I removed something from my blog today. Well, from the sidebar, actually. All right, all right — that is hardly the Times relaunching, I am aware of that, but it is still noteworthy for two reasons : one, it was the most recent addition there. Two, I removed it as a matter of, well, exorcism will have to do.

The item I removed was a pretty inconspicuous link to the AideRSS ranking of my blog’s feed items. I you missed Kit Meredith’s post extolling its virtues, AideRSS is a free web service that will swallow your blog’s feed (any feed, really, it doesn’t need any kind of subscription) and, after some rumination, spit out a ranking of your posts, which it calls PostRank. The FAQ tersely states that « PostRank™ is a scoring system that we have developed to rank each article on relevance and reaction [my emphasis]. ». The idea is to define sub feeds of, say, the top 10 % posts, so people can subscribe to these instead of the whole feed. Which sounds rather neat.

So what’s wrong with it ?

Nothing at first sight, which is exactly why I included the link in the sidebar (the much more informative widget provided is unavailable for wordpress.com hosted blogs, as it requires JavaScript to work). After all, if it helps my readers, it’s a good thing.

What made me wonder if that was the thing to do was what I discovered when I had a look at what AideRSS considers my « top 20 » posts (click on the screenshot for a larger picture) :

I mean, I can more or less agree on the inclusion of four posts among the top five. The reaction numbers (which AideRSS computes from the number of comments, Google blog search hits, Diggs and del.icio.us bookmarks linking to your post — although oddly enough, its count is slightly off from the ones the services themselves provide) are mostly corroborated by the reader statistics of wordpress.com. The fifth one, my interface rant, is the odd man out. Obviously, that is one case where AideRSS does its magic computing relevancy. Independently from any feedback numbers.

So why remove the link ? Was I miffed by some patent pending, trademarked Google-ish algorithm showing me it knows more about my posts’ relevancy than I, as the author, do ?

Wish it was that.

I removed the link because I was frightened — frightened to death by seeing what AideRSS considers the seventh most relevant post on my blog. Ever. See for yourself :

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Sometimes, the weirdest things just happen.

Here I am, minding my own business in SL after a nice afternoon spent, well, actually, this is neither here nor there — minding my own business as I said, when this AV IMs me out of the blue. The conversation, if you want to call it that (and you will have to forgive the dazzling display of esprit that makes up my side ; I was a tad surprised) went like this :

[Name of avatar deleted for privacy reasons]
[15:14] Anonymous: don’t mute me plz don’t mute me
[15:14] Anonymous: their after me
[15:14] Anonymous: just listen to me just 1 min
[15:15] Anonymous: PLZE!
[15:15] Anonymous: their after me
[15:15] Rheta Shan: Err…
[15:15] Anonymous: thye will get me any min now
[15:15] Anonymous: u hav to let the world know
[15:16] Anonymous: SHIT
[15:16] Rheta Shan: Is this some kind of joke ?
[15:17] Rheta Shan: Hey ?
[15:19] Rheta Shan: Right, very funny, really…
[15:19] Second Life: User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.

Oh great, I thought, more to file under « another day in Second Life ». Shee-eesh.

Which would pretty much have concluded the whole episode (and made for a very poor blog post, if at all) if my subsequent spring cleaning hadn’t uprooted a notecard in my inventory I’m sure I never put there. Yes, I know there’s no way it could have gotten there without me agreeing to it. In fact, it should not be there, at all. But it is. Which, all things considered, is only half as weird as its content. If not less.

But read for yourself :

From: Community Management Task Force
Attn.: All Task Force personnel
Re: Assessment of current community management effort

EYES ONLY

I am aware of a certain level of worry as to the continuation of the community management effort directed by our Task Force now that Linden Research faces the advent of a new CEO. Although Mark Kingdon’s choice of avatar name seems to denote a particular propensity for intelligence type operations, the new CEO is an unknown quantity. A measure of worry in an operation as sensitive as ours is understandable.

To state it up front: I have received the most reliable assurances that operations of the Task Force will be continued independently of the change of regime. The Task Force is considered a success, and its operation will not be at the disposal of the new CEO.

Looking back at past operations, this is the logical thing to do: from its inception, the Task Force has been both resourceful and effective in exploring shadow community management strategies with a minimum of in-house personnel. Despite not faring well under financial review, our very first operation, codenamed Pravda, is still considered a tremendous success, firmly establishing a body of criticism that has been shied by most community members for being unacceptable, whatever factual truth it might contain.

With newer concepts in place, the Task Force is currently in a position to play on the natural dynamics of the fractured user community in a way that is far more cost effective. This has been duly noted and, far from suspending operations for the transition, continuation of codename Pitchfork has been greenlighted.

A first assessment of the preliminary phase of codename Pitchfork shows great promise. Injecting the ARC “feature” into the viewer code and making this public through the developper channels (SL Dev mailing list and early RC releases) has surpassed all our expectations. Without adding much on our side (though codename Pravda does contribute), the community has fractured over the signification of the measure, with prominent bloggers both hailing and damning the new “feature”. The superb effectiveness of the channel also is proven by the fact that of the technical articles maximising coverage of the “feature”, not one has even touched on its peculiar implementation.

The main deployment phase will include :

• getting Torley to do a video tutorial: “render cost lag explained, and how to get rid of it in 11 easy ways”, possibly with a cheering theme song;
• implementing client side visual muting features; these do not actually have to be functional - it’s the availability that counts as far as we are concerned. Please coordinate with the Dazzle team for best integration into the new UI;
• distributing updated welcome packs on one or more orientation areas containing a quest HUD and sword to new users before sending them off to kill as many red ARCs as possible (budget for “kill” bounties has been approved; sword and HUD still in testing). This will be declared as a new user experience program. Should “M” ask, we are trying to make inroads into the MMORPG market.

Later phases are still sketchy, although the parallel launch of several other “features” is planned. Further updates will be given on a need-to-know basis.

[Updated at 1:05am Pacific] It has come to our attention that this memo has been distributed to unauthorised persons, at least three of which are not Linden Research personnel. A redesign of our distribution system is considered in the near future to prevent incidents of this kind; as a stop gap measure, memos will only be provided in unique hardcopy form from now on, to be read under supervision in the Task Force’s office (HTML on a prim under consideration).

[Resolved at 2:10am Pacific] We have identified three accounts to which this memo has been transmitted by error and have terminated them. We are still working on resolving the account owner issues and expect to post a progress report soon.

I’ll admit reading this rattled me somewhat. After all, the ARC feature really exists. And the community’s range of reactions does oddly conform to the description, ranging from technical explanations (by Vint Falken, twice, and Tateru Nino) to the usual contradictory comments on the official blog and to opinion pieces as diverse as Lillie Yifu’s and Ciaran Laval’s. Also, despite the fact that the logical flaw in the whole ARC concept is glaringly obvious, it seems to have gone nearly unnoticed.

