On Second Thought

Greetings Shannon,

First, thank you. For your diplomacy, for your feet-to-earth attitude, and for all the additional highlights.

One thing I really wanted to avoid was another witch hunt. Having a few mentor friends, I’m well placed to know that, do do mentoring, you have to be benevolent. Those people work hard, and for free, to help newcomers feel welcome in our brave new world.

IP is indeed a subject that is, IMOHO, prone to many flamewars by it’s nature. Tho IP theft is indeed a serious offense, those cases are often very complex indeed, and are bound to cause an insane amount of frustrations, both from the POV of the content creators than parties unjustly accused, or smeared by the actions of one or a few people, be it malicious or often like it’s the case, a dumb mistake, thing we are all prone to do one day or another.

Like you point it, nobody is perfect, and I truely believe in this case it was very probably an honest mistake, sometimes misunderstandings happens regarding distribution when dealing with any content creators.

This said, I must admit that I really hesitated posting this, being the claim of only one party. But I like my blog to feel like an open home for rational discussion, thing members of the Mental Mentor proven me right. More input was received and things discussed in a civil manner.

What pains me deeply tho, is the smearing. I hope to have tried everything to avoid it degenerating. As bloggers, we often report partial information and update, because we don’t have the same resources “real journalists” do. But sometimes, some subjects are really touchy, and that some people are quick to accuse. Thing is, I may be naive, but I trust my readers are intelligent enough to see the matter in a reasonable way.

Mentors are the heart of SecondLife. They pump knowledge through SL™, our body, our community. Of course they are humans. Some people may do mistakes, but frankly, I’m disturbed and a bit disgusted by some lynch mob like reactions to that case. But are we really surprised? SL™ is a dynamic community where rumors and innuendos spreads like a virus, and sometimes it turns into a dramafest, and in some other cases, into a total shitfest.

Mentor groups like Mental Mentors are admirable, in my own humble opinion. They are less rigid than official mentor groups, can usually give more flexibility to newbies to get some help, and also they foster amazing initiatives that spawns collective projects that profits to everyone.

I hope everyone gets that you cannot target a whole group like that, and a huge established group indeed, for such action. My point of posting this was more of a reminder to all people to be a bit more careful. Wasn’t my point to do the morals to anyone either. Fact is all of this fiasco could have probably been avoided, and that would have been in the interest of everyone.

For the first time in my blogger’s life, I have been tempted to simply delete that post. No I have not been threatened in any way, neither pressured. I just don’t feel the information I published, namely from SculptyPaint website, really helped anyone in this case. I like the community to be constructive, discuss, and share opinions in a posed down way. But I often forget the “flamewar effect”, meaning sometimes written communications can escalate just by the lack of head to head discussion.

I’m not sure what I will effectively do, but I am very tempted, Shannon, to cross post your article directly on my blog, with your permission of course. Tho I am mostly a photographer and a content creator, I am equally attached to the notion of help and mentoring in SL™, both are dear to my heart. I just hope again that people will understand this, with the help of all of you.

Thank you for posting this and providing much more clearer information, and thank you for seemingly understanding my intent. If all rants were like that, the SL™ blogosphere would be a much better place.

Sincerely,

Codie

I am not entirely sure whether I am meant to be a good witch or a bad witch in this instance….

I already talked to you in world of course, Codie, but I’m just going to post it here, too, so that everyone else can see, and you can’t get in trouble for stealin mah wordz ;) - You are more than welcome to cross-post, and thank you from the bottom of my heart again. (You’re welcome, too, and woot for the silver linings in the worst storms. :p)

Ordinal - I promised a long answer if you were interested… so here it is:

Ordinal, I do not think you are a bad witch. :) I have often read your blog and found you to be very thoughtful and quite a worthy read.

I am not saying that people do not have a right to be outraged that someone’s work, their creations, were distributed to the masses. I am not saying that people should not voice their outrage, or discuss the topic. All that I am asking for is, for the voices out there who are taking shots at the entire group of Mental Mentors and/or Second Life® Mentors, to cease laying the blame at the feet of those who had zero control over the notice being sent. I’m asking that those who are so quick to pass judgment upon all of us to consider that not all of us are to blame. Yes, this includes me. I saw and received a notice that did contain some sculpties (ceramics, not things from the SFT pack were what I personally saw) - and when I found out what it was, I got rid of it.

By all means residents should look out for one another - and by all means if someone knows of an instance of content theft, they should raise their voice about it. However, before that person should raise their voice, they first need to consider how sure they are that it is theft, and not an accident, as well as who specifically is at fault.

For what happened with Cel Edman’s sculpties, I am truly saddened. If they are not meant to be redistributed, they shouldn’t have been. That is and always has been my opinion of that aspect of the matter.

I do not have any animosity towards anyone who has blogged on the matter, and let me assure you again, Ordinal, that I do not see you as a ‘bad witch.’ Particularly because you have made it clear that you view the fact that the person who distributed the sculpties was/is a mentor as a detail, not the crux of the matter. All that I really want is for those who are blogging and discussing the matter to keep blogging and discussing the matter _without_ laying the blame at the feet of those who are simply not to blame. The entire group is not to blame whatsoever.

In my own opinion, whether accident or deliberate does not erase the fact that they were sent and shouldn’t have been.

One other small technicality, primarily directed towards Cel Edman’s statement: the textures were in no way, shape or form ’stolen’ - they were, however, wrongfully distributed, and the seller’s terms of use were violated. But the words thief and/or robber are very much inaccurate, and especially not as a label for the entire group. If they had been ‘ripped’ or ’stolen’ and then redistributed, I would be raising my voice against the theft, _too_ - but that’s just not strictly accurate.

[...] “all” Mental Mentors a bad name. It is those who paint all Mental Mentors with the same broad brush as those members they feel are not doing the right thing that are giving us “all” a bad [...]