It should come as no surprise that I have a keen interest in both reputation systems and in how people protect their own identities; just read my previous post. So, in order to achieve some transparency regarding the apparent hijacking of some real life identities for use in a virtual space, I’ve posted this on the Second Life forum:

As documented in this recent thread (Link) a question has arisen regarding whether or not people can sign up accounts that not only use the real life names of famous celebrities, but in conjunction:

– create avatars intended to mimic their real life appearance
– use as part of their in-world activities original content in order to associate with the real person or persons
– appropriate trademarks to enhance the real life association
– mislead residents about whether or not they are in fact the real persons (e.g. comments like “if they are alts” – ref )

This is the section which I would like clarified:
–
“You may not select as your Account ID or Avatar Name the name of another person, a name which violates any trademark right, copyright, or other proprietary right, a name which may mislead other Participants to believe you to be an employee of Linden, or a name which Linden deems in its discretion to be vulgar or otherwise offensive. Linden reserves the right to delete or change any Account ID or Avatar Name for any reason or no reason.”
–
Given the above and the apparent Intent, the following trademarks may be of interest:

#76350897 – “Pre-recorded video and sound recordings featuring music and musical performances”
#74394447 – “entertainment services; namely, live performances by a vocal and instrumental group”

Thank you for providing further guidance in this.

The response should be interesting.

Having recently signed onto LinkedIn, the professional networking site, I have to admit that even though I should have probably thought of this, I didn’t:

I suppose Linden Lab is aware of Linkedin (many Lindens are listed there, for example) and/or of similar Social Networking sites.

I have already created a gmail account for my avatar, so creating a complete CV on LinkedIn would be pretty easy. Considering that SL has a thriving business community, I believe that LinkedIn (or a similar service) could be of some use for avatars too, helping to create a chain of trust for example.

Would LL consider getting in touch with LinkedIn to create a “group” for Avatars? Or even to add “Second Life” as a valid choice for profile nationality/country of residence?

I think it would be better for everybody if avatars are tagged in a standard, easy-to-recognize way, in order to minimize inconvenience for RL users of the service.

That comes courtesy of Pamar Bjornson, a virtual entity in Second Life. I just checked, and Pamar isn’t registered. Yet.

Brilliant.

{Update: Considering previous mix-ups – example – I thought it might be worth having a second account and so I’ve gone ahead and created a LinkedIn account for my virtual identity. I’ve not linked it to my meatspace version for a variety of reasons. In the meantime, I guess we’ll see where this goes.}