Maybe I’m just seeing things, but consider the following for a minute : according to Pastrami Linden’s blog post, ARC is aiming to quantify the workload that rendering avatars puts on your graphics hardware (which it calls costs) by adding up token values for typical GPU operations. The idea behind this is « educating Residents about how 3D art should be made » so as to reduce client side lag. To that aim, the ARC rates the value it has calculated by displaying it in traffic light colours (i.e. red is bad, yellow is so so, green is good). Now comes the bit where it stops making sense, at least to me : it rates them on an absolute scale.

Yes, you read that right — the ARC colour rating is entirely independent of the power of your graphics hardware. How well your GPU would handle the workload never goes into the equation. So we have costs all right, and bugger relative purchasing power, let’s just all yell « this is too expensive ! » together. I feel better already.

Admittedly, the blog does a brilliant job stepping around the issue altogether, blabbering about carbon footprints instead (of 150 commenters, exactly one asked about the scale). It’s such a neat piece of spin you could believe for one fleeting moment there really is an invisible hand pulling the strings. Especially as the original release notes dangle the option of not only rating, but actually visually muting people, before our noses. Some people drool over the option to blot others out of their world already, wishing for individual or estate based muting levels. Maybe that is what Pastrami meant by the hope for « community » regulation : render vigilantism à la « if your ARC is over X, I’ll mute you » notices.

But then again, distasteful as it is, why should it be a conspiracy ? There is nothing substantiating the authenticity of the notecard I found. The disappearance of the avatar that gave it to me, and the subsequent disappearance of the card itself in a freak asset server failure are probably nothing but the usual random SL madness. A much saner theory would be to consider ARC as one particularly enlightening example of LL’s development processes. Coders thinking « wouldn’t that be neat » in a corporate culture encouraging them to work on whatever they like is all that is needed. The proposed new rating system for search items, as published by Massively and commented upon by Jacek Antonelli (a dream come true to anybody wishing for an efficient way to mob SL entrepreneurs — protection racket, anyone ?), fits that bill quite nicely too. Bright ideas probably account for a much higher quota of human disasters than conspiracies.

Which is why I have decided I will not let my train of thought run further along the tracks of paranoia. No software service provider would ever go to this length to influence its own user base. Not even one where the founder believes he is building a country. He didn’t mean « including an intelligence service » by that, I’m sure.

As to the pizza delivery van with California plates that has been sitting on my street since yesterday, I am perfectly sure there is an innocuous reason for its presence in Paris. A Dodge 90’s models collector maybe.

See ? It all makes sense.

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I have never been much of a political activist. The way I see it, however passionate you are about an issue, politics have a way of wearing you down by making you argue the same things over and over again, until anything you say is but the n-th rehash of things said countless times before. And while repetition might hone your skirmishing skills, each pass blunts your heart as much as it sharpens your tongue.

That, and the fact that I am a hopelessly shallow person of course, have been enough to keep me away from the nitty gritty of political work. Oh, I might cheer and wave, I might even run that first, glorious mile when events are still fast paced and exciting ; but don’t look for me when the going gets slow — unless it is in the boutiques we passed on that first mile. It has always been that way. I have always been that way. 

But life moves in strange ways, especially when you have two of them, and in one of mine at least things have been… different, lately.

Not entirely surprisingly, this has to do with trademarks ; trademarks as made into policy by Linden Lab, and as protested against by so many in the blogosphere. And then again, more surprisingly maybe, it has not. It has not because when all is said and done, what the issue really boils down to is not a silly set of writing rules for bloggers, nor even the presumption to enforce these by brute force if need be, but one simple and far more general question :

What kind of world do we want to live in ?

Yes, yes, I know how that sounds. Don’t call the orderlies yet (later, maybe : being put in a straightjacket and manhandled by burly men, then locked into a cell, only ever to get out for an ice bath or some electric shock therapy … but I digress).

Let me explain what I mean.

To do this, we’ll have to wade through the whole sorry mess one last time. Nothing that follows will makes sense without it. Take my hand ; it’s quite a tour.

On March 24th, Linden Research, Inc. as the operator of the Second Life grid we know and love know, disclosed a new policy regarding the use of their brand names. Immediately noticeable was that this policy voided the previously lenient guidelines for the usage of LL brand names on fan sites, community forums and similar. Suddenly, LL expected anybody whose site title or main URL contained a Linden Research brand name such as Second Life or SL to either change those, or to shut down. A grace period of 90 days was decreed ; no provision was made for grandfathering long established sites created in good faith. In essence, LL said goodbye to the crowdsource marketeers who helped make them what they are today without so much as a « thank you ».

Another part of the new policy was not quite as obvious at first. Under the label « Proper Reference to Linden Lab’s Brand Names in Text », it sported the stock clause of « put the appropriate trademark symbols after the first mention of our brand names if you are under US jurisdiction », only worth of note for the tremendous fun some got out of the judicious use of ™ and ® symbols — and a stinker : a series of rules stating how anybody who wanted to name the trademarked products of LL in writing had to mention them, be it in a research paper, on a non commercial blog, or even on a calling card.

These rules, and it bears exploring them because they are so absurdly detailed, state that « generic nouns » have to be appended to brand names on the first and / or most prominent mention, and as often as possible afterwards, and that most other combinations of words containing brand names are as unacceptable as any textual modification of said names. They forbid not only the much quoted « my Second Life » (you’re meant to write something along the lines of « my life in the Second Life world » instead), but also terms like « Second Lives », « second living », « 2nd Life » « SLife » and many, many more. Presumptuous silliness, probably unenforceable under most jurisdictions and as such easily dismissed — were it not for one fact.

A fact that was crammed down everybody’s throat when LL amended clause 4.4 of the ToS, making quite clear that a breach of the trademark policy amounts to a breach of the ToS. Which meant banning was on the table as a way to circumvent whatever protection against the guidelines local jurisdiction might provide. As residents had to nod off the ToS change when logging on, this chilling fact percolated though the user community, press and blogosphere until early April.

The result was the birth of a motley, informal coalition of protesters. People wanting to keep their domains and names, and people thinking free speech was at stake joined forces, their first action being to help Gwyneth Llewelyn draft her petition to LL. Later came a common agenda for Robin Linden’s office hour on April 8th, which was discussed there at length, mainly by the ever eloquent Gwyn herself as the designated spokesperson of the group. Its core demands were for LL

1. to make sure nobody is banned without warning for perceived trademark infringements happening in-world
2. to make sure nobody is banned at all for perceived trademark infringements off-world (there are courts for that) and finally
3. to find a lenient grandfathering agreement for established community sites.

Robin promised clarification was forthcoming and then … nothing much happened. Now the supporters of the original demand for clarification had said they would go on strike in precisely such a case. And so strike they did, starting August 15th on the dot, for three days.

Nothing much be said of the strike here, except maybe for the irony that its proponents seldom had so much to write about, albeit not on their own blog, and that among the most efficient publicists of the strike were many who opposed it on the grounds that silence is not the right way to attract attention. Suffice to say that it was one of the most controversial things going on in the SL blogosphere for some time, and that besides both strengthening and weakening the assumption that the natural unit of bloggerdom is one blogger, it was as unmitigated a success as it was unmitigated a disaster.

