New Federal Blue Laws to go into effect June 23

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,67869,00.html?tw=rss.TOP

The absolute impossiblity of Linden Lab being able to comply with these new regulations begs the question.. Phillip do you own soap on a rope?

Another link for this..

http://www.acsblog.org/bill-of-rights-1426-cracking-down-on-porn-protecting-children-or-naked-censorship.html

I really think the whole point is Linden Labs only post the free Linden Content -

All other content is User Uploaded and presented and sold to other users to present.

I really think of LL a bit like Geocities - Yahoo isnt responsible for what people put in their web pages.

I thought 'we' owned the content not LL.

I don't think this affects LL. LL is not distributing content - it's merely providing a platform where others are.

If an SL user is selling pornographic images, however, then it sounds to me as though it would fall under the change. The irony is that consensual condut online (cybersex, specifically, including poseballs) is probably not affected by this at all. But I could be wrong.

well they do have records all performers of cybersex are 18+ lol you filed proof of age via CC info and agreed to an online statement when you make your account.


Besides the fact that its not actual pornography since its not actual people having sex on screen.

From the article..


That something as humdrum as a record-keeping rule could provoke such concern is due both to the potentially severe penalties for those who fail to comply with the requirements and the broad reach of the regulations. Violations of the regs carry up to a five year prison term for a first offense and up to ten years for subsequent offenses. The rules apply retroactively to all content created after July 3, 1995. And the new rules apply not only to primary producers of adult images but also to "secondary producers," such as websites that syndicate content from third parties.

and..

Under the new regulations, however, it's "abundantly clear that's not the case," Brewer noted. (Her article can be reached on the AVN site, which may not be work-friendly, here.) In fact, she said, under the new 2257 regs, all websites must maintain their own sets of records for any explicit content they publish – perhaps even including explicit banner ads supplied by other companies or thumbnail images of explicit video jackets.


That sounds alot like what happens in SL, except that the images are even more in LL control since they are kept on their asset server.

Editorial,

Nothing that you have pointed out still shows any liability on Linden Lab's part - they are protected as an ISP in this case.

Well, no, not really. LL is the company that provides the servers. We (individual users) are the people who are the equivalent of the web page owners in the regulations.



The key piece here is the content that they publish - they being in this case the people who rent space from a service provider to have their content show up on the web.

We are they. LL is the service provider.

- Jon

so anyone uploading pron, be sure to have your records available for any of those images you "publish" (i assume that would mean display within SL).

maybe the question really is: SLers with publically viewable pron, do you have soap on a rope?

things are getting interesting in here.

Why do people misspell porn? I don't get it.

What I find more interesting is, they're actually misspelling "pr0n".

Individuals who engage in chat exchange would not fall under porn laws. They're not 'distributing' anything, they're engaging in the same kind of speech that protects phone-sex providers if they're doing it for payment; and if they're doing it for free, it's none of the government's f-ing business


Bing and go, Colette.

pleading guilty to laziness. the "0" is a stretch.

Pr0n was originally spelled that way to dodge filters on various Web sites.

More info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pr0n

That can't be his real name... no, it just can't be...

Never hold up in court. First time they try to go over US boarders with this it will get thrown out. If you can't chase hackers/scammers over countries you can't chase adult industry.