Sink, originally uploaded by krazykoreanbling.

Other than being totally sexist (but amusing), this is an innovative idea to get men to wash their hands. I suspect they’d get their hands really, really clean. Maybe someone needs to patent this….

-Veyron

So Law and Order: SVU has a show with a virtual world in it. And surprise, surprise, anyone who uses or plays in it is a sicko. I didn’t bother watching it because the plot was predictable, but Zoe did, and confirmed my suspicions. Of course now, we all are kinda perverted in a normal sick sort of way. But in a much better healthier out in the virtual open way. So let’s compare Second Life to Real Life.

Real Life has life and death

Second Life has prim babies that look like Pokemons and if you die you get teleported home.

Real Life has violent crimes

Second Life’s idea of a violent crime is giant penis’s being virtually flung at you on stage, embarrassing you.

Real Life has finiancial crimes and fraud

 Anyone dumb enough to believe they were going to get 400% return on an investment with no risk….  well, you knew better, didn’t you?

Real Life has cops, lawyers and judges

Second Life has none….  ummm, but we do have Linden Labs (how do we get those cops, lawyers and judges now?)

Real Life has people starving, homeless, and in poor living conditions

Avatars do not need, food, water, light, or air (even can go into orbit).   They can survive falls from incredible heights.  Survive being thrown in hot lava.  Being folded up like an origami doll.  Even walk around with your hair up your ass.  Wearing shoes from Dark Eden for extended periods of time without permanent back injury.  And dang, they don’t even need to go potty.

Real Life men usually have one orgasm, and roll over and either go to sleep or turn on the TV (or would secretly like to).

 Second Life men enjoy demonstrating their prowess and want to make sure their partner is having a good time and well satisfied.

Real Life primping for a party up can take hours.

Second Life primping involves shopping through your inventory, clicking a few buttons, and waiting for them to rez.  Shoes that would themselves take 20 minutes to put on take 10 seconds in Second Life.

Real Life tanning requires multiple sessions outside or in a tanning studio.

Second Life requires you to change your skins.  And you can decide if you want tan lines or not in seconds.

Real Life criminalizes or ostracizes lots of deviant sexual behavior.

Second Life usually rates it on a sliding quality scale.

Real Life takes itself very seriously.

Second Life tries to take itself seriously, but can never quite wipe the silly smirk off it’s face from the that impossible sexual escapade last night.

Real Life has campers.  Like in national parks and places of great beauty.

Second Life has campers in casinos speakeasies, clubs and empty malls.

Real Life sex carries (albit small now) risk of getting a STD and maybe even dying from it.

In Second Life you might make a mess on or around your computer.

In Real Life if I go into a dangerous place I might get really hurt.

Second Life’s idea of a dangerous place is a sim when you get notice it’s about to be restarted.

Real Life has corporate consumerism fueling massive expenditure of money on lots of frivolous items.

Second Life has mom & pop consumerism fueling massive expenditure of  a toy currency on lots of frivolous virtual items.  (Okay, I think that one is a wash….)

But let’s be clear, to paraphrase the NRA, avatars don’t make perverts, people make perverts.  And since I’m an avatar, I’m in the clear.  (I like that logic…)

-Veyron

Second Life is a lot of things, good and bad.  For me, Second Life is all about entertainment and some social activity - as it seems to be designed for.  The dark side of Second Life is when it becomes a force for dragging yourself down.  Whenever I feel Second Life is being more of a negative than a positive to myself, I just remember what I am here for, having a good time.

I see and talk to a lot of people who get dragged down into the abyss of some sort of negative drama.  It usually comes up subtly, creeping up slowly, engulfing their thinking and consuming their Second Life and eventually their Real Life.  This is a “bad thing” - something to be avoided.  Maybe it is impossible to avoid if you have anything beyond a casual relationship with anyone in Second Life.  I would like to think it does not happen to me, but of course it does now and then.

I have met a lot of really interesting and neat people in Second Life.  To be honest, there’s no one I have found I dislike.  I feel worse that there is not enough of “me” to go around to pay attention to all of the friends I have met.  I have been in Second Life now for close to a year, and upon reflection of that last year, I find that from a close relationship side it has not been all that positive for myself.  Maybe that’s a good thing, maybe not.

