According to George Orwell newspeak is "the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year", which ties in nicely with the latest official blog from a company who run a virtual world because, heck our vocabulary just got smaller.

A quick lesson, which we all seem to have to learn:

(this works for in-world chat too)

Why do we need it? Ah, Linden Lab® changed trademark policy. Where they used to encourage us to post a nice little eye-in-hand Second Life® virtual world logo on top of our headers, they now say that is a no go. Avatars of the Second Life® unite, throw all your existing textures, blog headers, real life books even that contain the eye-in-hand logo on a pile and rezz a fire. Do take the effort to create new ones though, containing the following logo, that shows we are inSL™. I feel a bit confused though, and have no urge to stick it on this blog. After all, my blog is ‘about SL’ or ‘on SL’ but now where inSL™. Html on a prim does not function well enough for that yet.

Anyway, if you want to sign up for inSL™ logo use, go here. Be aware though, it is only to be used on a white background. Let’s talk about boring. And ‘If displayed with logos for other virtual worlds or platforms, the inSL logo must be the same size and given equal prominence as the other logos.‘ I would assume bigger is ok too! ;)

I suggest you print out the guidelines and hang them on the toilet wall, to memorize them, as they are rather complicated:

I do not have ‘a Second Life‘ anymore, neither am I allowed to talk about ‘my Second Life‘. Then how do I do it? When I want to talk about ‘your Second Life®’ I say you have ‘a Second Life®’. Thank the Linden Gods I can still call you a ‘SL user‘ or ‘Second Life avatar‘ though. If I want to discuss this with you in-world, I need to throw you an SLurl®, not a slurl. And we now pay in Linden™ dollars. And how did you log on to the SL Grid™ today? Using the Windlight™ client? I see… .

What is very interesting though:

No Trademark or Business-Name Registration. Never register your full SL Associated Name, or any part of your SL Associated Name that includes “SL” or “inSL,” as a trademark, service mark, or business or organization name. For example:

This is OK to register: Architectural Design Services
This is NOT OK to register: SL Architectural Design Services (can’t include “SL”) Architectural Design Services inSL (can’t include “inSL”)

Imho this - once again - renders the SLart trademark claim void. Especially with this added: Your SL Associated Name must use “SL” or “inSL” (but not both) in combination with your own word mark (for example, Dell® or Toyota®, if you own those word marks), or in combination with a name that uses at least two generic nouns.

And as I’m not in the USA:

Linden Lab and Second Life and InSL and Linden and SLurl and SL are trademarks of Linden Research, Inc. I hope I did not forget one.

Before anybody panics, they will probably not shoot you for just mentioning Second Life and not Second Life® in conversation. Probably the same with blogging about your Second Life in stead of your Second Life®. As long as you are not using any of the Linden Lab trademarks for business, selling, branding, advertising and dubious domain names, you should be ok.

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.

"....A quick lesson, which we all seem to have to learn: