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

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

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

In my last blog posting, I talked about the Google Operating System. You can also expand on this and create an entire operating system for your Avatar, to better separate your lives from each other. It might also help in keeping your Avatar’s existence private. An interesting tool is the Free Portable Privacy Machine. It is a Linux virtual machine that will run under Windows or Linux using QEMU, potentially off of a USB memory stick.

From within the virtual machine you can run Firefox and get access at all of your Avatar’s life within the Google world. The only down side is the version of Firefox they have installed, version 1.5, is getting old. I’m not sure if it can be upgraded to the 2.0 version easily or not. In any case it should still do the job.

-Veyron

Last week an active member of the Second Life libsecondlife software library, Jesse Higginbotham, who’s avatar was Jesse Malthus died in an automobile accident. It is always tragic to see someone that young die. It brought up another interesting and often disturbing thought, what happens when the person behind the avatar suddenly dies or is disabled, and no one in real life knows about there Second Life? I am sure it has already happened, given the size of the population in Second Life.

I suppose the avatar just does not sign on ever again. Sort of vanish without a trace. A rather tragic way to go actually, since know one would know why they are gone. Some close friends in Second Life would never have a wake or a get together to pay tribute.

Even more disturbing, what would a family member think or do if they logged in with the decedent’s account? What might they find they might not want to find?

Interestingly, I have seen a service to address this sort of problem on the Web, MyLastEmail.com. Maybe Second Life needs something similar, but what would it really say or do? Even more troublesome, people disappear from Second Life for other reasons.

-Veyron

There has been a lot of discussion since Linden Labs announced that voice will be added to Second Life. Akela Talamasca made some interesting points about that person didn’t sound like I expected them to. There is of course the point about the handicapped or the socially challenged having issues with voice. What I think it will really come down to is two major points, at least for me. Privacy and usability.

Information can not be un-given. Once it’s out, it cannot be taken back. Text is text, my voice is my voice and distinctly my voice. I don’t want to have what I say used against me sometime in the future, perhaps far in the future, when I’m not an being an avatar. I’ve considered using some voice cloaking software, but that seems extreme. I’d more inclined to use it if a voice was a generated part of the avatar. Makes sense, everything else on an avatar is an artificial computer construct, except who is behind it controlling the avatar. And that follows into the my next thinking.

Usability. When you’re talking with someone you are either talking or waiting to talk. Unless your trying to talk over someone, only one person can talk at a time. When texting is going on, there are multiple conversations going on at the same time. I can actually queue up what I am going to say, and I get the great advantage of being able to have a moment to reflect on what I am about to “text” before I hit enter. It’s pretty hard to remove your foot from your mouth once you have planted it firmly between your teeth.

You can also be IM’ing people left and right while chatting. We all do it. You can usually tell when someone is doing it. This would be something very hard, if not impossible to do with voice.

Oh, and let’s not forget about the possible annoyance factor…. I have not seen any real comments about how annoying voice could actually be. Think about how annoying howling and yowling in a club is as text and some basic audio is now, can you hardly wait for it to come live over streaming audio? Oh, and let’s not consider the possibilities for griefing. I will make a prognostication right here, right now. Some griefer will figure out a way to blow a 90+ decibel sound through the system and right into the headphones people are wearing. I can hardly wait for the news flash on that one.

Audio spamming, err, advertising. You think ugly spinning billboards are a problem now? Wait until they start yelling at you at 90 decibels. Buy my 16m lot next to yours for an extortionists price to stop the screaming…. I’m not naive enough to think that this will not happen. I’m sure Linden Labs has some smug plan to prevent this from happening and will be shocked when someone smarter than they are figures away around them. Or worse they have taken on the usual laissez-faire attitude and stuck their head in sand pretending that none of this will actually happen.

Lastly, two other minor points for me. I spend all day at work talking to people. When I get home to play on Second Life, the last thing I want to do is keep on talking. I also rarely turn on the steaming audio in Second Life. I like the peace and quiet at home.

Finally, I feel the immersion factor of Second Life I so enjoy might be ruined with voice. The people’s avatars I see and meet I feel are real to me. Just like the places. I feel voice might break the spell.

Within a year or so once the voice option is mainline in the Second Life software, I expect their to be a bifurcation of the user base. The percentage, and probably large at that, of older avatars will not be using voice, while the newer avatars, not knowing anything else, will be yammering away with voice. The two groups will look at each other with puzzlement…. Then the next wave will be live streaming video, but then at that point, what is Second Life? Skype?

Call me a Luddite, but text it to me baby….

-Veyron