Some thoughts on suicide

I've been doing a lot of thinking of late about the entire ethical question of suicide, and it boils down to a few key points, which I will summarize here before opening the floor to comments. There seems to be a very limited scope by way of arguments put forward against suicide, and it makes me wonder how much people actually look at the topic from a neutral point of view. We are ALL going to die sometime - death is the only certainty in life. Why is it regarded as an aberration to have any decision on how and when we die? Here are the main arguments I've come up against, feel free to add others by way of comment.

1. Suicide is the most selfish act one can perform. I find it interesting that the only reason people can give for this is "what about the ones left behind?". Well, what about them? Close friends or family may mourn for a time, but again, we're all going to die. We might die by violent means at the hands of another, we might try and cross the road and get hit by a bus whose driver wasn't paying attention. Even if we don't, one day we'll die because our bodies simply shut down. Why is it a particularly selfish act to say "The circumstances no longer give me quality of life. I therefore, with love and respect for my friends and family, wish them all the best and withdraw from this life before I become a burden on them." I still fail to see how this can be selfish, other than to those who simply want the person to stay alive because they, personally, don't want to miss that person - in which case I'm bound to ask, who is the selfish one in this scenario?
2. Suicide is a sin, forbidden by God. It depends on your beliefs. Yes, if you're a Christian, the Bible says that suicide is the ultimate "playing God" scenario, which is one of the worst sins you can execute - but what if you're not Christian. I, for example, am Wiccan. Our beliefs don't hold that there's a God who judges everyone for their acts, or who will be waiting to don wig and gavel the second someone departs the mortal coil. To a Wiccan, death is part of the cycle of things - death is neither friend nor enemy, it just is. It's certainly not a sin. In a world where there is supposed to be religious freedom, why is it immediately assumed that just because the God of Christians says it's a sin to commit suicide, this automatically makes it a sin for everyone else?
3. Suicide is a mental illness. Don't commit suicide, get councelling. This is another common thing that I hear, and again, I don't see that a very broad label can be applied. In some cases, yes, some people who have a mental illness or problem will contemplate suicide. I happen to think that genuine depression is not a mental illness. Even the happiest of people can be driven into depression by a set of circumstances relevant to their condition or situation, That does not automatically make those people mentally ill. Councelling can only help if there is a solution. If a quite sane person, driven by circumstances has assessed every part of their situation and found that there is no viable outcome, just as if a vet tries every solution on an animal and it still remains ill - councelling isn't going to help. Councelling has its place, without a doubt, and nobody should die alone or make the decision alone. But at the end of the day, when one passes the age of majority and becomes lawfully an adult, one takes responsibility for ones own destiny, ones own actions. Ultimately I believe that gives one the right to choose, in full awareness and acceptance of the consequences and the responsibilities, when they leave this life.

The circumstances of the suicidal person should always be taken into consideration when debating how "right" or "wrong" such a thing is. This is an area where blanket rules can't and won't work. I'm interested on peoples feedback on this, so the floors open. What's your opinion on suicide?

Letter of Resignation to Support for Healing

Dear folks,

I have given this whole matter a great deal of thought. To write these words hurts deeply, and to actually need to write them hurts even more.

The fact is, Zafu Diamond has stopped communicating with the management team. In fact, except for Industria Dowler who has been landed with the unenviable task of trying to hold things together, I haven't heard from ANY of the other management team members in a while. Despite Twickle Rosebud's recent notice, there is no evidence that the island will continue beyond the end of June, especially given that there is no way for Zafu to collect donations directly to keep the island going.

As anyone who has been monitoring Jira Ticket MISC-1154 is aware, the island tier has to be paid by the account holder only, Linden Labs won't talk to anyone else about it. This means that we're stuck in a perpetual cycle of sending money to a paypal address apparently owned by Zafu without any feedback, and just hoping that the money will eventually receive LL on time. In addition, since the closure of supportforhealing.com this address is apparently a private one and it is NOT paypal verified.

