Schlagwort: development

Blame Europe?

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.

A feature I’d like to see: Mute a certain group

We all are members of more or less big groups, some are really spammy in the time being. I’d like to be able to mute all or certain groups e.g. during a meeting, so that I am not disturbed by them at all. When the meeting is over, I want to be able to unmute them, so that I can hear again, what’s happening on it and attend them, too. So, deal? 

Things to come

A few things to come in the future in my opinion, sooner or later:

  • income tax paid to your national government on virtual earned revenues,
  • more CAD tools like now this exporter named Henshin (AutoCAD to SL),
  • strict enforcing of this adult flag,
  • a 3rd party API to extend the client with plugins like importers, adding client side scripts etc.,
  • saving contents with LSL to notecards,
  • some sort of external backup,
  • regulation of the Linden Dollars, perhaps by the Fed, if it becomes popular enough,
  • some kind of interests on credits, defined by whomever,
  • more law rushing into SL (it has never been out of SL),
  • some kind of external grid/corporate grid, well new grids anyway,
  • the sale or IPO of Lindenlabs,
  • some bridge to existing instant messaging networks like ICQ, MSN or Jabber.

Child pornography issues

About one week ago there has been a report that aired on German television about the depiction of child pornography in Second Life. It sent out massive waves through the whole community, the Lindens even wrote an article about the whole case on their own blog.

The whole case broke down into this parts:

  1. the depiction of child pornography in Second Life, meaning: an avatar in child form having sex in world with an adult avatar and
  2. the exchange of real life pictures of teens and preteens in questionable poses (nude and more heavy stuff, it seems) as textures in world between some avatars.

The first case is not illegal in all countries; for example in the USA some could just say "heck, those are virtual things and just adults playing behind the whole scene, no real child has been harmed at all while doing this, and it is not illegal, either, so what’s the ruckus?" The final decision on it has to be made by a judge.

But Second Life has people coming from all over the world, and in many countries the depiction of such acts – virtual childs or not – at all is already against the law, so already the first case is against German law. But of course this doesn’t mean this act has been conducted by Germans, that’s something for the Lindens to find out.

Even more serious is the second part – the real life pictures. Law is here more or less the same in all developed countries, posession of such things is against the law and therefore a case for the prosecutor.

The names of the avatars were shown in the report, by the way. If they haven’t been banned already, they would be so dead by now, since million of people watched it and the word spread out, you cannot have an idea about that!

Anyway, the investigations have been showed to Robin Linden and she looked really shocked in the report. Ok, she looked not too good at all in the interview, but we all know who medias can make you look bad if they just want you to, by using the wrong light etc.

At last the Lindens have reacted at lightning speed to this issue. Why? Because this is a real, real big threat to their business. At the moment many companies are rushing into the still hip Second Life. If Lindenlabs would have not reacted at all, it would have a big image problem by now, not only being considered as "virtual sex world", but as "home of virtual pedophiles" or something like that.

And it is hard to convince your CEO to invest into such a thing, this would drive many potential customers away, so they had to react and with force, being open about it and telling all and that’s exactly what they did.

Even if some consider the first part just "role play", I personally find that kind of "role play" disgusting, but like always, it is not going away, it is now moving more in the underground since the first case of such a thing has been made public to a big audience.