Second Life experiences in general are a bit lonely and detached.  I think that’s a reason why people partner up in Second Life, to have someone to do things with, rather than alone.  Typically, you are lone while you are at your computer in Second Life, and it seems less alone while doing something with another avatar.  My personal experience with doing that with someone else has been alas, very poor.  Maybe I’m too much like a Neko, I like doing my own thing.

I have also noticed a distinct evolution of personal habits and behaviors within Second Life.  Starting with typically n00b wonderment, then on to shopaholic, avatar tweaking, clubbing, dancing, flirting, etc.  Then on to more semi-serious things like blogging, group activities and socializing.  But still problems with serious relationships.  My FAQ probably does a lot to explain it.   A combination of flirtiness and stand-off-ishness is never good for relationships.

Another bad habit I have is willingness to try just about anything, at least once.  Experiences are something to be tried in life, after all, you might not get to try them again.  I’ve tried a lot of things in Second Life, some have been good, some have been flops.  In the last month or so, I have been struggling with Second Life.  It’s a common theme with most of you other bloggers I think.  Some of my closest Second Life friends have been off grid for sometime and I am struggling with a failing Second Life relationship.

The funk has been bad enough I have considering retiring or going off grid for a while.  The last time I had this sort of problem in Second Life was back in January and then I decided that I was not going to allow myself to be chased off the grid by myself, so I stayed.  I’ll probably stay at least this time.

Where I’m going with this is I am struggling to find a purpose inside Second Life.  I am somewhat depressed about the relationship failures.  I somewhat feel I should take the majority of the fault for their failure.  Maybe I am looking for too much or unwilling to give enough.  Maybe the real route for me in Second Life is friendships rather than something like a “marriage”.

I’m still just trying to figure it out….

-Veyron

Okay, I was a bit torn about posting a link to what is obviously either a scam for Second Life vendors or more likely a rip off to anyone dumb enough to buy it.  Does anyone know more about the site SecondLifeCheaters.com?  I found the link on a bloggers Google Adwords.  Obviously not endorsed by the blogger I found the ad on.  Am I behind the curve on this site?

-Veyron

Keeping up with Amanda….

Kinda Dorky Nerd Queen… hmmm. I wonder what Vint and Tiessa score.

-Veyron

Well, there’s been a lot of smoke on the latest greatest plans by Linden Labs’ plans to identify who is who in Second Life.  If this is a good idea or not I’m not going to get into.  An analysis by Gwyneth Llewelyn appears to make some degree of sense above all of the noise.  The thought that Gwyneth has here is that Linden Labs is trying to find a safe harbor from the US legal system’s propensity to sue anyone who has deep pockets for just about any reason (which I haven’t really seen with Linden Labs yet).

The idea in a nut shell is that Integrity will assume the liability of verifying the identity of the customer (avatar).  This means that Integrity is on the hook for making a mistake.  Now, there are of course a lot of negative arguments against this whole idea, mostly down the Utopian concepts of free sex, money, land, ponies, and whatever else we have all come to know and love in Second Life.  Let’s assume that the method of keeping this information separated from Integrity and Linden Labs is kosher and we are for the sake of argument’s here going to pass over that.

(Disclaimer, I’m not a lawyer….)

First example, an escort performs some services for a customer.  This customer turns out to be Jimmy, a 14 year-old on the adult grid (shock and horrors).  He cheated the Integrity system somehow and the escort verified he was of “legal” age (whatever that means) before delivering services.  Mom and Dad find out and are infuriated.  They sue Linden Labs.  Their lawyer files discovery motions in every direction to find out who is who, like who was the escort avatar, so they may conduct discovery.  Without the verifications by Integrity, Linden Labs, and probably the escort avatar are now under a court’s microscope (like it or not).  But with Integrity on the hook, Linden Labs can probably shield the escort and themselves and fire the entire episode off at Integrity - who they are paying to absorb the hit.

Second example, a vendor sells a sex dildo strap-on to 16 year old Tommy (he has some interesting kinks - that’s for sure) and Mom finds out.  Same thing as above.  The vendor should also be protected, and more important, the vendor’s business should be protected.

