Your World, Your Imagination*

"Your World, Your Imagination." *

* Subject to unstated terms, conditions, by-laws, and the moral standards of every country in the world which can connect to Our Service, and whether the news media picks up on it. Mileage may vary. Restrictions on your imagination may change at any time and without any warning, resulting in complete bans from your account, loss of your virtual assets, and possible legal action. To continue to exercise your imagination in Second Life, please provide your full name, address, date of birth, driver's license, social security number, and passport. We swear we will not retain your personally identifying information. However, we will pull your contact information from thin air, like magic, to report to authorities any of your acts of the imagination which anyone anwhere in the world deems immoral, ambiguous, embarrassing, or a little kooky. We also may disallow general discussion on any matter on the forum service which we provide, nor may you question any decision Our Service may make or express disappointment over any failures of Our Service, as this depresses Our Employees.
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*shivers*

Thankfully, my imagination is very paranoid.

I guess its good Second Life and Linden Labs is blazing this trail.

It may be stumbling blindly and hitting a lot of obsticles.

But after the media uproar and the world figures out what a virtual world is and can be-

Second Life's replacement might be fun.

Thankfully my imagination doesn't involve having sex with small children.

Here, let me help you with those blinkers.

I doubt it, actually... what makes you think that any other online world will be free from restrictions and available to anyone to sign up, free, unverified?

I would guess that the anonymity which most people involved in sick/illegal activities enjoy online is why 'unverified signups' is the problem.

I know of no other online environment that is free to play forever. Even in WoW you have to give credit card details to get your free 10 day trial.

Many people said unverified signups was a bad idea. This is one very good reason (amongst many) why. I know it's Philip's dream ... but sometimes reality is needed more.

Broccoli

Becuase they can see the trainwreck and limit themselves to the point where the same wont happen to them.

The quote

"Those who ignore history, are doomed to repeat it"

can be reversed - If you dont ignore history you are not doomed to repeat it.

Unfortunately, the desire of some to regulate and/or govern others is quite strong. You'll notice already in this topic alone that a couple of people have expressed that "control" is good.

I don't necessarily blame Linden Labs (as you mention earlier that imaginations are largely ignored until brought to negative attention by hordes of "my morals must be your morals" residents), I blame self-righteous persons who feel it is their DUTY to control others.

So do you think that, if there had never been the "unverified signup" introduced, this sort of thing might never have happened because the people are traceable?

Broccoli

not necessarily im not entirely sure this mess was unavoidable - Like I said Second Life is blazing a enw trail.

Keeping unferifieds off mature parcels might have been a good idea, though.

The problem is that a lot of 'mature' land does not contain 'adult activities' - like our Stratics Headquarters and sandbox, and Coco's Cottages, together take up about 3/4 of the sim Rosieri.. but at the time it was the only decent land available.

I'm guessing that the idea of 'verify yourself to make yourself available to the new adult rated land setting' is a good start, but probably too late, and completely silly if new signups are totally unverified anyway because people into things like child porn are not going to lock themselves away on adult only areas and spend money and hassle making themselves traceable.

Broccoli

People into child porn who aren't sitting in prisons usually have ways of hiding themselves behind other peoples identities. They wont need to sit around PG areas trading pictures when they can simply supply whatever details they happen to be using that day.

well hindsight is 20/20

If theyd limited access to unverifieds when they opend the flood gates then they could have made a lot of the Mature land since PG land, etc.

Again im not saying they could of avoided any of this -

Thats the problem when someone marches first in line - sometimes that someone gets shot first.

i dont think its fair people jumping down LL's throats because they have to set restrictions in SL, if there were no restrictions or age verification then there would be no second life as it would probly be closed down by authorities.

LL is free to set as many restrictions as they please, it's their world. But you can't keep closing the barn door after the horse gets out. You can outlaw anything you want. But you can't expect people to follw rules you haven't written, and punish them for violating those non existant rules.

I think Linden Labs just needs to get to 'neutralizing' the platform ASAP. When other entities can begin running their own SL servers on a grid that represents something more like the internet than one company's experiment...problems like the ones cropping up lately will be considered the global responsibility of the authorities rather than of a single company.

I popped by the Linden Village today and was going to leave a snarky complaint on the "Thank You" board but after stopping to think for a moment I ended up posting "Thanks for doing a good job of a hard job".

I don't think any one at LL is trying to ruin SL, quite the contrary. They have good intentions but sometimes mistakes are made. The remedies are sometimes clumsy or, worse, ineffectual but the fact remains the attempt was still made to make it right. Freedoms are, sadly, always tested by the extremists and sometimes they manage to blow holes in them. Self regulation might have worked when the userbase was smaller but with so many viewpoints and opinions and so many people unwilling to compromise or appreciate different views any attempt at such now would be an invite to anarchy. I'm as frustrated as the OP with what's happening but I'm stumped for a real solution/alternative.

err yes they can and yes they do, peopel either put up with it or leave, LL are dealing with problems as and when they occur, if you dont like that / dont want to put up with that then dont use SL.

SL are doing the only thing they can as i stated dealing with things as they come up
however sometimes the way they deal with them leaves a lot to be desired.

Oh boy Res Mod wil be Enjoying thing thread after awhile

So you see no value to LL trying to predict problems before they occur to mitigate potential problems?

Besides the fact you completely missed her point:

Make the rules then tell people to follow them -

Dont Ban people then make up the rules you use to ban them with afterwards.

"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure".

An gram of prevention is worth a Kilo of cure Lets keep in metric sence

This is an inevitable part of SL's success. The vast majority of people--sadly including politicians and the media--do not understand the internet. Something nasty happens online, and instead of searching for the truth, people look for easy answers. This has happened to AOL and IRC in the late '90s, and more recently to MySpace and FaceBook. It was only a matter of time before it happened to SL.

What matters is how LL deals with it. If they do nothing, they are leaving themselves open to all sorts of hassles--some potentially fatal. If they become inordinately restrictive, they will lose members.

As I neither drive nor have a passport, I worry about age-verification methods. As someone who believes in free-speech, I have serious problems with censorship. However, I have no great privacy concern with giving the last 4 numbers of my SSN, and have absolutely no interest in having sex with children, real or virtual, I find the current solution acceptable.

I am glad SL has both PG-rated areas for the more mild mannered, and Mature areas for rest of us. Hopefully LL will make the right choices that will allow SL to move past the current German media frenzy and continue to be the open, bug-laden place it has always been.

Regulation and laws are what separates the civilized world from the uncivilized world, they are a necessary evil. SL, though virtual land still would fall under the same catagory as all land, it should be used for the highest and best use possible, SL is a business platform, and business needs regulation to protect both the investors and the customers. IF LL took a more business orientated approach, and stopped trying to apease the masses of irrelevant residents alot more would be clear.

Sounds harsh I know but its a real business model, like it or not