Banned due to language I Speak?

And there are many good reasons.. I often ban AV's from my area that are exactly 1.5705 meters tall....

because I hate only getting half a pi... ;P

Kudos Traven for a great tree, I have had one since you started them and in fact when I saw your post today I got the ban hammer for my tree and got your vegetable garden as well lol Great products that help give the new folks a start

Geek!

This is not exactly the same. Your avatar ist a graphic representation of yourself that you can change anytime. Discrimination based on the RL person behind the ava, like race, gender, skin color, is definitely discrimination, and AFAIK even against the community standards. If someone put a sign "no RL blacks allowed on this sim", you can AR them for intolerance. "Japanese only or you get ejected and banned" is in no way different. (I am not talking about language specific communities here. Those isolated groups usually organize themselves. If I can't read the covenant because it is gibberish I am not renting there.)

And it just goes to show that the Lindens don't respect freedom and diversity as much as they say they do. Otherwise that part of the TOS and Community Standards would be done away with.

My advice.... go ahead, AR the land owner..... see how far that goes..... get over it.

the argument that you can hide a trait therefore it's not discrimination is probably NOT where you want to go...

but then intelligent elitists already know that they don't have to post any signs... they just ban you for whatever reason they don't like, and as long as they don't give you a reason it's all perfectly within TOS.

why? because SL is NOT public community. eg if you own or have power of the land, it's effectively your home to toss people out of as you please.

We can agree to disagree here.

In the first case . . . non-military people who haven't served in a foreign war are prohibited
In the second case . . . no female people are prohibited

What is race?

There is no strong genetic evidence for it . . . it's just a classification of people based on some sort of criteria set from a societal perspective.

So, from my perspective, what we have is a simple exclusionary policy.

And that exclusionary policy upsets some because they've framed it as "racist" (an emotionally charged frame) when it may be no more than "this fraternity" doesn't want to admit women--they have their own groups (a more neutral frame).

Anyway, that's my stance . . . and you certainly don't have to agree with my stance.

And I certainly have no compulsion to force you or anyone else to agree with me (since I can't anyway . . . and what would it prove or achieve, if I even could?)

Yes. An exclusionary policy that is not permissible where the Golden Apple is concerned.

Couldn't have said it better myself. Nicely done.

The simple fact is that you can go into this sim and not get kicked. Merely change your viewer language. I can't read Japanese, but I remember the key shortcuts and most of the pie positions. As someone mentioned above, it becomes like a more complex form of "no-furry" or "no-human" bans (I've never encountered a no-human ban, but I can conceive of one).

LL are building all sorts of discriminatory features into SL--the AC stuff, mainly--so it seems discrimination must be a feature of Second Life. If there are reasonable things I can do to circumvent discrimination, the discrimination does not seem onerous or unfair. However, if I'm not allowed to sit at a luncheon counter because of the color of my skin (in RL), that does seem onerous and unfair. But changing the language on my viewer seems trivial, if prone to confusion for me as an English speaker. And the money tree maker is certainly entitled to refuse to allow his tree to be used.

well TBH the language determination was added to enable people to serve content based on language (a nice feature, that's rarely used yet)...

I think the (valid) point being raised here, isn't that it's easy to sneak around the restriction(it in the pref page FFS), but that it's still morally wrong (not to mention stupid) to discriminate in this manner.

not only did that person act like an ass, they made it apparent to everyone. if you don't get slammed for something like that, you still deserve to be. =)

PS Ghost? good art, weak storyline.

To me, it's just a trivial and stupid discrimination, annoying, but it did not prevent me from seeing that there is nothing special about the sim. It is on the same spectrum as true racial discrimination, yes, but it's so trivial--after the deletion of the money tree from the sim--that it's hard to credit it for anything at all, except that it has now accumulated 112 posts on the topic. So, I guess it's not as trivial as I think.

Now that the money tree is gone, how is this different from a corporation having sims that do not allow any avatar to view it unless they belong to the corporation's exclusive group?

PS, yes, Ghost. Her expression suited my mood when I adopted her: a refugee from a wonderful on-line puzzle game (Uru/Myst), a game that featured a section of the game where almost everyone was unintentionally ghosted by virtue of overloaded servers. And then "coasting," too. And of course, Ghost. Three-for-one.

You can (within limitations of skills and qualifications) choose your employer. Or any other club/group that you wish to belong to. You can't choose your race.

An "exclusionary policy based on race" is exactly what racism is.

I'm sorry, but I don't think this is racism. I can flick a switch in Preferences to change my language and thereby be allowed admission to the sim. I still can't read Japanese though the switch says I have my client set for Japanese. But, French, American, British, Brazilian, black, white, green, furry, dragon, whatever; I merely flick a switch to be admitted to this sim. This sim--as silly as I think it is for them to do so--has an exclusionary policy based on a switch setting. That is one heck of a lot different from basing discriminatory treatment on something about which I can do nothing and which has no bearing on anything to do with my humanity: my race.

granted, you and I know where the setting can be changed, but most will have missed where that feature is located. and for those that are discriminated against in RL (and this is using a RL analog) passing as a non-discriminated faction just hilights the overall issue, rather than removing it (although it is avoided for that person) and requires a person to misrepresent themselves (if only by omission), which is ethically questionable.

the question is what ethics are acceptable in general.