I am sure other members would feel very upset if they sent donations only to find the island vanished anyway. They would most likely want their money back, and I wouldn't blame them for that, which leaves poor Industria Dowler stuck in the middle, as the in-world person who collects the money she is likely to be crtiticised by angry members wanting their money back, but if she's already sent it to Zafu she won't have the money to refund.

This is not the way to run a support island, and my patience is finally at an end.

I therefore am left with no option but to resign my positions at Supportforhealing, effective immediately.

I shall be shutting down the vendors, removing my prims from the island and cleaning up. This unfortunately will mean the upcoming events sign, the fundraising vendors and the teleporters will shortly vanish. I apologise for this, but do not feel that I can continue without some solid evidence that the founder is behind us.

Also effective immediately, Listening Ear will no longer operate from the island. I have my own land now, and it will operate from there. IM me if you need further details on this.

Very shortly, a new website - supportforhealing.org - will become available, on which forums and other details will hopefully be posted.

Blessings to you all, and thank you for the friendships and contacts I have had over the period I've been at Support for Healing.

Untameable Wildcat
5 May 2008

Disheartening

Sometimes I wonder why people like me even bother to try and help others.

Following the problems at Support for Healing, I raised a JIRA ticket about the issue of a backup plan in the event that, for some reason, an individual sim owner doesn't manage to get a tier payment through on time.

Along come Mercia McMahon and Lex Neva (Lex isn't even a member of the Support for Healing group) and neither bothers to actually find out about the situation before they open their mouths.

Mercia first:

This is not going to be changed in the short-term and I understand that the Description is over-stated. The owner's account is still active and the island is not in immediate danger.
Management teams are fine until there is a dispute, I can understand LL restricting an island to single avatar ownership, and as private regions are not part of the mainland tier system there is no way for groups to own one. A solution would be to create a parallel system of private region tier, so that groups can own private regions and so tier payments can be shared.

Okay, let's go through the actual facts

• First of all, Zafu's account isn't active. What Mercia did was use the beta "Search All" to look up his account, and for some reason it showed. She never bothered to look up the nonbeta "search people" system, where his account doesn't show. Incidentally, in a later posting I'll get to in a moment, she doesn't take responsiblity for or apologise for her incorrect posting; it's clearly "a problem" with the Beta system.
• Secondly, we have no way of telling whether the island is in immediate danger, so to say it simply isn't is wrong. As we don't know (for some reason best known to himself Zafu won't tell anyone) what day tier is paid, we don't know what day we need to aim for, and thus we don't know if we need to put our hands in our own pockets as a management team to keep the island, should the tier day draw near and the donations meter still be at 25%
• Thirdly, her "solution" simply doesn't apply to the situation here. It's not relevant to this issue at all, because this issue is about a problem that already exists not about possibly presenting it in the future.

It should also be noted, I feel, that when I was talking to another SfH member about a recent depression support group, who was there making a LOT of use of the service? Mercia McMahon. Shame she can't show a little support for the service she seems to find so valuable.

Now Lex Neva:

> ...as the sim owner won't tell us on what day of the month tier is due.

Simply put, if you don't have full cooperation of the sim owner, I don't think it's a good idea for LL to let you step in and take over the island or island payments. Wouldn't it be messy if a quietly predatory group of "helper" managers managed to wrest control of an island away from its owner simply because they had something come up in RL and weren't able to keep current in SL? I know you assured us that's not what you're doing here... but how is LL to make that judgement in all cases? How can they do that without spending many hours of LL worker time per island?

It IS possible for non-profit corporations to hold islands and accounts in SL. I believe they can even get a discount. It seems like that kind of organization is necessary for such an important island as this one.

Let's have a look at this one.

• In Lex's mind, or at least in his posting, if the sim owner isn't always standing right behind the management team, it's better for the sim to vanish due to nonpayment than LL to talk to the management team. Sorry, everyone who needs the help and support of Supportforhealing, but if Zafu doesn't want to continue or to even talk to the management team, then in Lex's mind LL should simply kill off the sim. Who needs it anyway?
• Secondly, and MOST outrageous (and this really had me pissed off) - far from doing good works in trying to make sure the island didn't vanish, Indy, I and all the others in the management team are trying to take over the island. This from someone who isn't even a member of the group. Linden Labs should remove the island rather than let us take it over even if that's not what we're trying to do.
• Thirdly, the "non-profit corporation" he's talking about requires American non-profit corporation status. Support for Healing is an English charity. It doesn't have either the means nor the legal knowhow to register for NPC status in America, nor, to be honest, does it really want to. I was told at some point that we do still get the discount - I don't know if this is true or not - but if there's no mechanism for LL to recognise non American charities, that's their failing and something they need to look at.

