News and Commentary: Linden Lab Offers Apology to Strawberry Singh Following Takedown Demand

By Bixyl Shuftan

Protecting what they consider trademarked images and names has been an issue for companies for decades. For instance, for years the Lego corporation has asked people to call it's building toys "Lego bricks" and not "legos." Some have gotten a reputation for going overboard, such as when Disney once demanded a preschool paint over images of Mickey Mouse and other characters. For Linden Lab, the issue of trademarks usually comes up when one of it's residents makes an item inworld that is trademarked by someone else. But it's own trademarks haven't been an issue for many years, until now.

Strawberry Singh is a noted and award-winning blogger of Second Life, one whom has been doing so for years. On December 13, she announced she was removing one of her tutorial videos, "Introduction to Second Life." The reason, one of the Lindens, Tia Linden, complained to Youtube about it, and Youtube gave Strawberry 48 hours to resolve the issue before taking action on her account. Wondering what was wrong, Strawberry emailed Tia asking what was the issue. Tia soon answered, saying while they appreciated her continued support of Second Life, "we have not given you permission to use Linden Lab's intellectual property in the manner of which you have done." She emailed her again, but did not get an answer by the time the 48 hours was almost up and deleted the video, saying in her blog post, "in the future, I probably won’t be doing any other tutorials like this where I show how to use Second Life because their logos might pop up in the videos." She would tell Hamlet Au when he asked shortly afterwards that she didn't think the Lab cared she was promoting the virtual world.

As Strawberry's blog has a lot of readers, it didn't take long for word to get around, to New World Notes, Modem World, Living Virtually, and presumably other blogs. Hamlet Au would write, "Linden Lab's actions are contrary in spirit if not in letter to its stated policies around medua use of its trademarks." Inara Pey wrote, "the statement that certain images and logos now cannot be use in any capacity. If this is now the case, it is worrying for many of us who routinely blog about Second Life and have used such images and logos. ... Where do we now stand if we are now seeing a shift in position from Linden Lab? Are we now in violation of a new prohibition on image use?" Mona Eberhardt's title of her commentary was more blunt, "Yet Another Stupid D**k Move by Linden Lab." Daniel Voyager has yet to write about the incident, as of the writing of this article, but did end up retweeting a statement from Ebbe Linden (left).

Eventually, the Lab began to realize it had a public relations mess on it's hands. Ebbe Linden ended up defending Tia Linden from an angry Tweet by Mona Eberhardt, "I'm willing to take all kinds of heat, but suggesting that Tia is anything but an incredible team player and professional crosses the line for me. ... We will review policies that make things better and easier for us all though."On Thursday, they issued a public apology on the official Second Life blog.

Recently, the Linden Lab IP team sent a takedown request regarding a YouTube video created by the great Strawberry Singh. She and many others have pointed out that this seems like a mistake, and we agree. We have reversed that takedown request and have reached out directly to Strawberry, but would also like to take this opportunity to publicly apologize to her. 

 

Strawberry, we feel fortunate to have you as a member of our Second Life community (and Sansar as well!), and we are grateful for the public support that your blog, YouTube channel, and other social media activity provides. We’re fans of your work, we are sorry for this misstep, and we hope you will continue sharing your awesome videos.

Following the apology, the Lab explained that the incident came from it's policy of protecting it's trademarked images, and that it would be revised to allow people to write about and video to promote Second Life without worry of hassle, "While we still need policies in place to protect our trademarks, we will apply them as permissively as we can with the goal of encouraging and supporting our community."

Strawberry would tell the Newser, "Aside from a big thank you to all of my readers that gave me so much support yesterday I really don't know what else to say. I was so surprised at the response my post got as my reason for doing the post was just to inform others of what happened so they don't experience the same thing I did. I never expected that people would be so vocal and supportive and do all that they did for me yesterday. I was also pleasantly surprised with the Lab's response too. I was not expecting a response at all so all of it was so encouraging and uplifting and I'm so happy that the end result will be hopefully a better policy for all Second Life bloggers and bloggers in the future."

Linden Lab also mentioned what happened with a parody blog in January 2007 in which the blogger invited the Lab to issue a "cease and desist" letter. But instead Linden Lab's lawyer issued an "uncease and desist" letter, stating, "Linden Lab objects to any implication that it would employ lawyers incapable of distinguishing such obvious parody."

Also at the time, there was at least one instance of someone making modifications of the eye in hand symbol for the purposes of promoting Second Life. In early 2006, Yiffy Yaffle came up with a "Second Life Furry" logo as a way for sims to be identified as having a population of furs. The symbol is seldom seen today, though presumably from lack of interest.

Perhaps the incident was the result of one overzealous employee, but unfortunately Linden Lab has a history of making foul-ups such as this. While the Lab did apologize to Strawberry, that the incident happened in the first place is likely to be seen by many longtime residents as just the latest in a long series of blunders.

