In its defense, it did say it was a "primer", targeted at beginners. Chances are, it was lifted from the SL book itself.

LSL has a lot of limitations, some of which can be gotten around. However, the biggest issue is that LL is constantly breaking crap in their futile effort to scale their unscalable grid design to support the "millions of new residents" brought in from all the hype.

it's not in the language, but it's on the website:

https://secure-web7.secondlife.com/currency/sell.p hp

The average player, by default, can't push too much money around. For businesses and currency traders, you can request tiered levels of increased limits. How, otherwise, would these 'top of the pyramid' land barons pay for a couple dozen islands a month tier, if they couldn't reasonably get a dozen or two K a month out?

Looking at the withdrawl/outgoing maximums for each class:
Resident class: $5,000/month
Business class (Level 4 of 4): $30,000/day or $320,000/month
Enterprise class (Level 4): $60,000/day or $1,280,000/month
Currency Trader (Level 4): $40,000/day or $1,280,000/month

These arrangements aren't automatic, so take a request to The Lindens to get cleared for. Obviously too much work for our author, for whom *looking at the webpage* was either too much effort, or too damaging to his case.

The problem is that they are "investing money" into lindens and hoping the exchange rate changes. Linden Labs as specifically "pegged" the linden to the dollar. I track it and it usually has been consist to about 1000L for abojut $4/US. Lindens are strictly controlled, it is not easy to just make large amounts of linens, ( I know I have tried :) ). Most of this is planned, they hired an economist to help control the economy. Linden labs makes $.30 US on each buy and about 3.5% on each sale. Sales of lindens tend to act as stocks, meaning you put in a sell order and wait for some to bid on the lindens. buys are typically much faster though.

There is one example of linden dumping to control linden prices, quote: "In the second half of September we sold L$20,117,994 to prevent rapid appreciation of the L$. " . http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/10/03/linden-dolla r-economy-update-2/ it is on there blogs.

From the website (https://secure-web4.secondlife.com/currency/descr ibe-transaction-fees.php): Fees for Buying L$ You will be charged a fixed fee of $0.30 per transaction regardless of the amount of L$ you purchase.

Fees for Selling L$ Sellers of currency pay a fee of 3.5% per transaction. Proceeds will be credited to your US$ account balance.

Yes there are limits to trading, unless you apply for higher limits:
https://secure-web4.secondlife.com/currency/descri be-limits.php

So if you read the article, he was trying to do currency trading on a pegged currency, not the greatest idea. He got the same amount going in as going out minus the trasnaction fees, gee go figure.

And if you want to look at the economic statistics: http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php Which also lists the sources and sinks, most of the money made by linden labs is from transaction fees, tier fees (fees for owning land or islands), and membership fees.

Linen exchange market data: http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy-market.php More useful economic statistics: http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy-graphs.php

Another interesting thing is that lindens are not produced, except by "allowances" given to residents and non-residents weekly. In WOW (world of warcraft) the server producers more gold when creatures are killed. Hence the lindens in Sl are an artifical scarcity, which is what all real world currencies are.

Not everything is sunshine and roses though:

There are some problems with the economy though:

1. land prices have gone out the roof. It is nearly impossible to buy land without spending around $100US worth of lindens. land prices for purchase vary between 17L and more per M. How and what you can build on the land depends on the conventant or contract for the land and how much land you own. For the covenants, think home owners association. Plus for private islands you may not actually own the land, and if the island owner does not pay up his tier fees then the island itself may go into remiss.

   Yes, you can get equivilent work much cheaper in SL by paying in lindens. Although the prices needed for contracted services have been going up steadily. I have had several friends in SL quit doing contracting because it does not pay enough for the effort even corporate sponsorship. I do know of some contracting companies that make enough to survive on though.

   Problems with stability during the updates, this can be especially painful as shops cannot sell when SL is down, and sometimes products break during updates or on rare occassions inventory disappears during updates.

