Free Account Limitations

Can I propose that to reduce exploits, CopyBots and other violations in SL, for people with "no payment info on file" to have limited access and options in SL such as:-

a) to not have the permission to transfer items to people not on their friends lists. This includes the ability to sell/give items in world or on SLExchange.

b) to not hold more than L$1250 in that account or pay/receive L$2000 in 24 hours. This is to stop people from misusing exploits excessively over little time.

c) for other residents to not have the ability to accept debit permissions of objects created by them.

d) to not be able to use scripts on other residents land.

e) to not be able to rate people or objects in shops or vote on proposals. This is to stop one RL person creating 50 accounts and rating one avatar/item/proposal.

Although this may seem strict, it would give the Linden staff more power to ban people and to get back stolen money. Ultimately, people with "no payment info on file" could easily buy an initial US$0.50 worth of Lindex and have no limitations.

Please go to https://secure-web2.secondlife.com/vote/ Proposal #2347 to vote on this.

Iwana

I'm not sure what this really has to do with either of these.

If an unverified account is banned from SL, they're banned by hardware hash, which usually prevents the creation of alts. And the reason the Lindens can't "get back stolen money" isn't that they can't trace it - it's that they have no way of knowing for certain that the money is stolen.

I oppose these limitations in whole, as the very idea implies too many broad and unprovable assumptions about the nature, character and intent of residents with no payment information. Linden Lab has made crystal clear their position on this issue, and I support their position. It's not an ideal situation, but the benefits far outweigh the problems.

"A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures"

I oppose having unverified (what Linden Labs refers to as "No payment info on file" accounts at all.

But if such accounts must exist, I oppose making them second-class citizens. It's bad enough that there's as much of a class system in SL as there is already.

Change "No payment info on file" to "Unverified" and I'm with you 100%.

"No payment info on file" == "Unverified"

Great. Now, come up with a verification system that doesn't require a resident to use payment info that they may or may not have, or that may or may not work for the purpose of verification in their country. In the words of one particular resident who keeps preaching about it all over the forums, "It's not rocket science." Well, if it isn't, let's have your solution. It should be so easy.

No it's not rocket science for verication of an account. Simply requireing a real name with a real email located in a real city in a real country. And before allowing entry into Second Life a real confirmation code recieved at the real email address you gave on sign up. Holes in it.............you bet. You could lie your butt off and direct the email to a throw away web address. But, all that does give some hope of tracability that someone might consider should their intent be dishonest. It won't stop the hardcore but it will give pause to some of the mischievious. As it is right now............there is nothing............absolutely nothing. Sign up with bogus info and get on in minutes..............no haveing to wait for a code or link in your email....nothing.

And a warning in big red text stating that if any information provided is found to be false then your account is terminated...........no appeals...........terminated. I can't believe Linden Labs doesn't do something along these lines just for some sort of defense in any legal action that might come about. A minor..........like a 13 year old...........could easily come to the adult grid and get all wound up with online sex and agree to a real meeting with some pediphile. Anyone remember My Space? And without some symblance of verification the law will eat LL up in a court. And us SL users could very well be brought into it too.

No, it's not rocket science. Pretty much common sense.

Now that LL released additional statistics, particularly the by country resident breakdown, the myth of all those people living somewhere where paypal and credit cards don't exist can be put to rest. Only a tiny percentage lives somewhere where it might be difficult to verify, and those people shouldn't be excluded, but the reality is just that most don't want to, making imposing restrictions on unverified accounts reasonable.

So are you in the "pay to play" camp or the "find some meaningful way to verify account holders' identity" camp? It seems you can only make assumptions about that "tiny" percentage who live somewhere where it might be difficult to verify using credit cards or paypal - you don't have specific data about the local financial infrastructures, and whether they are even connected to the rest of the world in the way that you and I take for granted every day. (I don't either by the way). What is still not being considered is that there are easily tens of thousands of people who do not have credit cards to begin with. Even in the United States (20% of households as of 2004). Do we penalize those people?

Let me be clear that I am not neccessarily against some kind of verification system. I am whole heartedly against imposing restrictions on unverified accounts, however, until a verification process can be developed which does not class people based on their financial condition. For this reason, credit card verification is not an acceptable solution.

The preceding has been my opinion. Readers are free to disagree with it for a one-time fee of $L3,000.

That's because SL doesn't ask for a person's address unless they sign up with a credit card. They don't have country details for unverified users.

Looking at the numbers, when I started in May, 1 in 10 residents was premium and 1 in 3 bought L$ showing a rather healthy participation by active residents. Today, 1 in 30 is premium and 1 in 12 buys L$, a rather significant drop.

Now, verifying isn't about paying, but if LL can't manage to encourage users to even provide payment info at all then it needs to be made more attractive and the only way to do that is by placing restrictions on unverified accounts.

I certainly don't agree with the restrictions the OP suggested, but there are plenty of other ways to encourage participation, from a quota of daily/weekly/monthly logged on hours, to expiring accounts after 30 days, throttling bandwidth, or reinstating the L$50/week stipend for verified basics with unique payment info (main gets it, alts don't).

There doesn't have to a "pay to play", but there certainly doesn't need to be an equal experience between unverifieds, verifieds and premiums, especially when the last two categories are becoming more and more rare.

Country information is extracted from the logged on IP address, not from information supplied to LL.

There was a map-thing recently added to a site I vistit that has very few visitors--mainly because the info doesn't update very often--and there were 3 dots on the map (it only kept track of the last 24 hours, which the admin isn't happy about) and none of them were in the US. Like, UK, UK, New Zealand. I checked the timestamps and only one of those matched the current time: the one in New Zealand.

Conclusion: Apparently my school's wireless network shows up as an international IP. But then, it's Drexel, so it conforms to the standard (that being "a shaft".

To avoid the penalty, I fully agree with you

Well there are ways of doing this... by collecting documentation. DXSynergy has implemented this, for example. But it requires quite a bit of dedication of manpower from them, which may be asked too much of LL at this time.

Happy now?

No, it's not, because it makes the "class system" in Linden Labs worse, and there's no set of restrictions that you can come up with that won't let people use an endless stream of "griefer alts" to abuse you one way or another other than simply not letting unverified accounts into the main grid.

That's the restriction that's needed. Linden Labs has to get their act together on foreign credit cards and other international verification, give people a grace period to get verified, and close down the loophole completely. They could start by only allowing unverified accounts from IP ranges in countries where they don't have a verification mechanism yet.

And don't tell me that's not possible. I do it when I need to for my mail server, when spam from some country gets out of control. This is no different.