1. The Spy Who Lives Here
2. Hinterland Orkney: Scotland in Second Life
3. Mutiny in Second Life
Archives for February 2009
Relay for Life in Second Life: teams being formed
February 19, 2009 by 2 Comments
A yearly highlight in Second Life is the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life. The 2007 and 2008 events were big successes, with more than 55 million Linden Dollars (approximately 200 thousand US dollars).
Teams have started forming and if any Australian or New Zealand teams are forming, do let us know and we’ll promote your fundraising efforts. The team registration form can be found here.
The Australian Relay for Life is a superb community event for a lot of towns and cities. The Second Life version achieves that same community vibe and it’s an opportunity to remember those lost to cancer, to support those currently fighting cancer and to help find more effective treatments for cancers.
Thanks to SL Entrepreneur Magazine for the heads-up.
Merged realities: events and issues for virtual worlds
February 17, 2009 by Leave a Comment
1. Clever Zebra have made their Virtual Worlds for Business eBook a free download – all the details here.
2. ABC Island in Second Life sees the return of music trivia show Rockit this Friday night at 8.30pm AEDT. Everyone has a chance of being a contestant and it’s a lot of fun.
3. It’s always a small world: research shows that people in MMOGs congregate with people geographically close to them:
“It’s not creating new networks. It’s reinforcing existing networks. You can talk to anyone anywhere, and yet individuals 10 kilometers away from each other are five times more likely to be partners than those who are 100 kilometers away from each other.”
4. We’re well and truly still running our Victorian Bushfire fundraiser – all the details here.
‘Life On Line’ launches
February 15, 2009 by 1 Comment
I received a media release yesterday, announcing the launch of a virtual TV show, Life On Line.
It’s the latest project by Australian Steve Cropper, who produced a virtual worlds community called My Metaverse as well as a previous offering: The Late Show.
I watched the pilot episode and like any pilot, it’s pretty raw. The overall theme of the show is the multitude of ways that people spend time online, from Facebook to Wikis. The topics are covered in a fairly breezy way and it works to an extent. What doesn’t work for me in any way is the canned laughter. To say it’s annoying is an understatement – at points it harks back to some early TV shows in the 60’s where laughter appears in spots where there’s nothing to laugh at.
The news section featuring blogger Sigmund Leominster has promise, but the rest of the show to me seems to have a long way to go. It’s always great to see new options appear, and here’s hoping this is one that goes from strength to strength. The first episode launching today will determine to a large extent whether that’s the trajectory we’ll see.
Update – Episode 1 is now live, so you can judge for yourself the real deal:
Having trouble paying the bills ??
February 13, 2009 by Leave a Comment
Then try this one out.
This letter was received by a retail store in South Africa.
It starts with acknowledging the debt and an intention to pay then “I would like to bring to your attention that you are not my only creditor. I have many more as important creditor’s as you, and whom I wish to pay too. That is why, each month I throw all the names
into a hat and draw one randomly.
The one drawn is paid immediately. I hope that yours will come out shortly!
Sincerely….
PS. I regret to inform you that given the harsh and threatening tone of your last letter, you will not be taking part in the next
three draws”.
Virtual world IP: not a steal
February 13, 2009 by 3 Comments
Virtual environments and the public Internet sport a bewildering array of economies, from purely fantasy economies to real money trading between users. Fundamentally, many of these are currency-based economies which we all understand – you purchase something you value and give something of value in exchange. That is, you buy something you want with some manner of currency.
People generally have a whole lot more trouble with various license agreements, such as the GNU Licenses , or the Creative Commons licenses. Infringements of these licenses are common, and when challenged the infringers are often rather baffled. Either they do not understand that the content can be misused, or they do not understand why the ‘license nazis’ seem so put out.
Let’s break it down.
None of these licenses is technically ‘free’. Yes, they involve the use of content for no monetary cost, but that isn’t the same thing. There are multiple definitions of the word ‘free’ and if you apply the wrong ones, at best you’ll be confused, and at worst you’ll end up looking like an ass. So, these licenses are ‘free’ as in ‘no monetary cost’, but they are not ‘free’ as in ‘given freely for no exchange in value’.
These licenses are your basic, free-market, capitalistic contract. The owner of the property has something of value (the exercise of certain rights with respect to that content) and their release of some of those rights under a license makes that value available in exchange for something of value to them (your compliance with the terms of the license).
You both get something you want out of it, in short. That’s basic capitalism at work. Money need not be a component of the exchange, demagoguery notwithstanding. However, this is the fundamental principle that a lot of people miss, because they mistake the various different definitions of ‘free’.
If you take the content and use it in ways that don’t comply with the license terms, it is essentially the same as refusing to pay. That is why people get steamed about it. The rights to use the content in certain ways is given to you based solely on your agreement to comply. No money is changing hands, but ongoing compliance to the terms of the license constitute the payment for the usage.
Vint Falken was surprised to find that a texture that she made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derives license was being sold by a number of merchants in IMVU, some of whom claimed it as their own original work. Some of those merchants were even more surprised that she had any rights to her work at all.
KirstenLee Cinquetti quit providing her Second Life viewer binaries when pressed to comply with all the terms of the licenses that she was required to uphold in order to retain her permission to distribute viewer binaries. Some licenses require more compliance effort than others.
If you were handing over currency to obtain the necessary rights, that would be one thing. However, the purchase you are making is paid for with ongoing compliance to the terms. Quite often, you can simply arrange some alternative licensing or purchase scheme with the rights-holder. If you don’t, however, these licenses aren’t as simple as clicking ‘Yes, I agree’ somewhere and forgetting that you ever saw it. They’re contracts that require you to uphold your part of the bargain or lose what you gained.
Trying to evade or cheat the obligations under which content was granted to you wins you no friends either. As Bruce Perens points out:
don’t look for, and use loopholes in the Open Source licenses. Nothing makes your company look worse than taking unfair advantage of people who provided their work to you without charge, expecting in good faith that you’d honor their license.
Why? Because you took value from someone without the intention of paying the asking price. And that upsets everyone.
It really is as simple as that.
Introducing: Tateru Nino
February 13, 2009 by Leave a Comment
It’s an understatement to say I’m really pleased to announce a further addition to the writing team at The Metaverse Journal.
Tateru Nino is a significant addition too – she’s one of the first Second Life writers I read and she was incredibly supportive of our initial efforts when we started in 2006. It’s also worth reading our 2007 profile of Tateru to glean more of a picture of her.
Tateru will be providing stories most weeks and she has a totally open brief. If you’ve read her work on Massively or its predecessor Second Life Insider, you’ll know how thorough her research is.
No-one knows Second Life better and I for one am already excited about the stories she’ll be writing over coming weeks.
Welcome Tateru!
Recent Comments