Nulflux Negulesco Says:

August 29th, 2007 at 6:58 PM PDT
I am commenting on the ‘Identity Verification’ system because I believe many of you have missed the true and critical components of how this system integrates into the Patriot Act and how it works to eliminate the last bastion of true freedom in the United States.

Linden Labs has stated in their previous blog entry regarding ‘Identity Verification’ that their single most important goal is to ‘protect our children’ from the adult material in SecondLife. I believe that this is false propoganda supporting a political movement that works to remove all prospects of independent freedom for online users.

To further clarify the underlying motives behind Linden Labs false propoganda you must cross reference quotes taken from Aristotle’s Integrity public website regarding the purpose of Aristotle’s services:

Quote from http://integrity.aristotle.com/ :
“The service provides merchants and government agencies with PATRIOT ACT compliance and compliance with age verification laws and guidelines.”

My friends, THIS is the true purpose of what Linden Labs once called ‘Age Verification’ and has recently re-described as ‘Identity Verification’. It is a tool to further decrease the freedom of thought, of expression of free will and of self-determination that SecondLife and United States Citizens have previously enjoyed.

Aristotle International Inc. does not have any intention of keeping our personal data secret. While it openly states that “This site does not provide visitors’ information to third parties.” the specific wording is misleading.

The wording, taken in context and with a grain of salt only proves that Aristotle will not share information about ‘hits’ or ‘visitors’ to third-parties regarding visits to their WEBSITE. This statement specifically excludes information (personal data) gained from activities outside their ‘public’ website infrastructure. More to the point, this allows Aristotle to share information with third-parties at their discretion when it has been collected from other sources, such as ‘Identity Verification’ in SecondLife.

Statements by Linden Labs regarding non-storage of our personal data is an outright lie. While Linden Labs will not maintain a database of our data Aristotle will. As supporting proof I would like to present Exhibit A:

http://www.aristotle360.com/documents/aristotle-360.pdf

This document states several things which PROVE BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT that our data will be used AGAINST us and to CONTROL US POLITICALLY!!!

The following statements are from Exhibit A:

—-EXCERPTS FROM EXHIBIT A – ARISTOTLE 360—-

About Aristotle:
Aristotle, Inc. is the leading political technology firm in the United States. Widely recognized for having revolutionized politics, Aristotle is a non-partisan firm that has been in existence for over 25 years.

WEB-BASED POLITICAL DATA STORAGE:
You’ve got a plan. It’s a solid strategy. It reflects years of experience and lessons learned the hard way. Now you need CONTROL – of your RESOURCES, your COMMUNICATIONS, your PEOPLE, and your INFORMATION.

One Company, One Solution:
Aristotle is recognized as the pioneer in political campaign technology. Every occupant of the White House – Democrat and Republican – for more than 25 years, has been an Aristotle customer, as are most U.S. Senators, most members of the U.S. House of Representatives, and Democratic and Republican state party organizations.

—-END OF EXCERPTS FROM EXHIBIT A—-

Please, I urge everyone to have a look at supporting document Exhibit A. This new ‘Identity Verification’ data is yet another channel of data for this politically oriented data collection engine. Take careful note of the contact information provided in Exhibit A, especially the address: “205 Pennsylvania Ave, SE – WASHINGTON,DC”. Now look at the map kindly provided by Yahoo! maps that shows the location of this address:

http://maps.yahoo.com/maps_result.php?q1=205+Pennsylvania+Ave%2C+SE+Washington%2C+DC

ARISTOTLE INTERNATIONAL INC. IS OPERATING 1 BLOCK AWAY FROM THE UNITED STATES CAPITOL. It is directly beside the Library of Congress and a few blocks away from the Supreme Court. The evidence cited above is concrete, uncontestable PROOF that Linden Labs and their campaign to ‘protect our children from pornography and gambling’ is part of a much larger false propaganda campaign by the UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT to further enhance it’s control and manipulation of not only American citizens, but also citizens WORLDWIDE.

How much longer are we – the residents of SecondLife and Members of the International Community – going to allow this perpetuation of misinformation and blatant mind-control to continue. It is time that we stand up for our freedoms. As of this moment I am publicly announcing the formation of the Virtual Sovereignty Movement. Several weeks ago I formed the VSM in opposition to the supreme dictatorship of Linden Labs and today I am extending it’s goals to the abolition of corporate, political and religious misinformation, propaganda and mind-control (virtual slavery) over virtual worlds.

As an community of international free-thinking individuals we must join in unity against the dystopian mind-control and oppressive regulations imposed on our digital universe. We must help protect our rights to self-determination and expression of individual will. The tyranny we face is intent on commiting creative genocide. We must stand strong against this tyranny as one nation, undivided and become the juggernaut that will forge the foundation of a SecondLife that is truly ‘Your World’ and ‘Your Imagination’.