Unmitigated a success because LL actually acknowledged the blogosphere and its worries, which must be a historical first (as my darling Codie put it « Bloggers 1, Lindens 0 ») ; and unmitigated a disaster because what they actually said was « yes, we will ban you ». Of the demands put before them, LL only acceded to one : not banning without notice. Beyond that, they stated clearly that they consider the ToS to apply to out-of-world activities too, and would indeed ban for these, and they reiterated there would be no grandfathering for existing sites.

One out of three is… bad.

But I did say this would only tangentially be about trademarks. I apologise for having taken so long to revisit the situation ; believe me, I have cut and chopped so much already the bloody remains of history are piling up high under my desk.

Look back with me : see the bunch of kids frolicking on the barricades, kitted out in Les Miz costumes to play revolution, exhilarated at their own daring, merrily singing songs of defiance, safe in the trust LL would never touch a hair of the head of its own children ? Nothing had prepared them, nothing had prepared us for the chill that reached our hearts when, on turning around on the very last day, smiles of victory still on our faces, we looked into the mouth of cannons lined up before the barricade. And though the commanding officer called out to us in a friendly voice, it took but a moment to notice her eyes were cold, and that her men never left their post.

It is a funny and sad spectacle both, but it is not all I see, not by a long stretch. In fact, I see far more than kids playing revolution on that barricade (and not only so because the RL counterparts of these kids have passed their fourth decade more often than not). I see people who dared to assert Second Life is a society, and that what happens to that society is theirs to be heard about. And as I watch the doubt grow in their eyes, I hope and pray the resolve they carried in their hearts will grow with it.

Second Life, a society ? Oh yes.

To get one fallacy out of the way right away : yes, of course Second Life is a software service provided by a company based in San Francisco, renting out bandwidth, data storage capacities, and API access to subscribers worldwide. There is absolutely no doubt about that. There is absolutely no doubt either that atomic us are all semi-random accretions of carbon derived molecules temporarily held together by enzymatic activity, in a time frame utterly negligible on a cosmic scale. Both are big, meta type truths we have to accommodate. And in both cases, they do nothing to invalidate what life we have there day for day.

And yes, of course, too, Linden Lab is a company operating within the limits of the global economy and its place of jurisdiction, the State of California, US of A. It has employees and investors. It has to make a profit to stay in business. But this does not change the fact that what from the business’ point of view is the product it offers, oddly looks like the new country Philip Rosedale once stated he was building when taken on its own terms. It’s all a matter of what you are looking at.

Because what the market analyst will call the user base of the Second Life, the user base itself calls residents for a good reason. Look at this service that feels so much like a place  with unclouded eyes for one moment : it has a freely convertible currency pegged to the US $, a thriving economy, a large domestic consumer goods industry covering both base plagiarism and genuine creation ; artists, entrepreneurs, artisans, speculators ; a social stratification ranging right from the Linden aristocracy through the landed gentry, industrious burghers and rentiers to the paupers, prostitutes and thieves ; a varied press comprising news agencies, broadsheets, one man publications and tabloids, even a TV channel ; anything from consumist glossies to high brow discussions by its very own brand of intellectuals. It has fashions and subcultures. It has a frontier of sort, and immigration, as badly managed as its RL counterparts were throughout most of history, too, and often accompanied by the same inimical noises from those who came earlier. And it has a government, a power that reigns supreme over the land and its residents.

It would gain much from accepting what it is — an uneasy hybrid between a business venture and a new world —, but even more from getting what has made modern society what it is today : civil rights, accountability of those in office, justice. None of these exist in here. Laissez-faire does not amount to civil rights ; holding office hours is not accountability of those in office ; an anonymous system of complaints often having no result at all, and sometimes ending with the offending resident being dragged behind the shed to be shot, is most certainly not justice.

All of this is not so by oversight. It is by necessity. To the business, the country has to be, and to remain, its very own private domain, indefinitely. Privi lege (ever wonder about the etymology of the word ?) has to rule supreme. This sits badly with a society growing both in size and complexity, by its very nature becoming more restive as the need for government intervention grows. Between the residents of SL and their government, Linden Lab, the balance is uneasy : to let the powers that be push their agenda and throw ourselves at their mercy, though by that very act we ensure that they will respond to us less and less, eventually turning us into nothing but subjects ; or to push back, adding a factor of our own to the mix they have to take into account. A frightening option, because it literally means risking our existence in this world, but the only one to hold hope for becoming citizens one day. For in the virtual world like in the atomic, freedom is not granted. Freedom has to be won.

So when asked why I cannot stop griping about trademarks, and why I won’t make the oh so small adjustments needed to conform to the new regime, all I can say is : it’s not about trademarks. It’s about how I will not live in the growing shadow of Linden Lab the business, however comfortably, and watch my Second Life being taken away from me, little bit by little bit. Yes, the point I choose to make my stand is arbitrary, though I’d argue that censorship (and what else is it but censorship when a power decrees that only those writing the way it wants will still be allowed on its territory ?) is always worth fighting against. But in the end, I will simply not be boiled like the proverbial frog, just because the water temperature currently still happens to be bearable.

Here I stand. I might be shaking in fear and anger, but my decision is taken : I will see this through to the very end.

Believe me, nobody is more surprised than me.

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Your bad weather and poor economic conditions.
Our oppressive government.

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The strike is over. Access to posts and pages of this blog has been reenabled.

Thank you for having been such a wonderful audience, ladies and gentlemen, and please give the performers a big hand.

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Non, Sire, c’est… well, actually, we’re not quite sure.

Following the call by the eminent Ms Gwyneth Llewelyn for a general strike of the gallant fraternity (and sorority) of bloggers against the unbearable tyranny brought upon us by His Majesty’s legal and marketing departments (as documented here, here, and here), this blog will be on strike from today April 15th until April 18th 2008. No post will be available for perusal but those linked here, and none will be added until then.

As a diverting and topically appropriate interlude, we offer a reenactement of M. Hugo’s Les Misérables with a superb contemporary cast, starring Codebastard Redgrave as Jean Valjean (left), Ana Lutetia as Eponine (kneeling on the barricade), Jacek Antonelli as Marius (second from the left), Kit Meredith as Gavroche (right), and Gwyneth Llewelyn as la Liberté (center) ; also guest starring Catherine Linden as Thénardier, Robin Linden as Javert and Philip Linden as His most gracious Majesty, the King of France.

