Mastercard England have been blocking Linden labs and disabling any cards used for a month now. The friendly chap from The Royal bank of Scotland told me Linden Labs has been hit by money laundering from stolen credit cards.

When I reported this to Linden by three methods, twice each – they never even bloody bothered to answer me.
2 Platinum cards, different banks

Some warning might be have been useful. My wife went f’ing AWOL

So am I a little bitter?

Bite me…..!

Archie Lukas

Where precisely did I say that ‘only’ in Europe was there a great deal of publicity? Where precisely did I say that ‘only’ in Europe did Second Life have a whole now image?

I didn’t.

Furthermore I don’t claim to be a Journalist – so journalistic principles don’t worry me much.

IF you’d troubled yourself to LOOK before commenting you’d have seen that my article is headed Op/Ed.
Opinion/Editorial – that means it’s my opinion.
What I write is my experience, my opinion. Nothing more and nothing less. You don’t care for it? Don’t read it.

And, as you obviously hadn’t noticed, presumably because pedophilia/ageplay issues are so important to you, the article was about the recent and worrying breakdown of many of Second Life’s core functions and their effect on SL’s economy. Reference to pedophilia was only a peripheral item mentioned casually in passing (before Uri censored it) as an explanation of my reluctance to waste my time (as events proved would have been the case) running down to my bank to insist they paid Second Life/Linden Lab at the insistence of LL’s billing department.

I’m not going to speculate why the pedophilia/ageplay issue seems SO important to you, why you feel the need to minimise the impact of these issues (while, somewhat perversely, drawing attention to them), that’s your problem.

Unless of course this is just an attempt to distract attention from the core issue: that Linden Lab is screwing up the SL economy by an unholy mixture of poor management decisions, general incompetence and their usual unwillingness to accept the fact that there are serious problems out there that need urgent attention.

Gotta say though, talking up the pedophilia/ageplay issue to draw attention away from billing/economic issues seems like a move of desperation to me

Let me break it to you:

1. The fact that the *UK* BBC web site had and article about a ‘child abuse’ claim, says absolutely nothing about the rest of Europe. The French and the big majority of the Europeans south of the Alps, get their news from their local news sources written in their own language. As for the Germans, even if they are more proficient in English, I still haven’t seen *one* to read his news from English sites. Thus the notion, “BBC posted it so all Europe is aware” is absurd and very much Anglo-centric.

2. I suggest to go back and read the BBC article more carefully. They just report the events objectively as they supposed to do and they indicate that that “LL would help identify users and pass on details to prosecutors”. Nowhere in the article is implied that “SL is a den of pedophiles and perverts” as you concluded. And since we play the link game, the same incident was reported on the Guardian and the Telegraph, again without any hint that SL has become a game for perverts:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/germany/article/0,,2075340,00.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/09/wvirtual109.xml

3. More on the link-game. The very same incident was also reported on many other major non European media. Few links:

US Today:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2007-05-11-second-life-porn_N.htm

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation:
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/05/09/tech-secondlifechildporngermany-20070509.html

Australian Broadcasting Corporation:
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2007/s1920981.htm

It can’t be more “major” media than those, eh? So how come, you reach the absurd conclusion that *only* in Europe there was “a great deal of publicity” and *only* in Europe “Second Life has a whole new image”?

I suggest researching your stories a little further before reaching to arbitrary conclusions and calling people smart-asses. It’s a basic journalistic principle. Oh wait, I said “journalistic”? Ah well…

Translated: “Don’t be smarter than me”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6638331.stm

There’s no exaggeration needed when the UK’s premier news source runs a story like that.

As for the assertion that Germans and French are signing up in increasing numbers since that story was broken in Germany?
Well, I’m afraid I couldn’t possibly comment on the implications of that.

“SecondLife… attracted a great deal of publicity in the European media which has tarred Linden Lab and SecondLife with the very unfortunate tag of being infested with pedophiles and perverts.”

Excuse me Inigo but where exactly do you come from? The European continent, next to the Olympus mountain in Mars?

I suppose that as a SLH “journalist” you have to exaggerate in order keep the drama levels high but your claims that there was “a great deal of publicity in the European media” and that SL has acquired “a whole new image in Europe” are way over the top if not a blatant lie.

I work in Germany and live in France, two of the countries where all the recent SLosphere drama originates, so I guess I am in a position to have an estimate about the “whole new image of SL in Europe”. The German “Report Mainz” is generally considered by the majority of the Germans as “yellow press” and it was mocked many times by the major German media for its “drama style journalism” (SLH anyone?). The French FdF (Familles de France) is an organization that is even more laughable by the major French media.

Except of the above two cases and some other insignificant articles, neither the German nor the French major media had *any* serious article about “SL being invested by pedophiles and perverts”. And most of the people I talk to, know SL as “that game that you can make money” and not as “the game that is the den of pedophiles and perverts”.

And your proof for that is that the SL signups from Germany (and possibly France) are *increased* the last two months (read your colleague’s Prok blog and the conversation with Meta Linden).