If you would like to join our cause and help liberate the once-free virtual universe please become a member of the Virtual Sovereignty Movement group in SecondLife. Membership is free and open to anyone. We are not here to make money, we are here to become the leading force in a revolution against the political invasions of privacy, destruction of freedoms and subliminal mind-control in SecondLife.

Signed,
Nulflux Negulesco
Founder of VSM (Virtual Sovereignty Movement)

“It has come to our attention that you may be residing on the wrong Second Life grid. The adult grid is for people 18 years old and up. The teen grid is for people between 13 and 17 years of age. We have put your account on hold pending confirmation of your age” bla bla…

Since I rarely check that old email spambox, I didn’t discover the problem until 3 days had passed after receiving this message, and found (upon login) that my account was coldly and hastily disabled.

I submitted 2 tickets to customer no-service attempting to sort out the problem and of course never got a reply. After finding the email, I then called the support line and asked how exactly it “came to their attention that I may be residing on the wrong grid”. Naturally, the helpline employee was unable (or unwilling) to provide an answer. He loosely suggested that “maybe it was something I said, in-world.” Oh please, LL… is that the best you can do? Now we must all choose our chat words carefully, lest we be tagged as a suspected minor and targeted for mandatory age-verification?

I was under the impression this whole age-verification system was purely voluntary. Oh right… “voluntary” as in; either I give them what they want or it’s game-over, and goodbye to my account and all my time, work, uploads and L$$$ along with it!

I’m one pissed off (30 year old adult) about all this, but I may have no choice but to send these pinheads my ID, just so I can cash out my L$, give all my builds and textures to a trusted friend, then close the account. Maybe afterward I should also consider closing my checking account, since I have absolutely no faith in LL’s ability to protect me from ID thieves and the lot.

Needless to say, I won’t be spending another dime on a game owned and operated by idiots who implement pointless and risky policies, serve up demanding ultimatums, and largely ignore their paying resident’s complaints.

Okay, Rosedale… you are undeniably god of your laggish, glorified chat room/sex pit/casino world and I am just another helpless avatar subject. My only power lies in my ability to END my business with you, and I hope your age-verification strong-arming tactics backfire abysmally and it hits you hard in the pocket.

I chat with other players who have invested far more time and money in SL than have I, and they talk as if they’re terrified to say or do anything which may jeopardize their account. They won’t even provide details in IMs, because they’re actually living in fear of the wrath of almighty Linden Lab spies! Is that the kind of ‘big brother is watching’ virtual world you intended to create, Mr. Rosedale?

Eventually you may find that your Linden avies are the only players left to keep you company in your silly, overprotective dictatorship styled metaverse. End this rediculously invasive age-verification system and replace it with a simple “I am 18 or over” button which appears prior to entering any adult content-flagged region and politely tell the politicians, activists, lawyers, cyber-cops and concerned parents of the world to kiss off, or it will co$t you dearly in the end.

Washington indeed has such a fetish on obvious things like the Iraq war. But what makes you think they have this about online games and virtual worlds? They may well have — but what is your evidence for this?

Has it occurred to you that this statement from Aristotle — “There is no rational basis to assume a deal is going forwards” — could be more an effort on *Aristotle’s* part to disassociate itself from a very non-compliant, contentious, and hostile community with a pitbull blogosphere and tabloid press, so as to avoid endless speculation about its credentials? Perhaps *they* — as a company in fact that doesn’t have anything near the blemished record the Herald keeps insinuating — doesn’t want to come anywhere near this mess of Second Life? Maybe *they* don’t want to be involved with a riotous mob of ageplayers and BDSM practitioners — and that’s why the deal soured? The population of SL, given the characteristics we hear about it from the Herald and Second Citizen, sure sounds a hell of a lot more difficult and unpleasant to deal with than the teens wanting to access Anheiser Busch’s website! I mean, say you were a reputable verification agency. Would *you* want to take this *very difficult and nasty account* on board?

Perhaps the Lindens, under pressure from “the community” — which has gotten very comfortable with the idea that it can whipsaw Lindens around when it wants — made them back out of this deal. But…then which agency will they use? And won’t all agencies of this type sell voting lists and get leftoid nutters in Europe all antsy about “buying the vote” because they don’t understand the role of lists in causes and campaigns?

And won’t *any* agency even one that doesn’t sell lists merely by being in “Amerika” be suspect to the alleged sullen and rebellious anti-American European majority we’re being led to believe is backlashing against this age verification thing?

MannyM could be right that LL has messed up by trying to please all stakeholders. But given the actual tendency of LL to in fact run roughshod over the “community” in the last year and be absolutely brutal in pushing through every single change they wish, without recourse, what reason do we have to suspose they were getting all touchy feely about some Dutch lesbian worrying about her name ending up on the lists for sale for elections in Kenosha, Wisconsin?

