[opensource-dev] FAQ posted for Third Party Viewer Policy

Soft Linden soft at lindenlab.com
Sat Feb 27 17:53:42 PST 2010


On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 3:32 AM, Henri Beauchamp <sldev at free.fr> wrote:
> On Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:14:52 -0600, Soft Linden wrote:
>
>> There's now a FAQ for the Linden Lab Policy on Third Party Viewers:
>> http://bit.ly/caedse
>
> Very good job, Soft, thank you ! :-)

Ah, I didn't write it! I only pointed out that it exists.


> However, there are a couple of points that I think should be addressed
> or precised in this FAQ:
>
> 1. The trademarking rules as presented in the TPV are in contradiction
>   with Linden Lab's own trademark policy. In particular:
>      5.b.i You must not have a Third-Party Viewer name that is
>                       “________ Life” where “________” is a term or series of terms.
>   Is in contracdiction with:
>   http://secondlife.com/corporate/brand/trademark/unauthorized.php
>   in which we see that "[anything] Life" is not forbidden as long
>   as [anything] does not contain "Second".
>   I would call such a trademarking a "domain trademarking" (like
>   a domain name for an Internet site address"), but I doubt very much
>   such a rule would be legal, even in USA...

It's not in contradiction. It's more explicit on what's "confusingly
similar to a Linden Lab trademark" in point 1 or an "adaptation" in
point 5. It didn't list these word substitution examples specifically,
but the page also said it wasn't limited to the examples given. I
think that page was written before they knew what adaptations people
might use.


> 2. in the FAQ, to the question "I do not want a publicly available
>   listing in the Viewer Directory to disclose my own name or contact
>   information.  Is it possible for the public listing page to show
>   just the brand name of my third-party viewer?", the answer states
>   that name and contact info must be provided to Linden Lab, however
>   the type of "contact information" is not precised. An email from
>   an ISP account (not an anonymous Yahoo/Hotmail/Google/whatnot
>   account, of course) *is* a contact information that is sufficient
>   to legally identify the developper in case of any action against
>   them. But right now, the full snail mail address is required,
>   which is in violation with some international laws protecting user
>   privacy (notably the French law "Informatique et Liberté").
>
> I hope to see these two points addressed.

I know the identity requirement will remain, and I expect there will
be a form that's more explicit about what information is required, if
there isn't already.

If you know of any law that makes it illegal to require email as a
condition of being listed in an optional directory, it would be
helpful to tell me where to find it so I can pass it on to legal.


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