EOTB: Linden Lab To Email Survey About Second Life to Residents

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For those who feel, "Linden Lab needs to listen more to it's residents," some of you will get a chance to have your say. A few days ago on the official Second Life blog, the Lab announced they would be emailing "thousands" of users, "an invitation to complete a survey and give feedback."

As 2022 begins, we are looking to set new goals and make Second Life Residents happier! 

Later today and in the following weeks, research@secondlife.com will be emailing thousands of Residents with an invitation to complete a survey and give feedback. Please keep an eye out for it, and feel free to share your thoughts on how to make Second Life a more pleasant experience for all. We’ve also been conducting qualitative research with a smaller group over the past few weeks. If you participated in that research, you are still eligible to take part in this survey.

There was also a mention of Flickr and how it's team was also doing "its own independent research on the Second Life community." Second Life has it's own official group on Flickr. And there was a mention of the upcoming Lab Gab episode with both Philip and Oberwolf Linden.

To read the blog post in full, Click here.
 

More on Net Neutrality: Over 200 Businesses Sign Letter of Support, Philip Rosedale Predicts "Especially Negative" Consequences

By Bixyl Shuftan

Earlier, the Newser wrote about the plans of the FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to dismantle regulations protecting Net Neutrality. To the ordinary Internet user, it may seem like a David and Goliath style struggle of thousands of little guys like him versus huge corporations. As it turns out, the little guys have some big guys on their side. On November 27, also known as "Cyber Monday," one of the biggest days of shopping online in the year, over 200 online businesses and trade groups signed their names to a letter to the FCC asking them to scrap Pai's call to end Net Neutrality protections. Among those on the list were Pinterest, Reddit, Tumbir, Twitter, and Vimeo.

Because of the open internet, a web developer can launch a business out of their own apartment, an aspiring fashion designer in Wyoming can sell clothes in Los Angeles, or a caterer can find new customers in their town. Because of net neutrality, consumers and businesses have unfettered access to one another, increasing competition and consumer choice.

Without these rules, internet service providers will be able to favor certain websites and e-businesses, or the platforms they use to garner new customers, over others by putting the ones that can pay in fast lanes and slowing down or even blocking others. Businesses may have to pay a toll just to reach customers. This would put small and medium-sized businesses at a disadvantage and prevent innovative new ones from even getting off the ground. An internet without net neutrality protections would be the opposite of the open market, with a few powerful cable and phone companies picking winners and losers instead of consumers.

And what would the repeal of Net Neutrality mean for Second Life? According to Philip Rosedale, the founder of Linden Lab, it would be very bad. In a post on Twitter, Rosedale reminded everyone that for many users of the Internet, where they live there's only one Internet provider, especially for high-speed Internet.

Many Americans have only one internet provider. Removing the requirement for net neutrality would allow their opinions to be biased by the provider. Unbiased information will become a privilege of the rich. This is against everything we stand for as a country.

Talking to Hamlet Au of New World Notes, Rosedale explained more, "The end of net neutrality would be especially negative for high bandwidth services like SL and High Fidelity that are delivered by less powerful companies. I would not be surprised to see providers with no competition simply re-introduce by-the-megabyte billing for 'non-premium' services, taking us all the way back to the stone age of AOL and other early online services."

Second Life can be quite a "bandwith hog," to quote the starter of a 2007 thread from the SL Universe forums in which one person stated his Internet plan's bandwidth allowance for a month only covered slightly more than three days of use. With this in mind, it's fair to say the end of Net Neutrality would strongly affect a number of core residents. For users who spend a lot of time here whose Internet provider ends up putting a strict bandwidth limit with high charges for going over,  this would mean paying more, perhaps significantly more, for a higher level of use, or severely cutting their time here.

On another note, an article by the Washington Post reported that "hundreds of thousands" of emails to the FCC about Net Neutrality were likely fake. An article in Hackernoon stated that there were more than a million fake messages to them calling for the repeal of Net Neutrality, concluding that only three to four percent of the total of comments they had received were probably real.

Sources: The Verge, New World Notes, Twitter, Ars Technica, SL Universe, Washington Post, Hackernoon

Bixyl Shuftan

Eye On The Blog: Email Verification

For Second Life users, the ability to receive group notices and Instant-Messages in one's email can be a relief as it allows one to keep track of them without having to log in. Plus when one gets more than a few Instant-Messages when offline, email can be the only way to get them as only a few will be stored for one to see when logging back on, the extras capped.

For Linden Lab, having to keep track of the emails of so many accounts can be a daunting task. And if the account of a new user, or alt, is made-up or unused, which has the potential of getting Second Life flagged by an Internet Service Provider as a sender of spam. So recently, Linden Lab recently announced "over the next few months we will be converting all the sources of email in Second Life to not even try to send to an address that has not been verified."

To verify your email address, go to your Account: Change Email Address page. Go to the "verify" link next to it, and click on it. You should then get a verification letter in your email. Click on the link there to verify your email address. After that, and refreshing your page, the word next to your email address should change to "verified."