   Land values going down or becoming unusable due

The problem is that they are "investing money" into lindens and hoping the exchange rate changes. Linden Labs as specifically "pegged" the linden to the dollar. I track it and it usually has been consist to about 1000L for abojut $4/US. Lindens are strictly controlled, it is not easy to just make large amounts of linens, ( I know I have tried :) ). Most of this is planned, they hired an economist to help control the economy. Linden labs makes $.30 US on each buy and about 3.5% on each sale. Sales of lindens tend to act as stocks, meaning you put in a sell order and wait for some to bid on the lindens. buys are typically much faster though.

There is one example of linden dumping to control linden prices, quote: "In the second half of September we sold L$20,117,994 to prevent rapid appreciation of the L$. " . http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/10/03/linden-dolla r-economy-update-2/ it is on there blogs.

From the website (https://secure-web4.secondlife.com/currency/descr ibe-transaction-fees.php): Fees for Buying L$ You will be charged a fixed fee of $0.30 per transaction regardless of the amount of L$ you purchase.

Fees for Selling L$ Sellers of currency pay a fee of 3.5% per transaction. Proceeds will be credited to your US$ account balance.

Yes there are limits to trading, unless you apply for higher limits:
https://secure-web4.secondlife.com/currency/descri be-limits.php

So if you read the article, he was trying to do currency trading on a pegged currency, not the greatest idea. He got the same amount going in as going out minus the trasnaction fees, gee go figure.

And if you want to look at the economic statistics: http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php Which also lists the sources and sinks, most of the money made by linden labs is from transaction fees, tier fees (fees for owning land or islands), and membership fees.

Linen exchange market data: http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy-market.php More useful economic statistics: http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy-graphs.php

Another interesting thing is that lindens are not produced, except by "allowances" given to residents and non-residents weekly. In WOW (world of warcraft) the server producers more gold when creatures are killed. Hence the lindens in Sl are an artifical scarcity, which is what all real world currencies are.

Not everything is sunshine and roses though:

There are some problems with the economy though:

1. land prices have gone out the roof. It is nearly impossible to buy land without spending around $100US worth of lindens. land prices for purchase vary between 17L and more per M. How and what you can build on the land depends on the conventant or contract for the land and how much land you own. For the covenants, think home owners association. Plus for private islands you may not actually own the land, and if the island owner does not pay up his tier fees then the island itself may go into remiss.

   Yes, you can get equivilent work much cheaper in SL by paying in lindens. Although the prices needed for contracted services have been going up steadily. I have had several friends in SL quit doing contracting because it does not pay enough for the effort even corporate sponsorship. I do know of some contracting companies that make enough to survive on though.

   Problems with stability during the updates, this can be especially painful as shops cannot sell when SL is down, and sometimes products break during updates or on rare occassions inventory disappears during updates.

   Land values going down or becoming unusable due

The problem is that they are "investing money" into lindens and hoping the exchange rate changes. Linden Labs as specifically "pegged" the linden to the dollar. I track it and it usually has been consist to about 1000L for abojut $4/US. Lindens are strictly controlled, it is not easy to just make large amounts of linens, ( I know I have tried :) ). Most of this is planned, they hired an economist to help control the economy. Linden labs makes $.30 US on each buy and about 3.5% on each sale. Sales of lindens tend to act as stocks, meaning you put in a sell order and wait for some to bid on the lindens. buys are typically much faster though.

There is one example of linden dumping to control linden prices, quote: "In the second half of September we sold L$20,117,994 to prevent rapid appreciation of the L$. " . http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/10/03/linden-dolla r-economy-update-2/ it is on there blogs.

From the website (https://secure-web4.secondlife.com/currency/descr ibe-transaction-fees.php): Fees for Buying L$ You will be charged a fixed fee of $0.30 per transaction regardless of the amount of L$ you purchase.

Fees for Selling L$ Sellers of currency pay a fee of 3.5% per transaction. Proceeds will be credited to your US$ account balance.

Yes there are limits to trading, unless you apply for higher limits:
https://secure-web4.secondlife.com/currency/descri be-limits.php

So if you read the article, he was trying to do currency trading on a pegged currency, not the greatest idea. He got the same amount going in as going out minus the trasnaction fees, gee go figure.

And if you want to look at the economic statistics: http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php Which also lists the sources and sinks, most of the money made by linden labs is from transaction fees, tier fees (fees for owning land or islands), and membership fees.

