Netflix Buys Avatar Maker For VRChat, Smaller Worlds

 

There's been a development that will likely make it more difficult for people in VRChat and similar virtual worlds to get new avatars. According to an article in Techcrunch, Netflix has purchased the program "Ready Player Me." For those who haven't heard of it, it's an avatar-creation platform for various virtual worlds and games.

 

Ready Player Me was founded in 2014 in Estonia. Over the past decade it has raised over 70 million US dollars from investors.  It has a staff of twenty, who will all be joining Netflix. It's services, including Player Zero, will be going offline on Saturday January 31st. 

 

The Techcrunch article stated Netflix "plans to use the startup’s development tools and infrastructure to build avatars that will allow Netflix subscribers to carry their personas and fandom across different games." 

 

Scott Hayden in "The Road to VR" called the purchase "a blow to one specific group of people, namely VRChat users." Ryan Schultz felt while this would inconvenience users of the popular next-generation virtual world, at least it had a Marketplace for avatars for people to chose from. From his point of view, it would be the users of smaller virtual worlds that would truly be hurt as those platforms, "which wholly rely on Ready Player Me’s services ... are now going to have to scramble to find and implement a replacement in very little time."

 

Hat tip: Ryan Schultz

 

Sources: Techcrunch

 

Bixyl Shuftan 

 

Scenes From The Christmas Expo: Dragon Landing

 

 Taken at the Christmas Expo. With some supporters of the American Cancer Society (The Expo technically isn't a Relay event) having large avatars, it can make for something of a situation on the dance floor. So there was a special platform for the dragons at the main stage.

 

By Bixyl Shuftan

 

Skype Shutting Down in May

 

 

Readers will most likely remember Skype, the chat application that was commonly used from the late 2000s and 2010s, and still used by 36 million computer and smartphone users as late as Feb 2023. But it was announced a month ago that in May, it will be shutting down. 

We want to express our deepest gratitude for your support over the years. Skype has been an integral part of countless meaningful moments, and we are honored to have been part of your journey.

 

Microsoft, which has owned Skype since 2011, announced that Teams, it's newer platform, will be taking it's place. 

Skype was widely used in the 2010s, but as time went on, some users would drop it, using others such as Discord and Zoom. 

Sources: CNN, Microsoft

 

Bixyl Shuftan

 

Tik-Tok Social Media App Goes Offline, Then Restored

 

 

On the night of Saturday January 18, The social media app TikTok went offline. Those trying to access it instead got the following message:

Sorry,TikTok isn't available right now

A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can't use TikTok for now.

We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate Tiktok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!

This was the result of a law passed in April last year in which the app would be banned from use within the United States unless it's Chinese-based parent company ByteDance sold it. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court upheld the ban. 

But the next day, Sunday January 19, TikTok was back. President-Elect Trump had stated he would issue an executive order giving the app a reprieve.

Thanks for your patience and support. As a result of President Trump's efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.!

You can continue to create, share, and discover all the things you love on TikTok.

Since 2018 when it was merged with another app, Musical.ly, Tik Tok has been a sensation, with millions using it to share short videos from funny to serious. It's been especially popular with teenagers and young adults. But while social media platforms have always been subject to criticism, notably for gleaning data from it's users, with TikTok it was moreso due to the parent company being from China, whose government has been criticized for violating human rights and has been increasingly confrontational with the United States. It caught attention in 2019 when other social media was showing images of Hong Kong protests, but they were absent on TikTok. Despite that US election-related posts were on, the company's response to the criticism was that the platform was for entertainment and not politics. But leaked documents showed moderators were told to remove content the Chinese government considered sensitive. Concerns about collected data ending up in the hands of Bejing would lead to the Pentagon bagging the app from all US Military smartphones. Trump in his first administration had issued an executive order to ban US companies from dealing with the app or it's owner and then a second ordering it's sale within 90 days. But those legal efforts collapsed when Biden's Presidency started. But TikTok's problems continued, with stories that the app encouraged extreme dieting in teenagers. Continuing national security concerns would lead the FBI and FCC to ban the app from it's mobile devices. In March 2024, Congress would debate the law that would ban Tik Tok from operating in the US, and President Biden would sign it after it's passage in April. 

 

While many have praised the ban, calling TikTok too much of a security risk, others, notably it's users have protested, some saying they keep in touch with the news or make some money through it.  Ironically enough, Trump who was once a critic, began making use of the app in his 2024 election campaign that year. In anticipation of the ban, some users began signing up with another Chinese app, Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote (or Little Red Book).

