The Second Life® Brand Center vs. Bloggers

[ArminasX Saiman]

I've just finished scanning the overly lengthy new branding rules just announced by *that-company-I-am-not-sure-I-can-safely-mention-here*. There are several points in there that may affect bloggers, and many more that affect business owners. A few items of possible concern to us bloggers:

• "In the United States, always use a trademark notice symbol"
• "Always use a legible and reasonably prominent trademark attribution notice "
• "Always follow a Linden Lab brand name with an appropriate generic noun"
• "Use an appropriate generic noun after the Second Life or SL brand names"
• "Always capitalize and spell Linden Lab's brand names exactly as they are shown"
• "Do not use any Linden Lab logo, icon, slogan, or tagline."
• "Never modify, imitate, or register any Linden Lab trademark"
• "Never use any Linden Lab trademark in a disparaging or tarnishing manner outside the bounds of fair criticism or fair use"

Huh? Do I have to consult an attorney every time I mention S****d L**e in my blog posts? (Ooops! I just modified a trademark!) Is this for real? I have never heard of such extensive guidelines, and feel that these are highly restrictive rules to impose on our blogging community.

What do you think?

[Alex Fedotov]

Where do you, people, see the 'stagnating growth'... I wonder? I saw 64+ thousand concurrency lately... SL is a more or less COMPLEX environment, it will grow (and it is growing) relatively slow but steadily. It's not a 'web-site', it requires TIME to learn. It will NEVER 'explode', forget about it! Everything that requires TIME to learn grows like that.

Regards.

BTW, your blog is wonderful, we've included it into our index (http://yolto.com) , now you just need to include a link to one of the Metaforum Topics (they can be seen here: http://yolto.com/FeedTopics.aspx?c=5 ) f.i. http://yolto.com/FeedTopic.aspx?Id=515 and your post will be appended to it automagically. If you want it of course. :)

[IYan Writer]

Hi Alex,

thanks for the praise *blush* - I'll definitely include the link!

Re "stagnating growth" - from a pre-IPO company POV, any growth that is not clearly exponential is seen as stagnant by the potential IPO purchasers. Stagnating growth <> no growth :) just slower.

Bye,

IYan

[Alex Fedotov]

Yep. I understand that... VERY well :) hehe. That's what the VC guys (or WS) WOULD LOVE you to have if you are pre-IPO. :)
This WILL NEVER be the case with VW and MMO though. :) Just because of what I said - the learning period that is UNAVOIDABLE.
My point was: you can't do any better in terms of growth if you are a VW provider than Linden Research is doing right now.

[Harper Ganesvoort]

I was wondering about this while I was getting a wisdom tooth mined out today -- my last, thank all benign Powers -- and, technically, they probably would have us in a bind. Practically, though, it still comes down to whether or not they want to hunt all of us down. Is any company that anal about trademark protection these days? I thought Disney was going to be when I was living in Florida, and I heard about them suing an elementary school to take murals of their characters off the walls, but even that has settled down considerably (mostly since Michael Eisner left, I think).

Peace, Harper

[Edward Pearse]

Google recently released notices trying to get people to use the phrase "making a Google search" rather than *Googling something*. But for most people if you refer to Coke rather than Coke® they know what you're talking about (unless you get some over eager steampunk fans thinking you're talking about coke). Disney's been pretty good at suing people for using likenesses, which I find the heigh of irony as most of the Di$ney stories are adaptations of other people's fairy tales.

We can only hope that LL doesn't go all RIAA.

[Sciamachy Moran]

Silly really - even if "googling something" is technically brand dilution, it means that Google becomes ubiquitously associated with web searching, and thus becomes the first & maybe only search engine people think of when they want to make a search. I'd have thought that such a situation would be desirable to them.

[Harper Ganesvoort]

Such things are tricky. A good lawyer could argue in a few years for that trademark dilution claim, and "Google" would go public domain if the judge agreed. Trademark defense like this is an attempt to spend money now, trying to avoid spending much more money in the future.

Peace, Harper

[Sciamachy Moran]

Yeah - the problem is that the company risks losing its trademark due to a court ruling. It's a crazy law that can rob a company of its brand just because it passes into common use. You end up spending so much effort trying to keep it in the sweet spot between being universally recognised & being assimilated by the borg.

[ArminasX Saiman]

I agree with more clarification from Linden Lab. Clearly they don't want to shut numerous blogs that, our complaining aside, largely promote "the-vw-that-shan't-be-mentioned". They should specifically address our concerns by telling us the steps they expect us to follow. Were we to literally follow the voluminous legalese that crashed upon us this week, we'd all be hiring lawyers to double-check our posts. As Crap said, the domain name changes may be the most difficult, in addition to brand-cleaning tens of thousands of posts. I want to know how much of this work is truly necessary before we do anything, and I don't want to hire an attorney to tell me. Linden Lab should tell us.

Secondly, I agree with the notion of a general blogger's strike. This issue is clearly of massive importance to the blogging community and if the Linden mandarins have not yet understood our needs, perhaps we can gain their attention. It's not every day you can accomplish something by doing nothing, either!

[Dusan Writer]

I'm with you on the strike idea.

Posted on this on my own blog of course so won't ramble on again, highlighting the pablum of the "inSL" logo, their ineffective communication, and the fact that dear Catherine needs lessons from Sidewinder on community management. (Oh, did I just ramble? I need to stop that!)

I'll be curious post-strike (if it should come to that) whether I'd have much heart to write about "the name who must be obeyed" or might shift focus a little.

/me ties self to tracks and flips through AO HUD: fear, rage, terror, pouty, restless sleep

[Kanomi Pikajuna]

Hey neat look, New World Notes pointed to our discussion! And quoted me! :)

[Wiz Nordberg]

What is the point of a strike? Blogging is one of the most vibrant ways to voice concerns and issues. The more blogging, the more attention and the clearer it is how many people are affected and what they think.

A blogging strike can only hurt the bloggers and ignored by Linden Lab. They are ignoring just about everybody who is asking them questions right now, they surely won't be in the least bit affected by a few missing posts for a few weeks. They may even like the absence of noise.

Why not start a Second Life resident business petition which asks both for clarification as well as "grandfather" additions which do not require you to rebrand and reinvent properties which have been in existence for more than, say, one year? Who knows what the terms are, but if you can submit a formal non-reactionary petition to Linden Labs with a good set of participants, you have at least the start of a message that somebody may listen to, read, and demand some response by them.

If it's written well enough and organized well enough, maybe you can even get CNN to put their name on it next to SL i-Reports, eh?