Peering Inside: The Second Life year in review (part 4)
Drama
There isn't actually as much drama in Second Life as you find in the physical world (which is sort of surprising), but it's still close. People are people, everywhere you go, after all. There were certainly a number of things that made people howl over the last 12 months. Here are some of the highlights.
- SLCC's late community standards caused a fuss. So did media release agreements, but the anonymous RL sexual solicitation certainly raised a few eyebrows too.
- Griefers attacked the cancer fundraiser, Second Life Relay for Life on opening day.
- Burning Life 2007 was another fizzle, unfortunately — thanks, in part to 'nipplegate' and more.
- Planned changes to the way Second Life logins worked turned into a veritable firestorm for weeks. The planned changes eventually went ahead, didn't actually work properly and were abandoned for the time-being.
- More tales of shenanigans surrounding the World Stock Exchange, which closed its doors and halted trading in early 2008 for an update and hasn't been seen since.
- A number of user-operated banks were hacked, and millions of Linden Dollars stolen. Speculation ran rife that it might cause Linden Lab to wake up and apply some controls to user-run banks. Apparently the speculation was correct as Linden Lab made their move less than 8 weeks later, though what ended up being done would not have prevented this.
- With little advance warning, European users started getting charged VAT.
- Friction between SLart magazine and the SL art community when Richard Minsky begins asserting his SLart trademark.
- A big fuss was made several times about a so-called Copybot 2.0 which still doesn't exist. Every such claimed next-generation copybot we've been shown has turned out to be one of the original series.
- A bloggers strike as a result of new trademark policies.
- Linden Lab yanked a ton of content, apparently as a part of a DMCA action, then responded evasively calling the whole thing an accident and indicating that it was fixed — but reports are that the content remains broken.
- Linden Lab accidentally loosed megaprims, and spent the next week doing pretty much everything but communicating with users about it. In light of previous statements, the change appeared to be an intentional one, so Linden Lab's silence on the matter was considered particularly offensive.
- Linden Lab abruptly took management of the fifth anniversary celebration away from users, who had spent the 12 months planning the event, citing fears of possible legal restrictions. That anniversary is, as we've said, today. Organizers for the sixth anniversary are hoping to avoid the involvement of Linden Lab next year.