The Alphaville Herald

181 Responses to “‘Broadly Offensive’ Raid in Blister; Lindens Review Teen Anime Paintings”

1. 

   Q
   

   Jul 14th, 2007
   

   Sage.
2. 

   Also Sprachen Zarathustra
   

   Jul 14th, 2007
   

   Arrianna Asturias: And yes, child porn, real or cartoon is illegal in the US

   Wrong – a law against virtual child pornography was enacted by congress, but was struck down by the Supreme Court. No children are being raped in the production of virtual CP, which is the reason why CP is illegal in the first place. Therefore, since no children are harmed by the creation virtual CP, the law making it illegal was struck down – first amendment rights are more important than protecting non-existent children.

   REPORT BROADLY OFFENSIVE CONTENT! LIKE FURRY PORN!
3. 

   Alyx Stoklitsky
   

   Jul 14th, 2007
   

   I can confirm that Michael Linden’s avatar is indeed a ‘small, violently pink chibi squid’. Both cute and frightening at the same time.

   I suspect the reason the ‘offenders’ have not been permabanned is because LL seems to work on an ‘everything is ok until someone reports it’ kind of system.

   I know of numerous instances where lindens have been fully aware of content which violates ToS in one way or another, and have left it in existence for months on end until someone – usually an ‘enemy’ of the ‘offender’, has finally reported it purely as a way of getting at them.

   … In regards to the actual content itself, I have little care as to what people choose to do with some 3D models. We all know that there is far worse material in SL than this that has been allowed to exist for far, far longer.

   Two lines from the chat log stand out:

   ASCIIrider Hailey: ok it’s a GAME folks. .have any real minors had sex because of this?

   A voice of reason.

   Lexie Linden: Hi Mentors! Please do report things you see as being abuse and if you want to discuss or debate the topic among yourselves, please meet somewhere to do that : )

   …And a voice of “Hi Mentors! Please do our job for us, for free, and if you want to discuss or debate the topic among yourselves, please do it somewhere more private as this could be bad PR : )
4. 

   Inigo Chamerberlin
   

   Jul 14th, 2007
   

   Mentors now being called volunteers?
   Mentors now acting as a volunteer secret police for the more extreme Linden factions?

   Oh joy. Well, I can think of a few Mentors who never signed up for quasi-legal witch hunts and will be leaving the group shortly.
5. 

   Khamon
   

   Jul 14th, 2007
   

   Does Michael’s pink chibi squid avatar still wear his signature red fez?
6. 

   Obscure Doodad
   

   Jul 14th, 2007
   

   The PR drip drip drip continues of SL being a place where this is found in mature/adult areas. And yet . . . there are still some who think entering yourself into an Age Verified database of perverts would be a meaningless and riskless action to take — and that no divorce attorney would ever think of seeking a Subpoena Duces Tecum to find you there in order to affect the divorce settlement for his client (and his own income).

   SL has to come up with an answer, and fast. Asking volunteers to report such things is not going to please the court. It will indicate a choice on LL’s part not to spend their own money to police their own product to comply with the laws of the countries where they do business. It will not be long now until some enterprising DA decides to inform them that the measure of their cooperation will be what % of annual revenue is spent on this policing activity — and that south of 10% will be declared “uncooperative”.
7. 

   Prokofy Neva
   

   Jul 14th, 2007
   

   >And yet . . . there are still some who think entering yourself into an Age Verified database of perverts would be a meaningless and riskless action to take — and that no divorce attorney would ever think of seeking a Subpoena Duces Tecum to find you there in order to affect the divorce settlement for his client (and his own income).

   Yes. Not some, but many. Again, whatever concerns you have, I’d like to see some citations of actual cases where this has been done successfully, unchallenged, in a divorce case. I have limited experience I guess, as I’ve seen Duces Tecum (“duke ‘us, take ‘em) subpoenas used in security or other types of federal cases — and not always successfully, as they are fishing expeditions — and I’ve never seen them in local divorce proceedings, but I’m not a lawyer. In fact, this site is an example of how the excessive use of duces tecum is challenged:

   http://www.brandeslaw.com/litigation_and_procedure/abuses_subpoena.htm
   ” Because the statutory subpoena authority is so broad, and the recipient may be subject to contempt sanctions for failure to comply, courts have imposed limitations on the use of subpoena power. The Court stated that generally, a subpoena duces tecum may not be used for the purpose of discovery or to ascertain the existence of evidence.

   Please, let’s not have Internet lawyers and not-yet-passed-the-bar students with political agendas pronounce on this. Let’s hear from really seasoned, practiced trial attorneys (not corporate lawyers) actually dealing with cases where they can really affirm that they or their colleagues could successfully subpoena the records of a so-called “perv data base” of SL users who verified their agesg with a third-party age verification case.
8. 

   Nina A
   

   Jul 14th, 2007
   

   “a cut-out of a decidedly underage fairy”

   ROFL at what age do fairies come of age? Thanks Prokofy, this made me really giggle in a not very nice story.
9. 

   Jessica Holyoke
   

   Jul 14th, 2007
   

   Wow, Prok, I didnt’ even comment and you still try to slam me.
10. 

    Angel
    

    Jul 14th, 2007
    

    Hionimi is typical of the puritans who are up in arms, people like her overreact to the nth degree.

    “Hionimi Engawa: Yes yes, I’m checking their profiles, they really do perform child porn! D:<”

    Knowing nemo and kid society well (It’s not mainland BTW) there is no chance 6 kids are doing child porn together, especially in the sim where Nemo is, more likely Hionimi is doing the normal things these people do and is perving herself at the kids and into their profiles (probably with detached camera from 5 sims away) and seeing “10 year old (over 18 IRL)” and “7 year old (adult IRL)” and is really laying it on saying “Oh they are kids, they must be having sex… CHILD PORN”.

    Nemo is certainly not a paedo-playground, I doubt Loki would allow such things to happen on his land, especially since he is the head of SLC. A scandal like that could hurt the most honest, clean and reputable kids group (hmmm, maybe thats the aim of the puritans in crying wolf?)

    Other places like AdvI are far more likely to have kids “playing”, but then, thats a locked down sim.
11. 

    Benjamin Duranske (avatar 'Benjamin Noble')
    

    Jul 14th, 2007
    

    I’m not going to get into a forum war here (I tend to avoid those, mostly by almost never posting in forums) but I feel it is important to post here because it clears things up quite a bit, and because it is the reason you won’t see a post on this issue at Virtually Blind, even though I just wrote it up.

    I killed the piece before it was published because I spoke with ‘Lisae Boucher’ in world. ‘Lisae’ stated regarding the potentially offending content, that she and her partner “removed it ourselves after some of the more reasonable persons asked us to.” (Yes, TOS cops, this was explicitly on the record.)

