Is Linden Lab hostile to art?

UPDATE: October 17, 2008 - 10:41am - meade Paravane has submitted a proposal for a "Top Scripts on Parcel" estate flag so that parcel owners can see script times on their land (and have that enabled on mainland). Vote for it here: JIRA - SVC835. While not a fix-all for artists and their art, this would certainly prevent situations like the one that elros Tuominen (see below) is experiencing.


Whoa! I've been so self-engrossed this past month that I've partially or completely missed some important incidents. I'm not looking to be excused, but it's been quite the time. In my Real Life, it was my birthday, then workers on my street were tearing up the sidewalks and hit a gas main. The fire department made us evacuate for four hours. The next day, an electrical fire next door caused by the high winds had huge sparks raining down on my roof. And then there was the market slide, as I watched a lifetime worth of investments slide down to squarely half the value they'd had just two months ago. Still! Geez! What in the heck is happening on the grid?

A few weeks ago, kinetic sculptor elros Tuominen had much of his art returned and himself suspended from Second Life® because - according to Linden Lab - his scripts were affecting the performance on the sim. Upon his return, elros learned that he could convert his scripts to Mono (an open-source scripting engine that dramatically speeds up the running of scripts), and he did exactly that, but because he doesn't own the sim his gallery sits on, he is unable to pull up the Region Performance tab and determine how many milliseconds each of his scripts in his Region is taking. elros' art was returned again, and again he was suspended. He has been so disheartened that he hasn't been back since October 7th.

On my wish-list: The ability for all parcel owners to see the speed of their scripts.

I know elros well enough to say - beyond a shadow of a doubt - that this is just raging, undiluted silliness. elros is like the most well-meaning guy I know. All it would take is just one conversation between himself and a Linden with some enlightening information beyond the classic abuse report, for him to repair, change or even delete things that were causing trouble to others.

Yes, there are hundreds of thousands of persons using the grid at any given moment, but this is elros, someone who has pleased thousands of people - including a number of Lindens - with both his art and his daily prose, which many people depend on to begin their day.

And then there is physics artist Selavy Oh's story. Selavy frequently exhibits new pieces at Brooklyn is Watching. On October 5th, a piece of Selavy's art fell on a visiting avatar. That avatar filed an abuse report (oh brother!) and Linden Lab suspended Selavy from Second Life for one day. Selavy explained it this way:

"I've been banned for one day. Ironically, the "scripted object" was not at all scripted to attack other avatars, but to self-repair. It was part of the self-repairing chain, an artwork for "Brooklyn Is Watching". A 'bug' in the physics engine of Linden Lab causes the chain to break from time to time, and the falling parts may then accidentally hit avatars at the sim."

Yet another instance of an artist who gives us much pleasure - and Selavy is conscientious, methodical and well-meaning - being abused by an automatic system.

There are good discussions about these cases over on the Brooklyn is Watching blog and another on the forums initiated by Dekka Raymaker.