Feeling Betrayed by the Lindens

It's not the verification that is 'hurting the dream' I think, but rather the legality of things going on in world. It's never really been a concern before. Part of the issue is that SL comes under the category of 'graphical depiction' of things, which was really intended to mean; people painting, rendering or otherwise creating things to convey a particular image to someone. In the case of pornography this then covers erotic artwork, animations etc., that would otherwise not be covered at all.
However, the difficulty is that this doesn't really apply correctly to a virtual-world, which is something that laws don't really distinguish (because it's new territory). As a result the actions of players can produce 'graphical depictions' of things, but unlike in a piece of artwork where the character is a character, the avatars in game are controlled by people. So rather than being an ACTUAL child (as a painted character of a child may be), in SL we have people PRETENDING to be children by altering their virtual appearance to look like one.

As a result, law should really distinguish between a character that IS the character, or a character that is directly controlled by another person and thus is a disguise for that person, rather than a character in its own right. Like wearing a costume (which isn't illegal) but without the same restrictions as a real-world costume (the inability to physically change your size etc.).
But it's unlikely law will change to realise this, as it's too controversial an issue, and computing law isn't exactly keeping up anyway.

I think many people have jumped on the legality “issue” which may not exist. LL have not taken their stance on age play sex because of legal reasons, but because it impacts upon their corporate image.

The first version of SL had a store, nightclub and casino. Therefore I am still unsure how the old “vision” is being destroyed. The ability to own islands and sims enables the residents to keep what ever vision they wish taking place on their land. Talk of “the death of the vision” "hurting the dream" and “loss of freedoms” I feel are being exaggerated, possibly for effect, where in fact SL remains very similar to that which was started out by Phil all those years ago.

Ah, I get the correlary now.
Still, I use newsgroups for communication with a group of people and we see very little spam. Though, we did have a span a few years ago where we had to report to all the anonymous posting companies that we wanted our group removed from their service as it was being used to spam.

And low and behold, two weeks later we managed to get 90% of all anonymous posts gone. We still get spam on occation, but I report it. Have occationally had to request that they remove the group from posting access as they were an anon service, but we've had very very few issues with spam (the newsgroup has existed since Dec 11, 1991 and I joined in 2002 or so).

That's not the issue, though, the issue is the emotional response. People "age playing" are generally doing it in order to feel sexual arousal IRL, not in order to create a beautiful artwork. And encouraging and legitimising the feeling of sexual arousal in response to something that looks like a child is what the complaint is about.

If you are 100% positive that the person behind the other avatar is an adult, and you aren't gaining any sexual benefits from seeing the image of a child on your sceen - then why not use an adult avatar?

If on the other hand you are gaining sexual benefits from seeing an image of a child on your screen - then, sorry, but you're a paedophile.



If it was possible in the real world to wear a costume that gave you the physical body of a child then anyone sexually aroused by it would still be a paedophile, so this is irrelevant.

That is like looking at a 1967 Corvette and a reproduction 1967 Corvette and saying "Gee, they are the same car." No, they are not. There is a difference in attitude that you would not notice if you have joined SL in the last year or so.

The original attraction for many users of SL, like myself, was not the ability to create the content (though that is nice), but the freedom that allowed you to be whoever or whatever you wanted, as long as you did not harass other residents (and were prudent about PG zones). More and more you have to wonder if suddenly you are going to be told that you can no longer be or do what you enjoy.

Maybe it is inevitable, that as SL becomes more main stream and seeks more corporate business they will become more stringent and less accepting, but that does not mitigate the sense of betrayal that a lot of the early supporters are feeling.

So, by that thought process, playing an FPS makes you a murderer?

The issue the OP is making is about people forcing their own sense of morality on others in a virtual world, where everyone is a consenting adult (or is supposed to be) who is here to be what they cannot be in the real world.

There is no crime being committed. To point to anything and say "this encourages illegal behavior IRL" is (A) a statement without any evidence to back it up, (B) borders on a desire to police thought and punish crime before it occurs and (C) implies that people lack the ability to tell the difference between fantasy and reality. While it is true that there are people who lack the ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality (I.E. the insane), no society should ever build its rules and laws covering the treatment of it's regular citizens based on them.

By implementing the new bans, the Lindens are attacking the heart of their own creation and have already scared off other groups who once thought they were free to explore in SL.