    Because this makes the situation a non-issue from a legal perspective (and at least arguably from a news perspective too) I’m not posting on it. Back to your regularly scheduled flamewar.
12. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Jul 14th, 2007
    

    Bejamin, not only do you lack imagination, you apparently lack knowledge of the civil rights movement if you can’t see the issues of principle here about surveillance by vigilantes empowered by the state, and surveillance that leads to intimidation. And I know you’d like to enjoy a rich sense of triumphant superiority that you have trumped me in a story and trumped the tabloid Herald but…you’re wrong, and you don’t have all the facts, and the story isn’t over yet.

    This is indeed news, and not because of some prurient tabloid aspect of kiddie porn, but because the norms and practices of common law are being established for the whole Metaverse now, and they are shrinking the definition of what is broadly acceptable, not expanding it — and they are doing it on the basis of informants’ reports, not a distinct set of legal guidelines by the rule of law. Surely you can appreciate this, and not look at some narrow construction of whether there is or isn’t “a case.”

    Some of the more reasonable persons? So vigilantes in the neighbourhood fetch up mentors, and they then argue among themselves (as we saw them do last week? hello?) and then “more reasonable ones” suggest it be removed? And that’s ok?

    Femke Bikcin also contacted me just now in an offline IM, in response to my query last night.

    She says, “Nope, all false claims. The Lindens came, saw and didn’t consider it offensive. Yet someone in the area doesn”t seem to like the fact that I have some adult images on my land so they try to falsely accuse me to get rid of me.”

    But…if the claims are false, if the Lindens came and saw and didn’t consider it offensive, why did she remove it?

    Volunteers who came and saw and reported what they viewed as “broadly offensive” saw pictures of adult men looking very human, with erect penises, with distinctly underage human-looking girls, underwater. They say Michael Linden came and ‘force-copied’ the material, using God mode. This material was removed. The mentors may differ in how to interpret this stuff, but they agreed that this was actionable under the newly-applied TOS “broadly offensive” language.

    If it were ok, why was it removed? And by whom? Sorry, but there’s still more to this story, and we’re still checking it.

    You don’t ask that question — perhaps you weren’t told the story about the Lindens coming and ostensibly finding it not offensive (then why did they copy it?).

    As Csven Concord would teach us, even if it is removed, it is still on the servers. And if it showed RL children, it is criminal. Were they RL children? Or were they images so life-like from being modelled in 3-D from images on the Internet that they seemed real?

    If you look at the accused’s art works still on site, you see she makes mixed collages containing pictures from RL of RL people and scenes, anime or Internet image artwork, poser-made images she herself makes, all mixed together. So…can we be sure if there is any porn of an illegal nature there even for the U.S.? And what percentage of “real” in a mixed collage with “virtual” makes it “real porn”? And even if it is NOT illegal in the US, you surely have grasped the fact that in Europe, it *is* unlawful even being a cartoon.

    I’m glad to hear you, the accused, and the Lindens say that even if something broadly offensive is found, if you delete it instantly upon warning, or in anticipation of warning, as those people last August did with whatever they had in Yeonchong, then there is no crime. Csven Concord thinks there *is* a crime even if it is deleted because it remains on the Lindens’ servers and because evidently he believes that if a crime takes place, even if evidence of the crime and the criminal content is removed, the crime still stands. Perhaps you can enlighten us all on that aspect.

    What we have here, Benjamin is the Lindens recruiting and training a more formalized police informants’ group. Before, they merely encouraged police-informants anywhere to inform. It was a random affair.

    Helpers were used primarily for helping newbies. Live Help responded *when you called them*. So these helpers and volunteers heard about situations *when they were contacted*. There was living, connective tissue between local scenes and these “watchers”. People could call Live Help and know that it was under supervision constantly from Lindens and staffed by Lindens even. If you found something really objectionably, you would call Live Help, and they’d respond.

    Note how the situation is terribly changed now. The Helpers are no longer live, and no longer connected to live, grassroots information. Their role has gone from being first responders to first surveillers. They now go around the grid looking for stuff. They sound their networks and get around and get people to inform to them, not Lindens.

    The Lindens set this up because they closed Live Help and can’t scale it. But the system they have now, with a bunch of arguing people, some untrained from the looks of it, with some Linden intervention but never enough, are going around and deciding when they can harass their fellow residents with intimidation and fears of going to the wall over an anime image. That’s wrong. That’s the kind of bullshit stunt that Cven pulled by harassing my tenants because they merely had a swingset out, targeting them because he had a disagreement with me.

    If the Lindens have a rule that all child anime porn is unacceptable in SL due to European and other restrictions outside the US, then they need specific language explaining that in their TOS and dropped down immediately before they encourage hordes of people to abuse report their neighbours and intimidate them.

    I hope Uri and others can see that these issues they imagine as petty squabbles or flame wars are in fact very principled and very substantive matters. It really does matter where you have a police state run by informants rather than police under the rule of law who judge against an open and clear set of standards or guidelines.

    What we have is the empowerment of mentors — a very unevenly skilled and sometimes malicious and abusive group — to go around and decide what’s offensive and blow it into the Lindens and see if they can get it to stick.
13. 

    Lisae Boucher
    

    Jul 14th, 2007
    

    First let get some facts straight. I went online because someone gave me a warning about visitors on my land accusing me of childporn. When I arrived, Michael Linden was already there and I checked my chat logs to see if I could detect what the reason of all this was. As it turns out, some griever had put a sign about missing children on my land. I never gave permission for that and the sign was removed before I had the chance to remove it myself.

    I’ve had a talk with the Lindens and they haven’t indicated to me that the material was inappropriate in any way. I haven’t received any warning nor did the Lindens remove any material from my land.

    However, since people were clearly upset about some material on this land, I removed some of the images that were considered offensive. Not because the Lindens asked me, but because a few of the more friendlier neighbours asked me. And I am willing to comply when people just ask me nicely.

    The offensive images were nudes, not porn. Put in places where I would consider them out of view and in an area marked as mature. There has been a discussion about one of the models and the grievers make it appear as if all the models in my artwork are underage. I use several adult models and one teen model, yet a person age 18 or 19 is also considered a teen. Then again, if you look for teens on the Internet, you’d probably end up with images of adults anyway. On the Internet, the word “Teen” is more used to indicate youthful looks than a real age indication.

    However, there is a small group of grievers who are trying to make an enormous scandal out of this. Apparently they get a kick out of creating such conflicts. They are now out there trying to get others to do the dirty work for them. Hoping that others will start to harass me. Such kind of behavior is just so wrong and it only gets themselves in trouble. I had to report a couple of people already for violating the SL rules and if need be, I will continue to report people who just continue this harassment. SL doesn’t approve of this kind of intolerance.

    If you do disagree with the material on my land then the proper way would be to contact me, ask me about it. Perhaps even ask me to remove it. If the offensive material is still on my land and you really think it’s offensive then you can also report it, let the Lindens decide about it. And if they too think it’s not offensive then bad luck but we all see things in SL that we consider offensive ourselves. This would be the proper way to handle this.

