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An open letter to the FurNation Worlds Community
(hosted by Second Life) and interested readers about the
events over the days of December 27th 2006 to
January 5th, 2007
Let me introduce myself and give you a little
background information on what I do and what I built. My full name is James A. Robertson, and I
presently live in
A little over 10 years ago I started a hobby website
called FurNation (http://www.FurNation.com)
that hosted free websites for artists and writers of the anthropomorphic
genre. Over the years the web server
grew to over 2,700 hosted websites and over 35,000 visitors a day, with a
rating in the top 30,000 visited domains on the Internet. A little over two years ago I started a small
print-on-demand service to support my growing free web service and discovered
that I could expand it into a full blown publishing company. Last year I solidified the company by forming
an LLC (Limited Liability Company) called Nexxus Omnimedia, LLC with a DBA
(Doing Business As) FurNation Multimedia to support our brand name.
I am always looking for new ideas and creations to
expand our web services. I have researched
the new social systems like blogs and galleries which allow individuals to post
their works without learning HTML coding to create a unique website. Right now we are beta testing a new web-based
gallery system that I think our present visitors and hosted website owners will
like. About 4 years ago I looked into a
really interesting 3D virtual community system called Active Worlds (http://www.ActiveWorlds.com) that I
thought would be a really big hit with our visitors. At the time I was not ready to pursue a
platform of this type due to the amount of development time it would require.
The Beginning…
About a year and a half ago I discovered the game
called Second Life. This was a ready-made
3D platform that was completely hosted by its parent company Linden Labs and
offered some unique features that Active Worlds did not. I decided to jump in and “purchased” my first
island sim, which I named FurNation Prime.
At the time we launched our first sim Second Life boosted 200,000+
registered users and a good size group of private island sims like mine. According to Linden Labs advertisements my
sim “purchase” would cost 900 US dollars with a monthly “maintenance” fee of
195 US dollars each month. It seemed a
little costly at the time, but I figured it was not a lot of cash for the power
of the community platform.
Well, within 3 months we had a really fast-growing
community of new users. Linden Labs was
offering bonuses called developer incentives and referrer bonus to sim owners,
and FurNation Prime was starting to top the list for new members joining Second
Life and the largest populated island.
Things were working very nice, and I even had 5 of the Linden Lab
employees come and visit me in California during a convention hosted in July of
2005 I was attending to offer their support and congratulations on what we had
built. At this time Linden Labs was
approaching 1 million registered users, and FurNation had referred the highest recorded
number of new players to Second Life.
The Present…
Over one and a half years later Second Life has
gone through a drastic change. All
bonuses are gone, and sim owners are now on their own to develop in world
systems for community groups like ours. Linden
Labs seems to be more interested in advertising the e-commerce aspects of
Second Life to big businesses. Sim fee
“purchase” prices and “maintenance” fees have increased dramatically. Most of the larger community groups I
remember from the early days are gone or almost gone. But FurNation’s presence in Second Life continues
to grow and we expanded to nine sims. The entire island group is now called FurNation
Worlds. Up until December of 2006
everything was rather touch and go for maintaining the sim fees on our sim
purchases, but we now have the single biggest community group in Second Life
boosting over 1,400 total FurNation Community members. FurNation Worlds was intended to be a free
service for the members and visitors of FurNation, and I never intended to make
any aspect of FurNation Worlds on Second Life a money making or for-profit
enterprise. It was just for fun and to
provide and interesting 3D visual world for people who came to visit. I had hopes that it would at least pay for
itself over time.
Now I have had my share of glitches with Linden
Labs, including some billing errors, lack of timely customer support, sim
outages and restarts, etc. but most were minor occurrences and easily
corrected. Up until last month I have
never had a reason to doubt anything that Linden Labs did in the way of service
or policy decisions.
The Economy…
If you are unfamiliar with Second Life you may not
know or understand the economic system that Linden Labs built into the game
platform. There is something called
“Linden Dollars” which are used in game to buy and sell virtual goods, and
sometimes to rent land and island sims.
These “Linden Dollars” do not have any real world worth, but several
third party systems were created to exchange real
In mid December I was approached by an individual
(I will withhold his name) who stated he liked our sims and the FurNation
Community and wanted to help us out by donating several million “Linden
Dollars” to our cause. Now, in real
The Awakening...