Following rather a strongly worded correction of Mercia's points, she did respond with

@Wildcat. "If you search for the sim owner under Search -> People there are no results returned, because that account is NOT active. " Yes, but if you search for their first name in All, they are top of the list. I should have remembered that All is Beta, so a problem has been spotted there.

No "oops, I was wrong". No "Aha, I've checked and yes, that is actually the state." No apology. Seems a lot of people who cruise the JIRA looking for issues to comment on don't actually feel the need to do any research about what they're commenting on, which is really annoying.

In the meantime I'm working on the possibility after my move this week of resigning from Support for Healing. There's only so much I'm prepared to fight. The only thing keeping me there is guilt about dropping poor Industria Dowler into the unenviable situation of being the ONLY one apparently pro-actively interested in keeping it going; I don't really want to do that to her.

But really, from the point of view of the rest of the way things are working out, I simply don't want to fight any more... I'm still coming across people who don't even KNOW of the JIRA ticket despite the group announcement I made (did these people simply cancel the announcement without actually reading it?) and so they aren't voting, aren't making their voices heard... and if the island DOES disappear, they'll wonder how come it got this bad and they didn't hear about it?

Reflections on my time in SL (Bumped)

Once upon a time, there was a tavern
Where we used to raise a glass or two
Remember how we laughed away the hours,
Think of all the great things we would do


When I first came to SL I was gobsmacked. The system held so much promise, made boundaries so much smaller. It wasn't long before I found Support for Healing, and not long after that I founded Listening Ear, for helping those who felt uncomfortable talking in a group environment. This was my home away from home, and when I lost people RL I could come here, where there was no death, and still be helpful.

There was even a darker side to SL, where I could indulge my fantasies, in the hope I might find respite from numerous ghosts that had haunted me over the years...

Then, the busy years went rushing by us
We lost our starry notions on the way
If, by chance, I'd see you in the tavern,
We'd smile at one another and we'd say


Time passed. Rules changed. Arguments broke out about paid accounts vs free accounts. I moved countries, and somewhere along the way my first ever account was deleted, my land in Disl recycled, my possessions deleted. When I came back to SL after settling in another country, Support for Healing was a ghost island, regular meetings cancelled, hosts drawn from helping to dealing with RL matters. A very few people I managed to re-establish contact with. A few names I still try to look up every so often. I exchanged many a happy word with one person in particular, but I have no idea if she comes on any more... I've never actually seen her online, and now the system has changed so that you can't see the online/offline state of someone unless they allow it - which I still think is a deliberate cop-out to stop Lindens being IMd when they take no notice of the help request channel...

Just tonight, I stood before the tavern
Nothing seemed the way it used to be
In the glass, I saw a strange reflection
Was that lonely woman really me?


When I first came to SL I was an escort for a while, to make enough Linden Dollars to survive. During my prowling today I was asked for sex in the usual pidgeon english that is a dead giveaway the person I'm talking to either doesn't speak good english, or is well under the age the mature grid requires, or both. With things like first land disposed of, and RL politics in the form of various countries politicians invading SL to canvass for any votes they could get... I just felt the loneliness very strongly. I looked at the glass of the monitor, and I did indeed see a strange reflection of myself, and wonder - IS this really me, is this what I've become, and all I can ever be?

Through the door, there came familiar laughter
I saw your face and heard you call my name
Oh, my friend, we're older but no wiser
For in our hearts, the dreams are still the same


I watch the happenings these days at places like CaRP and Support for Healing from the sidelines. I see familiar faces, hear people occasionally greet me... all the dreams are gone now, gone to dust, as time passes and Second Life gets more restrictive, more unstable and more filled with people who just want to fulfill sexual fantasies with this unmoderated medium...

