Have you been to the Blog lately?

A product name change is a possibility. Originally, Second Life was named Linden World. When life gives you lemons make citric-based cleaners. In other words, spin bad media into good media. SPIN, BABY. SPIN!

If I was to suggest possible names:
* Porn 2.0
* Poon Town
* Steve Online
* Hello Kiddy World
* SEOL (SlamErica Online)
* Second MILF
* SexBox Live

All kidding aside... having been tarred by the "free file sharing service for pedophiles" brush it's unlikely SL will shake this off.

Actually, age/identity verification will have no effect as nothing will prevent two free Basic accounts that decline optional age/identity verification from standing in the middle of a Linden-owned road from uploading and swapping images of child pornography with each other. (Hmm... maybe free and/or non-verified accounts shouldn't be able to upload images).

The addition of age/identity verification has one purporse: For a PR flak in LL's marketing department to be able to say, "Look. We're doing something about this. Yes, something completely ineffectual that doesn't get to the root of the problem, but still something."

It provides grist for the mill because it happens to be true. A depiction of a thing is not the thing itself. It's absolutely no different than two people pretending to have a gunfight. No actual gunfight takes place. Why this blindingly simply logic is so easily negated by reactionary moralists is quite beyond my powers of comprehension. Please explain to me how a 27 and 54 year old can engage in abuse of a minor without an actual minor present. I find thier behavior quite disgusting, but not quite as disgusting as people imposing their moralism on situations that don't involve actual children. We submit to such bans on freedom of expression at the peril of other legitimate forms of expression. I guess no one will be doing a machinima version of Lolita, or historically accurate roleplay of ancient Rome, or innumerable other legitimate artistic expressions in the face of this very reactionary policy. People have to get past their individual distaste for certain activities and look at the bigger picture. Germany has incredibly strict rules regarding violence in videogames. Will we be adopting their policies in that regard as well? Censorship sucks.

Honestly I think the problem is that somehow this gets twisted into Linden Labs facilitating this behavior, which is absurd. Look, most sane normal people know whats right and wrong, but even though this is a virtual world, the participants are real, and there are some screwed up people out there doing this kind of awful thing whether its on SL or not...

I'm waiting for Chris Hansen from Dateline to show up in avatar form to catch the ped's

Right. The last thing in the world the media wants is for this kind of behavior to be stamped out of existence. Exploiting and sensationalizing it is part of their stock in trade. I find those Dateline segments to be every bit (if not moreso) as reprehensible as the behavior they're exploiting for profit.

I'd love to see that .

Good point the media conveintly forgets to mention the fact they had to seek this out.

Phil Linden didnt hand out Ageplay Pamphlets in the welcome area. Any activity outside of a couple welcome area things is Resident Activity only.

Ageplay is an underground activity anyhow. They would have had to either have had help froma resident who knows people from before the Notecard rules - or else searched for it somehow.

It begs the question - if they'd gone to the same efforts on the Normal Internet what would they have found?

Anyone trading Child Porn is a huge problem - of course!

Blaming Second Life for it, I dont know - seems wrong.

Yes Chip, I agree with you entirely. Similarly, I find the ageplay stuff repellent. But if it's consenting adults in privacy I don't see it as my concern. However if law enfocement bodies feel minded to investigate as to whether there's a crossover between people who RP ageplay and people who actually engage in pedophilia, then that's also their business. Furthermore if they find people who cross that line, then as far as I'm concerned they're totally justified in rounding them up.



Because reactionary moral crusaders tend to be blind to logic and reason? I doubt we'd be having this discussion if Linden Labs hadn't dropped the sign-up CC verification last year. What we're seeing now is some very panicky damage limitation. Which would imply to me that LL is probably having to deal directly with law enforcement agencies over some pretty heavy stuff of which this ageplay malarkey is most likely the tip-of-the-iceberg.

From the video how private a place that was is really debateable, it seems almost a club house. Thats definitely not allowed according to the Robin Linden Coversation.

-It would seem it did definitely violate the Notecard/Robin Conversation rules on Ageplay.

So the bannings make sense.

Since it broke existing Linden Policy.

One this is obvious. LL instituted the open signup policy without ANY regard as to what consequences it may have. Ironically the thing that they thought was going to entice the Big Boys to bring their wallets into SL may be the thing that scares them off.

We aren't going to have all the information on this a while. The German reporter has a story to protect. The German authorities have an investigation to protect. Linden Labs has litigation to avoid.

According to the BBC article, the report didn't just stumble upon the ageplayers and then report them right away. He had been investigating a group for a period of time, and following leads on all kinds of activities for a while. How much of this Linden Labs knew before making the ban is unclear yet. However, Linden Labs did see a capture of the activities before the ban. And, whether before or after the ban, they received information about the child pornography trading over Second Life.

Guessing at the current gaps in information, I'd make a very good guess that the talk with the reporter and Linden Labs was at the final part of the investigation, after the reporter didn't need the contacts that he made in Second Life anymore.

SL is becoming more like RL every day... the good and the bad. Since SL is a user created enviorment this was bound to happen. Even if they set us up with default avatars and no way to change them "adult content", "role play" and other ugly disgusting aspects of rl will be there too. Age verification will not stop that. While I love how much control we have in SL it makes the person responsible for their actions (just like rl). And lets face it there are a lot of irresponsible people out there.