Linen exchange market data: http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy-market.php More useful economic statistics: http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy-graphs.php

Another interesting thing is that lindens are not produced, except by "allowances" given to residents and non-residents weekly. In WOW (world of warcraft) the server producers more gold when creatures are killed. Hence the lindens in Sl are an artifical scarcity, which is what all real world currencies are.

Not everything is sunshine and roses though:

There are some problems with the economy though:

1. land prices have gone out the roof. It is nearly impossible to buy land without spending around $100US worth of lindens. land prices for purchase vary between 17L and more per M. How and what you can build on the land depends on the conventant or contract for the land and how much land you own. For the covenants, think home owners association. Plus for private islands you may not actually own the land, and if the island owner does not pay up his tier fees then the island itself may go into remiss.

   Yes, you can get equivilent work much cheaper in SL by paying in lindens. Although the prices needed for contracted services have been going up steadily. I have had several friends in SL quit doing contracting because it does not pay enough for the effort even corporate sponsorship. I do know of some contracting companies that make enough to survive on though.

   Problems with stability during the updates, this can be especially painful as shops cannot sell when SL is down, and sometimes products break during updates or on rare occassions inventory disappears during updates.

   Land values going down or becoming unusable due

The problem is that they are "investing money" into lindens and hoping the exchange rate changes. Linden Labs as specifically "pegged" the linden to the dollar. I track it and it usually has been consist to about 1000L for abojut $4/US. Lindens are strictly controlled, it is not easy to just make large amounts of linens, ( I know I have tried :) ). Most of this is planned, they hired an economist to help control the economy. Linden labs makes $.30 US on each buy and about 3.5% on each sale. Sales of lindens tend to act as stocks, meaning you put in a sell order and wait for some to bid on the lindens. buys are typically much faster though.

There is one example of linden dumping to control linden prices, quote: "In the second half of September we sold L$20,117,994 to prevent rapid appreciation of the L$. " . http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/10/03/linden-dolla r-economy-update-2/ it is on there blogs.

From the website (https://secure-web4.secondlife.com/currency/descr ibe-transaction-fees.php): Fees for Buying L$ You will be charged a fixed fee of $0.30 per transaction regardless of the amount of L$ you purchase.

Fees for Selling L$ Sellers of currency pay a fee of 3.5% per transaction. Proceeds will be credited to your US$ account balance.

Yes there are limits to trading, unless you apply for higher limits:
https://secure-web4.secondlife.com/currency/descri be-limits.php

So if you read the article, he was trying to do currency trading on a pegged currency, not the greatest idea. He got the same amount going in as going out minus the trasnaction fees, gee go figure.

And if you want to look at the economic statistics: http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php Which also lists the sources and sinks, most of the money made by linden labs is from transaction fees, tier fees (fees for owning land or islands), and membership fees.

Linen exchange market data: http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy-market.php More useful economic statistics: http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy-graphs.php

Another interesting thing is that lindens are not produced, except by "allowances" given to residents and non-residents weekly. In WOW (world of warcraft) the server producers more gold when creatures are killed. Hence the lindens in Sl are an artifical scarcity, which is what all real world currencies are.

Not everything is sunshine and roses though:

There are some problems with the economy though:

1. land prices have gone out the roof. It is nearly impossible to buy land without spending around $100US worth of lindens. land prices for purchase vary between 17L and more per M. How and what you can build on the land depends on the conventant or contract for the land and how much land you own. For the covenants, think home owners association. Plus for private islands you may not actually own the land, and if the island owner does not pay up his tier fees then the island itself may go into remiss.

   Yes, you can get equivilent work much cheaper in SL by paying in lindens. Although the prices needed for contracted services have been going up steadily. I have had several friends in SL quit doing contracting because it does not pay enough for the effort even corporate sponsorship. I do know of some contracting companies that make enough to survive on though.

   Problems with stability during the updates, this can be especially painful as shops cannot sell when SL is down, and sometimes products break during updates or on rare occassions inventory disappears during updates.

