Second Life goes open source
p2pnet.net News:- Second Life is a free, virtual world where virtual people controlled by real people can chat, fly and buy, buy, buy, sell, sell, sell, turning pseudo money called Linden Dollars into hard cash.
And it’s gone open source, in a manner of speaking.
Second Life’s current media magnet is Anshe Chung, a Chinese lady whose real name is Ailin Graef and who’s currently a German citizen. Her Anshe Chung Studios bills itself as “Your global leader in virtual real estate” and Graef is now a millionairess. A real one.
When, during a virtual CNET interview, the virtual studio was, “bombarded by flying animated penises and modified images of Graef holding a unrealistically large penis,” as the Wikipedia describes it, going on:
“The griefers managed to disrupt the interview sufficiently that Graef was forced to move to another location and ultimately crashed the simulator entirely.[9] Video and images of the incident were posted to the ‘Second Life Safari’ section of Something Awful, and the incident received notice in a number of places, including blogs like Boing Boing and the Sydney Morning Herald.”
Anshe Chung Studios subsequently issued takedown notices, real ones, under the odious DMCA, demanding that newspapers and websites remove photos and videos of the incident, claiming that they violate Graef’s copyright in her avatar.
YouTube chickened and complied.
Meanwhile, Linden Lab has released its viewer software under the General Public License (GPL). But Linden Lab will, “vet all outside contributions and maintain control of an official version of the viewer software, the company said,” says News.com. “Programmers must sign a contributor agreement to submit code. By signing the contribution agreement, a programmer agrees to assign joint copyright to Linden Lab and grant Linden Lab and anyone who receives the code a patent license relating to use of the code.
“With Linden Lab owning copyright, it will be permitted to change licensing terms if it desires.”
The Second Life Viewer is used by subscribers or ‘Residents’ to access the virtual world’s Grid. “Freely-downloadable from the Second Life website, the Viewer software enables Residents to control their in-world avatars, interact with each other via Instant Message, create content, buy and sell objects, access multimedia content and to navigate around the virtual environment,” explains Second Life.
Also See:
takedown notices – Anshe Chung’s penile assault, January 8, 2007
News.com – Second Life software becomes open-source, January 8, 2006
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