I disagree with the ferocity of MannyM and other posters claiming incompetence of LL about all this. I think they have a very tough job to do, trying to design a means of verifying age in a multinational setting in an unbelievably short time with a million back-seat drivers wishing them failure and barking at them over performance.

I can see that LL may be headed to having to fork the grid, which goes against their most holiest of holies, the One Grid All Hail the Central Grid. If they can’t get their new European, Latin American, Asian partners to age-verify and handle media and police flak-catching for them efficiently, they may split up the service in lieu of having to turn the entire grid into PG.

Basically, Linden Labs have totally screwed the whole issue by trying to fool and please all stake holders at the same time.

When I signed up (March 2006) you either had to provide credit card details or mobile (cell) phone details from a participating carrier.

This was explicitly stated as being for reasons of age verification. That was good enough 12 months ago.

Then they dropped this and allowed any man and his dog in as long as they could fill in the application form. They sold SL on the basis that fortunes could be made, that there was online gambling and that online sexual activity was enhanced by 3d modelling and clever scripts.

People flocked. August/Sept 2006 we had the ‘Yahoo’ invasion. Lindens were ecstatic. They then publicised the growth of the environment and suddenly, the number of avatars went from 1000 000 to 6000 000 in one eighth of the time it took for the population to reach half a million.

Of course, during this Lindens betrayed their own realm. They did not enforce reponsible checking and dropped their owm standards to impress new shareholders and investors.

I often wondered why a company like Amazon wanted to be associated with a website that had cartoon characters bonking in the most interesting of ways while their fellow cartoonies were gambling in pretend casinos, torturing each other in make beleive dungeons or selling each other pretnd drugs.

Sex, gambling, sado masochism and drug use – the foundations of SL.

Suddenly it has been realised that kids do not really care if they press a TOS submit button declaring that they are over 18. They want to be a part of it and be a part of it now.

There is only one sensible way out of this for every one, and Phil linden does not, I belive, have the balls to do this.

Make AV universal and compulsory on the SL main grid. Just like in a RL casino or bar. No ID – no entry. On June 1 all residents must verify their Avatar. On July 1 – no verification – no entry.

I feel that what most people are objecting to is not the concept of AV, but rather the nambi-pambi corporate bull shit method proposed and the inept way that Robin and Jeska and the rest of the Linden Cyber execs have mismanged the whole PR exercise.

As an aside, I have noticed too that unverified Avatars will be able to access gambling, just not sex and violence.

Ummm Governeor Linden…. Gambling in most states of the US is an age 21 plus activity. So guess what? by not checking the age of participants who you may reasonably suspect to be underage puts you, as the host of a gambling environment reponsible under Californian Law.

Why they will not do this?
1 Numbers.
1.1 Of the 6million Avatars only about 1.5 million are active. Age verifictaion results will prove this.

1.2 Of that 1.5 mill there will be a number of kiddies found. so again bang gores more numbers.

1.3 Of what is left there will be people with 2, 3 4, and more accounts. Suddenly LL will have to admit to corporate sponsores that they are not reaching to 6 million people world wide, but only about a million.

1.4 Of those who are left a few will get pissed off and just leave.

2 Reputation

If Sl ebcomes an AV site it will not take long for it to get its (well deserved) reputation as being an interactive slease fest for about 25-30% of the people who use it.
Two things will happen. Coporates and Educational users will leave or fail to progress. Rl spuses of residents will not want their SL addicted partners in “that place.”

3 Creative Content

Creative people tend to be individuals and free thinkers. They do not want to be made to do stuff. Basically a large number of the people who will leave Sl over AV will be the type of people they want to retain.

4. International Access

Finding ways of ID that will be accessible to all cultures will be difficult. ID systems, drivers licenses etc all differ between countries.

Of course, the proposal at the moment circumvents all of these. Well it does not circumvent one small problem.

There are under 18 yo people in SL. Some are doing cyber, some are gambling, some are just making stuff and being cool. But I understood SL was an 18 plus environment. The proposed AV system, in its current form, actually endorses that it is not.

I was just WAITING for someone to come up with the ‘that nasty German reporter made up the report’ theory here.

Don’t know where you come from, don’t much care, but just consider the REALITIES of the situation for a moment.

OK, reporter comes into Second Life and fabricates the story, including Age Play ‘escorts’ and RL child porn samples, right?
Then he goes back to REAL LIFE and broadcasts the fabricated story and either reports it to his local law enforcement agency, or the story is picked up by his local law enforcement agency, right?

So far so good.

But in REAL LIFE, the authorities will take a sworn statement from him, as evidence. That’s how the legal systems of both Europe and North America work.

Now, let’s project into the future a little, shall we? At some point it emerges that the evidence, which MUST exist because of the nature of SL’s file storage/handling doesn’t exist. It follows therefore that the sworn statement is false.

