The following article was posted by comrade Ilia Milev, and reflect the personal opinions of the submitter, not the whole membership of CPSL
Dear comrades
I think that we must to attack on one the central ideas of Linden's creation due to its capitalist conception: this concept is land property and the speculation derived from. This is an atempt against basical rights, including the freedom of movement, and an atempt in fact against the possibilities for making real new world in Second Life. So , the first thing that could be done is to shift lefty organizations on travelling HQ organizations
If we become travelling I firmly believe that we can win more popularity: Most of the people will not come if they see the hammer and the sickle in a building (it's sad but it's true). Anyway on the midle of any SL street if the people listen our discussion maybe someone can be interested, more probably some no communsit people would be awared and he/she would come to talk with us.
We can remember the sentence of Proudhon that was defenced by Karls Marx on the "Holy Family" : "What is private property? a robbery". Well, we can extend the concept lying on this sentence avoiding land properties for the group. In fact, land is a burgeois property that we don't realy need. Of course, we don't realy practice a private porperty by itself. But due to the attackcs we can end the history satcking many fences around our Hq's,. I n the other hand, avoiding to be land owners we can save efforts and money. Of course this doesn't suggest the possibility to obliggate to any IA avatar to leave his/her land and houses. I'm speaking to do that over HQ as an exampel for every body.
The houses, the pictures and the symbols are just this nothing than symbols. What is realy important are the ideas and the facts.
May be I will become unpopular, may be you can think I am a fool, may be it's not SL-like this way to proceed. But I think that it's a way to be revolutionary, and with this exemple, a way to force Linden that the HQ for organizations was free and protected from attacks. Also would can suggest that there wasn't specualtion, nor increasing he grid just for selling land.
Of course this is a proposal, an idea, I'm not more than the others comrades and of course my advice is not binding to any decission, hehe!.
Ilia Milev
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3 comments:
Some comment on this:
1. Why would it be necessary to "break" the Linden game?
2. How could that be done?
Firstly let me answer 1. This Second Life service is not a public service, it's created by a company (Linden Lab). They let you in for free, but that is to attract more paying customers.
So the whole concept of public space in fact in this Linden created Second Life does not exist. It is a private space, but with some possibilities for individuals to make use of this service for free.
Linden has no intention to create a public service themselves, the only reason for letting non-paying customers in is to drag people in, so they become paying customers and/or land owners.
In fact, they have to have such a policy, since if the number of people online in this virtual world would not grow, it's economy would soon collapse.
It will collapse in the end on it's own terms (even when Linden Lab would remain to have a monopoly on the software they created) due to the fact that the economy resembles that of pyramid financial constructions.
Second, how to struggle for a REAL public domain virtual space, the best way this can be done is by creating an opensource version of the client and server software, and run it on servers owned by organisations that are publicly controlled.
Such projects are undertaken already. It is quite possible that if there becomes an open standard for such virtual spaces, there can be built a worldwide netword of grids that can connect to each other, and which combine into a very large worldwide grid, open to anyone.
(see for example: www.openmetaverse.org).
We don't need the virtual economy Linden Lab created (which is based on speculation), people can come in there for free, and don't need to spent money. The only money involved is the money for the internet access. And also that should become a public service.
Btw. Linden Lab is not the only provider of such virtual space, since since '95 (several years before Linden Lab got in business) there was Active worlds (see: www.activeworlds.fr).
"Firstly let me answer 1. This Second Life service is not a public service, it's created by a company (Linden Lab). They let you in for free, but that is to attract more paying customers."
I think that it is bullshit. First of all, LLs are not billionaires running SL for hobby. They do work and have to get paid for that. If you think that running a server farm is for free, its cklear that you don't even know what the word 'work' means. Paying customers allow SL to run and allow you the space for whine about the fact that you are enjoying it for free. Try to find a job, and afteryou have got one work for free if you like.
Second, take your public opensource metaverse and do your thing there, we have enough whiners. Im a opensource programmer, you have to know that, and still i get paid for my work. i just dont charge for the CODE. Or do you think that Novell runs by dancing in the rain all the day.
I wanted to argue this post, but i reckon that you don't understand a fuck. stay in your room and eat your free food, cooled by your free frigidaire, drink your free wine if you are old enough. But respect the work other people does FOR YOU, idiot.
RB:
You reaction is very agressive and this style of discussion is not very fruitfull, I suppose.
Nowhere did I imply that Lindens run SecondLife as a hobby, or that they are millionaires. Instead, they are a company that created a service, and gets paid for it by it's customers.
Nothing wrong with that, I suppose.
As a company, that created and maintained the Second Life software and run and maintain the Second Life grid, they have employees who need to be paid of course, and for that they need to have some source of income.
Their main source of income is land -fee as I understand their business model right.
So, those who buy land (and exploit it) are paying for the whole service,so that others can make free use of it.
The question I raise is, why (as the original post implies) does the CPSL oppose this business model?
And with what kind of business model should it be replaced?
My criticism on the business model implemented within the Second Life world is that in fact it is a real economic activity taking place there. The Linden dollar is not ust toy money, but convertible to real money.
For that reason all ordinary laws would need to apply there too. Like taxes and persecution of criminal offenses, etc.
And if we have something against only one company running this service, the only option to strive for is that the software becomes open source and follows an open standard so that other providers can also provide this service.
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