For more information, check the community notice in full here:
https://community.secondlife.com/blogs/entry/2155-making-email-from-second-life-more-reliable/

In addition, Inara Pey wrote about the email verification as well.

Bixyl Shuftan

Linden Lab to Content Creators: We're Still Thinking It Over

Daniel Voyager reports on his blog that the communications between Linden Lab and the United Content Creators of Second Life group is still continuing. That's the good news. Unfortunately, there's not much new information to go on, other than the Lab hasn't made a decision on how to reword the section of the Terms of Service regarding content creators' rights.

Thank you for your group’s letter. As mentioned in my last note, we have been reviewing what changes could be made in light of the concerns expressed by some Second Life content creators. The Terms of Service impact all of our products and services, and the careful process of reviewing, evaluating, and making any revisions does take some time; we greatly appreciate the continued patience of concerned Second Life content creators while we do so as quickly as we can.

Kylie Sabra, the spokeswoman of the UCCSL, thanked the Lab's messenger for his response, reminding him they would continue to check in for more responses, "In cases such as this, silence is not golden."

In the meantime, the ToS controversy continues.

Source: Daniel Voyager's Blog

Linden Lab Responds to Content Creators in E-Mail

By Bixyl Shuftan

Last Friday, there was finally some word from Linden Lab regarding the ToS controversy. On Tuesday Oct 22, The United Content Creators of Second Life group sent an open letter to Peter Gray, Linden Lab's Communications Director. They asked for a meeting with people from the Lab in order to "resolve these issues and concerns … regarding the August 2012 Terms of Service, specifically Section 2.3." On Friday August 25, Kylie Sabra, the leader of the UCCSL announced they had received a response.

In Peter Gray's email, the Lab stated "we greatly value Second Life's content creators" and "we remain committed to providing Second Life as a platform on which residents can create and profit from their creations." They insisted, "the revision of the Terms of Service was made in order to further extend the ability of content creators" to sell their wares through other means owned by Linden Lab, notably their Desura distribution platform, "not just within Second Life."

However, there would be no meeting with the content creators, "We believe that it would be more fruitful to avoid further debate of the assertions made to date regarding the intent and effect of our updated Terms of Service, and instead focus on whether there may be an approach to address the concerns that have arisen in the community." A statement that could be seen as aimed at criticism of the ToS as a whole.

The Lab stated they were "currently reviewing what changes could be made that would resolve the concerns of Second Life content creators," with the intent of allowing content creators to sell content with Linden Lab acting as their "agent," but there would be no "reverting to the prior wording" of the ToS, "We are optimistic that we will be able to arrive at a mutually agreeable and beneficial way forward, and ask for your group's continued patience as we work to do so."

In a letter to the members of the UCCSL, Kylie saw the Lab's response as basically good news, "I see this as a positive, an opening for ongoing dialoug … They admit that the current ToS does not serve both them and the client base well. It is a tough issue, the protection of content creators' rights and giving Linden Lab the latitude they need to work across multiple services." Kylie did caution, "Bear in mind, this is a business, and they have no obligation to disclose their business plans. And speculation about the whys and wherefores is not productive." But she and the UCCSL "will continue to assert pressure on Linden Lab until we reach a resolution." Kylie also sent an article to the Sim Street Journal. In the article she was critical of Linden Labs for their stand, departing from her usual cautious optimism in recent days.

Gone is Rosedale’s concept that content creators own their work and should even share in the value that is created. Rather, the originating ideology of Philip Rosedale is laid waste with the scythe that is the August, 2013 Second Life Terms of service. This sweepingly destructive tool fells both pride of ownership and pride of creation with sharpened tines of shredding words.

While Kylie appealed for calm (outside her SSJ article), others remained skeptical. Several people responded to Daniel Voyager's post on his blog about Peter Gray's email. All expressed some level of skepticism about Linden Lab's intentions. Skepticism was also rife at the Sunweaver Estates where the SL Newser office makes it's home, with a few residents in IMs expressing doubt about Second Life's future. A hint the Lab's message may not be changing many minds on the issue.

The UCCSL group (blog at http:// unitedcontentcreatorsofsl. wordpress.com/) is currently at 458 members, and has been organized in several sections, or guilds, for different kinds of content, artists and filmmakers, fashion designers, musicians, scriptmakers, etc. The group has a headquarters at Angel Manor (131/134/4002).

Sources: UCCSL, Sim Street Journal, Daniel Voyager


Bixyl Shuftan

Residents 18 and Over Not Yet Age-Verified to Get Email From Linden Lab

According to a post on Daniel Voyager's Blog, Viale Linden had some news for the residents during a meeting on the Grid. It seems Linden Lab will be sending an email to all adult residents not yet adult verified, saying the system for doing so is much improved.


Viale Linden brought the news at the meeting today that they are preparing an email to all residents over 18 years that has not age verified to inform them on how much easier this is now, and how they can set their preferences accordingly.

No firm date on the mailing yet, but he suggested a timeframe of 2 weeks.

Details about the changes can be read on the SL wiki page.