Now if I could just think of another song to sing on the barricades but this one :

Ah ça ira, ça ira, les aristocrates à la lanterne…

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[Post scriptum : it has been brought to our attention that the following blogs are on strike :

• Gwyn's Home, by the eminent Ms Llewelyn herself
• getasecondlife.net, by the always charming Ms Cat Magellan
• Tagus Friends Weblog, by Ms Afrodite Ewry and her friends from Portugal
• Codebastardredgrave.com, by my beloved Red Queen
• Jacek Lives, by the Queen of cuddlefishes, Ms Jacek Antonelli
• What Is This Crap, by the honourable if contrarian Mr Crap Mariner
• iYan Writer in Second Life, by that most respectable gardener, Mr iYan Writer
• Second Life, First Person, by the always smart Ms Kit Meredith
• The podcast site of the well known Mr Tao Takashi
• Tenth Life, by a Caledonian gentleman, Mr Otenth Paderborn
• SignpostMarv’s SL Blog, by a gentleman of the coding persuasion, Mr SignpostMarv Martin
• Discursos do Outro Mundo, by a Portuguese Gentleman, Mr PalUP Ling
• airdiogo, another blog from Portugal
• Education in virtual/real worlds, yet another blog from Portugal
• Liberdade Perfeita, and yet another blog from that plucky country on the Iberian peninsula
• Portal Second Life, and it is another one indeed
• Also Portucalis, Second Life Portugal, Ms Summer Wardhani's A praia da minha Second Life, Fokas's Weblog and PT Code too, as our dazed eyes and minds realise
• Lost in Bananaverse, by the leguminous (nay, fruity) Mr Guy “Banana” Schilling
• A Stroll through Caledon, by the very stylish Ms Eladrienne Laval
  of Caledon Regency & Mayfair
• Virtual Jungle, by the wisely rebellious Mr Danton Sideways
• In Praise of Folly, by a gentleman of the legal profession, Mr Forelle Broek
• CronoCloud Creeggan, Virtual Fashionista, by the aforementioned
• The Avatar Lunette Fouroux, another blog with a self explaining title
• Girl meets Second Life, by the sweet if martial Ms Caterin Semyorka
• second life® of my dreams, by the ever gracious Ms Chestnut Rau
• Midcourt, by a manly gentleman, Mr Jordyn Carnell
• Voyage from Pluto, by the very sweet Ms Anna Junebug Tsiolkovsky
• The Young and the Rezzless, by the intrepid Ms Jezabell Barbosa
• iAlja Writer's life in a trademarked world, by the always lively Ms iAlja Writer
• Also, Ms Zoe Connolly, of SLBloggers and Caledon Royal Air force fame, is not only joining the strike with her Aviatrix :: Zoe Connolly, but in fact extending it to impressive 30 days
• Finally, the charming and witty Minister of the First Church of Rosedale, Ms Samantha Poindexter, has let us know that her call and beliefs do not allow her to join us, but that she wishes the strike the best of luck

We have also been notified that not content with shutting down its entire SL related blogosphere, Portugal also witnesses its bona fide RL press picking up the issue. Ah, felix Portugal…

Please do not hesitate to notify us of further developments.

Post Post Scriptum : The strike has ended, but the story around it has not. Those interested in both its past and future might find this odd beast of a post of interest.]

Catherine Linden does not listen.

She does not answer questions asked of her either.

Granted, the marketing director of Linden Lab did post a second time on the official Linden blog about the new trademark policy, in response to the outcry in the Second Life You-know-Where blogosphere, but this was nothing but a reiteration of the original position. The Lindens did not budge a millimetre.

Truth be said, there was one good thing about the second post : with the rephrasing cutting through the legalese, shortly after the revised ToS enforcing it was force fed on all residents at logon, many more bloggers started noticing things are really amiss — for one example, see Ciaran Laval’s change of mind on Your2ndPlace. Most important maybe, it spurned Gwyneth Llewelyn, whose « Second Life® Bloggers Require Clarification » (reproduced by express permission on my own blog) clearly put the blogosphere’s questions before the Lindens, to the next logical step of presenting them with a petition to reconsider their policies. Thanks to Gwyn’s efforts to mount a real campaign, the petition has been open to for review and suggestions by other SL Y-K-W bloggers before publication.

Whether you think already this is an issue, are convinced it is not, or are at loss about what to make of the whole fuss, I urge you to take the time to read the petition. Because, as you will realise when you do, Linden Lab are going far beyond the legitimate aim of protecting a vital business asset of theirs in the form of their trademarks. Not only did they suddenly revert a policy which has led thousands of residents to create blogs, fansites, services and similar around the world they live in, and that quite in agreement with the then lenient guidelines of Linden Lab, effectively thanking good and unpaid community building with a kick in the vitals and breaking all rules of good faith, both legal and moral, in my book — they also have abrogated themselves a censor’s right to decree how, and what is to be written about their products anywhere on the internet as long as you are a resident and wish to stay so, as Kit Meredith succinctly resumed.

But don’t take my word for it. Gwyn and her contributors have put all of the matters at hand much better than I could ever do it on my own, and the petition even offers what I think is quite a reasonable compromise to the Lab. Find it quoted in full after the fold :

Petition to Linden Lab on the Policy of Trademark Enforcement

Linden Research Inc., a company incorporated in Delaware, United States of America (”Linden”), doing business as Linden Lab®, developers of the Second Life® virtual world platform, owners of not only the Second Life® registered trademark (in the US, Europe, and other countries), and the eye-on-hand logo, but also of several recently registered trademarks (including, but not exclusive, to the words “SL”, “SL Grid”, “Second Life Grid”, “2nd Life”, etc.), has launched, in May 2004, the “Second Life® Fansite Toolkit”, which was later reinforced with referral programmes like “Viva La Evolution”, to positively encourage the widespread use of Linden’s trademarks, so long as it was quite clearly displayed that no infringement was intended, and a disclaimer to non-affiliation to Linden.

A direct quotation of the previous accepted use includes the following paragraph:

USE OF SECOND LIFE MARKS

While you are in full compliance with the usage guidelines described here, you may use the “Second Life” name on your website, as well as the related logos and graphics available at Toolkit, solely in the form described there. Additionally, you may use screenshots from Second Life to the extent that Linden Lab has the right to authorize use of the content within such screenshot, including screenshots of Linden in-world objects and Linden avatars, subject to these usage guidelines.

The full text of the acceptable use of Linden’s trademarks is published here. Three versions of the Fansite Toolkit were distributed by Linden, which included banners, logos, and a set of images, as well as a PDF encouraging their dissemination (the link is not available any more).

Under these gentle terms, users of the Second Life® platform have set up dozens of thousands of websites, blogs, forums, 3rd party services (both inside the Second Life® environment or on the World-Wide Web). The intended purpose of the “Fansite Toolkit” was not only accomplished, but overwhelmingly effective. From about 10,000 registered users in May 2004, the number of registrations climbed to over 13 million users in March 2008, and the growth continues — as well as the growth in the number of fansites related to the Second Life® environment. A quick search on Google comparing the number of times “Second Life” is referred on Linden’s own sites (9000+ results) compared to what the non-Linden sites (24 million results) shows quite clearly that the promotion and marketing of “Second Life” as a Linden product is, by far, being done outside Linden’s own feeble efforts — as it was intended.

The terms of the “Fansite Toolkit” enabled furthermore a small startup company in San Francisco, without any advertising, promotion, or little public relations in 2004, to create one of the most effectively known technologies on the Internet, enjoying raving press reviews in late 2006, and, since then, a product and an environment that cannot be further ignored by the mainstream. Like it or hate it, the Second Life® virtual world is now part of the Internet’s history. All this was achieved thanks to the huge community of very enthusiastic users of Linden’s platform, who have promoted its use way beyond Linden’s own ability to market their own product.