Sources: BBC News, Associated Press, The Guardian

 

Bixyl Shuftan

 

"A Dark Day For Internet Freedom" : EU Passes Vauge Copyright Bill

On Tuesday March 27, the European Parliament voted in favor of the "Copyright Directive," a controversial bill that advocates of Internet freedom charge is vague and threatens public rights of expression online. The vote was 348 to 274.

While not an immediate blow to those wishing to express themselves online, there are still a number of steps before the bill becomes law in Europe, the bill is still a threat. Particularly worrisome are Article 11, the "link tax," which could make it impossible for websites such as Wikipedia to function in countries affected, and Article 13 (which has been changed to Article 17) which would require websites and platforms that allow for content to be loaded to install "upload filters" as a preventive measure to stop copyrighted content.

The law is vague and subject to interpretation, but the potential consequences to Second Life are very bad. Linden Lab could be given a stark choice: the instillation of expensive and clumsy upload filters that would certainly anger it's users due to content creation becoming far more difficult if it involves bringing textures and other things into the virtual world and the fees jacked up greatly to make up for Linden Lab's expenses, or block the IP addresses of the affected countries.

The next step for the bill is when it goes to the European Council. While it previously looked like it would pass there easily, "one of two countries responsible for the final wording of Article 13 (/ 17) ... Germany is having something of a change of heart, with their Minister of Justice publicly opposing the idea of upload filters. ... five other member states – the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Poland, Italy, and Finland – have voiced public opposition to the Directive the vote. So should Germany, a key nation behind the legislation and of the EU, change its mind between now and April 9th, it would prevent a Council majority being reached." This would mean the bill would need to be renegotiated, and activists would have a chance to vote a number of legislators supporting it out of office.

As Inara Pey of Modem World put it, "while a significant battle against the EU Copyright Directive has been lost," the war's not over yet, but "it is going to be significantly harder to win."

Sources: The Verge, Modem World, BBC, CNet,

Image credit: Nydia Tungsten 

Bixyl Shuftan

European Union Copyright Directive Threatens Virtual Worlds, Internet, With Mass-Censorship

By Bixyl Shuftan

Lately it seems the Internet has been under assault. With the end of Net Neutrality in the United States, some companies have already started throttling traffic. In August, Verizon was caught throttling the Internet connection of California firefighters while dealing with a huge wildfire. One digital rights spokesman spoke of the incident, “If Verizon was willing to do this to a fire department during the state’s largest wildfire, when public safety should have been paramount, it’s easy to imagine what they are willing to do to everyday consumers.”

But unfortunately, the worst seems yet to come, and not from the United States. The European Union recently approved  legislation that has been described as threatening to "break the Internet," As Cory Doctorow explained in "New World Notes" and an "Electronic Frontier Foundation" article. Two parts of the bill, Article 11 and Article 13, have gotten the most attention. Article 11 is the "link tax," which requires platforms such as Facebook and Google to "to pay news outlets for the privilege of linking or quoting articles." Wikipedia, which would be badly hurt by the legislation, called it a threat to "freedom of expression ... online." Gizmodo commented the legislation would, "make it all but impossible for Wikipedia and other non-profit educational sources to do their work because of their reliance on links, quotes, and citation."

Article 13 would mean bad news for Second Life and other virtual worlds that allow users to create content. They would require any platform or website "that allow users to post text, sounds, code, still or moving images," etc. will have to create "upload filters" to compare all uploaded content to a database of copyrighted works, "that will be compiled by allowing anyone to claim copyright on anything, uploading thousands of works at a time. Anything that appears to match the 'copyright database' is blocked on sight, and you have to beg the platform's human moderators to review your case to get your work reinstated."

That the owners of Second Life and other platforms that fall under this bill are headquartered outside the EU won't necessarily protect them, "The EU has treaties with most of the world that allow for civil judgments to be collected in some circumstances; it's likely that future trade-deals with the EU (like the recently completed EU-Canada trade deal) would require that trading partners allow EU companies to sue and collect judgments under the EU Copyright Directive. That means that even non-EU companies could be forced to comply with these rules." And if they got in trouble with the EU over copyright issues, "those companies would not be able to establish sales/support offices in the EU, their executives would face civil and possibly criminal sanctions if they visited the EU, and they would be at risk of losing their ability to receive payments from EU customers."