    However, the grievers who started this conflict just want to draw a lot of attention to this area. I own this land for about 48 hours now (and apparently some people don’t like me as a neighbor) and already the traffic on my land went up from 0 to over 4700. Well, it’s one way to increase the land value. Is that what these grievers are after? Increasing the land value? Does it make sense to invite lots of people to an area where there’s the sale of offensive material? What purpose does it serve, except the need of getting a lot of attention for themselves?

    Anyway, I think someone in the area became upset because I bought some land that they might had hoped of buying. It’s for sale again so if they really want to get me out of the area, all they have to do is buy it. (And they get all objects for free in it too.) But instead they prefer to report me to the Lindens. What do they hope to gain? That the Lindens will kick me out and that the land becomes available for sale again, at a much lower price?

    I can only guess about the motives of these grievers. I do know that there is a lot of material out there in SL that is far worse. And material that is even more questionable. And I have serious suspicions about the real motives of those who have accused me.
14. 

    Nina A
    

    Jul 14th, 2007
    

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/901723.stm
15. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Jul 14th, 2007
    

    Lisae,

    I’m glad you got a chance to tell your side of the story here. I do have to ask why, if Michael Linden came and went, didn’t find anything “broadly offensive” and didn’t ask you to remove anything, that you felt you had to remove something underwater, out of sight to all but the most curious neighbours zooming in or physically diving in.

    Did Michael Linden click on and “force-copy” the material?

    As you can see from my report here, volunteers (formerly mentors) definitely found this material offensive, and took it upon themselves to abuse report it and get Lindens to the scene. They were tipped off by your neighbours. And they continue to believe they were right, and that the material did fit under the newly-enforced section of the TOS about “broadly offensive” which can mean even cartoons of anime if they are shown in lewd poses.

    The issue is not just your neighbours who want to find some way to get their hands on some water (couldn’t they buy one of the many other parcels on the sim for sale?), or a group of griefers, but a Linden-organized group of volunteers who are empowered to go around abuse-reporting on their fellow residents systematically, looking for broadly-offensive material.

    How should the Lindens proceed? Are they really to encourage an organized para-state force that goes looking for trouble, intimidates people, does the dirty work, yet never actually has a case, so that the Lindens never really have to decide?

    No, they simply have to create a set of realistic guidelines. And if they are not willing to put them in the TOS, they need to train all those entering this Volunteers force in what is and isn’t acceptable, what they should be abuse reporting, and “tipping off,” and what they should not be.

    And if they abuse report, that should be the end of it. They shouldn’t be making scenes, visits, gossip-sessions and camp-outs with the neighbours, etc. An abuse report, a Linden eventually gets a look at it, end of story.

    Otherwise this climate of intimidation and vigilantism will grow.
16. 

    Marianne McCann
    

    Jul 14th, 2007
    

    Um… Nemo? Not even close to an offensive sim, let along “child porn.” Loki and the rest of the SLC, which many of us do use Nemo, are not promoting such. Heck, we’re usually the first to complain about such. Sounds to me like someone is out of line – and it ain’t the people of Nemo.
17. 

    Lisae Boucher
    

    Jul 14th, 2007
    

    And to make one thing clear: I have removed images because the neighbors considered them disturbing, not because they are illegal, since they are not. (At least, not in my opinion but you can disagree about that.) I have removed some material from other areas too that these grievers are calling offensive. Not because it is, but to make sure this whole conflict and difference of opinions just ends. It feels as if I’m giving in to terrorism in some way, and it’s not far off anyways. Wouldn’t surprise me to see one of those grievers enter my land carrying some bomb one day, which is why they have been banned before they hurt themselves.

    It is NOT my intention to offend people and if people just ask me nicely, they will find that I’m very willing to listen to their arguments. And it’s very well possible to have normal discussions with reasonable people but in this case I’m dealing with fanatics.

    Finally, I’ve had several people already ask me why I have so many nude Poser models. The reason is very simple. It’s not that easy to add clothes to the models and make sure it fits every time you change a pose of the model. You can see several minor errors in those models that do have clothes in my art. I’m just using Poser for 4 months now and still need to learn a lot about it. For now, I tend to focus on light, perspective and shadows. Which happens to be easier when the model isn’t carrying so many additional items.

    Fortunately, hair is a bit easier else several models would have been bald…
18. 

    anon
    

    Jul 14th, 2007
    

    Linden makes no sense at all.

    Report “Broadly Offensive”, yet they themselves deem a PG rating system that stands for “Parental Guidance”.

    Well, you know, if no minors are supposed to be in SL main grid in the first place, why in the heck is there PG, Mature, etc.. anyhow? I mean, if this is for MATURE ADULTS in the first place, then where exactly, and how exactly would any Parental Guidance be needed?

    Not much of what Linden has done to date makes any sense. Other than they purposely left the front door open letting minors on the main grid.

    Some have proposed that PG just stands for no adult material. Well, I assure you that PG areas in SL have nude avatar bodies depicted in all sorts of ways.

    Nothing Linden does makes any sense.
19. 

    Lisae Boucher
    

    Jul 14th, 2007
    

    I don’t know if Michael Linden did a “force-copy” but he did appreciate it that I responded so fast, even though I was off line when the whole thing started. He didn’t say he approved the material but neither did he say that he disapproved it either. And I can understand why, since it’s a difficult decision to make.

    The reason for me to remove the material is simply because I am new in that region and didn’t want the neighbors to be too upset. Not because I consider the material to be offensive but because I want the people around my land to have careless lives too. If something upsets them, fine. Talk to me and I’ll make adjustments, if it’s reasonable.

    Btw, the underwater art can be simply explained. I am working on an art generator which is a simple script that makes multiple copies of a single object but with different textures. It’s an interesting little project and I experimented with it the night before these events started. Unfortunately I also had some problems with my viewer and connection and it kept dropping away. So after crasking a couple of dozens of times I just gave up and wanted to wait to clean up what was hidden under water to begin with. Which also explains why I removed these images later since I never intended to keep them there in the first place.

    And yes, several -but not all- volunteers considered it to be offensive. But instead of just reporting it to the Lindens some people just started to invite more people over to my place. And when I myself arrived there, people started to insult me and even attacked me with scripted objects. There was no chance of having a reasonable discussion until I banned several persons and disabled the creation of objects or use of scripts. Real sad that I had to do that. Worse if I continue to have to protect myself.

    And maybe this group of volunteers just got out of hand. They act like a bunch of vigilantes or whatever, trying to decide what should be the law, as long as it’s their rules. And those who disagree with this are very unwelcome, apparently. They are NOT the police and I think they crossed the lines here about what is reasonable. Their actions have required me to report several persons for their misbehavior and some real fanatics just continue to stalk me wherever I go.

    I think it would be best if this group gets reorganized and all the puritan fanatics need to be removed. SL has no place for this kind of censorship. SL has no room for a dictatorship. It cannot be ruled by just a small group of obsessive people.