“Genericide”

The secret of Second Life®’s success was, however, accompanied by an adaptation of the word to describe not only Linden’s product, but a new concept that did not exist before: a community of users that generate content in a shared environment, using Linden’s tools and Linden-managed computer servers to provide an interconnected grid where this content can exist. The usage of “Second Life” was never strictly associated with the client software (the 3D viewer installed on users’ computers), the server software (running on Linden’s servers), or the communication protocol (which, until recently, was even unnamed). Rather, “Second Life” was employed, for the past four years, to describe all the above together as a technology empowering user-created content in a virtual world environment using Linden’s technology. The subtle difference has, however, huge implications. “Second Life”, as employed on the 24 million links stored by Google (ref), describes not patented software (the Second Life® client is, indeed, free and open source) nor a “technology”, but an “environment”, a “virtual world”.

The situation is very analogous to the usage of the terms “World-Wide Web” or “Internet” (the latter having at some point been trademarked by Microsoft around 1995, with little success), both describing a certain use of several technologies, hardware, software, and telecommunications, but where no definite claim can be made on the resulting environment created by a community of users. Derivative words like “Internet Service Provider” or “Web consultant” are popularly used. The difference between those two terms is that no organisation currently managed to secure a claim to those names.

But further examples are also common, where registered trademarks have been adopted by a community of users generating content for their platforms. Thousands of sites and technologies have used the term “Mac” in their names, or even “Windows” (clear cases where the respective owners, Apple and Microsoft, have indeed solidly claimed their registered trademarks). “Mac” and “Windows” fansites abound and help the promotion of these technologies and platforms. The difference, in those two cases, is that the popularity of those technologies was heavily promoted by their owners through massive advertising and public relations. And still both companies “allow” the widespread use of their trademarked names in 3rd party websites, fansites, service providers, or even products!

Second Life®, by contrast, never enjoyed the same level of promotion by Linden. It relied on the “Fansite Toolkit” as the primary — and most successful! — way of “viral marketing”, effectively crowdsourcing the co-promotion of the Second Life® virtual world by its users. And these, obviously, were very eager to do so — since all participants in the virtual world, Linden and their users, benefit tremendously from this cooperative promotion. “Your World, Your Imagination”, Linden’s motto for their Second Life® virtual world platform, was taken to an extreme, and perhaps unprecedented, level in the history of technology dissemination.

Linden, however, now fears (probably very correctly) that the usage of Second Life® might fall under “genericide”.

Recent developments

Possibly advised by their legal advisers, Linden announced here and here that they would start as of now to aggressively discourage the usage of all Linden-related registered trademarks, thus effectively reverting its four-year old policy of co-promotion through marketing crowdsourcing. The major issue with the current population of Second Life® users is that dozens of thousands of products and services were created within compliance with the old guidelines, and there is no provision made by Linden to “grandfather” existing services now currently in existence. Almost all have no legal protection that will allow them to contest any of Linden’s claims in court to shut their services down if they receive Linden’s Cease & Desist letters. Linden’s claim to their trademarks is, naturally, factually correct, unambiguous, and entirely within Linden’s rights.

There is, however, one aspect of Linden’s claims where we feel the Guidelines are overshooting the legitimate intent of Linden Research in preserving their trademarked brands and preventing their dilution. We refer to the section “Proper Reference to Linden Lab’s Brand Names in Text”, which basically outlines how any mention of terms trademarked by Linden has to be written in any text published. Among other things, it claims to make sure the brand names are only ever used with an “appropriate generic noun” of which Linden provides a list, and that “as often as possible”, down to capitalisation, spelling, elisions and contractions. In effect, this precludes any usage of trademarked terms in text in most of the forms current nowadays, and dictates to commentators, bloggers and critics how and what to write when referring to trademarked terms.

The issue, however, is even more serious. Although Linden’s prevention of the use of trademarks under the new guidelines could be contested in court, either in the US or elsewhere, possibly appealing to estoppel, as a matter of fact, Linden can — through its new Terms of Service, that all users required to sign to access their content on Linden’s virtual world — simply ban any user that Linden considers to be in violation of their trademark claims. By virtue of the same principle, Linden can simply ban any user that exerts his or her rights to free speech, nominative use of trademarked terms as laid down by US law, or equivalent rights under local legislation.

This is “doing justice with your own hands” — without laws, without trial, without a jury, without recourse. The Linden Terms of Service allow Linden to ban any user from using their services, without any reason whatsoever. Linden can, at whim, delete accounts and content (even copyrighted content) from any user without a complaint.

Granted, complaints can be filed against Linden — but in a court of law. In at least one case (Bragg vs. Linden), a user of the Second Life® world managed, through a lawsuit, and with a settlement agreement, to get access to his content back. But this requires effectively users to sue Linden in order to get their access back, no matter if they are or not violating Linden’s trademarks. Linden does not require any impartial judgment to validate a user’s claims on the lack of violation. Linden can safely ignore their four-year-old policy and revert their decision at whim — because they can ban accounts that refuse to comply with their new Terms of Service.

In effect, Linden is able to enforce their own interpretation of the usage of their trademarks by banning all content they view as “threatening” to their claims on registered trademarks, no matter if it is displayed inside Linden’s virtual world or anywhere else on the world. Linden’s decision to ban avatars and remove content is unilateral and not appealable unless a user is willing to sue Linden in a court under the jurisdiction of the State of California.

This total reversal of Linden’s policy threatens to shut down most (fortunately not all) of the sites providing 24 million links to Linden’s products and services; it threatens to deprive Second Life of hundreds or thousands of 3rd party services, websites, fan sites, blogs, Second Life®-specific media, artistic and cultural developments, educational and research efforts — not to mention thousands or dozens of thousands of the most energic “evangelisers” that have co-promoted Linden’s products and technologies in the past which might, in less than three months, see their accounts banned and their content deleted with little or no hope of appeal.

Open petition to Linden Research, Inc.

The community of users of the Second Life® world always recognised, beyond a shadow of doubt, Linden’s full right to its registered trademarks, which were almost always duly credited, and clearly stated their non-affiliation with Linden and that they had no intention of infringing in any of Linden’s rights or claims to the trademarks. Some of those trademarks were never disputed, for several years since their registration and use by Linden, and Linden’s claim to them is solid and universally accepted world-wide. Linden, in return, gently condescended to a limited usage of their registered trademarks for specific purposes, well stated in a clear document (the “Fansite Guidelines”). The very few exceptions where abuse occurred could be effectively dealt with by Linden’s own legal advisers and were very reduced in number.

It is our belief that the extreme switch to the complete opposite of what has been actively promoted in the past four years is not a good marketing strategy — effectively, fighting off, one by one, all the most energetic promoters of Linden and their products, shutting down their right to talk and co-promote Linden’s technology and environment, ban their accounts, and remove their content. A four-year policy grants (at least under estoppel) the large community of enthusiastic supporters the moral right to request from Linden a better model of co-promotion, one that is fair and balanced, protective of Linden’s legal rights as valid owners of their registered trademarks, but also that allows “fansites” to continue to spread and promote Linden’s products without fear of litigation.

