Discrimination

When did it become possible to ban people from a sim based on thier account payment status? This seems to be simple class based discrimination created by LL. If the purpose of SL is to promote communication, then banning someone for an area based on their payment status seems a bit contrary. I mean why allow free accounts if thye are going to be banned from places?

All basic accounts are free, the only difference is some provided payment info and others didn't, but neither is paying to have their account (except possibly a one-time fee for an alt if the person was honest).

Payment info on file means that you provided a method of payment to LL but you've never used it to pay tier, buy L$, or pay for premium fees

Payment info used is the same except you did at some point (once, in the past, or regularly makes no difference) paid LL for something using whatever payment method you had on file

There is no way to tell (or ban, or allow only) premium members apart from payment info used residents (unless you see their name as the owner on a mainland parcel).

Though at this point there is no other way to verify who you are and get that payment info on file but to have a credit card. And not everyone can have it, there are countries and laws which prevent for example people being freelancers or housewives getting one. There are luckily also loopholes in those laws, if you know how to take it, but still I'd wish there would be some other way to identify oneself than just using the credit card. So in my opinion it is discriminating to those who simple can't have a credit card, though I understand the reasons.

I am verified here without using credit card information. I have a verified PayPal account which is attached to my bank account and not my c/c. A lot of countries can use PayPal to purchase, though receiving money via it is limited to certain countries.

Basically very few habitual griefers will use payment info on file because it isn't as easy to find new CC numbers to use as it is to make false Email addresses to create an account.

CC is still the best way I know of proof of age on the internet. But I use a debit card instead, which is a credit card that only works with a positive balance, they have been around for 10 years, banks just about force you to take one here when you open an account.
If you think you shouldn't be penalised for living in a 1980's tech country, just think there are still whole countries without internet providers, perhaps some with few phones even.

Besides you get monthly access for free you can't expect everything.

Sorta like having people on a fantasy game whinge that free accounts only go to level 5 instead of 20

Unfortunately PayPal account can be verified by bank account on some countries only, which include the U.S., Canada and I think Australia (maybe even Germany?). In other countries you must verify the PayPal account with credit card as well.

Oh, and not all debit cards (I guess you mean ones like Visa Electron) can't be used as identification either. I had such, and it wasn't approved.

It is not as if people choose to live without a credit card. In some countries you just don't get one if you don't have a steady income (like I think most housewives and artists for example don't have). Also, since underaged kids can also have a credit card of sorts, how is it a way to know if someone is an adult?

There are other ways to verify indentity, and actually SL was the first place where I found it is almost the only way of doing that.

Sadly, payment discrimination became acceptable when it was the only tool LL provided when they opened the flood gates by removing the use of either a cell phone number, credit/debit card/ or paypal account to verify that one is who one says one is.

One of the main complaints wasn't just about how griefers no have a way easy time of getting back into the game. It was also about the fact that the children could get on just as easily. In fact they can get onto the main grid far easier than they can their own grid! Their grid still has the requirement to prevent the non-Linden approved adults from getting on there.

So, we requested a way of dealing with griefers and minors.. and this is what we got. None of us are happy with it, but it's the only tool we get for it. I don't use it, since I don't have any real mature content on my property. But if I did, I might consider it. I'd hate to be named in a lawsuit against LL....

Basically what Raudf said =)
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Banning based on payment status has existed since shortly after they started making payment status information availble, the two came into being very near the same time.

It is protection against greifers, sure. But also the only way for someone with adult content to keep out people who have never verified their Age with Linden Labs.

Its possible to do the reverse as well to ban all verified accounts.

At the time unverfieds came into being there were plenty of complaints - they fell on deaf ears.

When this status display and banning system started people were very worried a two class system would come into being - It hasnt. Nearly all places do not restrict access.

If you find one that does they are doing it for one of two reasons -

-Keep out the throwaway account greifers
or
-Keep out people who havent verified their age becuase of their adult content.

Concerning the age-matter... since I saw at a family I was visiting that the son could get the credit card of his father, because he "wanted to buy something on the Internet" and he got the credit card without any more questions asked, I lost believe in the credit card as age-verification (don't ask me what be good instead of that, no idea).

If my youngster wants to buy something on the Internet, she has to tell what and why... and I do the payment.

To the banning of people on their payment info, before LL made it standard, there were already tools around which did exactly the same.

For me? I dislike it. People are griefers when they are got red handed... not a moment before.

Morwen.

I have two homes in SL. On the parcel that I own, I don't ban people for not having payment info on file. It's in a quiet residential region of a private sim, and any troublemakers rapidly get banned by the sim administration, often before I am even aware they existed. It's one of many reasons that I remain a Basic member, and will ONLY buy land on private sims. They are much better managed than the Mainland.

The other home is on a large mainland parcel that I share with a large household, consisting of several families. I don't own that land, but I have to agree with the policies set by the parcel owner. We tried leaving our land open to all. It became an utter zoo. There is a place in the sim next door, within sight of our homes, that gives away free and cheap stuff to newbies. I have nothing against that, in itself. But it attracts swarms of clueless individuals who have not yet learned the first thing about SL, and who all too often treat the entire world like a trash dump. We were constantly being intruded upon by strangers who would enter our homes, walk right into our bedroom while we were mating with our mate, and have the gall to ask if they could join in! Or who would start to build homes or God only knows what on my front lawn, because they didn't yet know that you can't just use any open space that allows building as your free sandbox. It became a daily, round-the-clock battle to inform and/or eject these trespassers from our homes and land, and to clean up the mounds of garbage that they left behind.

So we banned just the people with "No Payment Info On File". And the intrusions immediately ceased.