    I do understand why LL uses these volunteers, though. It’s more effective than having their own employees check each and every region. But these volunteers do need to follow the rules. The rules apply to everyone and being a volunteer doesn’t give anyone the right to start harassing others.

    If there are more questions, feel free to ask and I’m willing to answer them.
20. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Jul 14th, 2007
    

    >And to make one thing clear: I have removed images because the neighbors considered them disturbing, not because they are illegal, since they are not. (At least, not in my opinion but you can disagree about that.) I have removed some material from other areas too that these grievers are calling offensive. Not because it is, but to make sure this whole conflict and difference of opinions just ends. It feels as if I’m giving in to terrorism in some way, and it’s not far off anyways.

    This is a very disturbing development, and does point to the urgent need for a) more clarity to be given in the form of guidelines about what is and is not to be abuse reported by volunteers and other residents b) specific language in a revised TOS that is pushed soon for agreement.

    Child pornography, whether of the RL kind, or the virtual/anime/painted/imaged kind, is against this newly-revised TOS.

    But I have to say that it is easier to state this broadly, than to enforce it specifically.

    Example: the other night I was called to a scene of some recently-returned tenants who had expired, left, and returned with some new roomies and new pictures. They were being griefed by some French furry in some mafia group, not clear if he was hired, or what his story was. He had caged their entire group in a large cage, and was seeking to cage them in small cages as they tried to escape. They hadn’t set their prims or turned on autoreturn yet.

    The house was only half rezzing, and I wondered if somehow it had been left in share and the fox had stolen it because it just didn’t rez. I kept trying to right-click and ban the fox, but he had me frozen, or was using one of these shields or hacked clients where attempting eject just simply doesn’t work. I struggled to type his name into the land menu, but then couldn’t do it — my game froze. I had to relog about 4 times to get back online — it was the usual post-patch nightmare.

    I struggled to get these hysterical tenants to type in the guy’s name and to put on autoreturn to stop his cages from sticking, the house finally rezzed in, and I saw a picture on the wall of the anime type. I don’t follow anime or know the memes, but this was some kind of grotesque anime. The characters looked like little girls with pigtails, but their features were exaggerated and cartoony. One of the “girls” had a penis, and another of the “girls” was giving a BJ. Not a pretty sight, but one that was so clearly grotesque, so clearly a cartoon and not from real life, so clearly not even of the disturbing nature of SL avatar porn (because SL avatars *are not* grotesque and are realistic, the child “ageplay” porn is very disturbing).

    Was this an actionable item? Before I could even determine who was the creator or owner, the tenants came back, refunded and whisked away all their belongings, leaving only a crib. It didn’t seem to me as if there was anything to report about them, but perhaps the fox vigilante had attacked them over their “lifestyle”.

    The problem with this kind of scene is that if you are not an art expert/porn expert/anime expert, the first time you see something like this (and it was the first time I saw this kind of thing of exactly this type), you find it so grotesque, and awful, that you are taken aback, but you can’t call it “child porn” in any way precisely because it *is* so clearly a grotesque drawing and not taken from RL, and not taken from enactment with avatars. That seems to put it in a different class.

    Had these tenants opted to stay, I would have informed them that their artwork could be deemed offensive and could well get them abuse reported by others, and would ask them to withdraw it, since it could well fit the definition of “Real-life images, avatar portrayals, and other depiction of sexual or lewd acts involving or appearing to involve children or minors”.

    I would feel as if I weren’t an expert in doing this, however, and would feel as if I didn’t have sufficiently clear guidelines to work with.
21. 

    Lisae Boucher
    

    Jul 14th, 2007
    

    > Child pornography, whether of the RL kind, or the virtual/anime/painted/imaged kind, is against this newly-revised TOS.

    Yep. I fully agree with that. Problem is, what is the definition of porn? If I would live in a country like Iran, showing my bare face in public would almost be considered pornographic already. At least, there will be a lot of people who take offense over it. But when visiting the nudist beach in Cap D’Agte in France, no one will even bother to be offended by looking at a young adult naked woman. Or a naked girl, about 10 years ago. It just depends how much a community is willing to accept.

    Another point that I want is that there are many people who are offended by images of topless women. However, there have been several cases in the USA already where the judge decided it is considered discrimination if a guy can walk somewhere topless but a woman cannot. For this reason a lot of beach areas are now forced to accept topless women. Others are still trying to fight this decision but some just gave in and added the rule that guys cannot be topless in those areas either. Still, in the USA it seems a single bare tit can set up the whole nation while in reality it’s just a small group of people who complain about it. However, they do it in a way that intimidates a lot of others and if given the chance, they would dare to end democracy and just dictate their rules upon all others.

    It is weird, though. Next to one of my lands there’s a large area that’s actually dedicated to age play. There are children toys and you can even buy or rent children there. I have always wondered if I should report it or not but I have a recorder device and it never recorded any inappropriate discussion around the area where I put it. It is mature land, though. And you could consider it more questionable than the material on my own land. But when adults are pretending to be children WITHOUT any sexual context behind it, is it wrong? Is it that much different than other kinds of roleplay? Where should we draw the line?

    Well, It’s not something that I can decide about. I know there are about 6 billion different opinions about this anyways. Depending on whom you ask, people should either be stoned to death or just encouraged so they get in contact with their inner child.

    People don’t realize why there are laws against childporn and similar laws. It’s not because the material is offensive but because people fear it will encourage adults to start abusing children. But the effects of this kind of material has never been fully researched.
    It is also claimed that many Islamic countries where women have to cover up their whole bodies have much lower rape statistics than Europe or the USA. But is this because of the dress code or because women need to have four male witnesses or else they just admit they’ve had sex outside of wedlock. (The latter is a crime in these countries and the death penalty is a common punishment for these rape victims who admitted they’ve been raped.)

    I know one thing, though. As a nudist I discovered that the guys bother me a lot less when I’m at the nudist beach than when I’m wearing a bikini at the regular beach. Guys at the nudist beach are a lot less obsessed with looking at naked bodies, except for the occasional newbie who tends to stick out…
    Also makes me wonder if the rate statistics would be much lower if we started to accept nudity more often. Lots of people still confuse nudity with sex for some reason. Probably religious motives. Yet all humans are born nude, as God intended them to be. For those who are religious, do keep in mind that according to the Bible, humans just started to wear clothes after they’ve sinned for the first time. Clothes just to hide their sins, as if it would help…

    Anyway, Don’t want to get distracted about this view on nudism. And again, I’m not an expert in these matters so I can’t make any judgments about this matter. But neither can those volunteers who think they are Judge, Jury and Executioner.
22. 

    Jessica Holyoke
    

    Jul 14th, 2007
    

    I know Prokofy didn’t ask for my opinion, but I’m going to give it anyway.

    One thing that makes this interesting to me, that Prok and Benjamin didn’t address, is that if the mentor/volunteer group, that’s supposedly associated with the Lindens, can spot and report child pornography, or whatever you want to call it, then why can’t they spot copyright or trademark infringing works? If the volunteers can police one type of content, why not all illegal content? Would this suggest that the Lindens have more control over the content than they proclaim?