In the real world, anyone who runs a business they live on wants to take prudent measures to protect their source of income.  That’s why the soft porn magazines have a black plastic condom cover over them on the magazine rack and the hard core porn magazines are in another room.  It’s prudent.

Call me a prude (which I hardly think is the case), but I have limits myself.  Like children avatars inside of Second Life.  While playing around as a child in some sims might be okay, almost all of the places I go to it would not be okay.  Let’s use the example of Paradise Lost club.  Clearly, this is not a place for children.  It’s an adult playground, clear and simple.  It’s also an attempt at a business.  It makes sense to try to keep people who should not be there out.  Second Life is far closer to Las Vegas than Disneyland.

There is the purely moral point of unverified underage activity.  Most of us ignore the payment information on file or not on an avatar’s profile.  So, we do not really have that to go by for age verification anyway.  I would find it hard to believe that almost anyone who reads this blog would not be rather upset if they found out they were unintentionally involved in adult activities with an avatar that turned out to be a minor.  Right now, we escape that moral failing through ignorance, which is really not right.

A civil society makes compromises all the time for the better good.  Society does not believe that children are not capable of making adult decisions (which biologically they are not), and thus need to be protected from adults.  Adults have to give up a few rights to make sure that children, who are the most vulnerable members of society, are given some protections.  Rather than sounding like I propose the Disneyfication of Second Life, let’s attempt to keep it safe for non-adults, and keep it like the fun adult Las Vegas we all know and love (and figure out how to get gambling back too).

I’m pretty confident that everyone I know to more than a passing acquaintance in Second Life is an adult (at least legally speaking…  :)  but perhaps this verification system is a better way of being sure about it.

Lastly, rather than sounding like a hypocrite or zealot, I am very protective of my own Second Life identity.  It’s my means of increasing my enjoyment of the environment.   I play in Second Life for my entertainment, and I want to enjoy it to its fullest.  I too am concerned about how this verification will be implemented, I want to see this done right and hopefully it will be.  But I do see it’s value and why it is being done.

This is all going to be a difficult and painful process, but it is an unavoidable process of evolution for Second Life.  Hopefully things will turn out for the better in the end.

-Veyron

A prominent news source has an article about a study on casual sex.  According to a study in the International Journal of Sexual Health, it found that casual sex is only rewarding for the first few decades, but after then there could be a quarter lifetime of regret.  An excerpt from the article stated:

“There’s a troubling number of adults who spend their prime sexual years in complete coital abandon, then have nothing to show for it but dozens upon dozens of highly detailed erotic memories,” Sullivan said. “They must be so empty inside, one would think.”

Other common, albeit latent, secondary effects noted in the study include mild disappointment and mid-afternoon crankiness, as well as a lingering need for additional casual sex. Researchers could not conclusively establish a link between anonymous, passionate trysts in nightclub bathrooms and these results, however, as a large portion of the polling group was found to be asymptomatic.

I have to wonder if Second Life SLex could be a major contributor to long term future regret of these sexual trysts among the nerdier set.  After all, some SLex probably exceeds some of these swingers mosts wildest dreams by far.  Take for example the wild levels of unadulterated free spirited debauchery that occurs on the grid would definitely blow the minds out of any uninitiated swinger.  If this example from the article is the subjects idea of wild sex, the Second Life grid would truly make him go sign up for a premium account and probably buy his own island.

 ”When I think back on the countless times I’ve had raw, almost bestial sex, indoors or outdoors, with one, sometimes two Asian women whose parents I’ll never have to meet, I occasionally get a little down,” Pertzborn said. “God, what if I wasted my life having guilt-free, uninhibited, sensually explosive sex with anyone I wanted?”

I am really concerned about the studies conclusion about the long term consequences of raw casual sex (or slex for us SL’ers).  The mild regret and possible little pangs of guilt that might come along.  This could be really devastating to the psyche.  It alone might be a prime reason to avoid all forms of SLex on the net and it explains now why anyone who criticizes SLex as stupid or  just plain dangerous now makes complete sense.  After all, why take the clearly obvious risks of mind blowing uninhibited explosive SLex with the risks found in this study.  Dalien Talbot was right, it probably requires many days of intensive one-on-one discussion.