I was stirred out of bed by the phone ringing at
around 11pm on December 27, 2006.
Frantic phone calls started coming in from friends of mine and people I
put in charge of helping run FurNation Worlds stating that accounts were being
shut down and that no one had a clue as to what was going on. I tried to get online and found that my
account was also shut down and I had no access to Second Life or the online
support system. Using a separate account
I had created I was able to get support in world and was told of a fraud
investigation and that I could do nothing about it till the following day by
calling Linden Labs support line. I
contacted everyone whose account had been affected and told them to stay calm
until I found out what was going on the next day. I figured this was some sort of error as
within an hour of our accounts going offline we had someone steal the username
and password of one of the administration team and begin to destroy the island
sims in FurNation Worlds, stating that he had “destroyed and shut us down”. I assumed these events were related as we
have had individuals come to our sims with the intent to cause harm before, and
Linden Labs fixed the damage within hours and repaired the compromised account(s). I went back to bed thinking a phone call in
the morning would correct all this…
The Reality...
Next morning I made the call. After going through the usual Linden Lab
phone help system I finally got a hold of someone who explained what
happened. I was told there was a fraud
investigation going on and many people’s accounts were affected. This was all I could discover as I was
informed that most of the other information was “confidential”. I continued to try other numbers, hoping to
get some additional information or at least have my account reactivated so that
I could manage my “purchased” sims. At
about 4pm Central time we had another attack by the same person the night
before, using the same compromised account.
This time he did greater damage to the sims, but I was able to get a
hold of a
Days of Silence and a Very Sad
Christmas…
Nothing. No additional
information from Linden Labs. Phone call
after phone call left me with no answers, no explanation, nothing. All the way through Christmas and still
nothing. No resolution, no phone
support, nothing. I cannot even begin to
describe how I felt during this time. We
had planned a Christmas party in FurNation Worlds, but of course I could not
attend without access. To be denied
access to something you have spent such a great deal of time and labor on (not
to mention money) without a single piece of information on what is going on is
unbearable. It felt like I had purchased
a new house and the very night before the Christmas celebration the original
owner comes up and says, “I am sorry, you can’t enter.” I sat through Christmas by myself and decided
not to go anywhere until this issue was resolved.
The New Year…
On January 05, 2007 my account was finally
restored. I once again had full access
to the sims, and phone support said they would be restoring the other
accounts. But phone support also told me
the bad news: that someone had committed
fraud (which kind, how they did it, and who did it was never told to me) and
that they would be deleting “Linden Dollars” from my account because of
it. I asked a straight question, “Am I
the one you suspect of committing fraud?” and was told “No, you are not.”
My main account is now negative in the millions of
“Linden Dollars”. I have no way to
correct this, no way to pay back the depositors in the bank system we created,
and no way to have the sims in Second Life generate the revenue to pay the
“maintenance” fees charged by Linden Labs.
I am now facing the possibility of losing over a year and a half of work
on this project, selling the sims (if Linden Labs will allow it), and trying to
reduce the harm it has caused me and my company’s brand name.
We counted 16 total people who lost “Linden
Dollars” due to the fraud of this person.
I attempted to ask the following questions to the people on Linden Lab’s
support line:
·
If
·
Why isn’t
·
How was this money obtained? Did he get it through fraudulent means,
through a security hole in the
·
Why are we being treated as accomplices to this fraud,
and why has Linden Labs taken this course of action knowing it would cause as
much harm on so great a scale?
·
Were any of these events related to the individual(s)
who attacked our sims?
These are questions that phone support could not or
would not answer, stating over and over the same catch phrase: “Sorry, that is confidential information”.
The Learning Curve…
I am usually a trusting person. When I see something for sale at a store, and
I usually believe the advertisements associated with the product. I have at times bought something that didn’t
quite live up to its hype, but usually I found that if the company was consumer
friendly they were willing to exchange the product for something better.
During the time I had my access cut off from Second
Life I began to do some research to see if there was anything I could do to
clear all this up. I began to read news
articles about Second Life and began studying the Terms of Service that Linden
Labs has posted on their website. It
slowly dawned on me that all was not as it seemed to be in the virtual world.
