Please forgive my submitting this mail to this list. i know it's not the perfect forum, but i think some of the people who need to read it are on this list, and that it may be of interest to others. Pretty please, if this bugs you or you think it's spam or whatever, just delete it and forget i sent it. i promise not to respond to anyone or follow-up with any more of the same if people ask me not to.
This is the problem: when i first started using SL i did what i think everyone does and collected freebies, did Midnight Madness, accepted presents from pretty much everyone, and really, just acted like someone from the country in New York City. Don't laugh, i know you've been there yourself sometime in your life. Somewhere in all that i got stuff that had been ripped off by bots or whatever. The worst i might be guilty of is receiving stolen property without any knowledge of it, or reason to expect there were problems with it. Beginning about 9 months ago i started getting IP complaint mail from LL and things automatically removed from my inventory. For a while, it was at least once a day. It had effects on things i made myself due to the way i had embedded the stuff with IP violations in it. It also blew it for me with people i'd given copies to of the things i'd made that had problems, especially the new users. i still get IP violation mail sometimes with items automatically removed from my inventory. i have to say, it's unsettling and a little like coming home to find my apartment turned upside down and inside out by the cops. What i think would be much better if, instead of automatically raiding my inventory, the procedure would be IP violation mail with a request to delete the accused items within a week or some reasonable time after which it could be automatically removed. For the benefit of new users, the IP violation warnings should also come with extremely explicit instructions on how to find & be sure all offending items had been removed. The ongoing problem has caused me to make the following resolutions: * Never, ever get any "freebies" anywhere for any reason. * Never, ever do "Midnight Madness" for any reason, at anytime, anywhere. * Never, ever accept anything from anyone for any reason unless i know for certain the it really is theirs to give. Like, i watched them make it. * Never, ever buy anything anywhere at any time, either in world or from an online marketplace unless i know for certain the person selling it is the only other person involved in the sale and that the seller is the person who made it. Like, i watched them do it and they are "there" at the time. That really does pretty much rule out any transaction involving an online marketplace. i tell everyone i know or meet the same thing. i know a fair amount about how computers work. i understand a decent amount of the context of the SL world. Still, whatever the stuff really is, the reality enhancement, surrogate effect, or whatever you want to call it that SL offers is significant enough that root, a sysmon, or whatever they want to call themselves grabbing stuff in a heirarchy with my ID claiming it without asking first is creepy, annoying and to me, worth complaining about. i doubt that i am the only one who feels like that, too. One last thing, i really gotta say is that i feel like some of the people doing the complaining about their IP really ought to look at the total concept of their own lives and try to think about the world as a bigger place than they do. There's times when "hypocrite" is not an unfair accusation in the "big picture" of things. What i mean is, the viewer is open sourced and there are good, creative, intelligent people who are not earning salaries or have lost income because of it. Linux is open source and there are good, creative, intelligent people who are not earning salaries or have lost income because of it, i know because i have known some of them very personally. For anyone who works on open source code, especially the viewer, to complain about the IP in their VW creations being abused is in my opinion, not very fair. Just sayin'. Seriously, i'm an anarcho-communist. i think everyone doing anything worthwhile should be entitled to a fair share of whatever is available in the world and not have to worry about food, a place to live and all that. For "worthwhile," i'd call it anything that some significant number of other people get some good out of, or think is worth having available whether they get anything out of it themselves or not. But we don't live in that kind of world. At least not now. For better or worse LL has made SL a capitalist experience and until someone finds a way of subverting that in a way that keeps everyone happy, that's what we're stuck with. Still, i think beating on people for having some dance animation, hair for their avatar, or other copy of a file that didn't get all the L$ paid to all the people who think they are entitled to them can be inconsiderate, rude, and not the kind of thing that's going to grow the idea in SL that has the most potential for empowering imagination, achievement, and long-term progress with long-term value. The "i, me mine thing" may make it a more solid investment or whatever for capitalists, but i think we've seen enough of that philosophy in the world recently to see that it's got big, ugly problems and isn't going to play into the kind of future that studying VWs like SL can lead to. i don't think i'm the only one in SL, RL, or wherever who feels like that or i wouldn't have bothered sending this message. Sorry if i took up a lot of time or put extra mail in your Inbox you didn't want to see. Please have a wonderful day! - AK _______________________________________________ Policies and (un)subscribe information available here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/OpenSource-Dev Please read the policies before posting to keep unmoderated posting privileges
