Ginsu Yoon (Gene Yoon) is a 🏷️#lawyer and technology executive best known as the former vice president and general counsel of 📝Linden Lab, the company behind the virtual world 📝Second Life. He later became Linden Lab's vice president of corporate development and announced his departure in April 2009, when Engadget described him as one of the last of the company's early leaders, with influence on nearly every part of the business.
Yoon drew wide attention in January 2007 for his response to "Get a First Life," a parody of Second Life by Vancouver blogger Darren Barefoot. Instead of a cease-and-desist letter, he posted what became known as a "permit and proceed" letter: it called the site obvious parody, declined Barefoot's invitation to object, offered him a license to use a modified Second Life logo, and noted that "Linden Lab objects to any implication that it would employ lawyers incapable of distinguishing such obvious parody." Poynter, Fox News, New World Notes, and Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society held it up as an example of humor over heavy-handed legal tactics.
When I texted Ginsu a link to 📝One Inc Cooperative in March 2020, I was pleased with his two texts back: "you're building a text based mmorpg" and "like, a 2D Second Life. amazing."