Alphaville Herald

Metaverse SHOCKER!!! -- Free SL Accounts Locked Out?

Why are free accounts sometimes disabled to make room for paying customers?

by Avil Creeggan

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Dear Linden Lab,

I am a free account. I have been a free account for the past two years. During that time, I've dealt with a lot of stuff that, frankly, shouldn't be happening; flagrant asset loss and dehabilitation, incompetent customer service representatives, seemingly-random suspensions and bans for which there is no notification, having to provide my identification on multiple occasions... But it's been pretty much okay.

You see this dialog box?

This changes everything. You know why?

Forget the fact that you didn't tell me this was coming, at all. Forget the fact that, not only can I not login, neither can my friends. Realize that you consider me to "just" be a free account, now, and nothing else. You are completely wrong.

Second Life Left Unity's Open Letter to LL

Dear Linden Labs

We have been a group within your medium for 17 months. We are a political forum, essentially using the forum as a way to link with people of our political persuasion across the world. We felt this media would be a great way to do that and have managed to link people across the globe. Members of our group believe in a method of education espoused by Paulo Friere, the South American educationalist, and we feel the virtual world created on your media allows that in a way few other Web 2.0 forums can. Our most recent Charter and Aims and Principles can be found here.

We have a number of concerns we would like to share with you and perhaps you could address those.

We feel the new TOS are pretty stringent, your Trademarking (TM) the term “SL” has surprised us. Our use of the term SL came before your TM was introduced – and we have used the term both inside and outside the media. Our concern, however is not the name or the legalities of using the term “SL” or the term “Second Life”. Our concern is that we are an anti-capitalist group who at times confront some of the corporations Linden Labs now seek to involve in SL. We have in the past supported an Italian IBM workers strike that used SL to highlight their cause, successfully. Would this supporting of a non-corporate, group who had no commercial relationship with Linden Labs against a corporation who have an interest in Linden Labs (and vice versa) breach your new TOS?

Bots Turfed Out of Liberty Island S

Letters to the Editor

I'm writing about the article entitled "Bots Make Mockery of Traffic Statistics" on March 23, 2008 for the Second Life Herald.

My name is Doran McCullough and I, along with Organa Ashley, just purchased the land written about from Harold Malpholisto. I want to say, unequivocally, that under no circumstances will we ever use or condone using bots to artificially inflate traffic. We had no idea this was even going on when we purchased this land, and can't disagree with the use of bots strongly enough.

We are currently in the process of moving our mall and nightclub over to the land, and have always took the stance that bots are to be booted. I encourage all Second Life citizens to come down to the Oxygen Mall and Nightclub, and verify this for yourselves. Organa and I both agree completely that the process of artificially inflating traffic numbers by the use of bots ruins your reputation as a mall owner, disappoints vendors, and ruins Second Life for all citizens.

I would love the opportunity to talk this over with you, perhaps as an interview, or whatever you think best. Great work on the Second Life Herald, I've been an admirer for a while now. Keep up the good work, and please send me a notecard or IM letting me know you got this and if you would want to talk about it anymore.

Doran McCullough
Co-Owner Oxygen Mall and Nightclub