Thank You SL

Which is exactly what will happen. I have already stopped spending in SL. And I have seen a lot of the places I used to shop close down.

What I liked about SL was that it was the way the US used to be in the past before the authorities started to impose their will and restrictions on the American people. Now SL has started doing it. So ignoring the bigger picture is not an option.

Maybe you can point out where I was talking about "American imperialism".



You know something, I preferred it when the customer was king.

Hi Argent,

We're obviously miles apart in perspectives, but it's an interesting discussion anyway.

If for no other reason than I probably should have been a bit more specific about where I thought the genesis of the internet was!

It's just an opinion, again open to debate, but I was thinking of Tim Berners-Lee and the guys at CERN. If only because they (in my opinion again) were the first to develop an implementation of HTTP, HTML and URL addressing.

Also, I think he was the first really to start talking about the practical applications and about the developing impact of the web on society. Particularly with regards to its ability to support new paradigms in democracy and the support of heterogeneous communities.

Finally I admit that I'm almost certainly a fully paid up member of the moral majority. I'm not exactly sure what that is, apart from the pejorative overtones obviously, but it sounds about right.

Let me educate you a little about contracts. Contracts are agreements that have wet signatures from both sides were the terms and conditions cannot be changed later. A contract is also the creation of a law. Statutes are only colour of law and can only apply to those that consent to them because they come under commercial law. So joining SL does not mean that I agreed to any of their terms, and certainly does not mean that I agree to them changing any.

BTW, have fun when they come round to vaccinate you.

I didn't invent the Internet, but I partied with the people who did. And you and they are definitely miles apart in perspective.

You're mixing up the Internet and the World Wide Web, but that's really a side issue. What I gotta ask is, what gives you the idea that the kids at CERN were the kind of stuck-up wowsers you're making them out to be?

Well, hmmm, so people like Murray Leinster who were writing about things very much like the Internet back in the '50s, or Vernor Vinge who's ultimately responsible for the Singularity Summit this past weekend, and who wrote True Names back in the early '80s, and Brunner whose seminal novel Shockwave Rider really kicked off the whole idea that a networked society would create a whole new kind of participatory governance for society back in the '70s, are just something I dreamed about?

So let me think. What is the point to adult verification here? To deter the fifteen yo who sits on his/her pc all hours of the day or night and has absolutely no qualms about lifting mommies license from her purse? The Lindens are not fools. They may act foolishly at times but they are not fools. Those sheep amoungst you say "Aha, it is about time someone steps forward and ensures that my underage child cannot access anything they please because i can't be bothered. I will of course adult verify and support this noble cause!" GAG. Do you realize the information that is coded into your license number? I do. I made fake license numbers when i was in the university. Oh, but i forgot. The Lindens do not retain any of the information they get from you in their growing data bank. They promised. hahahahaha. And they couldn't possibly get whatever information from paypal as a condition of of doing business. But no, i'm sure they would never do that. They promised.
So let's review: The Lindens have instituted policy that cannot be effective in controlling access by children but they have managed to get personal, private information from thousands of their somewhat naive customers. Lord, now it all makes sense.

Public relations. Spin control.

It may well be different in your jurisdiction but I think you will find that most jurisdictions -- certainly all of Europe, as far as I know -- accept verbal and digital contracts as binding. In any case, I think the correct legal analysis would be that the contract between you and Linden Research is that they will let you use SL on various conditions, one of which is that you abide by whatever Terms Of Service, which you agree Linden Research may alter at any time, they may choose to impose.

Question -- is it actually a contract if it's a free account? What's the consideration you're offering LL as your side of the bargain? The various licences to use stuff you might create in SL, I guess.

I think with Linden Labs and PayPal, the boot is on the other foot; Linden Labs need PayPal's cooperation to stay in business rather more than does PayPal need Linden Labs, after all. And certainly if it transpired PayPal were passing on data to Linden Labs about European customers that local and EU laws on data protection say it shouldn't be, PayPal would be in a world of legal difficulty on my side of the Atlantic.

I wonder if any of you thought about joining SL before when you had to give CC info? If so of those who did not join then was it because you had to give the info that stopped you ?

Well truth is I can't vouch for who you partied with back in the day Argent and, if the party was any good, neither can you.

I did recognise your reference to Vinge and I do appreciate his ideas and those of other fiction writers as a means of exploring what might be.

Neither am I "mixing up the internet with the World Wide Web" or I believe I might have cited ARPANET as the genesis of the Internet. I was however guilty of mixing my nouns up.

My view is that we're here, the Web is here and evolving every day. there are now 1.7bn users equating to a little under 25% of the earth's population.

Given the fact that at the beginning of 2001 there were only 0.4bn means that a constant harking back to the "day" either to reference your partying credentials or to replay those halcyon days of IRC porn isn't particularly germane any more.

Back in the 70's for instance I still believed what we were promised, that by now we'd be living on the moon, flying around with jet packs and have no need for toilet paper.

We're here and the present from my point of view is far more exciting than any future dreamed up by Mr Vinge.

Where did you get the L$ to spend in SL?

You DONT have to "age verify" to get into most adult places (including the Zindra continent) if you buy L$ on the Lindex, as your account gains the "payment info used" status.

