Happy Birthday SL: Snapzilla Closes in Protest!
by Alphaville Herald on 23/06/06 at 12:00 pm
Happy Birthday, Second Life! Although it’s not such a happy birthday present that Snapzilla is offering up to Linden Lab today. Everyone’s favorite SL photo-sharing site has closed its doors for the day today in protest of Linden Lab’s new all-ages policy:
To coincide with the third anniversary of Second Life’s launch on June 23rd, this site will be closed for the day in protest of recent changes made by Linden Lab to the registration requirements for Second Life. Specifically, Linden Lab without warning has removed any billing information requirements from the account creation process, which allows complete unrestricted access to Second Life by minor children and destructive users with no accountability and no ability to ban problem users. It exposes the residents of Second Life to unnecessary stress and even potential legal liability and is contrary to the advertised promise of an adults only service that users have subscribed to.
Screenshots uploaded to the site today will not be lost, they just won’t be available until tomorrow.
While SL hasn’t formally put in a new all-ages policy, the fact that they no longer require any reigstration information other than an email address has the same effect. Is this stressing you out? Are you worried about liability and griefers? Join Snapzilla creator Cristiano Midnight’s protest and get in touch with Linden Lab. And keep uploading those birthday photos, you can check them our tomorrow.
Marissa Sullivan
Jun 23rd, 2006
Oi. Another protest. Anyone else figured out that LL just doesn’t give a shit?
Cindy Claveau
Jun 23rd, 2006
I support and respect Cris’ gesture closing down Snapzilla for the day, but ironically the most profound statement might have been made by griefers themselves. It’s now after 2:00 PM, when Philip Linden was scheduled to speak at the SL birthday party in world, and the grid and forums are “down for maintenance”.
Friday is not maintenance day. My guess is that mischief was afoot. What better way to get the attention of the Lindens?
TrannyPet Barmy
Jun 24th, 2006
again, jumping to conclusions ?
“grid’s down, MUST BE ‘griefers’” – of course, it must be, what else could possibly cause LindenLabs wonderful network to fall over ?
TrannyPet Barmy
The REAL ONE
Random Writer
Jun 24th, 2006
They mentioned it was down for “unplanned” maintenence on the status site, but unless they start banning griefers by IP, then I strongly disagree with this. All this will do is create frustration for business owners especially, since anyone with a vendetta can create an account, then poof, grief the sim, get banned and do it all over again.
Not only will teens be able to access this grid now, more camping bots will pop up, but people who didn’t have the cards or phone means before, hell, I have 5 computers, guess I can run them all if I really wanted to.
So help me god, with all this MySpace BS about age limits, I see a lawsuit coming soon for SL and not being able to monitor children’s activites. I dont mind roleplay, but soon, it’s gonna be REAL children behind the screens.
quack quack
Jun 24th, 2006
The 3rd birthday sim crasher was a resident protester. Their main account no longer shows in find nor does the alt they used to grief the event. How do I know? They were gloating to me about it via IM. These “oh woe is me you’ve opened the flood gates to the griefers” residents are causing more grief themselves than anyone else. Crashing the birthday party with huge obnoxious signs, harassing Philip, crashing the vehicle sims with lag bombs, harassing any newbie that walks through the WA. Funny how the tables have turned, though I’ve always felt that the nervous tic abuse reporters were the real griefers in SL.
Some people are able to find things to do to occupy their time in SL. The rest bitch and moan about issues that don’t exist. Philip said that the CC/SMS authentication didn’t work anyway. I think I’m a pretty good example of how it didn’t work. Having been banned on over 20 alts, I’ve never found it at all hard to register a new one.
quack quack
Jun 24th, 2006
And one more thought to add:
Yes, the new registration method will bring out griefers. But realize this: Your average moron with a sim nuke doesn’t know how to get around SL’s **SUPER SECRET** method of hardware banning. They make an alt, grief some furries, and their alts and main account are pretty much gone for good. Whereas before, they’d maybe keep their actions under the radar with a lot of subtle griefing spread over a longer time. I honestly believe that this new registration method will bring out the really stupid trouble makers and will get rid of them. The waters will be rough for the first few weeks, but things will settle down.