Developing such a content filter in the first place wouldn't be cheap. "Google spent $60 million developing the ContentID filter system that is only capable of analyzing audio-tracks of video." Something that would analyze everything from pictures to meshes to avatars would be considerably more expensive. It would certainly be beyond the ability of smaller virtual worlds such as the OpenSim grids to pay.

And how good would it be? Most likely it would err on the side of caution, and much content that resembled copyrighted material instead of matching it would also be blocked. A content creator who found his goods blocked would have to appeal to a human moderator, and if that failed, the only recourse might be a lawsuit. Complicating the issue further are "copyright trolls" As Doctorow explained, ""[T]his is a boon for griefers. Since the rule has no penalties for abuse, griefers could claim copyright over public domain works, works that others had created, etc, and block other players from using them -- you could upload every military insignia, the logo of a rival clan, etc."

The bill doesn't go into effect right away. It will go into closed-door meetings between EU and national government representatives, then next spring the language gets voted on, then the 28 member states' governments debate on their own versions of the bill, and there are court challenges. But companies like Second Life's Linden Lab face a stark choice, either pay huge sums of money for filters that will anger their users, or block IP addresses from European countries with such bills. As Second Life has thousands of European residents, this would be a very sad, and costly, move for the Lab.

Sources: The Guardian,SaveYourInternet, New World Notes, Gizmodo, Wikimedia, Electronic Freedom Foundation   

Bixyl Shuftan

Second Life Website's Community Platform To Be Moved To New Server, Forums To Be "Read Only" During Move

A few days ago, Linden Lab announced there would be some changes to the Community Platform on the official Second Life website. The new looks comes live on Monday February 27. But before that, the Lab will be moving the data from the server the platform is now to the new one. And this will take several days. So starting Tuesday February 21, and going onto part of February 27, the official Second Life forums will be set to "Read Only." So no new entries can be made at this time, but existing ones should be available to be read as before.

Exports require that the forums be put into “read-only” mode during the export process.  What that means for you is that during that time you’ll be able to read the forums, but not publish new posts until the export job is complete. Our hope is that by doing this we will avoid any gaps in the content as we import it into its new home.
The current timeline is as follows:

February 21st through February 27th -  The forums will go into read-only mode. Our hope is to have the new site live sooner than the 27th, but we want to be sure things go smoothly.

February 27th - The new platform goes live and the forums are taken out of read-only and full posting functionality is brought back online.


To read the Linden blog post in full: Click Here.

"Bright Canopy," Sucessor to SL GO, "Go For Launch" on August 29

By Bixyl Shuftan

Second Life users with tablets remember SL GO, the application made by Onlive in cooperation with Linden Lab that allowed them to access Second Life and go about inworld normally without the need for a computer. But in April this year, Onlive announced the end of the service following Sony purchasing their company. It was the end of what one Second Life newsletter writer called, "one of the best things to happen to Second Life in a long time."Later this month, a successor to SL GO will finally be ready for people to download and use: "Bright Canopy."

Bill Glover, the founder of Bright Canopy, credited Inara Pey's post on her blog, about SL GO's shutdown and suggestion that someone else could provide it's service, for his decision to post a survey asking if anyone would be interested in helping him start such a streaming service. The response was the founder of a company handling streaming for some of the largest companies in the world, Nikola Bozinovic, offering to help him out, and "over one hundred SL and OpenSim residents ... offering to help with testing, docomentation, bug tracking, and even development. ... With a team like that, it's no wonder we had the core features, working in beta in less than seven days."

The monthly fee, at least for the first 90 days, will be $17 a month, "Our early bird price is going to be an experiment for 90 days. If you’ve been following the blog, you know we’ve seen price fluctuations on the back end, and we still need to watch actual usage of the service. $17 is a sustainable price if the instance costs return to their typical, historical values. It is not a sustainable price with the current spike in instance price. We may need to get creative with how we split instances, or we may need to raise prices. We intend to remain transparent as always and will keep you posted. Our goal is to continue to maintain a sustainable, affordable service."

While $17 a month is a little more expensive than the $9.95 a month SL GO was at for most of it's history, it is much cheaper than the $3 an hour it was when first released. 

The company plans to soon have an "East Coast Cloud" for faster ping rates for users on the eastern time zone of the US, and is offering free time for those whom have friends sign up. They are also planning a release party.

Like SL GO, the company says Bright Canopy will improve the Second Life experience on older computers.