   Land values going down or becoming unusable due

The problem is that they are "investing money" into lindens and hoping the exchange rate changes. Linden Labs as specifically "pegged" the linden to the dollar. I track it and it usually has been consist to about 1000L for abojut $4/US. Lindens are strictly controlled, it is not easy to just make large amounts of linens, ( I know I have tried :) ). Most of this is planned, they hired an economist to help control the economy. Linden labs makes $.30 US on each buy and about 3.5% on each sale. Sales of lindens tend to act as stocks, meaning you put in a sell order and wait for some to bid on the lindens. buys are typically much faster though.

There is one example of linden dumping to control linden prices, quote: "In the second half of September we sold L$20,117,994 to prevent rapid appreciation of the L$. " . http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/10/03/linden-dolla r-economy-update-2/ it is on there blogs.

From the website (https://secure-web4.secondlife.com/currency/descr ibe-transaction-fees.php): Fees for Buying L$ You will be charged a fixed fee of $0.30 per transaction regardless of the amount of L$ you purchase.

Fees for Selling L$ Sellers of currency pay a fee of 3.5% per transaction. Proceeds will be credited to your US$ account balance.

Yes there are limits to trading, unless you apply for higher limits:
https://secure-web4.secondlife.com/currency/descri be-limits.php

So if you read the article, he was trying to do currency trading on a pegged currency, not the greatest idea. He got the same amount going in as going out minus the trasnaction fees, gee go figure.

And if you want to look at the economic statistics: http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php Which also lists the sources and sinks, most of the money made by linden labs is from transaction fees, tier fees (fees for owning land or islands), and membership fees.

Linen exchange market data: http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy-market.php More useful economic statistics: http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy-graphs.php

Another interesting thing is that lindens are not produced, except by "allowances" given to residents and non-residents weekly. In WOW (world of warcraft) the server producers more gold when creatures are killed. Hence the lindens in Sl are an artifical scarcity, which is what all real world currencies are.

Not everything is sunshine and roses though:

There are some problems with the economy though:

1. land prices have gone out the roof. It is nearly impossible to buy land without spending around $100US worth of lindens. land prices for purchase vary between 17L and more per M. How and what you can build on the land depends on the conventant or contract for the land and how much land you own. For the covenants, think home owners association. Plus for private islands you may not actually own the land, and if the island owner does not pay up his tier fees then the island itself may go into remiss.

   Yes, you can get equivilent work much cheaper in SL by paying in lindens. Although the prices needed for contracted services have been going up steadily. I have had several friends in SL quit doing contracting because it does not pay enough for the effort even corporate sponsorship. I do know of some contracting companies that make enough to survive on though.

   Problems with stability during the updates, this can be especially painful as shops cannot sell when SL is down, and sometimes products break during updates or on rare occassions inventory disappears during updates.

   Land values going down or becoming unusable due

The official announcement from Linden is on the Second Life Blog.

The official announcement from Linden is on the Second Life Blog.

IANAL, but several visit Wikipedia, which completely disagrees with you.

The question about who owns the copyright here is murky, at best. It would probably be Linden Labs, except that they consider themselves an "online service provider" under the DMCA. Operating under this portion of the law means that you don't claim copyright on the creative works you host; you merely act as a conduit.

My guess would be that at this point, copyright for the individual objects is owned by the creator(s) of each object. The question then becomes whether the public performance of each object is fair use. I'd argue that in most cases, it will be. There's only one copyright holder complaining here.

Link? :)

I find it disheartening, myself.

My PC's have better video cards, and faster cpu cycles

but are outperformed by the Core 2 Duo iMac.

Neither of my PCs can break 50 fps, with "superior" video cards.

Stating the iMac isn't a viable video game machine because you can't upgrade the video card isn't a valid argument at this point, but may be an issue in the future.

Unless you can point me to a game that is more demanding than Half-Life 2 with maxed out settings (I'm sure there are some, but I'm not exactly a hard core gamer)

I would say the iMac is a GREAT gaming platform for 99% of the games available.

This kind of thing takes place in another "immersive virtual environment" every day.

Yes, it's feature chicken. The game of chicken is a good metaphor for a lot of things. Superpowers bullying each other? Nuclear chicken. Libertarian/Conservatives arguing against social security? Welfare chicken. They don't want people starving in the streets either, but they hope someone else wants it even less so they don't have to pay.

Ok, now that was a not-planned thread hijacking attempt. I'm sorry.

