This post from Vint Falken made me think about a RL friend of mine who’s too much afraid to play now because it’s much less a community than a marketing buzz system like the web became when RL companies started to invest.

You won’t be able to fight this system has LL need money to run, and companies come here more and more to invest and show off. We are only a few months before advertisements based renting of land or free based renting if you use company tools.

So, to answer you Vint, movies are pure fictions whereas avatars acting in wars or griefing are really doing malicious actions against other people hence TOS violation.
Writing rules is a hard task especially as SL is such a new playground, it’s not your usual free chat room backed by university, it’s a business that needs to comply with RL rules.

However, LL plays fine with us with open-source client, open bug-tracker, open-blog, open script and build system. It’s still a freedom playground.

I think what’s really going on is poor communication–within Linden Lab itself as well as between the Lab and the residents. The ridiculous, confusing, and contradictory statements issued by Daniel Linden, let alone by all of the LL staff going back over time, give us no real clarity, but they do give us insight into the mess that is inside the company.

Also, the latest statements seem to be more of a cover-your-ass kind of thing than anything else. It reasserts LL’s right to do whatever they want–they’re not really champions of open source and free speech if it opens them up to having to defend themselves constantly, and I’m sure any attorney will tell you that championing those issues will require you to be very willing to defend yourself in court. LL can close whatever accounts they want and say it’s within the TOS as they define them, and then whoever has been booted for whatever reason will have to defend their own behavior as well as argue that LL misunderstands it’s own TOS.

@Kris — roleplaying violence is not griefing, it’s not a malicious act against one person, it’s consensual, just like sex that some people take offense to. If I orbit some av without its owner’s consent, that is arguably malicious. But Daniel Linden’s statement makes it sound like they will consider any depiction of violence that some people take offense to, even if those people don’t have anything to do with it, as a violation of TOS and grounds for action. They may be able to do that as the real “owners” of Second Life. But it goes against everything they once claimed to stand for, and furthermore, is logically absurd. It’s conservative doublespeak and it is born out of fear. Speculating, I’d say Linden Lab is worried about the right-wing idiots in the US Congress and maybe some wingnuts in their own organization.

Indeed. They try the ‘emote speak’ a bit to much, to my liking. It’s not a question of ’safe’. This whole thing is not focused on griefers, but on content censorship. I think they ment to say ‘clean’. :d If they want to make sure meta-me feels safe, they they should start backing up inventories in stead of trying to sell us this idea that we need this kind of a censorship.

Banning people for half of the reasons they state in that blogpost is just as rediculous as attacking a country on another continent because you are _sure_ it has weapons of mass destruction.

Remember ‘Your World, Your Imagination’? And ‘Second Life is a 3D online digital world imagined, created, & owned by it’s residents’? They claim they are doing this because the community wants it. Which parts of the community? Gorean and midian roleplayers? The furries? The girls with guns? Samoerais? The escorts? Their clients? I don’t think so…

Alex said it better than I could, but I suspect, LL does not really have a lot of wingnuts, but bad communicators.

I suspect that if they get a “sizable” amount of ARs they will have a look. It’s more of a public display of “extreme” violence and sexual images and activities.

e.g. I think it’s still safe for Vint and Zoe to shoot me in the bum, while I run around naked in a Mature area (except for me at least).

I think we should all AR the Die Hard sim. ;-)

once they implement the new age verification system do you think i can AR Linden Lab? having them asking me for such personal information about me doesnt make me feel safe, thats heavy psychological violence for sure.

Why not just block the IPs of all of the countries that have laws against what the FREE people of the world are allowed to do.

So block the whole of America (Patriot Act), largest part of Western en Easteren europe, the largets part of Afrika and the largest part of Azia? Hmmm that would surely lag. (And then I’m not even mentioning Australia and Canada.)

You’re never totally free, but you can fight for the amount wherein you are. ;)