Blogosphere around our beautiful world today is buzzing about the new trademark policy about using the name of the company who provides the platform for it, it's logos and the name of the world itself. In short, that company based in San Francisco now insists that we put ugly ™ and ® wherever we mention them or the platform we live on. I am too lazy to read all the lawspeak they rumble there so this post is not going to be informative in that (if in any) way.
Maybe you have noticed that I rarely write the words "second life" with capital letters. That is not because I am usually lazy to use shift on my keyboard. From time to time, I press that key and that is happening when I am talking about the platform, an actual product of a certain company. In those cases, now I have to put an ugly sign after the words. By the way, those capital letters and being so retentive about terms and slight distinctions in the terms is what happens to you when you study Aristotle (the Greek guy not the company involved in data collecting) in youth.
But most of the times, I am talking about second life, something that is going on not only on aforementioned platform but also on and thanks to WordPress, Blogger, Skype, ICQ, email… Something that is based on Internet before and after all. Something that is not a product in the capitalistic sense.
I am talking about something that is live due to its residents, you, me, those avatars that fly, walk and talk around, even those whose last name is Linden. (Hmmm, should I put ™ behind last names too?) And that life, that we conveniently call "second" is not anybody's intelectual property than ours. And it is not anybody's trademark. And there is no legal and/or moral way to insist that ™ badge must be attached to it. Does anybody remember of the Your World – Your Imagination thing?
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