Just some more news on the whole Emerald Situation, this time from both Linden Labs and Emerald.

[Linden Labs]:

Dear Second Life Resident,
Late last week, we discovered a denial-of-service attack that was being served through the widely distributed Emerald third-party viewer. This is in direct violation of our third-party viewer policy (part 2, section d, paragraph iii).

We have removed Emerald from the list of third-party viewers, and are now in touch with the Emerald team to discuss what can happen next. We did this to do our best to protect the safety and security of Second Life users. We will not tolerate a viewer that includes malicious code, nor will we tolerate development teams with a history of violating users’ trust or disrupting their lives.

We take privacy, safety, and security very seriously, and we will act to the best of our abilities to protect it. We have not yet disabled logins via the Emerald viewer, but will do so if we feel the software and the team behind it is not able to meet the standards we’ve set. While Emerald is currently the focus of our attention because of what happened recently, all third-party viewers are held to the same standard, and must comply with the third-party viewer policy. Read more >>


If you have been using the Emerald viewer, for now we would encourage you to consider either one of the Linden Lab viewers, or an alternative third-party viewer.


Philip Linden




[Emerald]:


As many of you have heard, Emerald was removed from the TPVD yesterday. This removal was a result of recent actions by former Dev member Fractured Crystal. Fractured resigned from the team due to those actions and Emerald Dev Team has undergone a massive restructuring.  We will be re-applying for the TPVD very soon, however there are some rumors and fears I think need to be addressed.
Many people have heard that Emerald is banned or that users will be banned for using the Emerald Viewer. This is completely untrue.
Linden Lab’s Third Party Viewer Directory is optional for third party viewers to apply for and join. It is not a requirement to be on the directory. What is a requirement however is that third party viewers respect the Third Party Viewer Policy http://secondlife.com/corporate/tpv.php. With the exception of the actions of Fractured recently, Emerald has always respected that policy and will continue to do so.
While Emerald is not on the TPVD you can rest assured that this does not mean Emerald will be banned or blocked by LL, and you will certainly NOT be banned for using emerald.
Sincerely, Jessica Lyon

 -----------------

I've been waiting for these messages. I wanted to flip out on the Second Life club "CLUB BADA BLING!" that sent me this via group notice in a notecard:

********* ENGLISH **********
Those who now are using the client Emerald, Modular Systems, please remove it from the PC and install an alternate client, with the recommendation to change their password as soon as possible since Emerald is * no longer on the list of clients approved by Linden Lab* and its use will soon become a crime, not to mention that is a danger to your safety and privacy online.
Here the viewer .. Secondlife accept that .. http://viewerdirectory.secondlife.com/
OR download from the Viewer ORIGINAL
*WIN Viewer 1*
http://download.cloud.secondlife.com/Second_Life_1-23-5-136262_Setup.exe
*WIN Viewer 2*
http://download.cloud.secondlife.com/beta-releases/Viewer-2-1-0/Second_Life_2-1-1-207998_BetaViewer_Setup.exe

*Snowglobe 1.3.2*
http://download.cloud.secondlife.com/Second_Life_1-23-5-136262_Setup.exe
*Snowglobe 1.4*
Release Candidate*
http://secondlife.com/developers/opensource/downloads/2009/1.4/3614/Snowglobe_1-4-1-3614_Setup.exe
*Snowglobe 2.0.2*
http://secondlife.com/developers/opensource/downloads/2010/2.0/3591/Snowglobe_2-0-2-3591_Setup.exe

Don't we all love stupid rumors? I'm not in groups to be tricked by gossip thank you very much. *leaves group*
And no, this isn't slander. It's the truth, it's what they did. Also, if they read the official statement OR watched the treet.tv video, they would have known their passwords were never at risk. Some confidential computer information such as where Emerald was stored on your hard drive and your computer user profile name was at risk if you were either a Mac user or installed Emerald to your desktop on a PC. No one wants someone else to know this information but let's at least get the facts right. And where the hell did a "crime" come from? I don't even want to get started on that.

Definition: Slander: Charge falsely or with malicious intent; attack the good name and reputation of someone.

Not false accusations. :)

Enough about that, moving on to the truth. Both parties [Emerald and Linden Labs] are handling this very professionally. They're making official statements on what is going on so that we know exactly how to react to all this chaos. As I blogged a little while ago, Emerald isn't banned. Linden Labs just have to re-check it again to make sure it's safe for its users again.

Fractured Crystal, the previous leader of the Emerald Project did some real damage to Emerald user's trust. Do I think the Emerald Viewer will suffer a loss of users because of this? Of course. We all want the ability to trust the programs we use. Emerald may never be the same again, but that doesn't mean i'm giving up on it just yet. It's done so much to make my clumsy self in Second Life so much less clumsy; there's no other Second Life client for me right now.