I teleported today onto the Phat Cat’s dancefloor. Well, strangely it happened that I was teleported under the dancefloor, take a look at this picture here:
It seems that Dilbert Dilweg really wants to get rid of his club fast, the price for it already went down to 800.000 L$ or 3.000 U$. Why he’s selling it? Because he’s moving in with his love and having much less time for SL, then. Quite easy.
The biggest and most popular jazz club in SL, Phat Cat’s, is for sale, again, but this time for real, as it seems. The owner, Dilbert Dilweg, wants to get at least 1.000.000 L$ (equivalent to about 3.501 US$) for the whole private island including all buildings and objects.
Now I wonder if we are going to see the most popular place in Second Life at all according to Tateru Nino under new management soon…
Let me quote the in world sales pitch here:
Phat Cat’s is for sale. The sale is 1,000,000 Lindens and will include full transfer of simulator and costs.
Buy at time of tier payed and get 1 full month without having to pay tier.
All transfers will be completed WHEN ALL monies have been transfered.
Paying thru pay pal without Lindens is also acceptable payment. Payment should be the equivelent of 1 million lindens at current market rate the total would be US$3,500.72.
Cotact Dilbert Dilweg for purchasing information if you are seriously interested in buying one of the strongest clubs on SL.
The price is quite a bargain for such a well established and good running sim, if you ask me. Other sims with that kind of traffic have been sold for much, much more money in the past already.
And if you take a look at the finished land auctions at the mainland, a new sim without any content there is still being sold for around 2-3000 US$ there, so this price is not out of reach or far too much asked for it.
SLMillions, the in world lottery where you could win one million Linden dollars, is gone for good. Seems to me that this project was creating way too much loss for the people behind it to let it run much further.
When you take into account, which big waves the announcement from 05/04/2007 of the age verification system made and that Lindenlabs wanted to implement this on really short notice and since then it has been over one month of time and it is still not there nor any new announcements about it, it makes you wonder – when is it going to happen, finally?
I haven’t even seen a public beta test of it so far, and if you consider how fast Windlight was integrated in the client, which is a far more complex piece of technology – what is taking Lindenlabs so long? And why?
The Second Life Herald is running an article named "Blame Europe" about the "virtual child pornography" by Carl Metropolitan (who dislikes it clearly) reported by German reporters.
The main thesis is this:
Sexual "ageplay" in Second Life–as repulsive as it is–would almost
certainly be legal under current US law. In the United States, only
virtual child pornography that is "indistinguishable from" real child
pornography is illegal. [1] However, many European jurisdictions are
far more restrictive. In Germany–source of the recent ARD "Report
Mainz" news reports–laws against "virtual child pornography" are even
stricter, [2] making little distinction between real and virtual child
pornography.[…]
The First Amendment has led to United States having some of the least
restrictive laws on freedom of speech in the world. But as Second
Life’s real life users become less and less American, and its servers
cease to be wholly US-based, Linden Lab will inevitably be forced into
more limits on what it can and cannot allow its users to do.
No, I disagree. This is not about enforcing laws here in the first line, or the constitution of whatever country at all. The main reason why Lindenlabs reacted promptly is: this could hurt their image great lengths and decrease their income great lenghts.
Face it, corporate plays a more and more important role in Second Life, it is making big bucks with Lindenlabs and is a thriving force and income for profit. But when Second Life’s image becomes equal in the public as some kind of wonderland, where child pornography is being tolerated by the company running it, then the first part to leave SL quickly is going to be the companies, because this broken image could hurt themself, too. Later also many residents would leave Second Life, too.
So it is either satisfying the needs of Lindenlabs to grow more or tolerating this behaviour of a small part of the community, which is illegal in many countries of the world and for sure would hurt the business great lengths, but not where the HQ of LL is situated.
Either way there would be complaints, but since a company wants and needs to make profit and tolerating this behaviour would hurt profit great lengths, the solution of it is without no doubt: making Second Life cleaner for all (age verficiation) and making it very clear, that they don’t tolerate such behaviour at all, even if it complies with the US law.
And while some are now complaining (what for?), I welcome this necessary step towards a cleaner Second Life and since it enables Lindenlabs the opportunity to stay much longer in business.