Does that also ban some perfectly nice, harmless people? Yes. As a matter of fact, two players whom I dearly love can't come to visit me at that parcel, because their accounts are still in that status, and they can't set them up with payment info yet. They must visit me at my other home. Our land is a residential area, purchased for our household's use. It isn't some public space like a mall or other business, nor is it necessary to travel through our land to get anywhere. The fact that all the problems sharply ceased when we clamped down access does indicate that, in general, people who are willing and able to provide payment info are a lot less likely to cause trouble. Certainly there are lots of new people who still flock to that newbie site, and who DO have payment info on file. Yet none of them ever bother us. I would imagine the fact that LL knows who they really are is at least some incentive for them not to act like jerks. Whereas a person who is completely anonymous may feel they can do anything they want, because it can't be traced back to them.

What ticks me off right now is that I talked about SL to a good RL friend of mine, who signed up for an account over the weekend and tried to get verified status using PayPal, and it didn't work! He tried it with two different accounts.

Apparently the problem people have been posting about with doing currency exchanges through PayPal (failure messages) has extended to not even being able to verify an account with PayPal. So my poor friend lost out on his bonus for signing up using a payment source and is wandering the world unverified.

To add insult to injury, I told him about the evils of camping to keep him out of a camping chair, and sent him instead to get a master money tree directory, but he can't pick from some of the money trees because they're limited to people with payment info on file. Lucky for him, I have given him some money in-world since I've used a couple of his photos for my landscape screens, so he's not totally broke.

Being treated like a griefer with blanket bans because of a technical problem linking to PayPal is NOT a good way for a player who wants to make a contribution to start their SL life.

The problem with this is: suppose you have a weekly event. A griefer decides they don't like it, and starts attacking it with freebie firebombs and guns. You ban them from the area, but they have still caused trouble at the event. Next week, they can just make another alt and do it all over again. And so the following week, and so on.. so either you have to have some way to keep them out in advance, or you might as well cancel your event.

Still better then: you qualify not to my measures, so I consider you equal to a griefer, even you are not one.

Freeze, eject and ban, that is all you need... even on a event. Security (to give it a name) belongs to planning an event.

Even in my Ultima Online time, when setting up RP events we caculated PK-runs in.

Morwen.

What other automated methods of identity verification have you found on the internet?

I'm just curious because, internet-wise, I have not encountered any automated identity verification process other than credit cards. I'm neither defending or dismissing using credit cards, I know they don't conclusively verify identity or even age, but they have the advantage of being something that can be done almost instantly by computer, and work for most locales. Basically, they're not perfect, but they are better than nothing, I think.

As for the issue of banlines based on payment status... personally I have never used that and doubt I ever would. *but* I am fully in support of giving land owners as much control as possible, and if someone does choose to employ those tools, I wouldn't question or discourage them. Between the high purchase price of land and the high monthly tier, I do believe fully in the SL 'addage' of your land, your rules. In the end, their land is theirs and they decide who can and cannot access it. Their reasons are irrelevant.

-Atashi

I agree.... your lands, your rules.

But don't call events free or public events when you use payment info on who is welcome or not.

Morwen.

I encountered this while wondering about the world in an alt. Its offensive and presumptive in my opinion. As it presupposes an entire class of people is not worthy, or are cluless greifers without actually allowing the inidividual the benfiit of judgding by conduct not status.

I though we did away with the whole class system decades ago. Apparently its back in vogue as an acceptable compromise for the greater benefit of society. Sort of like the 3/5's compromise our country was built on? Just because something make your life easier, does not make it right.

The ide is to encourgae people to join SL, well if you let them in the gate, don't let them de discriminated against in world. If everyone has to have a credit card for an account, then so be it. Better to discriminate as who can come in, than to treat residents of different classes unequally.

The thing i think many people are missing is that there are relatively few truely public places in SL. If it's not owned by governor Linden, it's NOT public... Period! The same so-called "discrimination" happens when someone runs into group access land... what you do is move on. SL is NOT some giant free world where all people were magically given access rights to all areas... it's a giant residental neighborhood, where every place you can go that's not a road or linden land is someone elses baby.

interesting point dana, but arguably since LL is not the government, but rather is a private association, there is no public land anywhere. We aren't really talking about inalienable guranteed rights here. LL can always ban us from the grid. We are, how ever, talking about the kind of community we want SL to be. Discrimination is not only a public act, but it can be a private act.

I think LL has clearly stated that I would be banned if I proposed banning all chinese people from my sim. To my mind banning all non-payment verified accounts is tantamount to the same thing. People are let in the world on certain conditions, and then, based on status, not on actions, are banned as a class. Status offenses are rigidly prohibitied in the US and other nations, and thus should be reflected in the policies of of SL.

In my opinion, you shouldnt called it, a discrimination. When SL offered a free account, it is a thumb up to everyone. Fairly speaking, there should a some FREE element in every gaming so that everyone can enjoy it, but not everything is FREE.

However, it is up to the owners' place to decide what do they want to do (in your words, banning a non-payment info users). In fact, they should deserved the right because they invested $$$ to play. How hard can it be to register a payment info? To me, it is a piece of cake. Even a teenager can do that. Not to mention a child can do that too, with their parent permission. Based on what i have said, everything are really fair.

I really dont see any contrary, maybe you are trying to get attention is it? or you are trying to get everything for FREE? or you are just 13 years old and unable to get your parent's approval for a payment info, right?

It happens. I got banned from a sim the other day just for the fact that i am partnered with someone that the sim owner dislikes. unjust it was, but i got even with them. Some people have the dire need to abuse their power in SL. It's just how things are.