No, because when you kill someone in an FPS, the feeling that people have is that of having scored a point in a game - not the same feeling they'd get from committing murder in the real world. Most real-world murderers do not, after killing someone, walk over and do squat thrusts over the corpse's head while shouting "0WNZORED".

On the other hand, the feeling of sexual arousal is the same as the motivation for both real and cyber sex.



Certainly in Germany, and possibly in the US, there is a crime being committed.



Um, the goal isn't "punishing crime before it occurs", the goal is "preventing crime". The idea isn't that paedophiles should go ahead and do sexual ageplay, then get sent to jail for it. The idea is that they shouldn't be able to do sexual ageplay because it would not be available. Making it available would be a crime - but that is an action and a crime that has already been committed, not a thought.

You have every right to fantasy, but fantasy is only what is in your head. The moment it comes outside of your head it's starting to break in reality. Ok, the other avatar might not really be a child, but it is absolutely reality that there is a child-like image appearing on your computer screen.

http://nytimes.com/2006/08/21/technology/21pedo.html?ex=1313812800&en=40a45848114deb35&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

This article presents research which showed that paedophiles, just as a result of being able to talk to other paedophiles on an internet forum, came to "accept their desires as natural" and "no longer be ashamed of them". If they can derive that from just being able to talk to others, then what will they derive from being able to act out those same desires graphically?

I'm sorry Yumi, but we're not going to fall for your claims of innocence. You're just a murderer when you kill someone in a virtual world, it's as simple as that. And all FPS and PvP activity should be banned of course, immediately.

If you can project your personal judgements on people in one area, they can project theirs on you in another. It's the same (ridiculous) logic as yours, and nicely balanced.

Oh, and while we're at it, you're also guilty of bestiality. I've seen you eyeing those furries. All furries must of course be banned, instantly. Bestiality is despicable. Who will think of the animals???

That's where your fine logic takes us.

I strongly disagree that you can not be who you want to be within SL. In what way are you or other longer serving SL members being "told that you can not no longer be or do what you enjoy." Excluding sexual age play what freedoms are LL removing from the grid.

The argument keeps coming back to “SL is now different, not as good, less freedoms” however I do not understand how people are coming to this assumption.

*Please can we not turn this thread into a discussion about the rights/wrongs/morality of age play, there are many others out there discusing that topic. I am genuinely curious as to what the real differences are that the “older generation” dislike so much about how SL has developed.

...Clouds issues to the point they cannot any longer be constructively and objectively debated. I DO NOT quote you, Yumi, to attack you...I hope you understand. I quote you to point out the extreme difficulty of continuing to constructively and objectively debate any topic when assumptions are presented as facts, then backed up by adding the power of statistical generalization of the target group to fit the original assumption.

The discussion of this thread had started as one that dealt with issues of appropriateness and legality of implementation of the policy, in view of social norms, the TOS and community (both SL and IRL). We continue to hope to address these issues in ways that both help us and help Lindens to better understand our desire for parity and sanity, as well as our concerns.

I think, if you are going to coexist with others in a global society, be it real or virtual, you need to be ready to move beyond your own preconceived biases and deep-seated prejudices/stereotypes...in this case, be reassured that there will be many child-RP-ers, who have not had a "kinky", "perverse" or "illegal" day of social or sexual deviance (or urges) in their entire life. However, they surely do roleplay as a child in SL, with others who do the same.

That's an excellent suggestion, and request.

You're quite right, the age-play aspect has been blown totally out of proportion by the taboo and stigma surrounding the subject, and the discussion always gets very heated because unjustified generalizations and implicit accusations end up replacing rational discussion. Parsimony Paragon labelled it very accurately as "[Irrefutable] Assassination". It's quite similar to mentioning Nazis ... all rational discussion stops.

To answer your question is pretty easy, if the above trap can be avoided --- let's try. Once age-play returns to being just another mode of roleplay, then it's pretty easy to see the issue rather clearly again, as it's no longer shrouded in fire and smoke.

And it's a very simple issue.

Virtual worlds offer AS THEIR PRIMARY DISTINGUISHING FEATURE the ability to change one's virtual character's attributes across the entire spectrum of possibilities, not just the common physical ones of gender, species, age, race and size (fatness!!!), but also functional roles. Like for example the manual labourer turning into the philosopher that he might have been if life had treated him differently, or the single mother turning into the rock star in the future that her child denied her, etc etc. Roleplay in virtual worlds is the single most powerful agent of transformation available to us, and it is available to everybody and is limited only by their imagination. It's easy to see why it is so highly regarded.

