Oh go on then...one more and then I promise to give it a rest for a while:

Official Second Life: Townhall With Philip Available

This is the transcript, and mp3 recording, of last night's 'Town Hall Meeting' in Second Life I happened to be listening in on it from the location I was at, while tinkering away on a rather complex scripting project - the land-owner in question having set up the land's URL audio stream to pick up the meeting in progress. The actual meeting took place for real...er...well....you know what I mean; 100 or so avatars gathered in-world at LL's special stage venue, to 'see' Philip Linden 'speak', or something. This whole Virtual World Analogue thing does my head in sometimes. Anyway, faced with something of a polite, but simmering mob all wanting answers about the C0pyb0tz0r, the meeting was effectively dominated by the thorny issue of Digital Copyright.

It's a pretty long transcript, and with so many people so concerned about CopyBot, it did tend to go in circles and repeat itself a lot. Here's some of the distilled pearls of wisdom, as I understood them. If you particularly care about SL, beyond the normal Snarky Blog Pointing-And-Giggling we all enjoy, do try and read through, or listen to, the whole thing, for a sense of context:

  • It's the Internet, Stupid!
    Philip seems to hold at the core of his philosophy a passion for unbridled and unregulated growth of SL. In this vein, he seems to be keen on Linden Labs absolving themselves of as much regulatory responsibility as possible. 'No-one regulates the internet', and he makes a point that LL should be doing *less* dispute resolution and overseeing, not more, in all aspects of Second Life. The key difference is that no one company has a finger on the Internet's 'Off Button', or controls it's sign-up process and account details. Philip seems eager to have this state of affairs ushered in to SL as soon as is practical.
  • Data Overload
    A number of technically minded questions and suggestions for copyright control were gently but firmly deflated, on the basis that the 'data corpus' - the total collection of objects in SL in total, is now far too big to enable any kind of technical copyright verification to work. He cites the internet again here, and has a point - it would be laughable to have someone check every other web page to see if the one you've just uploaded is original. To his credit, he comes right out and confirms that nothing you make in SL is 'safe', apart from compiled Scripts. He doesn't really suggest solutions, beyond a kind of publicly visible 'creation timestamp', which people could use to resolve copyright issues legally, amongst themselves.
  • White Hats Are Cool Guys!
    He seems to like the libsecondlife project, the very people who *ahem* 'accidentally' unleashed CopyBot on the world, citing all sorts of useful contributions they've made to SL's architecture, code, and design in the past. He strangely makes no mention that these people costing nothing to 'employ', and at least one respondent calls them out as actually being 'Black Hats' in disguise.
  • Bigger Better Faster More
    He makes no apology in the slightest for the current PR Overdrive, and if anything, seems hell-bent on getting everyone inside SL a.s.a.p, regarding a life in SL as the sort of life-affirming and empowering (he actually uses the word at one point) experience that no sentient being should have to go without. I suspect this is genuine 'vision', rather than a cynical attempt to boost SL to the point where it can be sold off to AOL or something. Even so, the creed of expansion above all is a bit disturbing, in a Ernst Stavro Blofeld kind of way, no matter how well-intentioned. I wonder if he has a white fluffy cat?
  • Want a Job?Somewhat comically, Philip offers everyone listening, and presumably, anyone not listening too, a job. He invites us all to apply, regardless of skills or experience. The actual positions are unclear, but he points us at the website. I'll do the same here. He tells us that only 100 people work at LL, less then 30 of which are developers (vs. a notional 1.4 million customers), and that this is one of the main reasons for the shocking lack of service, stability, and slow feature updates, etc - simply not enough hands on deck. I wonder if LL are a bit out of their depth these days - it definitely sounds like they're desperate for more hired help.
  • Bargain!
    Unrelated to anything else, we learn that SL has cost a total of 20 million US Dollars to make, over the last six years.

There are a lot of other points in there, but all in all, I doubt it was the kind of response folks were really after - some quick fix or magic wand. To his credit, the Linden Lab boss does seem to care, being disarmingly honest and open with his customers, and perhaps something of a visionary. It just seems as if he doesn't have the answers many pioneers of the Virtual World are looking for either.

Despite all this uncertainty, confusion, spin, hype and potential, and being somewhat interested in the continued, and free, existence of my little online Lego Set, I came away from it surprisingly reassured. Not that 'it'll be all okay' and that the Gods...the Devs and Management of the SL, were going to 'make it all better'. That would be naive, and is the Party Line you get from most normal MMOs. No...what I got from this was a sense that The Lindens are aware of the problems, are going to give it their best shot, but can't make any guarantees. I kind of respect that - moreso than the usual fluff at any rate.

Anyway, I'm sure you're all bored of hearing about this stuff by now - Oxygen of Publicity and all that. In other news, I resubbed to Everquest II, and am finding it surprisingly palletable in it's latest incarnation. Every time I quit, it gets a little better by the time I return, showing a good sense of design direction and commitment to feedback from SOE, I'd say. How long I'll last in there this time is another matter.

More on that later. This is the last post in the current series, but we'll be back with a new series in a week's time. Until then, remember - We at Van Hemlock do not condone Hats....Black OR White!

Toodle-pip!