Or was the L$ you spent in SL just tiny amounts that you gained from camping ?

Yes, I wouldn't worry too much about Paypal, or LL, come to that (unless they decide to start behaving like Facebook with our data). Aristotle is a different matter. I don't trust them at all and question the legality of asking for such data from EU residents.

I don't want to get involved with the "who invented the Internet and what's it for?" debate because I really haven't a clue, but I will say this ... If I want to access anonymous free porn, all I have to do is switch safe search off and enter any old search term in image search and I get pages of the stuff (OK, Google keeps all my searches tied to an IP address, but aside from that it's anonymous). If I click on the sites, many have free, unverified access. Aside from the paying sites, the most that is usually required is ticking a box that says "I am over 18". I'm in the UK, perhaps it's different elsewhere.

To get NPIOF residents to put payment information on file and hopefully use it.

Let's see. "Second Life JOIN NOW It's fast, free and easy!" I must have missed the part about needing cc information.

Funny, but you don't have to be an alcoholic or a stoner to have a good time.

I was on the ARPAnet, too. It started out a lot wilder and less restricted than you're making out, and over the years it's just gotten bigger, wilder, and more open. It was designed from the ground up as a decentralized, reliable, and loosely coordinated system... and it has fulfilled that promise in spades.

The Internet is getting harder for your kind to control every day. The more you tighten your grip, Atticus, the more systems will slip through your fingers.

Edit: seriously? The internet isn't "built on porn" any more than it's "built on videogames" or "built on" any other single service, but the people who built it were *completely* aware of what it would be used (among many many other things) for, and how futile it would be to keep any useful network from being used that way, and decided it was a bad idea to even try. The networks and protocols that WERE designed for tight control, your OSI stack, your X.400 email networks, your AOL and Compuserve, are now lost with the summers of yesteryear.

I'm kind of amused at the idea that anyone could espouse restrictions on porn (or anything else) and still talk approvingly of network democracy and free and open communities, though. How do you reconcile that?

Back when I joined you needed to provide CC details it was after that they opened the flood gates

TBH, if I had needed to provide CC details when I signed up, I doubt I would have done so. I always consider it a bit of a risk putting that info out there, and it took a couple of weeks before I was engaged enough in SL to want to take that (small) risk. On the other hand, I fully appreciate the problems caused by unlimited, free, unverified accounts, so there are no easy answers.

Ah, this says it all.

And GWBush conspired to make 9/11 happen
And the government blew up the levy's in New Orleans
And we never went to the moon
etc etc etc

Have fun in whatever Virtual World you find yourself in next Debra, but don't get too comfy cause guess what, they'll have rules too.

Handy

As a wholly owned subsidarary of Ebay i am sure you are correct in who is the top and who is the bottom in the PayPal/LL relationship. However you should take a few moments and read "Privacy Policy for PayPal Services (including PayPal Money Market Fund)" on their website paying particular attenion to who they may share your personal data with and the circumstances under which they may do so. i think i read somewhere in there about sharing it with the company from whom you are buying products or services.

I'm pretty sure I've never been an advocate of "control", if it's come across that way I apologise.

My hope is that we'll see democratic and consensually emergent paradigms for all aspects of human development and intercourse. Which by definition (of the word emergent - if I'm being too opaque) would rule out any sort of top-down control.

My main issue, which I admit seems blown out of all proportion now, is your advocacy of pornography as the raison d'être for the web, if not for art, literature and humanity as a whole!

As an apparent corollary of which, you seem to paint anyone who thinks that view might be a massive undersell, as somehow "The Man".

The paragraph I've quoted above seems to be the crux of the matter for me. The Internet is in fact getting easier to control, it is in fact creaking, it's straining and actually becoming easier to model and predict by many means, systems theory itself being only one.

People who are actually working in the real world to see through the visions of those early "party dudes" are looking at various options such as various open standards and the semantic web, if only to ensure the future of the web, a devolvement of data and hence a greater democratisation of knowledge and power.

As I say, I admit these are just my opinions, so you could be a bit more civil in your responses or (heaven forbid) a little better informed.

What I agreed to is set out at https://www.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/ua/policy_privacy-outside -- what do you say I should find alarming about it?

Yup. Teabagger.

The fewer of those in SL, the happier I'll be.

Those folks have some SERIOUS sticks up their butts.

It's cooler than the current verification systems, it means the person not only has a real money trail going back to their account but that they have lied to two organisations to gain access.

As it stands people can lie to aristotle with fake details, if someone is paying via an illegally obtained paypal account then at least the details are likely to be true.

I freely admit that the statements made in their Privacy Policy appear to be innocuous. But clearly, at least in the US version, PayPal reserves the right to share information with the entity from which you are purchasing products or services. I am not trying to make a big deal of it. I am only pointing out that at least some personal information given to Paypal could well be shared with LL. So if one's intent by using PayPal is to prevent data from reaching LL, that thinking may be a bit naive.

"
How we share personal information with other PayPal users

To process your payments, we need to share some of your personal information with the person or company that you are paying or is paying you. Your contact information, date of sign-up, the number of payments you have received from verified PayPal users, and whether you have verified control of a bank account are provided to other PayPal users who you transact with through PayPal. "