So, given that background, anything that seeks to place boundaries on roleplay in virtual worlds is a very bad thing because that's what virtual worlds are best at, transcending the constraints of real life --- hopefully that's clear. And this is where the recent changes hurt so much, because they strike at the very basis of roleplay in the following way.

Roleplay always takes place in a community, since roleplay without social interaction is largely meaningless in most cases, so it's almost a tautology that diversity in roleplaying is proportional to diversity in communities. The "SL vision" (the original one) held as a fundamental premise that individual SL communities would evolve their own internal rules and social mores, each to their own standards and interests, in a highly devolved and locally-democratic way, and without LL intervention.

In effect then, this was a Charter for Roleplaying Freedom, because no one community would have jurisdiction to impose their own norms on any other community. Looking back, it was quite a remarkable package that LL devised, something like SL's own Constitution and relevant set of Ammendments, but so lightweight that it didn't even need any lawyers to interpret it.

Now against that background, what has happened? The most fundamantal underpinning of roleplay has been shattered, because identity verification runs diametrically opposite to identity-hiding transformations. As many others have pointed out in extensive threads and essays, the idea that it will be optional is totally false, because while optional in theory, it will become non-optional in practice because without it you will be forced into a sort of ghetto existence, living on the margins of mainstream SL and judged by a politically correct mainstream community.

To understand how dreadful a change that really is, you need to realize that it is the exact opposite of LL's original explicit declaration that no one community would impose their rules on any other. (In fact that statement came directly from Philip himself, so it couldn't have been any clearer.)

So, it's an absolutely major change to the most fundamental organizational principle of SL. I hope that I've managed to explain it a little, Bodger.

=====

PS. As an aside, the age-play issue distorted not only the entire roleplaying landscape, but even distorted age-play itself --- almost everybody engages in age-play, since your character is extremely unlikely to have your real age, ie. almost everybody is either older or younger than their avatars, so age-play is inherent.

This is not just a turn of phrase, but is very real and important, as SL has a very broad demographic.

SL roleplaying gives older people a skip in their step as their youthful representations jump around and giggle exhuberantly as they engage in the games usually associated with younger people in RL, reflecting the way that they feel inside despite the impact of age. And SL's roleplaying gives younger adults who haven't yet developed a reputation in RL the ability to perform as the intelligent and well-developed adults that they really are, as we discovered after a tragic death in the community recently revealed a person's real identity.

The recent discussions in the media and even in SL have tended to characterize roleplaying as something odd and suspect, and age-play beyond the pale. In reality, *everyone* in SL is roleplaying, and age-play is inseparable from it.

Roleplay is a fantastic thing all around, and it's what makes SL different to a simple 3D version of the web, What's more, it is entirely harmless and even enlightening when practiced between consenting adults, and certainly immersing. Indeed, I'd go further and say that roleplay in today's virtual worlds is the start of our transformation from passive film gazing to interactive living of immersive stories. And culturally, that is no small thing.

*Applauds*

Vanilla Sex?

I guess the forums have just turned into a place where people come to bitch and moan. If you want to complain about linden labs, go submit a support query to linden labs.. Not here..

Wow, all these well written, well thought out posts have changed my mind. SL should allow and actively promote raping children in the world. I'll start a petition, why don't all of you who feel the same send me and email at [email]wearefilthyperverts@burninhellyoupervertedfucks.com[/email].

Well, that was a well thought out and reasoned post.

I almost left SL just after joining because of the child sex. But never would I want to deny someone who wants to play as a child av as long as they aren't using that av to have sex. What's the big deal about someone playing a child in SL? I don't get it personally, but hey, it's a big old world, in RL and SL, and there's room for all of us. I don't care to hang out with them, I'm not a kid person, I think kids are a pain in the arse and don't want to hang out with them in RL or Sl. But I'll damned sure defend their right to RP as a child.

Just trying to find a post actively promoting child rape in the world. Can you point me to that?

Morgaine I agree we are all roleplaying in SL and I strongly agree with and support the belief of SL’s ability to enable people to do and achieve things which their RL social circumstances do not allow.

I am an amateur photographer in RL and believe that digital photography enables everyone to have the opportunity to discover the artist within. As accountants, lawyers, bus drivers and shop assistants can be musicians, we too can all be artists. Secondlife gives me the opportunity to share the photographs in a new and exciting medium.