We thus propose the following:

1. Accept that, by introducing the “Fansite Guidelines” four years ago, Linden effectively allowed co-branding and co-promotion of their registered trademarks, so long as these were displayed on “website[s] created and maintained by residents or other devotees of Second Life®, with content primarily focused on some aspect of Second Life.” and had no other purpose. These “Fansite Guidelines” lead to fair expectations (under estoppel) of goodwill of Linden towards a fair use of their trademarks without intention to infringe on any of Linden’s rights.
2. Rewrite, but not eliminate, the “Fansite Guidelines” to be more strict, but still allow the usage of Linden’s trademarked words as part of the co-promotional effects, accepting that their existence in no way invalidates Linden’s claims on their registered trademarks, but only serve as a vehicle for promotion and marketing.
3. Require that all such websites register with Linden and formally accept the Guidelines (very similar to the request for the display of the “inSL” logo). Remember your international audience, too, and provide translations as well.
4. Reinforce the duty of all websites under the “Fansite Guidelines” to be strictly compliant with these, or face a Cease & Desist letter/Takedown notice.
   Request to all owners of such websites a clear display of their non-affiliation with Linden or its subsidiaries, stated clearly and unambiguously.
5. Reword the statements of the Brand Center, which currently states that no requests for the usage of any of the trademarks (with few exceptions) will be taken, and that most emails will never be answered (or even read). Instead, work on a case-by-case basis, grandfather existing products and services, and work with organisations, groups, and companies owning those websites to make sure they clearly comply with the Guidelines.
6. Request assistance from the users to locate, identify, and report websites where your Fansite Guidelines are not in compliance, or their non-affiliation with Linden is not being clearly and unambiguously stated, or where your registered trademarks are illegally used. Deal with each case separately and encourage first the non-compliant websites to voluntarily display conforming information, and threaten with a Cease & Desist or takedown letter if they refuse.
7. Remove the threat to ban avatars from users that have inadvertently ignored (or misunderstood) the Guidelines. Instead, warn them and give due notice of their lack of compliance with the Guidelines, encourage them to sign on and register their sites, and validate their compliance after the warning.
8. Continue to invest in the world-wide co-promotion of the “Second Life®” brand by launching different levels of “affiliation programmes”; “inSL” is a good start but a very weak one with limited value (no aggressive promotion by Linden of the logo and word).

We would also request Linden to further clarify the potentially censurous policy towards residents implied in the guidelines in conjunction with the Terms of Service:

1. Clarify that the rules and policies outlined in the brand guidelines under the heading of Proper Reference to Linden Lab’s Brand Names in Text do not apply to cases covered by rights of free speech, including but not limited to nominative use of trademarked terms under US law and equivalent rights conferred upon users of the Second Life® service by local legislation.
2. Clarify that Linden Research does not intend to ban or threaten to ban users exerting the rights delineated above, independently of the contractual relationship created by their usage of the Second Life® service.

We feel that the above proposal, if correctly implemented, and duly promoted, will not only reinforce Linden’s claim to their registered trademarks, but positively encourage their further widespread in all media, without hurting the millions of hours spent in the past year by dozens of thousand of users to promote and disseminate Linden’s products and services world-wide.

Disclaimer: the petition was originally authored by Gwyneth Llewelyn, with contributions by others you will find acknowledged on its original place of publication : Gwyn’s blog, and is reproduced here with her express permission.

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Disclaimer : The following manifesto has been published by Gwyneth Llewelyn, on her own blog. It is reprinted here to show my support of its intent. All credits for the manifesto itelf go to Gwyn. As I quote it verbatim, I have excepted it from the new terminology in vigour elsewhere on my blog.

Dear Linden Lab®,

Your recent change of policy regarding the usage of your trademarks — Second Life®, Linden Lab®, and others registered by Linden Research Inc. — will effectively prevent the operation of the very vibrant community of bloggers, forum posters, websites, community portals, and even 3rd party services, that have provided Linden Lab® with links and driving traffic to your blog, and raising brand awareness for free for your product Second Life®.

Probably thousands — if not dozens of thousands — of sites include (now illegitimately) the name “Second Life®” or “SL®” somewhere in their names. From sites like Reuters (which has a Second Life® channel) to whole companies that have a “Second Life® Division” (and promotes your product by the explicit naming of it), a plethora of online communities, products, and services — some free, other commercial, many in the limbo between both extremes — include, in some way, your registered trademarks.

Your previous policy, established in May 2004 (”Second Life® Fansite Tolkit”), and later reinforced with referral programmes like “Viva La Evolution”, positively encouraged the widespread use of your trademarks, so long as it was quite clearly displayed that no infringement was intended. To requote your own terms of agreement for the usage of your trademarks:

USE OF SECOND LIFE MARKS

While you are in full compliance with the usage guidelines described here, you may use the “Second Life” name on your website, as well as the related logos and graphics available at Toolkit, solely in the form described there. Additionally, you may use screenshots from Second Life to the extent that Linden Lab has the right to authorize use of the content within such screenshot, including screenshots of Linden in-world objects and Linden avatars, subject to these usage guidelines.

Under those very friendly terms, a plethora of fansites of all sorts popped up, driving traffic to Second Life®’s main website, its blogs, forums, and other related sites — making SL®’s own ranking quite high on Google, Alexa, and other systems — while at the same time, in a period of a little less than four years, allowing the number of registered users to skyrocket from 10,000 to 13 million.

Fansites, blogs, 3rd party sites, Second Life®-related online communities, 3rd party sites that create products and services related to Second Life® are the “off-world” counterpart of the dynamic and enthusiastic community that made Second Life®, as a brand, get world-wide recognition — without the need for Linden Lab® to spend millions in advertising and campaigns on the media. We worked for free on the promotion, brand awareness, and market recognition of your products — while, at the same time, we also worked for free creating the fantastic content of the 3D environment that makes Second Life® a place worth to visit, to enjoy, to chat, to socially connect, to do business, and launch the pillars of the upcoming metaverse — fulfilling Philip ‘Linden®’ Rosedale’s dream of having more users in Second Life® than on the Web.

We’ve been the ones ultimately promoting that vision, spreading it around, and making sure that the world noticed your product and your brand. We were very successful — thanks to your gentle and encouraging former policies.

And for four years, you have been thankful enough to allow us to do that promotion, by establishing very reasonable and clear guidelines of the terms of usage of your trademarks.

Your sudden reversal of position — effectively limiting the display of the name “Second Life®” on most sites, domain names, products, and services, through a mechanism of explicit approval that you fully admit “can take long and might never finish” and will only be available to a very limited number of sites — means that suddenly all the off-world promotion of Second Life® will necessarily have to stop; or face a lawsuit in court; or, at the very least, receive a Cease & Desist letter from your lawyers and be forced to shut down.