Lastly, this piece from the article only confirms the dangers of promiscuity….

 ”Tragically, it’s quite possible that many of these singles may never realize how miserable a lifetime of phenomenal, kinky sex can make them,” said Sullivan, adding that recent evidence suggests such a healthy, rational realization could be further hindered by the experience of spontaneous oral sex behind the bushes at poolside cocktail parties.

Perhaps what we need to do as a dedicated group of bloggers is form our own long term group to  study these effects.  To verify if they are true or not.

You can read the entire article here.

-Veyron

In typical smart arse fashion, Veyron has put up her very own FAQ or Frequently Asked Questions.  It answers some basic questions we all want to know.  Veyron sometimes gets tired of answering them - but not often.  So, in the interest of smartassdom she has put the first version together.  While I was amused with it, I didn’t let her post it for sometime.  Veyron finally won over and so it is up and online.

If you can think of anything more she would need to add to the FAQ, I’m sure she would oblige.

-The Narrator

I was talking with a fellow Second Life blogger, a famous photographer one from one of the low countries that didn’t want to be identified…. The discussion migrated to a topic we hardly ever talk about… Second Life Sex or SLex. She indicated that the problem was that English was not her native language but she knew more dirty words in English than any other language (funny how that is - I thought Russian was the top of that pyramid - or was that German?).

Anyway, is this a serious problem in Second Life? I mean, are we not getting enough SLex because language is holding us back? It also sounded like several of these low countries needed to form some new language committees. Perhaps they need a subcommittee on SLex talk. I know Tiessa did some reading on the subject to improve her already impressive skills.

Also, I’m curious to the multi-lingual who read here - confess, when you SLex, is it English or your native tongue?

Maybe this is a business opportunity, like the Xcite business - SLex talk. Learn to emote like a pro in 30 days? Orgasm in 5 different languages in a week?

-Veyron

Well seems like someone in Second Life is up to shenanigans over supposed patents of a fairly neat tool Dalien came up with and gives away. I believe this avatar, Jerry Martin, is full of smoke. It costs a non trivial amount of money to file a patent, and you need to do a patent search to search. To get it done right, you usually need a patent lawyer. As of 2005 the US Patent and Trademark Office was about 4 years behind in examining patent applications.

If Mr. Martin actually applied for a patent, and IF there is no prior art the USPTO has found, and IF there is no challenge to the patent, he might have a valid patent by 2011? Which by then should be worth about $2.53 - US.

Depending on how the patent is submitted is might even be easy to circumvent the patent by making a minor change to the algorithm used in the process.

-Veyron

Surprise, surprise…. The World Stock Exchange in Second Life has been hacked. Banks, stock exchanges, financial institutions in Second Life are a fraud. From top to bottom, start to end. There is simply no recourse for any theft, fraud or swindle. It’s the perfect breeding ground for thieves and con men (women?). Who knows if the hack is real or not. It does not matter.

It’s all fake. A bank offering 50%+ annual return on deposit is too good to be true. And it is. It’s called a pyramid or Ponsi scheme. Last ones in loose it all. Firsts ones in get it all. Who started the bank? The crooks….

Virtual stocks in a virtual company in a virtual world might be amusing if the virtual cash it was paid for didn’t come from real money.

If you have Lindens in a SL bank or one of these goofy schemes, get it out now, while you can. You have no recourse when you loose all of your money. The police will laugh at you, the courts will discard your papers, and Linden Labs will giggle all the way to the delete button on your email.

You’re all smart enough in Real Life, don’t be a putz in Second Life….

-Veyron

As I surmised in my last post in this subject, The Herald has picked up on the dangerous legal course Linden Labs has charted. The best posting so far is from Virtually Blind. The blog post on Virtually Blind is fairly detailed, and complicated, but under US law, Linden Labs is really digging themselves a deep hole that is going to take some serious back peddling to get out of….

-Veyron

In the book, Stranger in a Strange Land, one interesting concept is put forward, a Fair Witness. They serve to witness events and give full accounting of these events in court without additional facts added or changed. One interesting example of how their mentality works is, one of the characters asks a Fair Witness - “What color is that house over there?” Anne (a Fair Witness), just acting as a normal person and not in her Fair Witness mode answers, “This side is blue.”, without thinking about what she said. Now that as interesting statement… this side. Hardly anyone would state it that way. The side they can see is blue, so probably the rest of the house is blue, thus the rest of the house is blue. A normal person would have filled in the rest of the information - and probably have been correct - probably. They would have said, the house is blue.