Identity Verification (IV) will not shatter the identity hiding transformations. Post IV SL will be no different than to how it is now. We currently give our details when we sign up, real name address etc. This is not divulged in SL. Your verified identity will also not be divulged in SL. After IV I will have as much knowledge of your RL world identity as I do now. The only difference is instead of a small box saying “payment info on file” etc it will now say “verified” or “unverified”. That will be the only in world change.

LL has made another PR mistake in its introduction of this under the pretence of Age Verification. The sham of IV being Voluntary is also not helping in the adoption. IV is not in world verification, but another layer of the verification process to ensure LL meets their legislative and regulatory obligations.

I think this is a point that Morgaine and I may never agree on, that virtual worlds must take account of legislation and regulation from RL which impacts the activities within.

I take on board the construct of the other points in your argument, but as I have stated above I do not think IV will have such an impact. Finally, has age play (non-sexual) actually been banned?*

* This is not a request for such insightful comments as that posted by Xavier. Nor is it a request to start shouting as loud as you can to say it should be banned. This is a request for an evidence based answer, through either a LL post/blog/change in TOS, that it has actually been banned.

I give Morgaine and Bodger the Cooler Heads Prevailing award. Morgaine I agree with 100%. Bodger he only isuue I have with your staement is I think a lot of people just don't trust the satement that thier info will be safe. LL has been so clumsy in the announcement of this, bordering on disingenuousness, and the chosen provider of this "service" is also of questionable character. Personally I'm all for ensuring all of us are adults here, that is the major draw of SL, at least to me. I deal with a roomful of adolescents all day in RL, I need someplace to get away from them. But I too am not convinced that this isn't more than age verification, , but at the very least a back door for Data Mining and Marketing purposes.(and whatever else Uncle Sam may be sticking his nose into).

Some very interesting theoretical feedback in this thread. I appreciate all of the various distinctions you've drawn here with regard to ethical issues and norms in Second Life. Thanks!

this is the greatest post ive read on this bbs.
i wish the lindens could see it for what it is.

bodger you are obviously not aware that ll plan to make verification info 'optionally' available to people via your in-world profile. " 30+/F/Melbourne" + voice chat do go a long ways toward undoing the whole notion of a second life.
you can argue that it is optional, and perhaps in a strict sense it is. but it is more than likely that social pressures will come into play and marginalise people that do not elect to share this info. already people are suggesting female avs that opt-out or resist voice are actually males when in fact it may be the case it is a female that does not want to reveal her age or her accent or whatnot.
this is a bad thing for 'second life'.

I have absolutely no problem, at all, with people roleplaying children per se!

The issue is with people portraying *sex* with child avatars.

And, since I notice that the thread has moved onto that now, I share many of the concerns here about RL verification. The irony of all this is that the one online game which does have strict identity verification, of age and gender, and announces it all in the profile, is..... Red Light Center. Wow, that's a great example to follow

Now you're conflating things. Nobody is saying that a person who portrays sex with a child in SL should be treated as an actual child rapist. But they are saying that they should be treated as a producer/consumer of child porn - which they are, since it's appeared on their screen.

The parallel point about violence may have some validity to it, but the reality is that violent but non-sexual images aren't illegal.



Do you believe that these are just my personal judgments? These are common viewpoints. Imagine if someone who did do sexual ageplay in SL went and told their next door neighbour all about it. What do you think their reaction would be?



The nearest real-world equivalent to must furry avatars is a human in an animal costume (or "anthropomorphosised animals", I think is the term), so there is not such a problem with them. I don't know, are there any sexual furries who are playing actual animals - complete with four legs, horizontal gait, appropriate posing and non-communication?

Nina you are right I am not aware of this plan. I may have missed it, but I do not seem to have read this in any of the official blog posts. I would be most grateful if you could you point me in the direction of where you have seen LL discuss this, as it has a major impact upon the stance I have been taking and would indeed impact upon identity hiding transformations.

Longterm identity verification (IV) will not remain voluntary, I agree. This though will be in terms of verifying all accounts to ensure LL meet their KYC obligations. I would however expect any form of in world IV to remain optional. Take for example the forum we are in. The option is there for us to divulge these self same identifiers, yet very few do and there is no marginalisation.

Therefore in SL, those that partake in divulging their identities will more often than not be interested in SL’s social aspects. The optional nature of IV will therefore enable members of RP communities to choose whether or not to blow their cover.