Coincidence? Hardly. I might come back after switching to Linux, but under Windows SL is a bit too chummy with my computer for my taste.

The langauge applies to all matters, not just weighty profound ones. I could claim to be offended by short skirts, for example. Who decides?

That language is not there by choice as a power grab. It could not be any other way.

Thanks!

“Residents are entitled to a reasonable level of privacy with regard to their Second Lives. Sharing personal information about a fellow Resident –including gender, religion, age, marital status, race, sexual preference, and real-world location beyond what is provided by the Resident in the First Life page of their Resident profile is a violation of that Resident’s privacy. Remotely monitoring conversations, posting conversation logs, or sharing conversation logs without consent are all prohibited in Second Life and on the Second Life Forums.”

There is another point that she made in the article though, which is that while in-game mafias and quasi-governmental organizations (like the SSG and the Alphaville Government) have been doing under cover operations to gather info forever, the game companies ususally doen’t publish loving portraits of those activities. But, in effect, that happened in this case.

In other words, the point of the article was not, gee look at this new thing happening in the game, but rather “why the hell are the linden’s applauding it in a company sponsored blog.”

I’m sorry, did you have a point?

-Mars

- Remotely monitoring conversations and sharing logs etc is not a punishable offense
- Impersonating persons or entities is not a punishable offense
- Revealing residents’ RL details, should they become known by residents, is also not an offense

This is not because I have a personal interest in these things, they are just what I would prefer to be LL hands-off. I anticipate the, “What if you were the victim, Neal?” objection but I take that one on the chin. I think that residents should be empowered with their own ways to respond to these situations in SL. At the code-level. Obviously there are some situations that residents physically won’t be able to respond to in any meaningful way. Here I think you just have to bite the bullet and list it as a cost of the hands-off approach over paternalism.

Where it gets trickier is sub-article iv:
“[You shall not] take any action… that… as determined by Linden at its sole discretion that is harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, causes tort, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another’s privacy, hateful, racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable”

I would say here that threatening RL physical harm should be a bannable offense and of course the proper authorities notified etc. The line is obviously quite vague and tricky though. The others (harassing, vulgar, tort etc) are even harder. I think that Linden Labs should try and pursue a strategy aimed at maximizing free speech while maintaing a strong position legally. What that entails exactly, I simply do not know. My main point though is that I am personally very liberal in terms of what I think LL should allow residents to do in Second Life. So I think that the examples of these detective/intel activities, should not be restricted.

It’s a tricky topic to tackle because it deals with rights at the most basic level. Unless you bring in thought-experiments that lead to Bad Places or you can highlight internal inconsistencies in a position, I’m not sure that there is all that much more that you can say other than, “I believe that we should be allowed to do such and such…”

So that’s what I believe

But it’s 4am and I’m unsure of myself on this issue and might just be playing Devil’s Advocate

As hard as that may be for you to believe.