Robin Linden speaks to residents on current issues.

Robin Linden recently held a meeting with residents where a number of current issues were brought to the table. She explained in detail why the two characters in the German video were banned, and how EU laws were not compatible with the type of activities that were taking place within Second Life.

Robin Linden: there are several countries in the EU where the virtual depiction of sex with minors is taken as actual child pornography
Robin Linden: This is a *criminal* offense.
Robin Linden: Tiberious: until the jurisdictional issues are worked out we have to be mindful of laws that will affect our business.
Robin Linden: the alternative is to block all Germans I suppose, but then we'd miss Tao
...
Dreams Lightcloud: i blieve age play is against TOS, isnt it?
Robin Linden: They were banned because they were engaged in sexual behavior where one was playing a minor child.

She believed the very existence of SL hinged on how age-play and the likes were treated within Second Life, she also believes that banning Germany or any other country where these activities were illegal was not the way to do it. Given that the majority of active Second Life residents come from Europe, with Germany being the number two most active country right behind United States.

With the creation of the age and identity validation system, she hopes that in the future the liability of such illegal activities could be passed onto the land owners rather than Linden Lab.

Robin Linden: and we are working with the lawyers to find out if it's possible to pass liability to the land owners if they want to do something which is against the law in their country

The exact way this could be implemented was not mentioned, but it might be that in a future update LL would allow land/estate owners to ban people by country or region?

She also goes on to explain why certain words have been unusable within the advertisement system, such words as "Loli*" and "age-play" are already banned along with the word "casino" (strangely most casino's are now listing their establishments as "kasino" instead). This change does affects many people who sell products based on the "Gothic Lolita" fashion design.

Ryozu Kojima: What is LL's position on the fact that this will affect totally unrelated businesses, such as "Gothic Lolita" fashion?
Robin Linden: we can't let the actions of a few put the entire service at jeopardy

Robin also mentions that the new age and identity verification system would also have real life gender verification, which would show up in the in-game profiles. A thread posted on the Second Life forum by concerned residents debate what the implications of this might be in the long run.

Robin Linden: Brenda - should someone decide they want to authenticate their RL gender it would show up in their profile.

A question was asked by Khamon regarding Meta Linden's recent buhaha on this blog, which went as follows:

You (Khamon): If we're shifting topics, Robin, is LL going to enforce a policy concerning inworld material such as chat logs posted to independent blogs and websites?

Robin Linden: We have a policy about Lindens posting on external blogs. It wasn't followed.

You (Khamon): Meta apparently told someone to delete material from their blog because posting it was a TOS violation. That's since been retracted but I wonder if she was acting on a new policy that just hasn't been published yet.

Robin Linden: No old policy, new Linden who hadn't read it, I think.

Thus, it appears our friendly abusive Meta Linden, did not read the established policy on posting on external blogs, and did not understand the Second Life ToS. Furthermore, she just randomly decided to use the power in her "Linden" name to threaten and harass a resident. It was also known that she's not in the abuse department, and that her activities as documented in this blog were all personal grudges... very disturbing.

Linden Lab should make it so that this kind of abuse does not happen in the future, and should implement some sort of internal review board as seen in eve-online.

A full text of this meeting is available at Second Citizen.

Linden labs to sell my personal information!!! YAY

On May 15 2007, the Linden Labs is going to demand every single user to give identification in the form of social security numbers, passports and drivers licences to a company called Aristotle.

The reason for doing this is apparently to stop minors from accessing (Second Life is strictly 18+), the majority of SL areas (which would automatically deny access to anyone who has not validated themsleves with Aristotle). And it doesn't matter if you're an adult and have been using SecondLife for 2 years with your credit card validation. They force you to submit all sorts of personal data to this Aristotle.



And who is Aristotle?

Why they are corrupt data selling horse fuckers. (PROOF)

Aristotle International used a website to sell the lists, which contain details about registered voters from nearly every state. The data includes birth dates, home addresses, phone numbers, race, income levels, ethnic backgrounds and, in some cases, religious affiliations.
...
But in reality, Aristotle's site allowed anyone to register and purchase lists under a phony name and address. The site asked only for a name, the state where the buyer resided, an e-mail address and a phone number. Fields for mailing address and company name were optional.
...
Sylvia Levy, a South Carolina voter whose data appeared on a list purchased by Wired News, said she was surprised to learn about the transaction.

"If I knew this, I would never have registered," she said. "This is very disturbing, and I'm very disappointed in the system."

And that was about RL voting. Now we are trusting our personal and private information with these con artists. What the fuck is Linden Labs thinking? Yeah wut?

I'm sure gonna trust LL and some marketing whores when Homeland Security and TSA are so cool on personal data.

I've been hearing from various people that LL is imposing this age verification (along with a ban on age-play due to pedophilic cases in Germany vs SL resis's).

Rock Vielle posted the following on the old forum :

Following the story that in Holland, the Dutch Prosecutor's Office is considering legal action against child porn in SL (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/0...ual_child_porn/) and (http://buziaulane.blogspot.com/2007...first-life.html), and the blog concerning Rape Games (http://sparklematrix.wordpress.com/...e-games-update/), the sexual activity of some players in SL has again come under the spotlight with a recent German news broadcast, on ARD, again focussing on child porn (http://portal.gmx.net/de/themen/dig...55801RIaPy.html).

In Germany it is not only illegal to engage in paedophilia, but also to depict it in any way. Stories, pictures, cartoons etc depicting any of this is illegal. Circulating now in German porn shops are movies made inside SL showing sex between a child avi and an adult avi.

In Europe, the stories concerning SL are starting to become entrenched in people's minds that SL is a haven for paedophiles.

There is talk of another programme coming up, on BBC's Panorama, also depicting SL in this way. It is getting to the stage where, in Europe, who would admit to being in SL?

How many of these kind of news stories will it take before rl businesses and corporations desert SL in droves?

Is it time that all sexual activity in SL, which engages in role playing which is illegal in RL, such as Age Play (paedophilia), Rape Play (rape, abduction, sexual assault), Gorean Lifestyles (sexual slavery), even Furry Sex (bestiality) should be outlawed completely by SL, for the greater good of the majority of its residents?

How many more negative news stories can SL survive? How long before these sickoes spoil it for the rest of us?