Maria.

Sorry guys, Ginsu is no longer Linden Lab’s General Counsel and hasn’t been for some months now – though that can’t absolve him from responsibility for either the TOS or the Bragg affair.

Who is currently responsible for giving Linden Lab poor legal advice at present is not clear, but Ginsu Yoon it definitely isn’t.
I’d suspect a legal ‘team’ rather than an individual though, and considering the way Linden Lab is currently staggering from disaster to crisis in the legal field I suspect that team isn’t particularly keen on publicity…

“One of the problems is that they actually seem to be going well beyond passive enforcement, not just relying on user “tips” but doing some policing themselves. You can see that they’re targeting at least some advertising and actively replacing it with placeholder content by searching classifieds for the phrase “description removed.” Some have argued that this move seems largely targeted at casinos, which is accurate, but it doesn’t really matter. It isn’t *what* they are editing that takes them out from under the CDA’s Section 230(c) safe harbor protection for service providers, it’s the fact that they’re editing user content at all. I’m the first to admit that this is a fairly immature body of law, but it’s not an far-out theory by any stretch of the imagination. Policing content, particularly when they do it on their own, is at least potentially problematic”

This is a very, very important issue. And it’s so important, and I’ve been fighting it along with others for so many months and years here, that sorry, I’m just not leaving it to Benjamin to land on the issue and define it like a ton of bricks merely due to RL credentials.

First, does Benjamin concede that if online gambling is regulated or outlawed, say, in the U.S. that this a crime, and that promoting and advertising such a crime then isn’t “freedom of expression,” but promotion of a crime, so the Lindens have no choice, really, but to remove it. They were advised by their lawyers and by the probe from the Feds that they had to crack down on casinos. 90 or more percent of the “removed content” on these 108 pages are about casinos.

I’ve made a point to TP to many of those remaining “unclear” parcels and have to conclude that they were likely “ageplay anime” of a more extreme kind, or really gross extreme sexual sites — but I can’t prove that as the material is now *removed*, the people aren’t answering about the content, and you can only extrapolate from what remains. In at least one case, it’s truly perplexing to figure out what could be objectionable. It’s also not clear the Lindens went on a spree using SEARCH, but they may have — or they may have abuse reports — but *we cannot know that or speculate about it because they do not tell us* (that’s why I’ve always lobbied for the police blotter to be full, fair, and findable).

So this first example of editing by the Lindens just is not a good example of any editing of sexual expression of the “Moral Majority” type that Benjamin and others are worried about it.

It’s very important to be accurate about this. And if you are fair and accurate, you have to say, no, the Lindens did not remove anything of any type except 1) casinos, which I think Benjamin would concede is legitimate even in his First Amendment rich environment and 2) “ageplay,” which the Lindens made a policy about: no promotion of sexualized ageplay. This may NOT meet First Amendment tests, but then, as Benjamin concedes, this is not an environment in which it can be mandated (and we’re still waiting to hear a VARIETY of legal opinion here on whether or not LL is a “common carrier”).

I *REALLY* cannot see anything but a HUGE STRETCH here on the notion that removing content that *incites the recognizable RL crime of unregulated online gambling* as removing them from the safe harbour concept. The presence of a few Lolitas here in the mix also don’t strike me as enough of a test of their having removed themselves from safe harbour *given the EU laws and the 60 percent non-American membership*. Incitement or promotion to commit a crime isn’t protected speech *in this private club setting*, is it? I don’t think so.

Basically, this concept — “Policing content, particularly when they do it on their own, is at least potentially problematic” — has an awful big hole in it — lack of definition of “common carrier” as applicable to Linden Lab. Lack of clarity as whether a private club can in fact have policies prohibiting the promotion or incitement of crimes.

And, once again — the Lindens are calling on the police informants to be the tipsters, and this removal of casinos and a few Lolitas really isn’t rising to the test of being a true “editing of the world” and enforcement of guidelines.

Try to realize the Lindens are not dilettantes; they have lawyers smarter and better than what most resident lawyers could come up with this because they do this for real, for pay, with real consequences — they don’t just play on an Internet forum with it.

