I’ll Wait For The C & D
It looks like Second Life is taking steps to protect itself against dilution of copyright a bit too late, now. The new Second Life Brand Center explains all of the ways that people will no longer be able to use the words “Second Life”, “2nd Life”, “Your World, Your Imagination”, and even the acronym “SL”. One thing that I noticed is that the blog post announcing the new “brand center” left out the copyright symbol… so much for consistency.
Reading through the “Unauthorized Use” page gave me a strange feeling that they had seen this web site (and most likely others like it) and realized that they could do nothing about the information on it. Section number 2 and number 5 of that page gave me a very bad taste in my mouth. They are trying to tell people that they cannot refer to “Second Life” by saying “2nd Life”, yet they are also saying that you are not “allowed” to register a domain name “2ndlife.com”. You can’t have it both ways, Linden Lab… sorry!
They are also saying that you cannot use a “modified” logo or even use a modified version of their (bogus) tagline, “Your World. Your Imagination.” Again, this is something that they’ll have a very hard time trying to enforce, since the modification of a logo and use as a parody is considered “fair use”.
Number 8, on that list actually mentions “fair use” and gives a link to The Fair Use Network, which they obviously didn’t read before making some of these things up.
What I find simply amazing is that Linden Lab would actually have the balls to do something like this at such a late stage in the game. There are thousands of web sites, news sites, in-world publications, and blogs that use all sorts of different ways to refer to Second Life. Now, they want you to think that they are “being nice” by giving everybody 90 days to change everything. Think about some of the larger Second Life news web sites and how long it will take them to change “everything” on their sites so that they aren’t violating the rules laid out in the “Proper Reference” section.
The people that have the most work to do, because of this change, are they people that have stuck with SL the longest. Now, they want their long-time fans (so-called residents) to suffer. I personally know one person that will now have to proof read and edit over 4000 story entries, so that their web site doesn’t violate anything. I’m not helping him…
As for this site… we’re not changing a thing. Before I even started this site and ever since, I’ve made sure that nothing here violates any copyright, and that everything contained on the site falls into fair use. If Linden Lab wants to argue differently, let them.
Malignant Narcissist @ March 24, 2008
“yet they are also saying that you are not “allowed” to register a domain name “2ndlife.com”. You can have it both ways, Linden Lab… sorry!”
You do mean “can’t” have it both ways, correct?
I concur with what you’re saying here. I’m not a legal-eagle, but I’ve been in graphic design and movie industry long enough to be clearly aware of copyright and trademark law.
Some of what they are wanting is unenforceable, others would fall flat on it’s face in a court challenge and other parts are on the up-and-up and fair enough.
but to wait this long - I agree.
Even Hormel bit the bullet with SPAM, stating that they have no issues with the term ’spam’ referring to junk email and the like, as long as “SPAM” (all capitals) - is never used.
So, has Linden Lab waited too long? Like Hormel, I think so. Just my worthless 2-cents.
Thank you for catching that. I’ve made the changes to what I actually “meant” to say.
Well i will wait with a big smile for the end of the soooo nice 90 days
Oh and… did they do something to prevent the copyright thief texture in world?
Very lucent paper Malignat *bow*
Linden Labs may have waited a bit too long to actively defend their brand identity. It will certainly be very interesting to see what occurs with businesses that currently have domains that correspond to some of the terms that they are trying to protect.
For example, http://www.sl.com/ and http://www.insl.com/ are currently in use and the ‘eye in hand’ logo seems to be a recurring concept in human imagination ( http://www.darkfiber.com/eyeinhand/ )
Additionally, Marc Bragg recently posted a list of 245 domain names that incorporate the term “Secondlife” on his blog at http://secondlife.typepad.com/second_life_lawsuit_bragg/2008/01/are-sl-virtual.html Perhaps someone versed in the appropriate field of law can comment on the current situation.
In regards to this site, microsoftsucks.org, windowssucks.org and applesucks.org currently point to sites critical of major corporations. If the legal departments of those businesses can’t stop the criticism Linden Labs may have similar luck.
If anything, the C&D envelope stuffers will have a very long list to work from.
Good day!,
Hello!,
Hi!,