Seriously, those dominant assurance contracts could probably be a great solution to the problem, but it seems that even where there's really no need at all for it, people would rather have artificial scarcity. I think it's because fundraising for common goods is still seen as a sort of begging. And from the ones who come closest to implementing good assurance contracts, it seems that not only do bidders think of it as begging, sellers don't grok it either and mostly use it for begging...

Sorry I don't have an account here, but that's ok :) I am Traven Sachs in Second Life, and I run Wolfhaven Productions, a Second Life based business. For those of you who don't know - Second Life is a 3D Virtual world with a contiguous 'grid' of 'regions' (think counties) we call "sim's" (short for simulator). A person can literally 'walk' from one side to the other... takes a while, but oh the sights you'll see! In any event, objects and items created in-world by someone can be 'scripted' or programmed by the creator to DO different things. Sometimes the programming added to items can be set up to do malicious things like create a self-replicating device that runs amok and complete out of control. The same programming could be used to make self-spawning CONTROLLED objects as well that are by no means malicious. You might say at this point... well - if it can be used to do harm like that, why leave it at all? Because MOST folks interacting with Second Life are responsible individuals that are there to enjoy themselves. The creators of Second Life have been improving the in-world controls over the past year to help prevent malicious attacks and code from spreading and downing the grid. Some will point out that the grid WAS down. Actually it wasn't... It was Closed to NEW logins... but anyone already in-world was still there, including the clean-up crews. The grid didn't go down... folks just had to wait in line until they swept the theater clean of refuse (so to speak). :-) Now, on a final note let me point something out... I have been in Second Life since September of LAST year (2005). The first 'grid attack' I experienced downed the grid completely for HOURS and caused major amounts of content to be deleted in-world... entire buildings and structures just 'vanished' before my eyes (just before I was kicked off).... Now, we have a grid attack, and 9 times out of 10, most residents who are currently logged IN to Second Life may not even be AWARE one is happening, because the clean up crews at Linden Labs have developed ways to stop them that much quicker. Not perfect, but... FAR better than it used to be.... and STILL improving. :-) If you want to know more about Second Life, check out http://www.secondlife.com/. :) With warmest regards, I remain ~Traven Sachs Wolfhaven Productions http://www.wolfhavenproductions.com/

The 600,000 refers to the number of accounts that were active in the last 60 days, as per the counter on their homepage. Apparently the overhyping of Second Life now extends to their system outage reports.

From: http://secondlife.com/whatis/ip_rights.php

  IP Rights

Linden Lab's Terms of Service agreement recognizes Residents' right to retain full intellectual property protection for the digital content they create in Second Life, including avatar characters, clothing, scripts, textures, objects and designs. This right is enforceable and applicable both in-world and offline, both for non-profit and commercial ventures. You create it, you own it - and it's yours to do with as you please.

So it doesn't apply anymore?????

My "brilliant" idea: an MMO with a built in scripting language. See, it'd be all about coming up with algorithms and scripts to maximize lewt/experience levels.

You're thinking of Second Life. Great idea, allows some amazingly creative applications - I myself design hookshots and object-analysers and 3D radars just for kicks on there. But it does have a lot of flaws, that result in huge-scale griefing. Item duplication and creation is a nasty business, but required for some of the game's greater projects... life simulators with basic evolution in a shared coherent virtual world sounds like something 20 years away, not something happening right now.
Besides, you were talking about maximizing lewt - that'd more like any Programming Game. My favourite is Robocode.

So LL said "if we catch you using Copybot we'll cancel your account" and you took that to mean "acceptance"?

Frankly, these sorts of things have been around forever in SL, but Copybot was the first to gain a lot of notoriety. If people are closing their shops now (I doubt this is more than a small handful of vocal protesters) then they're just late on the train. Ultimately your client needs to be able to display the data, and the client is in the hands of the users, so as LL rightly pointed out, no technical means will ever make your creations 100% secure. If you can't handle the thought of that, then not only should you step out of Second Life, but you should probably step out of your Real Life, since that also holds true there as well.

Being able to report someone for using a Copybot and having his account suspended is probably the best solution to this problem. You'll just have to accept that a few people may slip through the cracks, but given that SL is a largely lawless society anyway I'm not sure why you'd expect strict enforcement on this one thing.