The current terms can be aggressively enforced or not. According to your blog, we are supposed to have a 90-day grace period to remove all mentioning of Second Life® and its logo from our fansites, blogs, forums, or 3rd party sites offering products and services related to Second Life®. In fact, what this means is that we are forced not to talk about Second Life® any more — or, if we do, we cannot explicitly name the product at all.

This is, obviously, absurd.

The compromise between Linden Research Inc. (owners of the registered trademarks) and the community of volunteers that have so faithfully promoted your product, Second Life®, was quite clear for the past four years. We had clear guidelines of what we could do and what we couldn’t. Abuses could still be effectively dealt with by your legal department; to the world’s knowledge, these cases were few and scattered, if any. They were not significative to prevent a vast number of dozens of thousands of sites of all sorts to draw traffic to your own site; to reach out the huge audience on the Internet; and to drive new users to register. The numbers fortunately speak for themselves: with almost zero promotional costs, you managed to grow a thousand times in four years, thanks to crowdsourcing the promotion of Second Life®.

The “inSL” programme is definitely interesting, but a small new logo, worthless to an audience of hundreds of millions of users that are familiar with the eye-on-hand logo, without a massive campaign of promotion behind it to reflect the logo change, is not enough. “inSL” doesn’t say much, and it cannot be expanded to talk and promote Second Life® directly. And, anyway, the same restrictions apply to the usage of “inSL” as with all your other trademarks. We appreciate the grant to use that new logo, but we also feel it will be unable to gather the same support and promotional effort as the old logo and the product name did in the past four years.

We would thus kindly request that you clarify your position regarding the usage of the trademarks Second Life® and the logo on all fansites, blogs, forums, or other 3rd party websites offering products and services related to Second Life®. This clarification should be as easy to follow as your previous policies on the usage of those trademarks. They should make clear that all people intending to promote your product and raise your brand awareness are not facing lawsuits because they have faithfully used your trademarks using the old policy, and wish to continue to do so in the future.

We consider that an appropriate response should be forthcoming in the next few days, or we will be forced to shut down our own blogs, websites, forums, community portals, and other 3rd party sites to avoid litigation — and thus deprieving Linden Lab® from the traffic generated by millions of direct links and millions of viewers that learn first about Second Life® through all those sites.

Personal note: This blog will enter on strike on April 15th, 2008, for a period of 3 days, if no clarification by Linden Lab is published before that date.

following up on your post on the Official Linden Blog on the Brand Center, I turn to you today in my quest for an instance able to certify that the measures I have taken on my blog do indeed make it conform to the new trademark policy of Linden Research. Not wishing to incur costly legal disputes, I have made the following amends :

• All mentions of Linden Research’s trademark « Second Life » have been replaced by « You-Know-Where » throughout all posts, pages and comments.
• All mentions of Linden Research’s trademark « SL » have been replaced by « Y-K-W » throughout all posts, pages and comments.
• All mentions of Linden Research’s trademark « grid » have been replaced by « you know where » throughout all posts, pages and comments.
• Common derivative terms have been adapted as fitted this  « Second Lifers » for instance has been replaced by « You-Know-Where denizens » throughout all posts, pages and comments, « SLURL » by « Y-K-W-URL », etc.
• Related uses of Linden Research trademarks have been corrected likewise : the subtitle of the blog now reads « Rheta Shan’s You-Know-Where blog », and posts relating to the trademarked product are now tagged « you-know-where ».
• The Disclaimer page has also been amended to conform to the required form.
• Finally, all errant « s » appended to Linden Lab have been removed throughout all posts, pages and comments.

I have left these edits documented for inspection, and will do so for the length of the grace period generously offered by Linden Research, or until a crack team of censors trademark lawyers from your office signifies the all-clear for this measure, preferably with an official seal of approval (a large watermark « TM » might be fitting). I must however preemptively beg your leniency as to an issue that is bugging me : the title of the post Second Life Guess, which, as any expert you care to consult will probably be able to explain to you, is a pun, or play on words – I’d appreciate a proposal on how to handle the translation into the new terminology in this case. I also must apologize for not having converted the incriminated trademarked terms to the new form in URLs, as I have not found a solution to do so this without breaking the link to the targeted page. On this matter too, advice would be greatly welcome.

Once approval is given, I will extend this corrections to all other statements on the web I have made, as far as I have editorial rights to these (I am very much afraid there is not much I can do about old Twitter posts, barring deleting them all. Would that be the suggested course ?).

If I may, I would urge you to accede to my request in a timely fashion, allowing me to turn this blog into a shiny example for the entire Second Life You-Know-Where-related blogosphere. I can promise that, once your and the censors’ trademark lawyers’s approval has been given, I will use my influence in blogger circles for the blogosphere to follow my example and conform to your expectations.

Do not hesitate to contact me, in-world or here, in case of questions.
Cordially yours
Rheta Shan (avatar)

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About two months ago, some of you might have caught a discussion panel sporting Robin Harper — aka Robin Linden — and Jack Balkin — professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School. It was hosted by the USC Institute for Network Culture and Global Kids as part of the MacArthur Series on Philanthropy and Virtual Worlds and was somewhat curiously called « Philanthropy and Virtual Worlds: Do Avatars Dream of Civil Rights Considering Civil Liberties ».

Of course, the event was not actually held with that fancy strike-though title ; it went live under the simple heading « Considering Civil Liberties ». But it was originally announced as « Do Avatar Dream of Civil Rights » (see here and here ; and take note of the above mentioned Global Kids URL while you’re at it). One week before the event proper, the title suddenly changed.

I have been trying to put this curious title morph out of my mind for a while (in fact, I had latched on the whole issue originally for the panel’s content, and was hoping to get my teeth into that. Nothing more be said than that it was rather anti-climactic, though it did cure me of my dread of Robin Linden). But somehow, I can’t. It irks me.

Granted, it is entirely possible someone just noticed that another paraphrase of Philip K. Dick’s best known novel title sorely lacks in originality, and decided to change the title because of that (not that the new one shone in that regard). Still, I find it a rather surprising thing to do on such short notice, and I’m left wondering… What if, instead, someone realised that they had leant so far out of the window, trying to be funny and clever, that gravity was taking over ? Pondering how soft that concrete sidewalk will be on landing can do wonders for a change of mind.

For a sidewalk there is : one week before the sudden change in title, Tateru Nino posted A person chooses, a tool obeys on Massively. And sparked a discussion which took me by surprise. I would not have expected that alluding to the avatar as an entity in its own right would be such a contentious matter. Neither did the panel organisers, it seems.

The gist of Tateru’s argument, in case you haven’t read her post, is that an avatar is nothing but a tool, a « device without intention » no law can directly apply to, and that the tool’s user is the only actor in the play. It was followed by a heated debate on the comments, and has not ended there. In fact, I have found the whole issue to be as recurrent as it is contentious — with people flatly and vocally denying the avatar might ever be a legal entity in its own right again and again, both in private conversation and in public discussion. The Wunder Waffe in this discussion seems to be the need for trust and accountability when dealing with « real money ».

