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| Philip Strikes down the Emerald Troll. |
The warning is interesting because the last version of Emerald came with a feature that would make circumventing the block easier. It was made easy to change the message that viewers use annouce to LL what viewer they are. A resident using Emerald could just change that message to what the LL viewers have. LL might have other ways to detect what client you are using though.
Not all hope is lost if you are a Emerald fan, the Third Party Viewer list has been updated, and we see that both the Emergence Viewer and the Phoenix Viewer have been fast tracked on to the list. Both these viewers are based on the Emerald source code, with supposedly all the bits removed that LL objected about. I can't tell how trustworthy the developers of these two viewers are, as many of them come from Emerald. Supposedly these developers where not part of the devious acts that happened around Emerald, but they did stand idly by and did little when they happened. Time will have to tell if they stay on the right path this time.
Today's announcement incited Arabella Steadham, Communications Manager of the Emerald viewer, to lash back at LL and other Viewer developers in a post on the Emerald blog. She is furious at what she describes as LL's dictatorial attitude and that LL turns a blind eye to other and new third party viewers that she claims are also being developed by people with questionable history. Which is interesting because many of those developers come from Emerald, and thus she admits that there where many questionable developers on the Emerald Team.
All of this makes me recommend everyone to try out the latest LL 2.1 viewers and give it a real go to get used to it.
Let me end with quoting the Block announcement by Joe Linden on the SL Blog:
Links:As of 10am PT Wednesday, September 8, the Emerald Viewer will be blocked from logging in to Second Life as a result of violations of our Policy on Third Party Viewers. Residents who have been using any version of the Emerald Viewer will need to use a different Viewer to access Second Life. You can download the official Second Life Viewer, developed by Linden Lab, here. Or you can learn more about alternative Viewers, developed by third parties, here. There are several new Viewers listed in the TPV Directory, so there are many alternatives available to you.
We take Residents’ privacy, safety, and security very seriously and will take action to enforce the policies that help protect it. As our CEO, Philip Rosedale, has blogged about, we recently removed the Emerald Viewer from our Third-Party Viewer Directory due to violations of our Policy on Third-Party Viewers.
Since then, we have been in communication with the Emerald development team and have requested several changes in order to remedy violations of our policy, including changes necessary to meet our privacy requirements, and to address GPL license violations. Unfortunately, the team was unable to comply within a stipulated time frame. As a result, we have decided to block logins from the Emerald Viewer in order to protect our Residents. All versions of the Emerald Viewer will be blocked from logging in to Second Life as of tomorrow at 10am. Please be aware that attempting to circumvent our blocking to access Second Life with a banned Viewer is a violation of the Policy on Third-Party Viewers and may result in the loss of one's account.
SL Blog: Emerald Viewer to be blocked for Second Life
Third Party Viewer Directory
Arabella's response on the block
Dwell on It post about the block