    And to Obscure, let me break it down for you, in a common sense, non-legal way. Age verification as described is not supposed to retain personal identifying information. According to Robin Linden two weeks ago, the process is supposed to be seeing if whatever you provide as a RL identification actually exists as a RL identifier. Which means if you provide a driver’s license number, is there an actual driver’s license number that matches that?

    Also, age verification is supposed to help residents identify who is verified or not. Therefore, a quick check of the profile should be enough to see if the avatar is verified or not. There’s no need to prove that a person verified with a third party if its readily available on their profile.

    Without the information retention, what does being age verified prove? It just means that if you age verified you went to an adult content area. And because adult content can also mean “extreme violence,” it doesn’ prove sexual activity.

    Also, if you like adult content in SL, you probably like adult content on other parts of the internet. And that means a defendant specific trail of cookies, temporary files, passwords and internet history that’s discoverable by making a motion on the defendant.

    Lastly, if I was overseeing a divorce with a heavy SL user, I would subpeona Linden labs for all the chat logs of the defendant. That’s the more interesting source of data. Because that would show who the defendant was talking to and if the defendant was engaging in a virtual affair. And having an affair is not dependent on being age verified.
23. 

    Jessica Holyoke
    

    Jul 14th, 2007
    

    Oh and about that US law regarding virtual child pornography.

    The issue the US Supreme Court had with the original law is that it encompassed all virtual, or seems like a child pornography. The example typically given was “Romeo and Juliet” as depicting a 12 year old girl engaging in sex. Congress went back and rewrote the law to allow for works that are not obscene. Because SL child avatar sex can lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value, appeal to the prurient interest and go against community standards, or if its a minor engaging in almost any sexual activity and lacking value as stated above, it can still be illegal in the US. 18 USCS § 1466A
24. 

    isan vansant
    

    Jul 14th, 2007
    

    one of the SL Stasi, is so outraged that she feels the need to attack others without concern about her own profile on http://www.slprofiles.com/minime/Hionimi
    to quote “As young kitty, around 14 years of age, Hionimi
    started to notice something was strange with her bust.
    They grew abnormally fast as she was in her teenaging
    years, She had cup G when she was 15.
    They still grew at that age, after some tests,
    it was clear that Hionimi had a rare desease
    that made her lobules generate milk endlessly.
    Though after they started to get bigger than
    cup N she figured out how to lactate.
    She can now do that to simply adjust their size!
    Thus why she sometimes have smaller bosoms when
    she is tired, and bigger when she feels up for it.”
    so we have a ava that suggest that she has big breasts and is underage by Linden standards, hmmmmmmm
25. 

    Yumi Murakami
    

    Jul 14th, 2007
    

    Volunteers have recieved no instructions or special powers to police content in Second Life.

    One person happened to find the content, and because they were a Volunteer themselves, decided to use group chat to ask the other Volunteers if they should AR it. This was simply a request for help; volunteers do tend to help people who ask for it and the reporter in this case took advantage of the fact that, as a volunteer themselves, they could use the group channel – but that’s all.

    To say that this incidental group chat somehow reflects an agenda for the Volunteer group is a complete misrepresentation.
26. 

    Angel
    

    Jul 14th, 2007
    

    > one of the SL Stasi, is so outraged that she feels the need to attack others
    > without concern about her own profile on http://www.slprofiles.com/minime/Hionimi

    “I mostly like girls as I’m mostly lesbian, though teasing boys can be fun too! :3″

    That explains it. As Nemo is a prime hangout for boys she was offended that she didn’t see any girls so she ARed the boys.

    Frustrated puritan. Buth then.. I guess they all are.
27. 

    Solar Legion
    

    Jul 14th, 2007
    

    In case you could not tell by the profile there Isan …. The Avatar you have linked to is not depicting a Human.

    Last I checked Linden Lab has been going after Human avatars and their real life equivalents.
28. 

    Lisae Boucher
    

    Jul 14th, 2007
    

    As Jessica Holyoke says: “why can’t they spot copyright or trademark infringing works?”

    Good point! But I think I know one reason for this. I have some images that I’ve used in the past (and still use) which originate from a few adult websites. However, before using those images I did send a request to the owners of those sites asking for permission to use those images within Second Life. They allowed this as long as there’s some reference back to their sites. Thus, I cannot remove any copyright notices from those images but I am still allowed to use them. For these sites it’s just an additional form of advertisement, since there will just be a few images that spread around this way. They know that most customers will sooner or later end up at their site and sooner or later those people might actually join. So as far as I know, owners of these adult sites have no problems with a few of their images being used within SL.

    Actually, one of the owners of these adult sites didn’t even know what SL was but was still interested in knowing more about SL. So I invited him to SL, gave him a small tour and explained how things work. So if there has been a rise in the amount of adult images in SL, you know whom to blame.

    Same problem with trademark infringements. Who is to decide if something infringes a copyright or trademark? Actually, the same problem with images. Who decides if a model or avatar in Second Life is underage or not? Also take a look at all that Manga/Hentai stuff all over the Internet, including SL. Or Anime in general. Often those Anime images seem to refer to quite young people, yet they tend to end up in many questionable situations. So how to determine age of a cartoon character? It’s always a problem to have to determine this. So in the end, volunteers just have to use common sense and report anything they consider to be a violations and just let the Lindens sort it all out.

    Reminds me a bit of the Spanish Inquisition, though. They would command a whole village to be wiped out, everyone murdered, so it would be up to God to sort out the true believers and send all others to Hell. At least, these volunteers do seem to behave like this, which is not a good thing.

    Btw, about Hionimi Engawa… Isan, if I read that profile correctly then her avatar developed huge breasts at age 14 which continued to grow at age 15. However, the story continues to say that they grew after that age, thus her avatar is a minimum of 15 years old, but more likely a few years older. She’s a cup N now, according to the story. Thus she grew about 7 more cup sizes. That’s not something that happens overnight so she’s a borderline case. So it’s just another case where it’s not easy to make a clear judgment.

    Don’t see how your story relates to this whole topic but it did provide me a good example of how people can mis-interpret the things they see. And if you start a mass hysteria over such things…
29. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Jul 14th, 2007
    

    Volunteers have recieved no instructions or special powers to police content in Second Life.

    I find that to be misleading to the extreme, Yumi. By their very nature, Volunteers have special powers — they’re Volunteers! They’re selected as a class apart and *encouraged* to abuse report in a kind of concentrated way. All residents are encouraged to abuse report; but here, with this organized group, with a special communications channel with Lindens in it constantly, you have a concentrated force of “voluntarism” and you have essentially a ready-made squad of people to go get ‘em.