It’s a useful survival mechanism. For example, those spots moving over in the bushes there… is that a leopard or a peacock? Let me think about that - leopards move low and peacocks make these noises - hmmm. (cue screams of a person being attacked….)

A human brain is not a monolithic processing unit. It is a giant parallel processing unit that does all kinds of work in parallel. Albeit slowly compared to a modern computer, but we can kick a computers ass in doing some things - actually lots of things. Stopping to think about everything you see, hear and touch would mentally bog you down, so parts of your brain fill in details for you. Think about how easy it is to drive. Most people can do it without really any serious thinking. A computer is seriously taxed just trying to follow a preprogrammed route with some sensors, take a look at the DARPA Grand Challenge.

Want disturbing proof of this? You have a hole in your vision. It is in the middle of your view. You cannot see ANYTHING in a small circle directly in front of you. The back of your eye where your optic nerve attaches has no retinal receptors for light. You cannot see there. Your eye and brain visually fill in that hole in real time all the time. Don’t believe me? Get a small light, you want a small one, like a dim LED light, nothing really bright. Even something that will glow in the dark will do. But nothing really bigger than the O on your keyboard. This might be hard to find, but it’s what you’ll need. Next, at night, go into a darkened room. So that the only thing you can see is that tiny glowing object. Then look directly at it. POOF - it’s gone. Look slightly away - there it is. You just fooled part of your brain - it didn’t have enough information to automatically put the small light there so it didn’t.

Ever get an email from someone, and it made you mad? Angry? You fire back at them all indignant. They reply all befuddled and confused. They just asked a plain question and didn’t intend to make you upset.

A wise person I worked for many years ago said, an email message can be interpreted in what ever mood you are in. You have to be careful of that. An email message (text) usually lacks any emotional cues. That’s missing information, that your brain will be allowed to fill in for you. If you are in a bad mood, maybe have not very good feelings about that person, or just luck of that moment, your going to have ill feelings to that person in your reply - no matter that they did. Even if they did not mean to be taken that way. This sort of theory probably extends into IMs and similar communications.

Second Life takes this to another level. I can appear to be angelic, beautiful, graceful and all those wonderful things that. Now the reverse is could happen. Someone who maybe is not so perfect or wonderful might be perceived as far more wonderful than they really are. This is why emoticons are commonly used in text inside Second Life - like for happy or for sad. Even though they seem dumb or sometimes overused, they help to give us the body language that is missing from Second Life that helps put a lot of the text in context.

Where am I going with this? Second Life can be a hall of mirrors and your brain is your own worst enemy. It was never made for a place like Second Life and it is not going to perform like you would expect it to. Trust your instincts, but always take a moment to step back from the screen and think about what you’re doing - take a deep breath - maybe wait a day, and then do what you think you need to do. There’s no rush, it will still be there tomorrow.

Just remember, this should be all for fun.

-Veyron

I got irritated last night. Then I got upset. It bugged me all morning. It gave me an upset stomach. So, I have a rant here. I’m ranting here to make sure that I can at least read it again in the future. Learning can sometimes be painful.

I joined up into Second Life fully planning to “ride under the radar” and have some fun. My situation has obviously devolved into something more (or less) than that. And I’ve been reasonably comfortable with that so far.

I have had a few bad experiences in the past with online relationships, so I’ve essentially sworn them off. No, I have definitely sworn them off. And that means what it means. And what I mean by a relationship is something beyond an acquaintance. I like meeting people, having fun with people online, but that’s as far as it is ever going to go. I have learned my lessons. In fact, I wrote down a memo to myself about a week into Second Life detailing what I will not ever do. It’s my contract with myself. When I feel I get close to violating it, I read it again. It’s good to remind myself of what I have learned.

Someone insinuated I was not who I said I was. So, being stubborn and bull headed, I couldn’t take it any longer. I charged right in to prove them wrong around noon today. Taking a cue from the old show, The Spot, I changed into a swimsuit and setup my camera in my living room on a tripod. I wrote up a small sign to hold and took a few pictures.