Those were the days, my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd live the life we'd choose
We'd fight and never lose
Those were the days, oh yes, those were the days

Very little holds me to SL now... the few people I mention in my web profile, the occasional genuine cry for help that I can in some small way help... but very little else. Some days I just long to fade.

One day, I shall fade from SL. I will close my account, and click the magic button in control panel that officially kills me from the system. Few will notice, few will care.

It's just another lost dream, after all.

Stay safe.

(lyrics: Mary Hopkins - Those were the days, my friend)

Support for Healing is dying, and with it my SL purppose

I can't help but recognize one fact this month.

Support for healing is dying.

At the beginning of the month the domain hosting for supportforhealing.com was not renewed. It's now in its "grace period" prior to being deleted. Despite on a number of occasions me suggesting we moved it to a domain I administer, there has yet to be an answer.

This morning, the person I would have appointed as manager of the island helpers in the event that I needed to leave second life abruptly left, deleting all his prims on the island. This came as a shock to me since I have no idea why he left. He also unfriended me, so I don't know if he'll respond to my IM about it.

There's a donation meter on the island now. I'm given to understand that this months tier is okay, but so far next months tier is in doubt. The donation meter was at 20% when I last looked.

It looks like the island that drew me to SL in the first place is in its death throws, and may close within the next two months. If it does, with my new job an increasing demand on my time, I may well leave SL myself. It's sad to think about this, but I may end up moving on simply because what I loved more than anything about SL has died. Blue Angel memorial garden closed last month, and if Support for Healing goes the same way, Untameable Wildcat will quietly die with it.

I doubt anyone will notice.

MetaLIFE: New social networking tool or spam-generator?

A short while ago I was asked to try out a new social networking tool called MetaLIFE. From the outset it struck me as quite well coded, with a lot of thought having gone into it. It wasn't perfect yet (what is?) as it was still hardcoded to use channel 8 which upset other scripted items, including Psyke's security orb, which could cause the MetaHUD to become quite confused (and, it appeared to me, rather distressed) when it couldn't obey the commands it thought it was being given.

But for a social networking system it is pioneering. It allows you to "follow", or track, the activities of other residents (I do have some worries that they might fall foul of privacy rules here, but time will tell) and get little messages whenever someone you're "following" does something. Likewise, people choosing to "follow" you will be told when you buy something, choose to "follow" someone else, comment a profile or other such things.

Originally this was quite quaint fun, and I did enjoy it.

But then someone scripting the MetaHUD made a real mistake in my opinion. They altered the way it worked so that it started sending offline messages to a subscribers email. And worse than that there STILL doesn't exist the ability to regulate that from the MetaHUD itself. Again, it's hard coded. The only options you have to stop that are to stop "following" residents, or to choose to stop SL from sending you offline IM's to email (which in my case isn't an option since I must receive urgent calls relating to SupportforHealing's Listening Ear project). Of course, if you DO do that then you risk getting "capped" by SL, which has a limit to the number of offline IMs and messages it will store.

At present, I'm only "following" one resident who is particularly busy. But that single resident's activities have sent me 11 emails on March 12th, six on the 13th and (at the time of this entry) 4 today. And that's one resident. Multiply this by 10 if it did become popular and suddenly you have a serious email problem. Already due to the frequency, length and content, my Mozilla Thunderbird has started to classify incoming MetaLIFE messages as junk mail.

I'm not sure that it isn't right.

Why does this come as such a surprise?

Recently, since Support for Healing declared a financial crisis when our founder, Zafu Diamond, was not able to afford to pay island tier prices to Linden Labs on his own, I've had my eyes opened to a major misperception.

I've spoken to quite a few people, on the island and off it, about fundraising. Inevitably the topic of conversation will come around to the organizations legal standing, in terms of whether support for healing is genuinely a non-profit making charitable organization. The statutory requirements of the United States are mentioned, and I'm asked about SfH's compliance with them.

Then comes the bombshell.