Use of CopyBot and Similar Tools a ToS Violation
Tuesday, November 14th, 2006 at 3:47 pm by corylinden
Tags : none

Second Life needs features to provide more information about assets and the results of copying them. Unfortunately, these are not yet in place. Until they are, the use of CopyBot or any other external application to make unauthorized duplicates within Second Life will be treated as a violation of Section 4.2 of the Second Life Terms of Service and may result in your account(s) being banned from Second Life. If you feel that someone has used CopyBot to make an infringing copy of your content, please file an abuse report. Note that this is completely separate from any copyright infringement claim you may wish to pursue via the DMCA.

Like the World Wide Web, it will never be possible to prevent data that is drawn on your screen from being copied. While Linden Lab could get into an arms race with residents in an attempt to stop this copying, those attempts would surely fail and could harm legitimate projects within Second Life.

There are features to allow Second Life residents more choices about how they respond to potential infringement beyond the DMCA. Specifically, we will add data to allow residents to compare asset creators and creation time; incorporate Creative Commons licenses so creators have the option to create content that allows free copying, modification, and exchange without having to utilize outside applications; expand ban lists and reputation so residents can share information about those who abuse copyright; and, publish additional statistics on the website so creators can make rational decisions about the health and strength of Second Life's economy.

These are important features because the implications of copying should not be about Linden Lab's approach to copyright enforcement. We are not in the copyright enforcement business. The communities within Second Life should have the tools and the freedoms to decide how and when they deal with potentially infringing content. Many will decide on less restrictive regimes in order to maximize innovation and creativity. Others will choose more restrictive options and ban visitors who do not respect them. Consumers, creators, and all residents need to have the final say about which approaches work best for them.

Please recognize that using the Terms of Service is not a permanent solution. Nor is it shift in Linden Lab's support of libsecondlife (who have removed CopyBot from their Subversion repository), machinima creators, or others who have explored Second Life beyond the features of the Second Life client. I continue to feel that libsecondlife is an incredibly important part of Second Life's development and community.

I do not extend those feelings to residents attempting to profit off of infringing use of CopyBot.

To the community, I am very sorry that we have not already completed the features needed for you to address these concerns yourself. We are working very hard to complete them and will release them as soon as they are ready. In terms of prioritization and scheduling, additional asset data will be deployed in Q1 2007. Adding in support for CC and expanding the ban lists will be deployed 3 to 6 months later. Until then, as described in the first paragraph, use of CopyBot or similar tools to create infringing copies within Second Life will be treated as a violation of the Terms of Service.

http://blog.secondlife.com/

TFA is seriously lacking in details, so I went to the google, which kicked up a few links to blogs http://sr.wordpress.com/tag/secondlife/

One & Two,
etc

Basically, this CopyBot program was created with the aid/knowledge/acceptance of the Linden Labs folks.

Here's some discussion straight from Linden Labs or you can read what the CopyBot creators have to say http://www.libsecondlife.org/

Summary: "if it's this easy, we should tell people that relying on the Second Life systems to protect content is not feasible any longer."

This article has some interesting timing given the recent problem on Second Life in which someone has created a utility which supposedly can copy any object, even those that deny copy permissions. This has sparked a huge outcry from the users of SL who are unhappy that all of their hard work could end up wasted if their creations are copied. I wonder how many of those individuals have MP3's or movies they've downloaded without paying for?

Copyrights and Content Creation in Second Life

The blog mentions "Copying does not always mean theft", invokes the DCMA, talks about fair use and basically points out that it's the same analog hole that always gets digital media in the end. It will be interesting to see how this virtual world deals with the issue, but already Second Life's spokesperson has indicated that copyright is up to the copyright holder to enforce and they can't really do all that much about the copying.

"The only counterexamples that come to my mind are:
Enemy Territory. Are there any others?"

There's Second Life, which I play quite often. It's proprietary, but the client and basic account are free. And despite the Linux client still considered alpha, it's nearing parity with the Windows client(movie support is still missing, but there are workarounds). Plus there's an in-world LUG with the current Linux client developer as a member.

http://www.secondlife.com/

Sounds like you've been playing second life