What do you think happens then? Do you think the German prosecutor and police chief go round and see this guy and they all have a jolly good laugh about the reporter’s actions?

Or do you have sufficient connection with REALITY to realise that perjury is just the START of the reporter’s problems?

Yup, perjury is a good start, a holding charge, while the prosecutor and police work out just how much the time and money they’ve spent, wasted, on this wild goose chase. Then they can add, wasting police time, attempting to pervert the course of justice, and so forth. The names of the offences may vary from country to country, but every North American and European country has multiple legislation to cover an instance like this, and believe me, they use it!

In my country you’d find yourself facing at least three charges, all imprisionable offences, all viewed very seriously by the courts and no excuses about being a reporter accepted.
So, that’s without him, and/or his TV station, facing the possibility of a malicious libel case in his local jurisdiction by Linden Lab…

I’m not even going to bother asking if you still think it’s all ‘faked’ – if you do though, you have completely lost touch with reality my friend.

And really, spouting out ‘age verification’ to be a solution to this whole thing is preposterous. Almost everyone underage will roleplay or state they are _over_ the minimum age(being 18, for LL), so the perpetrators of the whole ‘child porn’ indistry on SL are all adults, anyway. From those sexually ageplaying as youngsters, to those “_USING_” said youngsters. It’s just more of the old ‘bait and switch, then hit them with a bat and keep them as confused as possible so they don’t notice that we can’t really solve problems’ crap that LL has been pulling on us ever since beta started. Oh, yeah, @whee, flexi-prims are great, yep, all hail LL.. Screw that, fix the sims and pipeline routines, first, then the memory holes, and _then_ add in new features.

The biggest problem I can see, with all of this happening, is that LL has opened a super large economy sized can of worms by starting to let the rest of the world dictate what is and isn’t allowed on their servers. With the wide range of what each and every country finds ‘unacceptable’, the entire grid will have to be sanitized to allow them to have accounts from everywhere in the world and for all the governments to be happy. One executive from LL stated that they were making the advertisement of Ageplay unacceptable because they didn’t want to have their IP banned by a foreign country, and that they wanted the accounts from said country. As LL is a corporation and more concerned with getting in new money, figuring all the people who are paying for premium accounts will ‘hold out and wait for better days’, they don’t mind chasing away anyone who’s already payed their original subscription fee and will probably continue to stamp out anything any governement says they don’t like.

As to the ‘won’t somebody please think of the children’ crowd, and their, and the government’s, whole policy of making sure that the parrent is blameless when their kids don’t know not to take ‘candy’ from strangers, I blame it on the phenomina of everyone wanting kids but not the responsibility of actually bringing them up. They let the TV raise them, or the internet, and then yell and gripe and scream when they realize the kid isn’t being the good little robot they want him/her to be.

I believe the German news article is false. Or half-false, anyhow. Yes, there are ‘escorts’ that look or ageplay as being underage, and even still advertise it. But the real child-porn pictures thing and refusing to say who gave them to him? It’s not like he’s ‘protecting a source’, he’s just saying ‘I got them from someone. Over there. TRUST me…’ Wouldn’t hold up in court is all I’m saying. I mean, I could jump up and down and scream that George W Bush ‘touched me inapropriately’ as a kid, but without evidence it’d be my word against his, same as in this case, we only have the reporter’s word, and maybe some video that can be faked. After all, it’s video of a world that’s fake, in the first place. Heck, I could make a new acount, right now, upload a picture of a flower, send it to my actual character, and then say, “Gosh, I got this illegal picture from someone else, it’s not mine, I didn’t upload it!” Unethical? Yes. First time a reporter has faked things to get a good story? Oh, heck no. Double heck no. Faking up a good story has been around since the begining of journalism. If they get caught, and they were good at it, it’s simply ‘Oh, my bad, I didn’t find out the whole story!’.

Just my opinion. Please prove me wrong.

I really, really, really wish this were true, but it’s not. People have gone to jail because they provided minors access to “mature” material. In many places, by law, if you allow minors access to it, you’re committing a crime, and “he said he was 18″ doesn’t cut it if you didn’t ask to see his ID. There’s a local bookstore with a back room you can’t go into without showing ID. There’s another bookstore that was closed after the owner was arrested for letting someone in without asking for their ID. It’s much like serving liquor to a minor — you can’t just take their word for it, you have to ask for ID or you’re legally culpable.

Much of the argument against this seems to revolve around the way most of us agree the world should be, but understand LL has to operate in the context of the way the world actually is.

(Inigo wanders off to the garden to eat wurms)

This Perv Database people are supposed to place themselves in . . . and risk their RL lives, identities and reputations — can we get a definitive statement in the form of an affadavit from LL that every single LL employee will place themselves in the Perv Database and if it is later revealed that this did not take place . . . there are monetary damages assessed against LL?