Now there’s a lot of holes you can poke in these arguments, starting from the question what makes money « real » (it seems that « a lot » is the keystone of reality, when it comes to money) and ending with asking if the tool simile isn’t a tad too conveniently simplistic when we speak of human activity — never mind the interesting, if still hypothetical, question of what to do with bots once their AI is sufficient for them to blend into the general population (you might want to refer to the above mentioned seminal work by Mr Dick before judging too hastily).

Still, the issue fundamentally puzzles me. It’s like the aug / imm thing I haplessly blundered into earlier : I’m not sure I really get it, and I’m not convinced I believe what I get.

I haven’t got much to say about Tateru’s argument, dependency and its implications. Taken at face value — metaverse avatars do not exist independently of their meatverse operators — it obviously holds true. But then, the same might be said of about anything else on this planet. Everything depends on something else at some level. As to reality, I’m not even going to touch that with a ten foot pole (feel free to joke about this) — I’d be so far out of my depth I’d never hit the ground again. And anyway, discussing reality somehow inexorably seems to degenerate into a purely intellectual exercise, provided you go meta enough. Which I’ve always considered futile, because at the end of the day, whatever your professed stance on reality, like Hume’s sceptics, you’ll still leave through the door. Or, as Philip K. Dick put it, « as soon as you begin to ask what is ultimately real, you right away begin to talk nonsense ». Real enough for me will have to do until further notice, at least as long as I still manage to communicate about it.

But that doesn’t bother me. Those questions miss the point altogether, if you ask me. Because the real (ahem) question about the avatar as an entity is not that of reality, or dependencies, but of identity.

Or rather, identities.

Please keep in mind I am no social scientist or psychologist, and that I most certainly am no philosopher. I’m just making this up as I go. I’m happy to be taught better. ‘ere we go :

As far as I can tell, identity is very much a fluid thing. Yes, yours and mine both. I still have to meet a person who does not change, be it ever so slightly, in different contexts.

Think about it : identity (how we perceive ourselves, how we behave, and how we are perceived by others) reflects the situation we are in (i.e. at work, in bed, in public, in front of a class, etc.), your relationship to the persons involved (i.e. your spouse, your lover, your parents, your kids, your sisters / buddies) and the history of these situations and relationships. These are the contexts of our identity, and it is pretty obvious that who we are shifts and changes according to context. But in the meatverse at least, the contexts are usually meshed together so tightly, often largely overlapping, that the range of the shifts and changes is pretty small.

This makes it easy for us to lump all of these identities together, defining them as facets of one larger identity. Basically, what we end doing is saying « it’s all me ». Well, mostly, that is. Some people dissociate their identities far more sharply, be it for organic (schizophrenia) or for professional reasons (actors) ; in both cases, common wisdom is to dismiss this, either as a fluke due to a medical condition (which side-steps the issue instead of addressing it, but never mind) or as a somehow lesser phenomenon — « it’s just acting » (tough that sentence is one only people who haven’t spend some time around professional actors — plural — will utter in good faith).

The limits and cohesiveness of these contexts are a recurring topic of literature, though it often disguises itself as a discussion of civilisation (random examples, bridging two centuries : Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Golding’s Lord of the Flies). Well, literature, right ? But what about those good German husbands and fathers, ordinary men without political affiliations, who, when called to arms in the 101st reserve police battalion started ruthlessly murdering thousands of Jews in the hinterlands of Nazi occupied Poland ?

Bereft of its usual contexts, identity can change fast and drastically indeed.

Which is where the virtual comes into the picture. The peculiarities of Second Life You-Know-Where as a social space have been noted and commented upon more than once. If you feel left out on the topic, I’d recommend reading Kit Meredith’s and Zippora Zabelin’s blogs (passim if you ask me, but Kit’s A Sense of Place and My Rezbian Theory as well as Zippora’s Me, myself and I will do in a pinch ; or the resume of John Urpeth’s study for Proximity London, if you prefer a more scientific approach).

Quoting Kevin Kelly, courtesy of Dusan Writer : « In Second Life You-Know-Where, or in chat rooms, we can chose who we want to be, our gender, our genetics, even our species. Technologies gives us the means to switch genders, inhabit new forms, modify our own bodies. » But Second Life You-Know-Where goes beyond the chat room. Visual feedback, the vibrant texture of a living society, and the almost universal array of things possible in its space put it in a class of its own. It makes it a new context far richer and complex than any we are confronted with in the meatverse. And it invites us to unlink the identity we project into that context by its very mechanisms.

You might not really notice before you have been around some time. Building its own social network, creating its own history unhindered by its operator’s contexts, your AV will develop its own identity. Yes, it’s linked to the others, of course — but especially if you prefer not to bridge the gap to the meatverse, it might be much less subtly different from what you think as facets of your identity than you’d expect. And you might find yourself hosting two identities, without noticing at first — until you fall in love.

Falling in love in SL is the ultimate watershed. Seeing how much we insist on considering our identity one, it is utterly amazing how many people manage to have a relationship in SL Y-K-W (and yes, the feelings are genuine, I know what I’m talking of) without actually considering it conflicting with their meatverse ones. Extending Kit’s theory, you could talk of poly-rez-amoury. But it would be missing the point again.

What we do when faced with SL Y-K-W love is choose : choose between trying to absorb our metaverse identity into our meatverse one — or accommodating two identities in our mind, separate but communicating, each aware of the other. It’s a frightening choice to those among us who realise what is going on, however diffusely. It certainly is to those who immerse themselves reluctantly (and it accounts for much of the clamouring for RL names or even RL identity disclosure from that quarter, I’d say). No wonder there are so many vociferously denying that avatars are, or can be, entities in their own right. The legal and business aspects brought up in these debates could be solved. The matter at hand is on what terms. Clinging to familiar concepts and solutions will not help.

But it is also a knotty issue for those who have translated their awareness of the boundary between the spaces into their metaverse persona, as I have come to realise lately. Because what we face is not easier to accept if we’ve previously considered ourselves one, or have opted for two, separate. Accepting we have become two, united is a huge leap of faith. But once we do, it’s actually a surprisingly uncomplicated cohabitation, as I have found out — the only problem being sorting out the areas where the two indentities overlap. It’s a bit like a sharing a flat with somebody you rather like. You might squabble about who has to carry out the trash occasionally, but that’s all there is as conflict.

I’m keenly aware I’ll be considered barking mad by many after reading this. Maybe I’d be better off indeed in a nice room padded with comfy rubber, spoon fed by muscular orderlies, restrained by a straitjacket (actually, I’d probably quite enjoy that, but that is neither here nor there). All I can do is ask you to take my word it only sounds mad until you try it for yourselves. Because it’s what so many residents of the metaverse have done already, when faced with the problem, thought they only rarely have blogged about it as straightforwardly as Zippora did. If it is madness, it’s a collective one.

Be it as it may, it’s a step I have made. And I suspect that shedding our current notions of identity might be the next step in our evolution. You are welcome to join me — all of me.

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