Please note that I am taking a vacation from the blog for the next two to three weeks, except for sponsored blogposts (and the occasional breaking news story such as this).

Have you heard?? Minusseven has posted the following comment to my most recent blogpost about the Kalhene Ariadna mesh body:
Unfortunately, the Kahlene body has been taken off the marketplace. I heard it was because Maitreya had complained to LL, but that might just be a rumor.
I have checked and it is, indeed, now gone from the SL Marketplace. In the back of my mind, I think I knew that this might happen, which is one of the reasons I loaded up all my female alts in SL just to pick up a copy of this freebie.
I’m not sure if Linden Lab has the ability to actually remove content from people’s inventories if a product is deemed to be somebody else’s stolen intellectual property (I seem to remember that they can, but it is not used very often). Daisy Winthorpe (who knows more about this than I do) has informed me that:
Linden Lab can pull the UUID of the mesh and the UUIDs of the texture. If the person who filled out the DMCA has proof enough, I am sure they will.
So, it would appear to be possible that we could lose all Kalhene Ariadna items in our SL inventories. I hope it doesn’t come to that, but we’ll see. I will be sorry to see this beautifully-crafted female mesh body go; in a very short period of time it made a big impression!
The creator, Claudia Urdaneta, posted the following notice to the Kalhene Second Life group:
Hi all. I want to communicate something important about the ARIADNA bodymesh. I have recently received a DMCA for my work, and according to Linden’s rules, I must remove the content and disable it from sale until this whole issue is resolved. In the meantime I will continue to work on improving, and on new items. I ask you for patience and I want to thank you for the welcome that my work had. I hope this matter will be solved and it will be available again soon.
DMCA refers to the U.S.’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act. When Linden Lab receives a complaint against a store or brand, they must act. You can read more about the process here when I blogged about a DMCA complaint filed against The Genus Project, which led to the closing of their in-world store.
Hoo boy, the people over at Virtual Secrets (the National Enquirer of Second Life) are gonna have a field day with this one! Everyone is gonna have an opinion, and point fingers (probably at Maitreya). There will probably also be something on the SL gossip website The Whisperer, who tends to keep tabs (and provide receipts!) on the never-ending drama and intrigue in the Second Life fashion community.
Stay tuned! This could get interesting.