The patent troll company that sued Lindenlab has its own strange legacy

EmpressOfCommunism

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So, earlier this year a little known company called Worlds inc tried to sue Lindenlab for copyright infringement.

It turns out that they have their own virtualworld since the nineties that attracted attention from sponsors such as David Bowie, MTV and Stephen Spielberg in its heyday of say, 1999.
The world still exists and is usable, a quick look around with an avatar gives you a nice bit of 1990s nostalgia as most things are untouched since then.
I will note that the most recent custom avatars around remind me of 2008ish avatars of SL with a lot of cobbled together texture based fetish gear for the ladies.

Much like our virtual world, though, there is/was an underbelly. Where we have an unfortunate stereotype for pedophiles and weird kink content due to people not liking kid avvies, the weird pixelated quality of their avatars and them being around in the mallgoth heyday has given them a stereotype of being...a front for satanic cults!

I will admit there is something charming about the old builds, but also a little sad that most of it is a ghost town and even has bare concrete walls in spots where people could once hang signs and images freely(I'm assuming) and put little shops.

The above video gives a good rundown of worlds and the sites history, squashes some of what's ridiculous about the cult rumours, but then discovers some legitimately concerning content.

While I hope I am dead of old age by the time this happens to Secondlife, this is also our future. One day we're gonna be this ghostly, I hope not soon, and I hope the staff has enough dignity to simply pull the plug or let the Open Simulator people merge, rather then devolving into patent trolling and frivolous lawsuits!
 

Chin Rey

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So, earlier this year a little known company called Worlds inc tried to sue Lindenlab for copyright infringement.
I wouldn't call it little known. Forgotten perhaps, but they were certainly one of the pioneers of virtual reality.

It turns out that they have their own virtualworld since the nineties
They also created ActiveWorlds although they sold that to another company rather than run it themselves.

Much like our virtual world, though, there is/was an underbelly. Where we have an unfortunate stereotype for pedophiles and weird kink content due to people not liking kid avvies, the weird pixelated quality of their avatars and them being around in the mallgoth heyday has given them a stereotype of being...a front for satanic cults!
Oh, I suppose that's what they accuse Second Life of stealing then. :p

While I hope I am dead of old age by the time this happens to Secondlife, this is also our future. One day we're gonna be this ghostly, I hope not soon, and I hope the staff has enough dignity to simply pull the plug or let the Open Simulator people merge, rather then devolving into patent trolling and frivolous lawsuits!
I think we should leave it to the court to decide whether the lawsuit is frivolous or not.
 

Kara Spengler

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So has LL been sued by whoever wrote the original mud and mush code yet? Palace maybe?
 

EmpressOfCommunism

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They appear to sue multiple companies of varying sizes every year, I'm surprised they havent sued Habbo Hotel yet or tracked down the guy who did pong to sue him.
 
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Fionalein

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Is this an ironic make-fun-of-it book club or a dead serious one? I'm keenly interested in one of the two...
No book club at all but in SL exist funny folks who read cheap SciFi books and decide to model their SL and RL live on those "pieces of literature", that's why I occasionally call SL itself the "bad bookclub of the internet"...
Blissfull me never ever heared about Ayn Rand or John Norman before SL.
 
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Pr1m

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Ah, and here I thought you were only referring to Gor. When I was younger I found a scholarship where you write an essay about Atlas Shrugged...gave up before I started when I saw what a brick that book was, and I'm glad I didn't read it at such an impressionable age.
 
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Monica Dream

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No book club at all but in SL exist funny folks who read cheap SciFi books and decide to model their SL
Which is fine...
... and RL live on those "pieces of literature"
THAT's where the true horror begins!
Blissfull me never ever heared about Ayn Rand or John Norman before SL.
"Oh my sweet summer child" ...I remember encountering the Goreans on IRC back in 1998; and the many geocities sites made about their trailer-park (literal) kingdoms (or whatever they call their forts)...

And compared to some folks here (Argent, for example) I'm the 'sweet summer child'... (edit: meaning I'm confident that someone has a story about encountering goreans back in the BBN days of 1981 or something)
 

Brenda Archer

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Which is fine...

THAT's where the true horror begins!

"Oh my sweet summer child" ...I remember encountering the Goreans on IRC back in 1998; and the many geocities sites made about their trailer-park (literal) kingdoms (or whatever they call their forts)...

And compared to some folks here (Argent, for example) I'm the 'sweet summer child'... (edit: meaning I'm confident that someone has a story about encountering goreans back in the BBN days of 1981 or something)
I remember coming across them on the Palace. I never did quite figure the Palace out.
 
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Wildefire Walcott

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For anyone who enjoyed that Worlds.com video, it reminded me of a wonderfully eerie video that Vinny from Vinesauce did exploring ActiveWorlds a few years ago, with similarly mysterious characters.


He also did a re-visit a couple months back, but the original stands as one of my favorite YouTube clips of all time.
 

Mona Eberhardt

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Which is why I've always advocated the abolition of software patents, with immediate invalidation of any such patents that are still current.
 
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Soen Eber

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How sad. There are neither Hitler "downfall" necropost videos, nor memes :(
 

WolfEyes

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For anyone who enjoyed that Worlds.com video, it reminded me of a wonderfully eerie video that Vinny from Vinesauce did exploring ActiveWorlds a few years ago, with similarly mysterious characters.


He also did a re-visit a couple months back, but the original stands as one of my favorite YouTube clips of all time.

After becoming a resident of SL so long ago, I tried many times to go back to AW. It has improved enormously over the years but it just can't hold up next to SL. It should be kept in mind how much older AW is than SL.

As for the idiot who keeps trying to sue other 3d environments... he's an idiot, what did you expect? He doesn't have a legal leg to stand on. He's gone after a number of 3d environments and lost every time.


Soen Eber

 
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