I fail to see how Linden acquired MORE liability and “edited” and “guided” when they *did the opposite* in their statements and actions! They devolved responsibility for content *further* to the land-owning residents, and washed their hands of it, urging people to abuse report stuff they found “broadly offensive”. They themselves didn’t specify what THEY find broadly offensive — they said ‘You go find it’. They claimed extreme violence and obscenity was “always” broadly offensive” and “never allowed” but…they didn’t create any new cases or interpret the law.

I don’t care how cool and credentialed you are, Benjamin, I don’t care how many love pats Urizenus and Hamlet and everybody else is giving you on this “brilliant” idea, you have to face the fact that you have a basic, common-sense challenge to your legal “brilliance” here.

You have to show that Linden Lab seeks to guide and control.

You can’t. There’s no case. There’s not even a THREAT of a case because they said to the residents, “You decide.” Please answer that, and be socially responsible, whatever groups you have founded and whatever purpose your are realizing in SL.

Because they didn’t define, guide, control, makes lists. They told *the community* to do that. So you really need to
factor in that obvious hole in your legal theory here, truly.

Shockwave says, “Simplified – if LL doesn’t change or limit what its users do or create, then they are protected from prosecution by the “Common Carrier” clause of the law. This is the same clause which states that an ISP is not responsible if a user puts a dirty picture on their webpage. If LL starts censoring and restricting what can and can’t be said or done in its service, it loses that protection and is liable for everything inworld.”

And we have absolutely no official legal judgement — yet — that Linden Lab is a common carrier. Linden Lab has not yet removed a single “dirty picture” — although in the past, they’ve responded — IF abuse reported — to some really gross and extreme sexual pictures on group icons in search (but left the same pictures in a house alone).

I’ve talked to many lawyers about the issue of the common carrier status — they differ. Linden Lab is a private company with a private club — it has subscriptions and a TOS. Just because it’s open to anyone with broadband doesn’t mean it isn’t a private club with subscriptions and a TOS — and you know that.

You’re also terribly weakened in your argument, Benjamin, by not facing the music here on the issue of why, if you admit that the First Amendment does NOT pertain here, that we should care about it. Again, as I noted, your boss defines what’s “not safe for work” and you don’t squawk about the First Amendment there; what is it about SL that makes you think you *can* squawk. I know why I think we can squawk; I’d like to hear you articulate it.

I also thinks it’s terribly fun that Benjamin and other RL lawyers were so missing in action when stuff happened like my banning from the blog, booting from town halls, and such. No doubt, these august personages think that’s just “removing trolls” not “chilling speech”. No doubt, like matt Mihaly at Terra Nova, they think, oh, that’s just being an illegitimate troll, why, that’s just being selfish and thinking your little political spats matter, why, that’s not freedom of speech, says matt, that’s just failure to grasp the social structure by which you should be bound (!).

Truly, I’m less than impressed with the stampedes of kewl kids turning up now to crank about cramping of sexual expression that didn’t happen yet — who were cool to chilled on the issue of Meta Linden banging on third-party blogs, or on the suppression of political and economic expression. I’m beginning to get a vision of this Brave New World: freedom of sexual expression to keep the masses and the craven fuck-you hedonist leaders and content-creators happy; brutal suppression of political and economic expression. OK, glad we cleared that up.

Uri, since you’ve been the amen corner on this, I think you really need to parse this yourself: Linden did not guide or edit. They didn’t take action. There is only the legions of fanboyz who might or might not take action — and did we see that they did yet?

The Lindens removed “Lolita” stuff when they developed a policy about non-promotion of “ageplay”. Since the “broadly offensive” edict, I can’t see that they’ve unilaterally removed any content. I’m quite prepared to protest when they do; I don’t see it.

In the current climate in this business sector, it is almost impossible to be stupid enough to destroy a company.

I think that just following the policies of US authorities and LL is very educational. I make my own analysis of their laziness and errors. Just in case if somebody else wants to buy better solutions from me.

Isn’t being broadly vague paradoxically more honest policy by Lindens than the earlier one? Earlier they had more declared policies which they were either incapable or unwilling to follow.