First, Linden Labs has a very interesting TOS
(Terms of Service). Phrases such as “…has
the right at any time for any reason or no
reason to suspend or terminate your Account…”. I do not believe I have ever seen the phrase
“no reason” used in a TOS like this before. If I purchased a sim, how can Linden Labs
disconnect access from the product I purchased?
I mean, the advertisements all over the Second Life website include
phrases such as “
Nothing. I
found nothing in the Linden Labs TOS that spoke of the actual sim purchase,
scope of sale, or buyer rights to that purchase. There seems to be a complete lack of anything
that I could find even dealing with the major advertised part of Second Life,
which is the ownership of virtual land.
I did find many instances where Linden Labs reserves the right to
disconnect, terminate, and claim ownership of all data on their servers. As a consumer I do know the difference
between a “Purchase” with a recurring maintenance fee and a “Setup Fee” with a recurring
lease fee. I was beginning to think I
had actually leased these virtual sims and had no actual equity in them, which
means my original purchase price is actually a setup fee in disguise. I mean, if you buy a car from a car dealer
you don’t expect the car dealer to be able to come and seize the car or to lock
you from it at any time with “no reason”. But if you lease that same car you do not
“own” that car, and as such have limited rights in its use.
Now, this may not be as bad as it sounds, because
many sims in Second Life are “bought” and “sold” each day between players. There are even several “land barons” who
openly speak of how much equity their companies own in virtual land in Second
Life. But since my research uncovered nothing
in the TOS covering the transfer or sale of virtual land I can only assume that
Linden Labs could deny asset transfers under their TOS of data ownership. Basically, if Linden Labs wants they could
simply take away all your sims, terminate your account, and wave you a fond
farewell as you sail into the sunset.
There is a pending lawsuit against Linden Labs for
EXACTLY this. It would seem that due to
a “suspected” TOS violation a customer found ALL his “purchased” sims
repossessed, his account shut down, and his sims resold by Linden Labs. After reading about the case it appears that
the plaintiff is declaring that he did NOT violate Linden Labs TOS and is
trying to get his account restored. You
can read more by following the links below:
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,70909-0.html
http://secondlife.typepad.com/
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/05-08-2006/0004356685
http://www.3pointd.com/20060509/land-lawsuit-hits-linden-lab/
http://forums.secondcitizen.com/showthread.php?t=5132
The Rules of Monopoly Money…
As far as the “Linden Dollar” goes, this was much
easier to find in the TOS:
In Section 1.4:
You agree that Linden Lab has the absolute right to
manage, regulate, control, modify and/or eliminate such Currency as it sees fit
in its sole discretion, in any general or specific case, and that Linden Lab
will have no liability to you based on its exercise of such right.
In Section 1.5:
Now since we did not commit any fraud or violations
of Linden Labs TOS you would assume from section 1.5 of the TOS that all the
“Linden Dollars” in our account were safe, but section 1.4 seems to be a
general catch-all that allows Linden Labs to simply remove any “Linden Dollars”
from any customer at any time.
Back to the Future…
We are now re-assessing our plans for a 3D virtual
world development project using the Second Life platform. Since we can no longer count on either the
sims we “purchased” being closed down by Linden Labs for “no reason”, and we
can no longer safely use the “Linden Dollar” for in-world transactions due to
its volatile nature, the future of using this platform for continued growth
looks dim at best.
I really see potential in a 3D platform such as
Active Worlds and Second Life, but I am now very weary of the companies behind
such platforms. When I started
developing in Second Life it seemed that Linden Labs was much more focused on
building virtual communities and obtaining the most devoted content developers
to the platform. After 100s of thousands
of man hours of paying customers building the in-world content it appears to me
that Linden Labs is mainly focused on bringing in big businesses and boasting
that their system is the next wave in Internet e-commerce. I see nothing wrong with this, as it is their
technology and their company and they can do as they wish with it. But I want to build a virtual community that
is safe, stable, and with some assurances that the company behind the software will
do no harm to myself, my visitors, or my name brand with decisions that are
outside of my control.
