Emerald Gets a Reprieve....For Now.

Emerald got some good news the other day. Linden Labs has offered a stay of execution by giving Emerald a list of requirements that need to be met. (The post can be found here.)

While we wait for the list of requirements to be published, I do have a few questions for the Lab:

You have asked Emerald not to use the emkdu.dll and llkdu.dll files, will you be requiring other viewers to not use these files as well? With these files being closed source, I think there is a greater risk for abuses if they are allowed to remain in the viewers. the only option I see for the Lab is to require the no one use this file, even them. there is no way for us as users to check their code to verify that it has been tampered with.
What will the Lab do to make sure that there is more transparency with the viewer loading page? I feel that this is something that all viewers should be required to comply with..I personally would like to be able to right click on the page and have a view source option available.
WHY IS LINDEN LABS LISTENING TO A HACKER/GRIEFER who’s story changes by the hour, sounding worse and worse just so he can draw more sympathy for his cause? Why have you not cut off all communication with him, especially if you have supposedly perma-banned him and his partner? WHY ARE YOU GUYS GIVING HIM ANY CREDENCE? Why haven’t you done something before this incident to make sure this private war didn’t happen?( I will cover this story later...I have been writing it but don’t have it done yet. :S)

These are questions that have plagued me for a while now, even before this whole “Emeraldgate”. In my opinion, I feel that Linden Labs is equally to blame for the events of the last few weeks. They knew that there was a situation on the rise, yet but did little or nothing to stop it. Talk about dancing with the devil.

I did like though that the Lab attended a show called “Can 3rd party Viewers be Dangerous? I did listen to what the LAB had to say but in my opinion was only a defense of Philip Linden’s post/email on Tuesday regarding the removal of Emerald from the TPV list. Yes, that whole scenario was handled poorly. It could have been handled better:

Philip should have gotten with the Emerald Team BEFORE removing them from the TPV and discussed their problem then. It would have been nice if both Emerald and the Lab could have come to an agreement on the removal of Emerald until they got the viewer to compliance then JOINTLY put out statements explaining the situation. Instead, Emerald was removed Sunday with many users as well as the Emerald support team wondering what was going on and it wasn’t until tuesday that Philip decided to let us know what was going on.

In conclusion, I just feel that the Lab handled this whole situation poorly. The lack of credibility of their informant should be taken into consideration as well as communications with him should be entirely severed. As for the Emerald team...It is nice to see that their hard work over the weekend had not been in vain. I am hoping that they will also sever all communications with this griefer as he is griefing under a different guise. We the users are tired of being in the middle of this battle and consumer wise, this is not going to be good for the Lab nor Emerald.

I am looking forward to see what happens between Emerald and the Lab. Hopefully, it will be something that can benefit their users no matter what viewer the user chooses. In the meantime, I am still looking at my virtual world options.