DizzleDazzle
Jun 24th, 2006
Random Writer you act as if teens weren’t in the MG all ready. Why don’t you take your time and research before you go on a wild tangent about teens being in sl and ruining it. Now I know teens are not supposed to be in the Main Grid but you saying they will start all this trouble is complete BS and you should know better. If you remember back before the TG there was a pretty good number of teens in the main grid. Not one lawsuit came out of it and I don’t know one of those people were wild grid attackers or goons. Ofcourse you probably didn’t know a lot of those people unlike myself. I wouldn’t even be suprised if teen grid was opened before you joined. As into teens seeing nude avatars or whichever of the subjects you prefer. Well I hate to break it to you adults but there is this tool called the World Wide Web and I have to say a good percentage of those teens have used it to find what you consider inappropriate content. Feel as you like but the internet itself is dirty and you can’t make it clean whatever you do whine, bitch, or moan. Now why don’t you be a pal and email Jack Thomsan whining how teens brains are getting ruined from this bs I’m sure he’d love to pass annother wild unconstitutional law.
Random Writer
Jun 25th, 2006
First of all, Dizz, you took my words and totally twisted them to create drama, instead of reading them as they were, you saw a few random words, then took off on a tangent that, frankly, you sound like an idiot about, especially when you read what I wrote. I never said in there, that TEENS would be griefers or even bad members of the community. And frankly, for you to jump off so fast, it sounds like you are a teen yourself.
I said the MYSPACE BS. First off, remember to read that carefully.
Secondly, any intelligent thought would surface, had you read it the way it was worded and intended. This isn’t the SL of old. Get THAT part through your head. This game isn’t so “underground” anymore. It’s being brought into the mainstream by actual publications everyday now. And obviously, if you had at least one marble in your head, you’d realize that means that it’s an increase in scrutiny. Up until this point, if a teen joined in SL and someone wanted to raise a fuss, LL had the terms to point to, that it’s sign up processes required ADULT verification. I don’t know many 14 year olds with credits cards.
Now, with no verification, the barriers are let down, in the prime of the spotlight. With no real reason to remove them. Unless they wanted to hope to pad their numbers now, allowing teens in, other previously banned people, and those that have good accounts can now make as many as they want = a jump in member accounts, and now, no way to verify they are individual accounts or alts. I personally have two alts, one I create on in peace and silence, and the other I play normally on and sell from.
All it takes is for one overly zealous parent to walk in, while their 13/14 year old is on a poseball they shouldn’t be, and see that, to create some trouble for LL. Does this mean all teens suck? Not at all, this just means that the parents can sometimes suck and now, without sign up requirements, cannot monitor their actions in SL. Add to that you cannot easily ban SL from a comp like you can webpages, and it’s the start of a fiasco, for just ONE SINGLE INCIDENT.
If you had any idea on REAL LIFE news, then the statement of MySpace BS and lawsuits heading for LL over content go hand in hand. Not once did I trash teens, their inputs, accomplishments, etc. in my post.
Icy Flasheart
Jun 26th, 2006
If it works….don’t fix it!!!It was great that access was limited in SL,then why do this now?What was actually wrong with the registration method?Noone was complaining about that….But they were and still are about lag,sims dissapearing,stuff from sims poofing,some trouble makers bombing clubs….there were a lot of stuff to do….changing the registration method was not a priority i think in my humble opinion…I hope will be ok , but i really doubt that there won’t be any more problems in SL after this decision…Thank you for listerning…
Sebastian Genosse
Jun 28th, 2006
The reason they changed the registration requirements was obvious. Many more people will sign up for the service if they don’t have to provide any (perceived) payment information. Why would someone give a credit card to a company that they’ve never heard of. For some, it’s just as risky as pumping in your CC into an obscure porn site. By removing the CC validation step, the influx of new, unique, memberships will soar.