For more information, check their website: http://www.brightcanopy.com/ or their blog:  http://www.brightcanopy.com/blog/

 Hat tip: Daniel Voyager

Bixyl Shuftan

Luskwood Goes Egyptian

I'd heard something about Luskwood changing it's look a couple weeks ago. But it was only earlier this week that I got a good look at the place since the change. For the majority of it's history, Luskwood's social area was more or less a simple wood base with some railing and a few basic decorations. It has changed some over the years with the addition of more seats, a chess game, etc. But months ago came a bigger change when grass was laid down, and some Japanese style structures were set up. Well, it seems the Luskies decided on a new look.

 Dropping by the place, it had taken on an Ancient Egyptian look, with the store area set up to look like the ruins of a structure, with hieroglyphs and carvings, jackal statues, scaffolding, pillars and obelisks, palms trees in spots to resemble oasis, and lots and lots of sand.

The shop is still running as before. A friend came by to request an update to her avatar, and she got it.

And the social platform is still as active as ever. This place in Luskwood remains one of the few spots on the grid you can always find someone, even at odd hours.

Luskwood is one of the oldest social areas in Second Life still active, due to celebrate it's tenth anniversary on September 10. It's also the oldest, and still one of the major, furred avatar companies.  Unlike some mainly furred places, Lusk has always maintained and enforced a PG atmosphere.

For Lusk's entry on the Second Life Wiki: Click Here. 

Bixyl Shuftan

Linden Labs Buys Desura

On July 10, Linden Lab announced it had acquired Desura, a digital distribution platform based in Australia. Sometimes compared to Steam, Desura is best known for focusing on small independent games, or "indie games," instead of those from the bigger companies Steam has. This continues the trend of Linden Lab buying or establishing platforms centered around user-generated content, such as Patterns, Blocksworld, and Versu.

In the Linden Lab press statement, Mark Humble stated, "Desura puts the best games, mods, and downloadable content from developers at gamers’ fingertips, ready to buy and play. The free Desura application can serve and patch games, mods, and add-ons directly for customers around the world. Developers and publishers can share news, images, videos, and other content through their profiles, while every member of the Desura community can post comments, submit reviews, and upload screenshots from their own playing experiences. Desura also demystifies user-made mods and add-ons for games by making them as easy to find and install or update as professional titles."

Desura called it's acquisition, "an important milestone in the company's history, with much more to come."

For our community of gamers, publishers, and developers, rest assured Desura shall continue running uninterrupted. Long term, expect plenty of polish as we continually strive to innovate and differentiate ourselves as we have done in the past with our Linux client, alphafunding, mod support and self-publishing for developers. We have big plans and many ideas to explore, and the resources we now have as part of Linden Lab will allow us to do just that.

Our aim remains to put great games, mods, and downloadable content at the fingertips of players - and we look forward to doing this in a greatly expanded manner and challenging ourselves to grow with the games we support.

In an open letter to its game developers, the Desura team stated, "... To date Desura has been built and run by a dedicated small team- and it's grown to the point where we list over 1,000 games and have served over 1,000,000 customers. We are very passionate about the developers and community we represent, and I want to assure you now this policy isn't changing. With Linden Lab's support, we plan on expanding our team and providing you with more co-ordinated coverage, sales, marketing efforts, reporting, and assistance from us. We want to solve challenges like discoverability and giving your customers' choice, and we look forward to doing so. We are going to continue to polish and innovate so Desura stands out and does its most important job better: getting your game into customers' hands. ..."

There have been a few opinions about the matter, and considering it's earlier moves some wondered if this was another move to "throw enough things at the wall and hope something sticks." In the SL Universe forums, a couple people expressed worry that Linden Lab would just "gut" Desura of it's technology and then close it down like when it acquired "Avatars United."

Iris Ophelia expressed the opinion that Desura was different from Linden Lab's earlier moves, "At points, it seined like they were snapping up promising creative gaming projects and hoping that one might magically blossom into the next Minecraft. But they've yet to demonstrate the follow-through that would be necessary to make that happen." They neither had a community of fans nor did the Lab did anything to nurture one. "But Desura is very different. If we're talking about Linden Lab buying up projects to see what will stick, Desura's already well into the process of sticking, if not already 'stuck.''

Iris called Desura, "Steam for Indie games … if you're big on indie games, you're probably big on Desura." And indie games were what Iris called "a big f**king deal. In the past few years, some of the most memorable games have been indies that seemingly came out of nowhere. … this segment of game development is big and only getting bigger. Desura appeared at the perfect time to take advantage of this, making an array of publishing and vending tools available to just about anyone with a game they wanted to sell."

