Month: November 2018

The Historical Pfaffenthal 1867 Sims Move from Second Life to Sansar

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Pfaffenthal 1867
Image of Pfaffenthal 1867 taken from the Second Life Destination Guide

Blogger and irrepressible 1920s Berlin landlady Jo Yardley (whom I have written about on my blog before here and here) reports that the seven-sim virtual reconstruction of the historical quarter of central Luxembourg City, Pfaffenthal 1867, is moving from Second Life to Sansar:

Members in the group received this note:

Dear citizens,

The moment has finally arrived, for the 1867 project to move on to Sansar, where land is free, where we can have better graphics, VR headsets and real physical interactivity. Note that Sansar works very well on a normal PC, for desktop mode you do NOT need a gamer PC.

IMPORTANT! All the 1867 sims in Second Life will be shut down next Monday, on the 26th of November. Please pack all your stuff by then.

We will have a good-bye party, Saturday the 24th of November at 10 a.m. at Café Neuen.

Please join us in Sansar and be among the first to get a new house there! We have 4×4 km!

Now, this is notable because it is, as far as I am aware, the first (but probably not the last) such wholesale move of virtual land from Second Life directly to Sansar. I know that they’ve been working on the Sansar experience for quite a little while now. Obviously, they think they are ready to make the switch. However, there’s still very little Victorian-era period clothing in the Sansar Store.

But, as Hauptmann Weydert says in his group note to the members of the Pfaffenthal 1867 group in SL, they have a 4 kilometre-by-4 kilometre space in Sansar for free, which is certainly a lot cheaper than what they have been paying to maintain seven sims in Second Life! In fact, you can now have up to twenty 4 km-by-4 km experiences in Sansar for free.

Here is a lovely machinima created by the talented SL videographer Pepa Cometa which gives a real flavour of the Pfaffenthal sims:

Here is a SLURL to the Pfaffenthal 1867 sims in Second Life, and here is a Sansar Atlas link to the new Pfaffenthal 1867 experience in Sansar. I would strongly encourage you to visit and explore Pfaffenthal in Second Life before it shuts down next Monday (as the video shows, it’s a beautifully crafted and lovingly detailed virtual historical recreation). Be sure to dress in Victorian-era clothing or you’ll stand out like a sore thumb!  And, I would equally encourage you to check out their new digs in Sansar.

Draxtor Despres also profiled the Pfaffenthal 1867 sims in an episode of his Drax Files series of vignettes on Second Life creators:

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: REIGN

Have you joined the RyanSchultz.com Discord yet? More details here. If you have a tip on finding Second Life freebies, come over and join us and share the good news!

One of Ryan’s eight rules for freebie hunting in Second Life is:

Watch for free group join periods!

Well, I got a great tip today from a blog I follow regularly, NessMarket.com, about another Second Life group that has temporarily dropped its group join fee.

The REIGN group is free to join, but only until Sunday! And you can pick up some really nice shoes and boots for your female avatar, 21 group gifts in total (not all are footwear; there’s also some coffee mugs).

And not just one measly pair of footwear each! We’re talking FATPACKS, with 20, 25, even 30 colours each!!! This is an incredible deal!

Take a look at only a few of the free group gifts from REIGN (I think that the boots in the second picture are especially nice):

Reign 7 21 Nov 2018Reign 6 21 Nov 2018Reign 5 21 Nov 2018Reign 4 21 Nov 2018Reign 3 21 Nov 2018Reign 1 21 Nov 2018Reign 2 21 Nov 2018Reign 8 21 Nov 2018

(The last picture, the black pumps, comes with a HUD with just four options: black, and three different American stars-and-stripes patterns. It’s a former 4th of July group gift.)

So get down to REIGN and vacuum up those freebies! This SLURL will take you directly to the group gifts room. (The sim is very busy today, so you might have to use something like the Teleport Hammer to get in. Keep trying!)

NEW! A Discord Server for RyanSchultz.com Readers

I’ve decided to emulate a couple of bloggers whom I know (Strawberry Singh and Wagner James Au), and I have set up my own Discord server, an online community especially for RyanSchultz.com readers!

The focus will be the same as the tagline of this blog states: news and views on social VR, virtual worlds, and the metaverse, as well as a more general discussion of virtual reality and augmented reality topics. And you’re invited to join us!

Here’s the invite link, or you can simply scroll down and look for the new Discord widget on the left-hand-side panel of my blog, located right under the search box and above my fancy new social media buttons:

RyanSchultz.com Discord Server.png

If you are connecting via a smartphone or tablet instead of your computer desktop, just click the three-bars menu button in the upper-right hand corner, then scroll down until you see the Discord widget displayed.

I’m looking forward to seeing you online! We’ll have some very interesting discussions, I’m sure! As Adam Frisby told me tonight, my Discord promises to be the first cross-worlds server, a true melting-pot of citizens from the various metaverse platforms!