    It used to be that Volunteers helped newbies primarily. And they took calls in Live Help. Now that Live Help is closed, they don’t take calls…they take tips. And that’s different. It’s not an open accountable system. I can’t call it and complain. It’s not open. It’s closed. Only special people get picked for it, and talk privately among themselves, with Lindens. It’s a class of overlords. As I’ve warned repeatedly about it, it’s going to acquire more powers. It wants more powers. It wants abuse report buttons on events lists to abuse report the hell out of yardsalers it hates; it wants abuse reports on classifieds to abuse report casinos; it wants to be able to remove content when it sees it in violation — the Lindens are also actively discussing the possibility of having these people be able to ban/eject griefers from welcome areas and infohubs.

    >One person happened to find the content, and because they were a Volunteer themselves, decided to use group chat to ask the other Volunteers if they should AR it. This was simply a request for help; volunteers do tend to help people who ask for it and the reporter in this case took advantage of the fact that, as a volunteer themselves, they could use the group channel – but that’s all.

    They didn’t “happen to find it,” Yumi, and it wasn’t just one of them. There are entire groups roaming around just to police this; they overlap and interact with Volunteers. Some people join Volunteers just to be able to satisfy their zeal to be able to police their fellow man.

    As one of them yourself, you’re bending over WAY to backward to give them a clean bill of health. But you can’t. They are sinister as a system precisely because only Lindens pick them, and they have sliding scales of criteria for how they do this. It’s highly discretionary — and that’s one of the reasons applications pile up so much, as only “our sort” are picked.

    To claim that this was just somebody “looking for help” is ridiculous because I’ve seen some of these same people in the Concierge channel with these same complaints and I’ve seen these identical conversations in other groups.

    Not at all. These are Volunteers, using the officially-sanctioned channel. The Lindens come on and what do they do? They encourage them to go out and abuse report, but to discuss it among themselves, not on the channel. Even more secretive!
30. 

    meh
    

    Jul 14th, 2007
    

    I think it’s important to note that the PROTECT Act, which codifies US. 18 USCS § 1466A, as mentioned by Jessica Holyoke has not yet been constitutionally challenged. It suffers from much of the same constitutional deficiencies as the original CPPA, provisions of which were successfully challenged and struck down as unconstitutional in Ashcroft v Free Speech Coalition.

    More intelligible analysis can be found here, for example:
    http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/analysis.aspx?id=11865
31. 

    Mark
    

    Jul 15th, 2007
    

    “To say that this incidental group chat somehow reflects an agenda for the Volunteer group is a complete misrepresentation.”

    Eh, I think it’s probably pretty indicative of how these things are being “handled” by that group. A group I used to be in for a very long time, btw, until a bunch of new volunteers a couple of summers ago decided that the group was more of a badge than a teaching certificate.

    You can nearly hear them licking their chops in that chat log.

    I am in full agreement with Prok and Lisae here – this is complete bullshit, and a very bad sign for SL.
32. 

    Yumi Murakami
    

    Jul 15th, 2007
    

    > I find that to be misleading to the extreme, Yumi. By their very nature,
    > Volunteers have special powers — they’re Volunteers!

    Um, in what weird version of English does the word “Volunteer” imply special powers? Volunteers have exactly one special ability: they can teleport to the newbie Help Islands and Orientation Islands. That’s all, the end!

    > They’re selected as a class apart and *encouraged* to abuse report in a
    > kind of concentrated way. All residents are encouraged to abuse report;
    > but here, with this organized group, with a special communications
    > channel with Lindens in it constantly, you have a concentrated force
    > of “voluntarism” and you have essentially a ready-made squad of people
    > to go get ‘em.

    There aren’t Lindens constantly in the Volunteer channel. There _were_ in the Live Help channel, but they didn’t involve themselves in any general chat, as they were too busy dealing with the Live Help calls! And they’ve never used it for encouraging anyone to AR anything.

    > It used to be that Volunteers helped newbies primarily. And they took
    > calls in Live Help. Now that Live Help is closed, they don’t take
    > calls…they take tips. And that’s different. It’s not an open
    > accountable system. I can’t call it and complain. It’s not open. It’s
    > closed. Only special people get picked for it, and talk privately among
    > themselves, with Lindens. It’s a class of overlords.

    Um, Prok.. *anyone* can file an AR. What you seem to be saying is that we’d have to ban discussion of ARs on *any* group chat channel, because after all, all the people in the group could get together and file multiple ARs against someone and potentially get them investigated, and that wouldn’t be an accountable system. There are Lindens in the volunteer group, but as far as I know, they aren’t Lindens who are involved in processing ARs. They are, surprisingly enough, Lindens whose job is to maintain the volunteer program.

    > As I’ve warned repeatedly about it, it’s going to acquire more powers.
    > It wants more powers. It wants abuse report buttons on events lists to
    > abuse report the hell out of yardsalers it hates; it wants abuse reports
    > on classifieds to abuse report casinos;

    Which would be available to everyone..

    > it wants to be able to remove
    > content when it sees it in violation — the Lindens are also actively
    > discussing the possibility of having these people be able to ban/eject
    > griefers from welcome areas and infohubs.

    Yes – griefers. That’s totally different from the content issue. That’s just dealing with the problem where a single griefer in a Welcome Area can ruin the starting experience of SL for tens or even hundreds of people because nothing can be done against them until a Linden has time to visit.

    > They didn’t “happen to find it,” Yumi, and it wasn’t just one of them.
    > There are entire groups roaming around just to police this; they overlap
    > and interact with Volunteers. Some people join Volunteers just to be
    > able to satisfy their zeal to be able to police their fellow man.

    Sure, some of the people who have decided to act as a police force are Volunteers. I don’t doubt that for a moment. But claiming that’s the same as someone having actively *told* the volunteers that part of their mission is going to be policing content is just not reasonable.

    > As one of them yourself, you’re bending over WAY to backward to give
    > them a clean bill of health. But you can’t. They are sinister as a
    > system precisely because only Lindens pick them, and they have sliding
    > scales of criteria for how they do this. It’s highly discretionary –
    > and that’s one of the reasons applications pile up so much, as only “our
    > sort” are picked.

    I’m not, honestly. I’m trying to tell you that they’re not at all “sinister” or “shadowy” or anything like that. Why *can’t* they just be people who want to help?

    > Not at all. These are Volunteers, using the officially-sanctioned
    > channel. The Lindens come on and what do they do? They encourage them to
    > go out and abuse report, but to discuss it among themselves, not on the
    > channel. Even more secretive!

    Um.. I’m boggling again here. So it’s bad for a group to discuss ARing, because they could be acting in concert to victimise someone with ARs and the group wouldn’t be accountable. I can just about understand that point of view, I don’t think it’s what happened here, but I can see where you’re coming from. But then.. we can’t tell them to stop discussing it in the group.. because then they might discuss it somewhere else and that would be even more secretive.. well, what *can* we do, Prok? Should people just not be allowed to discuss ARs with anyone else at all?
33. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Jul 15th, 2007
    

    Yumi, um, since you’re IN the system, you’re obviously going to remain one of the smug little personages defending this insidious group whose powers have only grown, and whose unaccountability has only diminished in the last few years.