The *SUPER SECRET* banning method is a fantastic idea (If it’s what I think it is, I hope it’s the truth), and while it’s not a perfect method, it’s better than anything, including credit cards, since many people have more than one.
Linden Labs REALLY, REALLY needs to address (meaning, publicly acknowledge and express a position on) the legal liability issues for its residents engaging in “adult” activity in their environment. Pushing the responsibility onto the residents will NOT work. As the non-validation story became the talk of the world, some adult-catering parcels began to require independent age verification (such as contacting the owner through 3rd-party adult websites). One’s traffic stats over the rest of the week dropped from the usual mid 3,000s on average to less than 100. When there’s a traffic stipend on the line, it costs the land-owners more (or might even kill their service!) to keep their residents honest.
Robin Linden said in a recent post on secondlife.blogs.com that a “verified” status in a member’s profile was in the works. It would be great if Linden Labs would clue the business and land developers in on their roadmap for such things.
Random Writer
Jun 28th, 2006
While they have introduced this, the changes are still waited on for allowing or banning people by those methods.
And in your case of showing that people didn’t want to give their credit card info, these are the same people that would give their info to eBay, amazon, authorizing use of their cards in paypal to be ‘billed’. I frankly, have a VERY hard time believing the reason the accounts stayed so low in numbers is because people don’t want to give out credit card info. Anyone who is that savvy to the net to even come across this game could do a simple google and realize it’s legit, not only that, but hundreds of thousands of people every hour are giving their billing info to other games to pay to play. Like I said, I find it hard that anyone could happen to come across this game in ANY form, and then be scared it wasn’t legit.
I’d fancy a poll taken to see how people got here. I came from word of mouth, and my friends, so I know that they played and it was fine. What way could you come up with, that would make this not a not trusted company? Random search? Even if you came here through someplace like GameSpot, IGN, a newspaper article, etc. those are all legit as well. So I will state again, maybe 1 person per month comes to this game, without any knowledge of gaming, what to do, how to get here, how to search on it, etc. and I am fine with losing 12 people a year who don’t trust LL. Frankly, given the high tech nature of this game, someone with zero internet knowledge whatsoever, wouldn’t last more than a week anyways.
Now, the account numbers will stay padded, so we will never know anyways.
Bookitty
Jun 28th, 2006
I didnt play much to begin with in recent weeks but now with the age limits verfications lifted what are we to do? Those of us that are worried about the results of this are wondering if we should just walk away before it gets too bad. Ok so before this we somewhat knew who are friends where because at least u had to prove your age(although its been known some lie) but now we meet a new person in the game and have to ask ourselves is this a kid playing. Is it worth makin new freinds in the game? As a parent I would not want my child in this game and I can see lawsuits coming from this as a result.I hope LL is ready for this!
Random Writer
Jun 29th, 2006
That’s my point Bookitty. And frankly, this not only opens it up for real sexual predators (think I am joking, wait and see, they will use any means they can to get at a minor) and also lawsuits can be brought, thanks to our wonderful government, upon individuals outside of LL.
Example: I start dating in SL an av who says they are 25. He lives really close by, and I think… what the hell? New friends are always welcome. He makes what I think is a joke in passing that he’s really 14. I go to meet him at a local McDonald’s and wham! Police are there. Sound crazy? It’s not. It happens every day. All you have to do is a simple google on any state and realize this is how they ‘get’ sexual predators and frankly the whole ‘I thought he was joking about his age’ doesn’t fly in our courts.
Mr. F
Jul 2nd, 2006
OK, so snapzilla closed. Now how is this news?
TrannyPet Barmy
Jul 3rd, 2006
“Super Secret hardware banning” ? It’s not that secret, it’s been on SecondCentral.com for months how to reset your Mac Address :-
http://www.secondcentral.com
http://www.secondcentral.com/win_mac_addr_spoofing.htm
Reset your mac address and you’re back in the game again, once you’ve signed up a new account of course.
TrannyPet Barmy
The REAL ONE
[future editor of the SecondLifeHerald]