I shoot RAW, so I need to then process the shots in my computer. Since I do have some vanity, I though I would clean up a few “minor” (ahem) issues in Photoshop - I mean, why not while I’m at it? I was all smug thinking how I was going to prove them all wrong and I was going to show them up. I tinkered with the best shot for a while and then I realized that someone could obviously accuse me of Photoshopping the shot together, and this would be insufficient. More would be required. Visions of audio, and then video being required as proof…. Then I remembered my contract with my self…. I deleted the photos and seethed for a while at my computer. I felt I had let myself manipulate myself and that was the ultimate form of stupidity.

I play in Second Life for my entertainment and no other reason. Not for money, life or liberty. Only entertainment. And to be frank, my entertainment - not someone else’s. Letting myself get manipulated into doing something I did not want to do in the beginning was now not fun. It was drama way outside of what I needed or wanted, and I let myself get pulled into it rather than blowing it off like I usually do.

Lillie Yifu has an excellent post on what Second Life virtual sex revolves around, presence. I let some other people push their presence into my space without thinking about it. I have seen this happen to friends of mine inside Second Life. People get overwhelmed and consumed with Second Life without thinking about it. I let myself get consumed with it for a few hours, and I am grateful I was able to pull back.

My first two weeks or so inside Second Life I was obsessed with who was behind the keyboard. I’ve meet people like this - I was one of them. Then I had an epiphany. I have either no intention, desire, or real ability of ever meeting anyone in Second Life in Real Life. Therefore, who or what they are in Real Life actually is more of a fantasy than what they are in Second Life. Think about it. Inside a fantasy world, reality is the fantasy.

I take everyone in Second Life at face value. What does that mean? You are what you look like and who you say you are. Why not? While it’s obviously cute if two guys are doing a ridiculous job at cybersex with each other as girls - I really could care less otherwise. I feel for someone who is mislead about the other person who they are if it caused hurt feelings, last thing I want to do is see hurt feelings. There’s enough pain in the world.

But for me, I don’t necessary need to know about their Real Life lives. Again, that’s a fantasy here. If I wanted more Real Life - Life - I might be on IRC or something similar, but I’m not. I’m in the current ultimate fantasy land.

The annoying part about this whole drama is that it is no fun. Which goes back to the point of why I play in Second Life - to have fun. And then we circle back to why Real Life has to or needs to intrude in Second Life. The day Second Life is not fun anymore is the day I am done with Second Life. Today was a close call. I have too many people inside of Second Life I would miss to leave.

What does this mean? I had set my terms with myself up front. My terms were good terms and terms I need to and wanted to live with. I control my destiny. I am in control of who I am and what personal information I want to give out of any kind. It’s not a angry statement or loud statement, it’s just a firm stance. I don’t think it’s unreasonable either.

I think a lot of people in Second Life start out with the “I am going to be anonymous” position and let it erode over time. There is no recall button for information once it is given out. Just say no and walk away. It’s that simple. If the other person can’t live with that, then there are at least 5 million other people in Second Life to play with.

I just wanna have fun….

-Veyron

Disclaimer, I am not a lawyer…. And let me also state up front that I am not in favor of all of the grotesque child play activities. I even dislike seeing “children” avatars (dwarfs are obviously different than children - I can tell the difference) inside Second Life. The adult grid is just that, the adult grid. Children and facsimiles of them do not belong in the adult grid. That’s my position.

I have been watching for sometime, with some concern, Linden Labs increasing migration away from their previous laissez-faire attitude toward governance within the Second Life grid. While this obviously annoyed certain individuals, mostly leftist really (who are into that Big Brother as a state mentality) and right wing lunatic fringe. This laissez-faire governance was probably driven by a few basic problems, they would never have enough staff to enforce any real or serious rules they laid down and the rules themselves could become a real morass themselves.

Creating laws within Second Life would be a massive undertaking. The US Federal Code alone is a massive tome of laws, and only a small part of it covers criminal law (in the US most criminal law is covered by State Laws). This also avoided other legal messes and left the masses to themselves. In fact the terms of service is setup mostly to protect themselves. This attitude actually has an advantage to the Second Life citizenry. One could argue that under this policy Linden Labs is just a common carrier.