We will of course continue to pay the fees for the
island sims we “own” as long as Linden Labs allows, follow the TOS, and
continue to enjoy the game. I owe it to
the people that have come online to play in FurNation Worlds and to ensure it
is up and running as long as I have the ability to do so. I will not forsake my friends or customers I
have referred to Second Life. Understandably,
my faith in Linden Labs and Second Life has changed. I doubt that I will sink any more money into
expansion in Second Life at this point, as over the last year and a half we
have paid Linden Labs well over 15K in real US dollars and that did not help us
one bit in these events. Like any other
company I must look toward the future and attempt to spend any development
money wisely. And as of this writing I
no longer feel that more investment in the Second Life platform to be a wise
decision.
Afterthoughts…
I want to apologize to all those effected by the
incidents described in this blog. I must
take full blame for losing the large amount of “Linden Dollars” that we were
going to use to expand our community because of the possible fraud of another
player outside of my control. It was my
decision to use Second Life as a development platform for FurNation Worlds, and
as such the final responsibility falls directly on me. If I had known that Linden Labs would react
in this way after I followed their TOS and received “Linden Dollars” as a
donation in good faith I would have done things differently. But I will learn from my mistakes and attempt
to be more careful with future companies like Linden Labs that I may have
business dealings with.
All of this blog is as accurate as I can recall
over the time span written. There are
many other aspects of Second Life that I have left out of this statement as
they do not directly impact anything that happened (such as intellectual
property rights, free signups to the system, risks associated with business
transactions in Second Life, etc). I
have written this letter from my own perspective, as the events unfolded, and
as I learned more behind the Linden Lab TOS.
I may be mistaken on how I interpret some of the Terms of Service, but I
write this from the side of a consumer and my interpretation of what I
read. I am not an attorney, nor do I
claim to have any legal knowledge of contracts or Terms of Service
statements. If you are interested in
getting into Second Life, or plan to buy a sim I would highly recommend that
you hire a licensed attorney to review the Linden Labs TOS and advise you of
your rights and limitations. There is no
substitute for good legal council.
There are many articles about other game developers
who are creating interactive 3D worlds similar to Second Life. Some of these platforms offer great hope for
communities such as FurNation Worlds to run their own software on their own
platforms independent of any third-party companies at a greatly reduced
cost. As of this writing Linden Labs has
released their client software under the open GPL license, and I have been
informed of at least two separate groups that are undertaking the task of
developing the server-side platform to interface with the Linden Labs
client. The future may be very bright
indeed.
My Contact Information…
Real
Name:
James A. Robertson
Second
Life Name: Nexxus Ambassador
Email
Address: Webmaster@FurNation.com
E-Mail
Responses I have received to this letter (real names removed):
Dear James,
I just thought I'd drop you a line to say I fully agree
with the points you've made in your posting at http://letter.furnation.com and
have blogged about it at my blog http://healerofsecondlife.blogspot.com which
is also available through my profile on my Second Life character "Untamable
Wildcat".
I think that the lack of customer service offered by
Linden Labs is an absolute disgrace. I realize
how frustrating it must be for you to be treated this way and felt that it was
right I should express my support for you in your stance towards the treatment
you've received. Try
as I might, I can't imagine why YOU should end up paying (in all ways) for this
quite deliberate anti-furry attack.
Please don't give up.
There are people out here who sympathize, and who support your
viewpoint. Linden Labs might consider
themselves too big to consider the FurNation community, but if you were to
withdraw I'm sure their accountants would feel that loss - and really nobody
could blame you if you did. However, I'd
like to ask that you do not, since doing so would hand victory to the perverted
bastards who attacked FurNation in the first place. I find myself extremely angry at Linden Labs
and actually wondering if there's an "anti-furry" amongst the Linden
team themselves, since the hacking of an account twice within a short space of
time that Linden apparently aren't interested in investigating smacks - to me
at any rate - of some degree of complicity.
Anyway, chin up.
People do care. Please try and
stay with Linden Labs even if they are rivaling Micro$oft for their poor user
support.
Not sure how many people respond to you..
but I'm rather stunned by the strength of your
character.
Typically an issue like this would of
just been kept under wraps and no one would of been the wiser about what
happened.
The fact that you stood up and took full responsibility
for what happened says a lot. If your ever in need of
someone to volunteer to help out, I'd be more than glad to. I was in the United
States Army for a short time and always willing to help out a former veteran.
