Socially|Mundane

Today, November 5th, 2009 is the big day that has Linden Lab quaking in their boots, biting their fingernail, holding an unruly bladder. At least, that's what the "Artist's Voice" campaign is hoping. I have to say, it's difficult to make me laugh out loud and it always is a pleasure when something like this comes along.

Allow me first to make this clear: I am not dissing, degrading, slamming-on or in any way intending to insult anyone who is a part-of this campaign including participants and the organizers. Plagiarism in Secon... (Ahem!) Excuse me. I mean content theft (a serious misnomer) is "rampant" in Second Life (not.) There are many creators in Second Life who are fed-up with it, and of those, I suspect a very tiny percentage are actually affected in any way. Rather they become emotionally hysterical and jump on the old bandwagon.

I've been copybotted myself. but I don't waste my breath, effort or blood-pressure whining about it. I adapt and move-on.

Okay, so part of the this campaign is a simple boycott of 'business dealing' in Second Life, the intent to send some kind of Message to Linden Lab. Firstly, Linden Lab already has heard you. They hear you every day. Participating in this campaign only hurts you, but does help me so by all means: please do.

Look, people - not uploading in an attempt to get Linden Lab to even notice really isn't going to do anything. Firstly, a number of participants will upload anyway, even if it is only because they forgot they were even boycotting.  But the fact is: Linden Lab won't feel a dent.

As for no blogging, well that's good. Then more readers might come to me to get some of that SL-Addiction fix. I'm all for it. As for the no-purchases, again Linden Lab won't feel a dent. Neither will most merchants from who you'd have purchased from. It's a simple matter of buy-from-me now or buy-from-me later. Either way you'll buy from me or it was never a sale anyway.

The big one that gets me is the "No Sales!" thing. Do you really think Linden Lab cares? But the real question is: how many of your participants are actually going to take their vendors and XSL boxes off-line or block access to all their sales boxes? I mean really? It's an effort to do that, and the intended result is to explicitly not make any money. In other words: working to refuse money anyone might want to throw at you.

I just don't see that happening. In fact, I am willing to bet real money that if you go through the list of participants, then visit each point-of-sales location for each one, you'll find you can purchase their wares just as easily today as you could yesterday and the day before and the day before and so on. Any participant who actually practices most, if not all of these 'boycott steps' is only hurting themselves.

However, if any of them sell thrones (my own primary product) then I say go for it. Because when the customer can't buy from them, they'll likely come to me.

If you, dear reader, want more detail on this futile effort, you can get the details here: About the protest.