Being a common carrier in the US is a way of realistically performing commercial work without being criminally responsible for certain acts used for your commercial goods or services. An obvious example here is the phone company. Making a bomb threat using a telephone does not make the phone company criminally liable for the act. They were just the carrier, they do not monitor the call or vet out the activities. And that is the key. They do not monitor or vet the activities.

It is very similar to how the somewhat hated Digital Millennium Copyright Act works in the US. If the carrier did not know about the violation, they cannot be held liable for it. But once they are informed of it, they have to take action.

Linden Labs original policy set themselves up to be purportedly a common carrier - but that had not been upheld by a court yet since Second Life does not quite fit the mold one would expect of a common carrier (yet).

Now, here’s the bad part for Linden Labs - once you start to police your self for “naughty” bits, you start to loose your common carrier shield, if not entirely. If Linden Labs states or implies that they are policing the grid for “naughtiness” and they fail to do so, they are liable. In the US tort law is going to make them a target for lawsuits because they have money. And they only need to have a modicum of guilt to pay out millions. Since they do business in the entire US, a lawyer can shop the entire US for a court district friendly to his point of view and sue there. Being a US corporation, they are at the mercy of the US court system.

This posting from Linden Labs about keeping Second Life safe probably had their corporate counsel climbing the walls. I am perplexed at this strategy they are undertaking. It seems reckless and without much thought to it to the long term consequences - to themselves no less.

This also opens themselves up to legal attack from the other direction - terminated users. Let’s say this user is annoyed about that. They had a few hundred or thousand dollars of “stuff” in SL. They march down to the courthouse and pay $50US or so and make a small claims to LL for say, $2000 in damages. Now LL has to defend that claim. I’m not sure how they are going to defend it. Small claims court is a complete roll of the dice for all sides, and since LL probably has no counter claim to make, the person making the claim has almost nothing to loose. Judges really hate it when one side is acting capricious, illogical, or inconsistent. A litigant is going to be able to prove all of that in court, probably with ease. The lawyers will have a field day. Everyone looses - except the lawyers.

It always seemed the best approach for Linden Labs was just to be the supplier and not the government. Supply the viewer, the servers, and the infrastructure. Let the land owners make the rules/laws. That follows the common carrier model.

Now maybe this age verification thing is some attempt to segregate parts of the grid to marginally protect themselves. On paper maybe this seems to be a good idea. But it is being implemented in an idiotic and ham fisted fashion. If they were smart Linden Labs would just back off from the idea for now and let things cool down. Claim stupidity and call it a day - or ask for alternative ideas. State clearly what their objectives are.

I also wonder how they plan on enforcing these “rules”. A volunteer police department? Sex police? (Okay, don’t give too many people too many ideas…. I think I might have a uniform that might work for that…. but I digress.)

They also open themselves up to another legal trip up for them - privacy violation. If you do it in public, you have no rights to privacy. If you do it in private, you have different rights. Oh yes, yet another legal can of worms for them. Hmm… I own the land in SL, I had a skybox, I took precautions to ensure I was private, yet the sex police (Linden Labs or their assigned agent) spied on me and terminated my account, and defamed me. Again, it defies logic they would go down this route.

Linden Labs would like everyone to think that sex in Second Life is not a major part of the SL economy. They are lying to themselves. The VHS video tape recorder in the 1980’s was a hit because of pornographic videos not because people could watch Snow White at home it was Debbie Does Dallas. The Blue-Ray versus HD DVD groups are more concerned about not what the major movie studios think of the formats, but what the porn industry thinks of each format and which one they prefer.

Lastly, I think the Teen Grid, this reaction - if not overreaction - is all driven by a public relations and possibly an attempt to avoid a real government from stepping in and monkeying around. It is not driven common sense.

I’m not sure where it all ends, hopefully in a good place. Fear not, Linden Labs has paved the road and proven this technology and business model can work. If they screw it up, someone else will pick up the pieces and eat their lunch….

Synopsis: Acting dumb (you know - the previous modus operandi) in the end will pay off more for Linden Labs (and everyone else) than acting paternalistic.

-Veyron