My name in-game is Jag Nakamura and seeing as I have a lot of free time, I'm
willing to offer it to help those enjoy themselves in FurNation.
Greetings James A. Robertson a.k.a. Nexxus Ambassador,
I have read your letter and am very dismayed that the
actions of one individual
could shatter the foundation of FurNation. I say this from two perspectives.
First, dismayed that SL could be so easily and drastically
manipulated. I certainly understand that
internet security is a challenge everywhere but the events you describe show an
apparent lack of check points and I would expect more from someone as large as
Linden Labs has become. But this of
course is out of our control at present.
Second, and more importantly, dismayed that the actions of
one individual might steal away the magic of FurNation from the one who created
it. This "terrorist act" of
sorts wasn't just about taking away land, it was designed to take away the
hopes, stability and security of all furs as well. Did they succeed with you? I sure hope not..
Please don't let that happen...
Listen, Second Life and FurNation has CHANGED MY
LIFE. I write this letter to remind you
of all the hearts and souls you have set free with your vision and that the
mischievous actions of one individual pale in comparison. I was a humble scared little fur when I found
FurNation.com many many years ago. I was
just as timid logging in to SL for the first time not sure if it was really ok
to be myself. With the help of SL and
FurNation I started to grow out of my shell.
Taking chances, trying new things... I now perform LIVE music concerts
as a fur all over SL, even in human sims with no fears
of rejection. "My
music!"... the most personal part of me...
out there for all to hear... I never
thought it possible! I'll say it again,
"Changed my Life". Family and
friends in real life even comment on the wonderful growth in happiness and
self-confidence. The change has been
noticed by all. James A. Robertson you
have done great things... and I thank you.
You really have no idea.
I read your blog and the offer still stands. All you have to do is put the code on your 2
websites and that can be some extra money you bring in to help support the
community. I'm running 10L per click
until Jan 31, so I'd like to get you setup so you can take advantage of that.
Let me know if you are still game or if I can do anything.
Peace. Love...and Fur...
CEO, SL Public Radio
http://www.slpublicradio.org/
"Digital Music For Your
Digital Life"
I was upset over how
> The Better Business Bureau (BBB) has attempted to
process the above
> reference complaint. To
date, we have not received a response from the
> company.
>
> We have sent a reminder letter to the business and
need to know if the
> situation has been resolved
with you directly.
>
> Your immediate attention to this matter is sincerely
appreciated. If
> we do not hear from you by
January 17, 2007 we will close your
> complaint as unanswered.
>
>
> Sincerely,
> Better Business Bureau
> Dispute Resolutions
I answered them as no they haven’t contacted me, and
infact it has gotten worse. I compared it to being at an amusement park with
advertised 20 rides and every time you are there ,
only 5 work. That is bad business, and I feel just because they are a
"cyber" business they are above consumer law. Rather its pixels or
metal, if Disney was ever ran this way they would be sued in seconds.
So Not only do they have a
lawsuit, I have the BBB on them. Please get other furry folk to send in legit
complaints to the BBB about
Take Care Nex I am so sorry all
that happened.
Hey Nexxus,
Your letter was brought to my attention by a friend of mine, I must say I am appalled at what the administration
has done to you guys and shocked at how venerable the TOS can make us. This
isn't like gold in a game like WoW, L$s have become somewhat of a real currency and I may not
have invested as much money in SL as you have, I still have assets invested in
the game.
It's about time I paid my dues. Furnation
Worlds was the reason I joined up to SL in the first place and I have spent
countless hours over last year enjoying it. I wish to give my support any way I
can, weather it be raising money by DJing or even
renting a shop in on of your shops. It may not be much, but it's the best I can
do.
Dear Nexxus / James,
I've read your letter in the web and I feel it hard to say
how sorry I am about what happened in this situation. My only hope is that LL
will reestablish your former account status soon.
Then, sure there is a shady side of SL. Often there is
such a shady side when too much power is bundled for too few ppl. Therefore I am wondering about what you wrote on two
groups of ppl working on a server side project in
means of Second Life.
It would be a great help if you could provide me with some
more info (contact info, web page url)
of those groups as I am keen on participating in such work.
Thanks a lot - and good luck for all of us with SL and
LL... :-/
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