As promised, I’m ignoring the rest of the comment.

From a business side though, LL wants to make SL a business tool and make a fortune. They want everything in it to be SFW. But those who built SL thus far are decidedly NSFW. Thus you have a conflict between the existing crowd and the new crowd. They can’t just cut out the 4Million customers and their wallets, and they can’t attract new businesses with the Anything Goes crowd in place. Catch 22.

The solution is to abandon the attempt to clean up the existing world and instead create a new mainland within it, one that is business oriented and squeaky clean. Our existing world becomes the “Wild West” where the current players live in SL as they always have. The characters already in world are grandfathered as “Adult” as well. All NEW players have to to through age-verification (without SSN and Driver license numbers) and the new continent gets called “Civilization”. To enter the Wild West, you’ll have to either be an existing player, or age verify. All new players can enter Civilization without any verification at all. You then have a business climate and a game climate within the same framework while claiming Common Carrier protection at the same time.

the only shortcoming will be the potential for underaged players in the existing crowd. Their status can be changed on an “as detected and caught” basis though, just as is done now. And in a couple of years, all the existing players will be over 18 automatically with the passing of time. So that problem will fix itself automatically. Just as the phone company has common carrier status while serving both personal and business needs, so can SL.

The argument that just because something happens in the People’s Democratic Republic of San Francisco, that is it acceptable elsewhere in the country.

“Will it play in Peoria” is an old saying in the entertainment industry, meaning will it have broad appeal. Would much of the ..um.. unusual policies and behaviors in the PDRSF “play in Peoria”? Not so much, IMHO.

That said, I agree that the “broadly offensive” criteria of LL is troubling. I agree that SL is not supposed to be a “better world”, but world where we can explore without the burden of our mortal coil.

And if all content that could be offensive having to have a special Adult classification — beyond PG or Mature (PG-13?) — where one has to give up their anonymity to access, how can they deny “broadly offensive” if they are going to quarantine everything broadly offensive to a special area?

I wouldn’t think that a belief about putting your brain in a vat is something that is a private, sequestered matter, but which would be part of your public repetoire.

So I repeat, who is the more wacky and immersed and fantastical here? Somebody who accepts that virtuality is a mode of being that is immersive and engaging and has real consequences for the human being, spiritually and materially? Or someone who believes their brain should be kept in a vat for revival after death, who places religious faith in technology?

When you get Urizenus saying “Amen” to a figure who presents himself as credentialed in RL, and who has grabbed titles like “SL Bar Association” and “SL Law Society” to run in SL, and then puts something over like this:

“First off, I don’t think that Second Life is a “new world where things are supposed to be better,” I think it’s a three-dimensional communication tool that simulates an environment we’re familiar with, but if you want to play that game, I’ll take the question. You’re damn right there’s a place for it — just like there is in a public library, an art gallery, and a history book.”

I *sure as hell* will push back, even though I, too, question the Lindens’ “Better World” stuff (I think they need to accurately observe and describe it before they go around hallucinating that it is “better”). I *sure as hell* will quote a conversation inworld that I have absolutely no reason to believe is “private” with a pubilc figure espousing his public positions, as a person representing himself as a voice of authority in SL and being endorsed by the Herald. I contacted you after you public meeting to ask your views on certain issues; if they’ve been prematurely exposed, well, there’s proof of my point that SL isn’t the communication tool you imagine, eh?

I’m sorry, but I just don’t see why I have to sit still for this. Otherwise, we all get smothered with this stuff. I *sure as hell* do not want to be smothered and told how I should interpret virtuality, placing it in some narrow-minded and reductive niche like a library shelf. I truly do resent being told I’m a fantasy RPer and nutter merely because I observe and affirm that virtuality is real and has real consequences. It’s no more an illegitimate affirmation than claiming that SL is merely an Internet communication tool.

If you’re going to get all shirty and use expressions like “you’re damn right” and make pronouncements like this, you can be sure I will counter it.

Petey is merely imposing here the usual, predictable W-hat Calvinism and prudishness about anyone who views virtuality other than the reductive and abusive plaything to annoy others anonymously that he does.