Linden Lab made what could be a brilliant move, Iris felt. Provided the Lab can help keep it's momentum and help fix what problems it has, this could easily be it's best purchase, "I'm not worried about Desura 'sticking,' so long as Linden Lab sticks with Desura."

Most responding to Iris's article expressed optimism, though there was one person asking, "What does this have to do with Second Life?"

So it seems Linden Lab, for once, made the right move at the right place at the right time. But will they continue to avoid blunders with their new acquisition?

Bixyl Shuftan

Sources: Linden Lab, Desura, Wikipedia, New World Notes, Business Wire,  Techcrunch

Dropping By Luskwood

I took a little time this week to stop by my first hangout of Luskwood. With all this greenery, it's quite a change from earlier days. While there, I ran into a few old friends such as Treminari Huet, Ardy Lay. Founder Michi Lumin was also there. If the skunkgirl with a reputation for being a workaholic wasn't busy enough, it turns out she owns one of the pony sims: Trotsdale.

Hopefully the busy girl doesn't end up with too much.

Bixyl Shuftan

Multtiverse MMO Platform Closes, Becomes Open Source

According to Gamasutra, The MMO/virtual world development platform Multiverse had shut down last month. Started by a team of Netscape workers in July 2004, the platform was designed to allow people to "build and launch their projects more quickly and for less money than ever before."

Over the years, it took in several million in funding, and even had “Avatar” filmmaker James Cameron in its advisory board. It acquired the rights for multiplayer online games based on the “Firefly” sci-fi show, as well as Cameron’s “Titanic” and “Avatar,” but delayed development. Despite attracting the interest of “thousands of developers,” they weren’t “able to achieve a profitable business model” and so in December 2011 had effectively closed.

But the place will not be completely going away. Multiverse released their source code to their community, which made the Multiverse platform open source, “we have been updating and altering the code ever since, with the aim of carrying on the original dream - to give small-time developers the chance to make something big, and to show the development community that you didn't need to have millions of dollars to make the next World of Warcraft, or the next Eve Online. With the tools we provide, you can be just as good, if not better.”

In New World Notes, Hamlet Au thought the open source platform might be useful for Second Life builders, who could intigrate what they built on it into their builds on the Grid. He also mentioned that Second Life residents had created a “Firefly” roleplay community, as well as an “Avatar” inspired one.

To get the code, Click Here. You can also check their community on their forums.

Sources: Gamusutra, New World Notes, Multiverse

Bixyl Shuftan

The New Second Life Community Platform, With Ranking System

On Tuesday, somewhat overshadowed by their decision to act against Redzone, Linden Labs through Vogt Linden announced the launch of their “new and much improved Community website.”

Today, we are pleased to launch the new, and much improved, Second Life Community website. The new platform integrates Blogs, Forums, Answers, and the Knowledge Base into one powerful integrated system that enables you to more efficiently leverage the power and knowledge of the community. We have also redesigned the Customer Support Portal around this platform to make it easy to find the most relevant answers to your technical support and customer service questions online or to contact us when your issues are more complex.

The announcement had a Youtube from Torley Linden describing what’s new with the forums. This includes “a smarter SL Answers” section, a detailed FAQ area, a “unified search,” and “contribution based roles.”

You will notice that each person in Second Life has a role, or rank, based on his or her contributions to the platform. The roles start at Resident and go up to Helper and with each rank comes more capabilities. So, keep those contributions coming and watch your community platform ranking rise.

This ranking system has been getting some chatter among Second Life bloggers. It’s been compared to the leveling system MORPGs use. Hamlet Au, whom admitted he’s long wanted something like that on the Grid, was “pleased to see this baby step in that direction,” feeling what was needed next was to make these ranks visible inworld. Tateru Nino disagreed, feeling at best it wouldn’t change behavior much and at worst pointing out Second Life’s earlier achievements system was judged not to work and finally scrapped.

Personally, I can see how these ranks would serve a purpose on the community board, but not inworld. In a sense, we already have our own inworld “achievement system” in which talented residents become successful content creators and scriptors, DJs and musicians, combat RP aces, and of course hotshot news reporters.

Feedback from posters was overall positive, though some people did express missing the avatar profile pictures on the old blog.

To read the blog entry and comments: Click Here.


Bixyl Shuftan