    By mentioning only the teleporting to OI you’ve forgetting to mention the sheer secretivity and amplification power of having their own channel, and one that Lindens indeed do pop in and out of, and can be there in a heartbeat when there’s a real scandal breaking out. Their brief goes way beyond OI and HI now, and it’s silly to pretend otherwise; they are replacing Live Help, but with less access, less accountability, more secretiveness.

    The Lindens encourage these people to AR; they are a concentrated AR machine. That’s clear. It doesn’t matter if “anybody” can file an AR; here’s a group that can put “hive mind” and um the er “wisdom of the crowd” to work and get mob justice going in a flash, as we see.

    I’m for abolishing this system. It’s corrupt, and unaccountable. I’m for the Lindens putting up an open bid for both corporations and non-profits to take on newbie orientation and for outsourcing the problem of community policing to some competent outside party not infiltrated by all the FIC, griefing groups, and everything else festering in SL. It should be like UN blue helmuts.

    The idea that the volunteer-management Lindens are somehow behind a firewall from the abuse-management Lindens is the most preposterious thing I’ve heard in a long time. They’re all in one community team; they are all in staff meetings and they all have the same chain of command. Seriously, Yumi, put the Kool-Aid down, have a drink of water.

    The idea that AR buttons are available “to everyone” is silly. Because more and more, people like me a) don’t abuse report and b) won’t be abuse reporting in the future. So the Lindens are preparing these Gridkeepers (there is even a group with that name already) as kind of their faithful eyes and ears. That’s clear.

    I don’t think the Lindens should be empowering these randomly selected very uneven “mentors” or “volunteers” to be handing over tools like ejection to. The type of person who joins these group is by nature a busybody and often a zealot. They are horridly immature sometimes as we saw from this 20-year-old anime lover fascinated with big boobs who was about five minutes older than the teens she was supposedly protecting by swooping down on this lesbian couple.

    The Lindens claim AR response time is better now when you file a ticket, when it is for things like griefers shooting. They should also turn off scripts and third-party objects and be done with it. That’s what I finally had them do in the infohub that I’ve been helping to run and it’s made a world of difference. Once you get over this creators’ fetish and sandbox obsession that the Lindens have, you can make the newbie experience 1000 times more enjoyable by limiting the “creativity” that griefers hijack out of the openness of the tools. Then for those creative/hackster types, they can go to the sandbox and play cobs and robbers with Lindens there, at least out of sight and mind of people just landing and trying to get oriented.

    I see people coming to the Volunteer group FULLY CONFIDENT that they can get the group to help them decide how to bang on people’s content. I see members of this group applauding their witch-hunts. And I see Lindens coming on and saying “Please abuse report anything you see” and urging even further separate follow-up meetings out of the list, where no one can object. It’s like encouraging a separate posse to get started, it’s awful.

    Sorry, but you see it through rose-coloured glasses. I don’t. I see that neighbours and zealots in the Volunteer group got together to hound these people with erotic art. If the Lindens truly found nothing wrong with it, that suggests there was no case to start with. But I’m not sure that the Lindens aren’t doing something very sly here. That is, letting the vigilantes and the rogue Volunteers have their way and pressure people and force them to remove content, but not facing the music themselves of making a judgement about it. That way they can keep happy the legions of people bitching about them cracking down too hard and making too vague statements, yet get some dirty work done. It’s such a classic pattern used in authoritarian states, like the paramilitaries, always the deniablity, the extra-judicial operations and black ops. This is the sort of thing you have to watch for even if “only a game”.

    People who go to Volunteers, as I’ve seen time and again, are not people who just want to help. They want reputation enhancement. They are egotists, looking for ego-stroking; they are often people who, as you follow their illustrious careers, do that time in the soup kitchen with the newbies, then go on to gain very high-profile blog positions like Tateru and pronounce on policies everywhere like gurus. Newbie-helping is just one of the many ways people look to amp up their street cred and their visibility.

    People who really help go and…help. They don’t hang around dithering in channels trying to find backing for witch-hunts. They don’t tell everyone they’re helping. They just help.

    The very reason why you shouldn’t even have such a system like this is that it can only deteriorate into a Lord of the Flies operation because of its very inception. It’s meant to be a secretive extension of an already very un-transparent operation the Lindens run. So it can only go from bad to worse. Yes, discussing ARs amplifies them, but the solution isn’t to ban AR discussion; the solution is to disband the group and outsource this and/or bid it properly.

    Once there is a professional force that handles both monitoring the grid and responding to griefing and content issues, and once newbie help is outsourced, you will see a much better operation that works better, and the issue of small bands of vigilantes getting together to plot against their fellow residents will begin to dissipate. Such groups can get started because the justice is ineffective.
34. 

    Jessica Holyoke
    

    Jul 15th, 2007
    

    To Meh,

    One thing though, if the content is considered obscene, its still illegal. The article you cited glosses over that point. The law I cited mentions as a requirement that the work is obscene or takes part of the Miller test.

    Also, do you really want to be the one to test that concept out?
35. 

    Mark
    

    Jul 15th, 2007
    

    “If the Lindens truly found nothing wrong with it, that suggests there was no case to start with. But I’m not sure that the Lindens aren’t doing something very sly here. That is, letting the vigilantes and the rogue Volunteers have their way and pressure people and force them to remove content, but not facing the music themselves of making a judgement about it.”

    That same thought crossed my mind. If it’s true, then it’s truly a sad day for SL.
36. 

    Alyx Stoklitsky
    

    Jul 15th, 2007
    

    >> Prok
    >> once newbie help is outsourced, you will see a much better operation that works better.

    I myself am already involved in the construction of an Orientation/newbie learning and tutorial sim.
37. 

    meh
    

    Jul 15th, 2007
    

    Jessica Holyoke,
    Much of the entire point of that analysis is that the Act attempts to prohibit non-obscene virtual child pornography. The point is not that all virtual child pornography is constitutionally protected, and since that codification was specifically cited, that’s why I linked to it. Otherwise, you could have simply said SL avatars bumping around could be illegal under obscenity laws, regardless of 18 USCS § 1466A. As far as making the point and responding to yours, obscenity wasn’t at issue here or there.

    In a sense, the PROTECT Act re-criminalizes obscenity in addition to watering down its definition, which is why I think it’s extremely important to make the note about the PROTECT Act, even regardless of the SL context.
38. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Jul 15th, 2007
    

    >I myself am already involved in the construction of an Orientation/newbie learning and tutorial sim.

    I said outsourced and bid out, not handed over to griefing groups.
39. 

    Alyx Stoklitsky
    

    Jul 15th, 2007
    

    >>I said outsourced and bid out, not handed over to griefing groups.

    BNT Holdings is not a griefing group. It is a large and well known land rental company owned by Intlibber Brautigan.
40. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Jul 15th, 2007
    

    >BNT Holdings is not a griefing group. It is a large and well known land rental company owned by Intlibber Brautigan.

