Relationships between a legal team and their video game company clients

In an oddly timely coincidence, Gamasutra has an amusingly written essay on the interaction between video game companies and their lawyers. The basic message is good; learn to work with your legal team instead of seeing them as an obstacle or something to point at instead of facing difficult decisions.

Bring the scripting email list back!

Vote to bring the scripter's email list back!
MISC-1048

EDIT April 01: The list is back! Periapse has accepted ownership.

Unicorns, Trademarks, and other ramblings

As some denizens of the grid have already discovered, I've got some new unicorn ( or horse or pegasus ) avatars up for sale. They're the first quad I've ever made. I used them in another "making an avatar" article for Avatar Toolbox. I have to go through AT and check it for trademark stuff, and I want to update it with some new links (and some links to a couple of Torley's new videos, especially the advanced attachments video.)

Still fussing around with the motorcycle. Did some clothes shopping. Visited a couple people I hadn't seen in a while. Had to go to sleep before Veyron's party, but I gave her a party favor the day before. Timezones suck. :P

I'm wondering why Linden Lab doesn't have some sort of official contact for the blogging community, and one for businesses on the grid. The concierge group just doesn't cut it - some issues overlap but many don't. It would have been a simple thing to have a channel (blog, forum, mailing list) where they could put up a discussion about "How the new trademark rules affect you" and clear up all the confusion and upset. A wee comment buried in a long blog post is not good communication.

And I'm very curious to see how they're going to handle domain and business name cases like SLExchange or the Second Life Herald. The old trademarks page said "You agree to refrain from using any domain name that closely mimics our proprietary domains, including secondlife.com and lindenlab.com." I don't know if that would have had additional meaning in lawyer's english, but in typical usage it didn't suggest that you needed two nouns in your name if you included SL as a reference to Second Life.

The new inSL logo makes me wonder what was being smoked in the Lab - when the eye-hand image has such recognition, why would you rip it out and replace it with something that no one recognizes and (I know I'm being catty) is so unappealing? Were they playing off of the SLGrid icon, or thinking of your basic plywood cube? If you're going to dump the recognizable, at least give us something with style!

Trademark and term changes

There's now a new set of rules for using SL related terms. Here's links to the Official Linden Blog entry and the website information. We've got 90 days to adapt.

Logos, including their green eye in the hand one, are no longer okay. They have a new inSL logo that we're welcome to use under certain conditions. The logo can't be shown on a page with anything that might not be considered PG. (Interestingly, the example they use involves skins, which we've been told are acceptable to show in their entirety for sale in a PG sim, although not to run around wearing without clothes.)

Bloggers, forum posters, and people chatting are (more or less) in the clear. We are expected to use the standardized terms now. The company is Linden Lab, not Linden Labs. LindeX, not Lindex or lindex. SLurl, not slurl. Second Life is always two words and both words are capitalized. You can also refer to it as SL. Not 2ndLife, sl, or secondlife.

Looking for a new CEO

Word from Reuters is that Philip's planning to leave the CEO position and move to CofB. Wonder if they have a CEO in mind or if they're just starting the search?

Sculpted prim bug?

If you're working on delicate or finework with sculpties (jewelry, shoes, etc) look over this jira entry. There's a positioning issue that's affecting sculpted prims.

Missing From Database has struck me

Dear SL,

Please bring back my unicorn's tail. Finding that something your avatar was wearing last time you logged on is now "Missing From Database" is a very sad thing.

HTML on a prim

The first stage of HTML on a prim has arrived. Here.

Mishmash

Swapped comments here to use a captcha - I'm hoping that stops the spam comments. I hate the idea of moderating everything. :P

Still working on the motorcycle - Sometimes it does a head-dive and I'm learning how to smooth that out with the vehicles page.

Making a unicorn avatar. It's going beautifully. The galloping animation is a pleasure to see. I'm taking pics as I go for Avatar Toolbox.

I've developed a sudden fascination with victorian dress - the evolution of the bustle and the changes of fashion are bizarre.

Went to a couple parties, had a good time.

I need to go ahead and start selling the tracking spotlight.