Sources: Strawberry Singh, Linden Lab, Washington Post,Twitter

Bixyl Shuftan

Press Release: Grid-Wide Corporate Logo Hunt

Preface

Since Linden Research, Inc. decided in November, 2013, that it holds License to anything created in SecondLife; this Contest will be held to find examples of Real Life Copyrighted and Trademarked material used illegally in SecondLife.    Since we as users cannot bring an action against Linden Research, Inc. for any matter at all (according to the Terms of Service), it is our intention to let the Corporations that hold the rights to license their Intellectual Property, bring Action against Linden Research, Inc.   It is our contention that since Linden Research, Inc. changed the Terms of Service to:

" Except as otherwise described in any Additional Terms (such as a contest’s official rules) which will govern the submission of your User Content, you hereby grant to Linden Lab, and you agree to grant to Linden Lab, the non-exclusive, unrestricted, unconditional, unlimited, worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, and cost-free right and license to use, copy, record, distribute, reproduce, disclose, sell, re-sell, sublicense (through multiple levels), modify, display, publicly perform, transmit, publish, broadcast, translate, make derivative works of, and otherwise exploit in any manner whatsoever, all or any portion of your User Content (and derivative works thereof), for any purpose whatsoever in all formats, on or through any media, software, formula, or medium now known or hereafter developed, and with any technology or devices now known or hereafter developed, and to advertise, market, and promote the same. You agree that the license includes the right to copy, analyze and use any of your Content as Linden Lab may deem necessary or desirable for purposes of debugging, testing, or providing support or development services in connection with the Service and future improvements to the Service. The license granted in this Section 2.3 is referred to as the "Service Content License." "

That Linden Research, Inc. made itself a party to any Intellectual Property infringement instead of simply a "Service Provider", and therefore liable under the DMCA and Copyright and Trademark Law, for the abuse of protected Intellectual Property.

This contest provides YOU the user with a voice.   Regardless of how you see yourself, if you wish to make trouble; then you could become the Ultimate Griefer, with the potential to bring the Lab to its knees with the right picture.  If you wish to help the Lab and the Grid in general; you could be the Ultimate Benefactor, if you take the picture that causes the Lab to change the Terms of Service back to requiring permission to take license to anyone's creations.

Contest

Entries open March 1, 2014 at 00:01 SL time, and will be closed on April 5, 2014 at Midnight SL Time.

This contest will be based on in world pictures made by users and placed on a Notecard.

That Notecard must be sent to IPJudge1 Resident prior to the close of the contest.

Each picture on the Notecard will be considered one Entry, any Resident may submit as many Entries as they wish.

All pictures shall be of examples of the use of Real Life Copywritten or Trademarked Intellectual Property used on items that are FOR SALE inside web properties owned by Linden Research, Inc.  

All Entries must be standard pictures with the User's name and the Location taken.   Any alteration of the default data on a picture will disqualify it.  The Picture Description must contain a clear location for the subject of the picture Any Photoshop editing will disqualify the picture.  

All Entries will be verified by the contest judges, so they must exist at the time of judging and be easily found from the data on the picture alone.    Any Entries that cannot be verified will be disqualified.

There will be 2 catagories of entry:

Catagory 1:  Pictures taken inside Secondlife of infringed Real Life Intellectual Property covered by Real Life Copyrights or Trademarks.

Category 2:  Pictures of infringed Real Life Intellectual Property taken inside SecondLife and inside any other Linden Research Web Property of THE SAME ITEM covered by Real Life Copyrights or Trademarks.

Judging

A panel of Judges has been selected, each has been tasked with putting digits on a notecard that are normally included in a UUID.  Those Judges are assigned a number, and are not told who the other numbers belong to.   An additional Judge will be tasked with determining the order of those notecards, that Judge will not know who the numbered judges are.   IPJudge Resident will then verify the entries closest to the UUID numbers selected, and announce the winners.

Prizes

Category 1: 50% of the prize pool will be awarded as follows:
Grand Prize: 30% of the total prize pool
First Runner Up: 10% of the total prize pool
Second Runner Up 10% of the total prize pool

Category 2: 50% of the prize pool will be awarded as follows:
Grand Prize: 40% of the total prize pool
Runner Up: 10% of the total prize pool

All Entries will become the property of the Contest Sponsors.

The Contest Sponsors reserve the right to remove these pictures from SecondLife to make them available to any interested parties at the Sponsor's sole descretion.

Should Linden Research, Inc., or any third party tamper with the contest, tamper with the Judges, or tamper with the entries, the contest will be restarted and the event will be announced through the same channels that carry this announcement.

The following example pictures are ineligible for this contest, they have been altered so they may only serve as content hints.

Knight Macalroy
Knight and Knight Investigators