    I said outsourced and bid out, not handed over to griefing groups.
41. 

    Loki
    

    Jul 15th, 2007
    

    Some of the comments here like with the Mentor group chat have gotten confused with the name Nemo. Yes i am landlord to a popular place for Kid Avs called Nemo, but this is not the place being reported in the Mentor group chat. The Nemo they refer to is in the SIM Nemo.
42. 

    Yak Wise
    

    Jul 15th, 2007
    

    I have seen some of Lisae’s work. Nice and original work… where she combines Poser technique with real backgrounds (Dutch landscapes). I never got the impression that any of the depicted models were under 18, that it would be ‘child pornography’(which I strongly oppose) never entered my head. For a liberated West-European this which-hunt is really hard to understand…
43. 

    Anonymous
    

    Jul 15th, 2007
    

    JAWOHL MEIN FUHRER LINDEN, DER SCHUTZSTAFFEL.. Ich meine… DER LIVE HELPERS SOLLEN DAS GRID WIEDER FREI UND PG MACHEN!

    NUR PG SL, DAS IST DER ENDLOSUNG!!

    HEIL LINDEN!

    Really. Gestrapo Live helpers?
    SS Linden asslickers?

    WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!?!?!

    IT’S NOT REAL KIDS!!!

    IT’S PIXELS!!!
44. 

    Lisae Boucher
    

    Jul 15th, 2007
    

    There’s one thing that just proves that what these volunteers are doing is plain wrong. Ever since this whole thing started, the amount of traffic on my land had risen from 0 to over 4700 and my place has received so much attention that it’s already starting to sell several items. Sold a crab and several images already. So in a way this all turns out to be free publicity. I feel as if I actually have to thank those people for this.
45. 

    Alyx Stoklitsky
    

    Jul 15th, 2007
    

    >>I said outsourced and bid out, not handed over to griefing groups.

    BNT Holdings is not a griefing group. It is a large and well known land rental company owned by Intlibber Brautigan.
46. 

    Coincidental Avatar
    

    Jul 15th, 2007
    

    “as the Lindens strategically include only a fraction of incidents on the blotter.”

    They exclude only a fraction of incidents on the blotter. Big liars will do well in the USA as long as there are masses of naive people. The Lindens obfuscate their AR process not to give information to their customers about their violations of service terms, agreements and trade laws.

    With their current level of income from SL, they are commercially unable to provide the service they promise to deliver. Thus they resort to bluffing that they deliver more service than they do.

    I wonder, who wants to be affiliated with liars.

    “there are still some who think entering yourself into an Age Verified database of perverts would be a meaningless and riskless action to take”

    Why do you think peeps share accounts in the internet?

    But my opinion is that this Age Verification is just a LL plot to make money from “creative” adult content. Their competitor charges 20 USD for similar access. LL will collect money and the creators will see a decline in their sales.

    “Asking volunteers to report such things”

    makes volunteers vulnerable to backfiring lawsuits without any legal backup from LL. On the contrary, LL will feed them to wolves to save their own asses.

    Reporting legal stuff as illegal can be a RL crime, thus avoid the grey area as hell.

    “And even if it is NOT illegal in the US, you surely have grasped the fact that in Europe, it *is* unlawful even being a cartoon.”

    To clarify, kiddie porn/sex images/cartoons are illegal in most part of Europe. But naked pictures of children are not! Actually families post pictures of their naked children playing naked on beaches on their websites.

    Or just take a look at Mannekin Piss.

    “yet a person age 18 or 19 is also considered a teen”

    eighteen, nineteen

    “Well, you know, if no minors are supposed to be in SL main grid in the first place, why in the heck is there PG, Mature, etc.. anyhow? I mean, if this is for MATURE ADULTS in the first place, then where exactly, and how exactly would any Parental Guidance be needed?”

    In theory PG area means that you can buy a parcel and nobody will set up a sex club next door.

    In practice less-brained Reuters journalists buy land from a Mature area and are surprised that somebody sets up a sex club next door. Parental Guidance rating gives me and others a chance to say to the stupid whining journalists that they are stupid because didn’t choose to shut up, what was their right.

    [I agree that terms "Mature" and "Parental Guidance" could be made up only by brain-dead Americans. All mature singles want to have sex/porn as opt-in, not mandatory.]

    “They are NOT the police”

    And the police is not the law either. They just work in blue-collar level of law enforcement.

    “But these volunteers do need to follow the rules”

    LL certainly won’t advice them about the legal hazards of their actions.
47. 

    NobodyImportant
    

    Jul 15th, 2007
    

    Give it a rest, Prok.
    Not everything is about your personal crusade, your holy war against griefers only you can see.

    Also, really. IntLib a griefer? He couldn’t grief if his life depended on it.
    And as a side note to dear ol’ IntLib, the PN aren’t going to do your dirty work. So don’t try anymore.
    /end comment topic threadjack
48. 

    Lisae Boucher
    

    Jul 15th, 2007
    

    First a quick update… Those people who started to protest about 48 hours ago are very quiet now, or so it seems. It is af if they have received warnings that their actions is putting them in danger. Or maybe they realize that their protests over legal material is just a waste of their time. Or maybe the fact that I had to ban 11 persons from my land helped a lot with this too. In the end, it just turned to be a single action of these 11 people and since my name got mentioned here, let’s return the favor and name these grievers: Aaltien demina, Cashew Masala, Jodieanne Jewell, Mercury Slade, Mot Voom, Myra Parisi, Redneck Racer, Sapphire Oh, Sasja Fitzgerald, Spiderman Oh and Sugarplum Serapis.
    These 11 avatars (possibly even more) have conspired together in an attempt to get me kicked out of SL. I have several recording devices located on my land and their conversations have been logged and what they were conspiring about wasn’t really pretty. Spiderman Oh even suggested to them that he would just catch me in some cage to harass me and someone else created objects that are pretending they’re saying things as if I say them. (Which isn’t difficult since all you have to do is make a scripted object, give it the name of an avatar and let it say all kinds of nasty things.) By doing this, they are actively trying to discredit me and again, I have the chat logs to prove it. Then again, it’s no problem for LL just to check their own logs and take appropiate actions based upon their bad behavior.
    But will LL do this or not? That’s something I’m still wondering about.

    And I have nothing against these people but I do feel a need to defend myself against their actions. And naming them here will also allow others to defend themselves against these persons, who apparently only wanted to disrupt SL.
49. 

    Yak Wise
    

    Jul 15th, 2007
    

    ATTENTION: The earlier comment by me Yak Wise, is somehow completely hacked!!! I never wrote what it says there (in Mock German)and I disassociate from it. Moderator what is going on?
50. 

    Yak Wise
    

    Jul 15th, 2007
    

    Oh… I see the messages of Loki and me got switched around. So Loki’sessage is mine and my message is Loki’s.
    BTW, Loki. I do agree with your point, even if I would perhaps have said it differently.

Leave a Reply