Please be sure to read the rules posted in the #rules channel, and feel free to ask me if you have any questions, or if you want to suggest a custom channel. Thanks!

IMPORTANT NOTE: I will now be staying logged in to Discord on my home computer 24/7/365 (unless my PC has crashed, there’s a power failure, etc.). During the day, while it may look like I am online, I’m not around (especially when I am at work, although I may pop in from time to time just to make sure you haven’t broken any furniture or burned the whole damn place down 😉 ). Remember: behave yourselves! You guys can certainly have wonderful discussions without me hanging around all the time, anyway, and I will usually be available in the evenings and on weekends.

Intellectual Property and Copyright Issues in Social VR/Virtual Worlds: A Follow-Up Editorial

Apparently, Ghoster (whom I interviewed previously) is quite peeved at me for, and I quote, “bashing [his] server and VRChat”.

I didn’t even realize he was upset with me until I started chatting with him today on his new Discord server, Hi-Fi Traders, which is set up much the same as his previous server, VRChat Traders: a forum where people seeking a custom avatar can connect with avatar designers, creators, and riggers. The services are quite popular, and some people likely make a good side or full-time income from custom avatar creation for paying customers.

Ghoster probably has a right to be angry with me, after what I wrote about intellectual property and copyright issues in virtual worlds. He might feel, and not without some reason, that it was a personal attack. (It certainly wasn’t, but I can understand where he’s coming from.)

And it would appear that I have now been banned from Hi-Fi Traders, and probably VRChat Traders, too. I was still on the Hi-Fi Traders Discord channel when I found myself suddenly kicked out.

Before I was unceremoniously booted off his server, I told Ghoster (twice) that I would gladly give him a guest blogger spot to post a detailed rebuttal of my original blogpost, but it would seem that throwing me out was the preferred approach. I still stand by my original blogpost, and the argument I am making today. Also, I am not singling out VRChat, either; I have also blogged about IP infringement on OpenSim-based virtual worlds, and what I have to say here applies to all metaverse platforms, not just VRChat.

All I have done is point out that people charging money for the creation of custom avatars, where they do not own the intellectual property, are operating on sketchy legal grounds. Ghoster told me today that the high number of concurrent users on VRChat makes it difficult to police this sort of thing. That’s true. But frankly, that’s not an excuse for clear-cut cases of copyright infringement.

Custom avatar creation is a sort of cottage industry, much like those peasants who did piecework on their weaving looms before the Industrial Revolution came along. That’s fine, and I fully and completely support that work. (Many people still make a living creating and selling content on Second Life after 15 years of operation, for example.)

And creating a custom avatar inspired by someone else’s intellectual property is okay. For example, Roger Rabbit in the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit is based on a mash-up of Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, and Goofy:

Roger is a slender, white rabbit with large blue eyes, pink nose, a tuft of red hair who wears red overalls, yellow gloves, and a blue yellow polka dot bow tie. He is an amalgamation of various classic cartoon characters; taking Bugs Bunny’s cartoon rabbit form, Mickey’s gloves, and Goofy’s baggy pants. Animator Richard Williams described the process of creating him like an “American flag” with the red overalls, white fur and blue bow tie and American audiences would enjoy him subliminally.

But, if you make an exact copy of Mickey Mouse as a custom avatar for somebody and charge them money for it, don’t be surprised to find the Disney lawyers breathing down your neck (or, more likely, going after VRChat, High Fidelity, or whatever virtual world is hosting that avatar). Even worse, if you create a Mickey Mouse avatar modified in some X-rated way, you’re really skating on thin ice if someone reports you to Disney Inc. They don’t look kindly on that sort of thing.

And I do know that Linden Lab (for example) is monitoring items placed in the Sansar Store, to ensure that no copyright-infringing items are placed up for sale. (They do have Star Trek items up, but it is with the explicit permission of the Roddenberry estate.) In fact, very recently, a lovingly-detailed, fan-made recreation of the Enterprise from Star Trek: The Next Generation was pulled offline following a cease and desist from CBS.

As far as I am aware, VRChat is still not doing that sort of checking. (And giving it away for free isn’t an excuse.) They are opening themselves up to a possible lawsuit. So is any other social VR platform or virtual world that is allowing people to recklessly copy somebody else’s intellectual property without permission. And if the company owning the IP comes after a virtual world platform, they have no choice but to comply.

And kicking me off your Discord server, because you don’t want to hear that, isn’t going to change that reality one bit.

DisneyCopyright
You might not agree with it, you can protest it, but it’s the law.

Sorry, Ghoster. I hope you can forgive me over time. But it doesn’t change the facts. Your beef isn’t with me; it’s with the system. If you disagree, then put your efforts into copyright reform, not into a personal feud with me. Don’t shoot the messenger.