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

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).

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…

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.

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.