Yet they were able to determine, at the very least, the age & sex of the people that were banned. I'd say that they were probably verified in some way.

Or is that not also obvious?

yes this is true - They probably were verified. Or else unverified and gave their correct name.


Edit -

Well maybe not - perhaps the 54 year old man and the 27 year old woman were just the fake details provided during an unverifed sign up.

I find it a little hard to believe that LL would say such details if it was based just on unverified signup info..

a Good point. Im pretty sure you are correct about them being verified.

on the other hand - they let you Play Second Life on just Unverifed signup info.

True, I'm just sick of hearing, over and over and over and over, how everything is the fault of unverifieds.

Another possibility: SL becomes known more for its creativity and resulting products, art and new ideas then the activities of a minority of people who treat it like a form of porn. The porn addicts find another source and SL rises from the ashes as a creative platform.

Very clear post and right on I think.

Yeah -

Is not enough - This is the fault of the people who did this stuff.

The People who got involved in the mess are the ones who were at fault, period.

The RL child porn could have traded hands outside of SL just as easily.

Thing is the Media will use the fact theres unverified people againt Linden Labs. Whether or not any Unverifieds did anything.

I see a Fox news story next.



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Still youd have to doubt the intelligence of someone doing something illegal in Second Life using their actual verifed information.

Thats not a seperate Scenario - that could happen with any of the three I suggested.

That would require an objective press that lacks an insatiable appetite for sensationalism. Good luck with that.

Would I get Mickey Mouse ears?



Y'know, if you verify they filter those threads out automatically....... Sorry



But the porn industry is always the quickest to exploit and develop any new entertainment media.

It sounds like the good old days of SL were pretty neat the way that people miss them; I didn't get to experience them as I signed up last fall tho I do have a premium account so I am not an invading freebie I guess. I was an early explorer on the web however and I remember various type wishing that the web would go back to being used by a few university types and the right people; they really resented the influx of all the new people. I think the first cars were seen as agents of the devil that frightened horses. I'm sorry that the early SL is gone but there is so much creativity activity going on as the new people adjust. Has anyone had a chance to see how much SL art has grown? Its amazing and wonderful stuff.

The classes going on around the clock? The new groups forming? Its amazing! Compared to keeping SL a haven for a limited number of people, it is not even close in my mind in which direction is best...SL is barreling down the road to the future one way or another. And law is going to be made. There will be lawsuits, issues about content ownership, you name it. This is just the beginning.

I do like the idea tho that some of the astonishing artists of the earlier SL may finally get the recognitions they deserve in a wider venue. House builders (a certain person's skyhouses are works of art that take my breath away , sim buiders, role play sims, on and on.) These talented and hardworking people do not benefit from keeping SL the private preserve of a small group of people who fear their activities will not stand up to the glare of public scrutiny.

They're talking about a contract they have with aristotle/integrity, which according to integrity doesn't exist.
http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/2007/05/09/linden-age-verification-plans-hit-a-bump/

Lying and misdirection seems to be the standard LL response to everything lately.

I realized a while back that it was only a matter of time before the real child abusers started using SL as a way to make connections. I had hoped it wouldn't be so soon, but I guess I'm not surprised.

Once again, we're going to need clarification on what is and is not allowed, and what is and is not legal in our various countries. This was difficult as long as Linden was trying to walk a tightrope, but it's easier for them if indeed this blog entry represents a policy change to ban all sex (or at least all visual depictions of sex) involving minors. They still need to put some effort into defining exactly what a minor avatar is (and maybe start providing pubic hair for free). My take on all of the preceding threads on this subject is that the best thing Linden could do right now, as far as the immediate needs of the user community is concerned, would be to address the confusion, with clear and precise statements, including examples.

Long term, I've said before and I'll say again, the adult entertainment market of SL needs to be spun off into a separate company. That market is so at odds with the other markets that trying to serve them all within one business will be a disservice to them all, and an excedingly poor business decision. The cost of dealing with these issues should not be borne by the other customer bases, nor should the public relations issues of the X-rated market be allowed to be a drag on the rest of the business.

More hypothetical options are to get SL treated more like a common carrier/communication service or to provide peer-to-peer server features. The first shifts the liability for content off of Linden onto the content creators and sim hosts. This is similar to the exceptions for ISPs, who have relatively limited liability for the material being transmitted on their networks. (Not to be confused with hosting services, which don't have the same exception, even if owned and operated by an ISP.)

A peer-to-peer service seems like a much more likely future, even without this issue. If you and your friends could run your own server, perhaps much smaller than the standard sim, so that Linden's involvement were no more than as a software vendor, their liability would go away. There are some obvious unrelated advantages, which is why I consider this future to be inevitable, whether done by Linden or a competitor.

Finally, as a minor aside, I believe that US law around child pornography relates to visual depictions, only. I say this to point out, for the purpose of this discussion, that two avatars sitting on camping chairs in different sims, while using IM to rewrite their own version of Lolita, is very different from the sort of stuff that's really at issue.