Support for Healing is not an American project. It never has been. Our co-founders both live in the UK. When I tell people that, particularly if they come from the US, their reaction is almost identical in every case - they never considered, for one brief moment, that an organization that does such good works would exist in any country but the United States. It takes them completely off guard that Support for Healing would have gained it's charitable status in a different country.

I have to ask myself why this does come as such a surprise. The reactions of a lot of Americans I've spoken to is quite telling, in that reflected in their (justified) national pride about the charitable works of some American organizations overseas, is the growing sentiment that only Americans would think about doing something like Support for Healing. There's less of a surprise factor in the reactions of non-US residents, and indeed less of a disbelief factor as well. Less often do I get asked "are you serious?" by a non-US resident when I say that SfH is UK based.

I've seen other support groups in Second Life, and I've seen quite a lot of commercialism in terms of any support group needing to be paid for. That will never happen at Support for Healing. We do embody the Buddhist belief of our founder in that SfH is neither religious nor discriminating. We do what we do as volunteers, because we seek to help others; no other reason than that. Surely, this can happen anywhere in the world, not just the US?

The Story of Stuff

Guest blogged by Whisperwolf, with comments from Wildcat.

Browsing the internet I came across one of the best short animation-films I've ever seen. Called the story of stuff and presented by a lady called Annie Leonard, this film exposes the true cost behind todays society of use-and-throw-out. One really shocking thing that she said, which I checked out (and found to be true) was a true reflection of consumerism. What did President Bush tell people to do in the days after 9/11? (apart from bomb Iraq, I mean.) Pray? Spend time with families? Grieve? No. He told us to shop. Don't let the terrorists win, continue our daily way of life - in fact, we should shop more just to spite the terrorists. Yeah, that'll show them.

Do everyone a favour. Watch the film yourself, and when you've watched it, publicize it. Tell everyone you can think of about it. Blog about it, as I have done. Perhaps THE most important point she makes is that it isn't too late to take this back off the corporations. But time IS running out. The planet's resources are not finite. Watch. Care. Get involved. The planet is depending on you.

You know, wondering around in Second Life I see the echoes of the consumer society. Second Life is the ultimate utopia for consumer spending, where shopping is god, but ultimately there are no production costs, no problem with disposal, no using the planets resources. I look at Second Life and I see that its training us to think like consumers. Want your own land? Consumer. Even if you get your own land, you're going to want stuff to put on it. Even if you don't, every day there are group IM's about costume events where virtual money is up for grabs, but to enter you've first got to have the costume... so get out there and buy, buy, buy.

I was somewhat shocked to see on the television adverts for the latest version of the popular board game Monopoly. It's now available in a CREDIT CARD edition, complete with a mini computer (batteries not included of course). Each player has a credit card and when they land on someone elses property they use their credit card to pay the rental bill. They don't even have to work out the bills any more, it's all done by the little computer. One of the main parts of monopoly when I was a girl was doing the maths yourself, and if you got it wrong or wasn't paying attention and didn't notice before the next player rolled the dice for your turn, then you forfeited collecting that rent. It helped teach maths. That's gone in this version.

And you want to know what is saddest? What's the most likely way the kids will see their parents buying this new version of Monopoly? With a credit card.

I'm tempted to start an alternative sim, one where people donate things to be given away. One where with every giveaway, people are alerted by notecard and links to things they can do to save the first life world. Whisperwolf is right, time is running out... and we that play Second Life prefer to ignore that and take our consumerism into a virtual environment. But that won't stop the planets resources from being exhausted, and when they are - Second Life will cease to be, because it can only exist through the parts of the consumerism chain we all ignore or take for granted. When resources run out, and there's nothing left for power generation, so Second Life too will vanish.

Worth thinking about, worth doing something about, before time does run out.

Crossing borders

During the time I've been involved with Listening Ear at supportforhealing, I've seen a lot of cries for help. Some were obviously more a cry for attention, some were genuinely distressed people who needed help to find their sense of self, once they did so they were able to pick themselves up and go on.

But nothing could prepare me for a conversation I had today, and it wasn't even at the Listening Ear hut.

My spirits rose when I saw the online notification for someone I haven't seen in Second Life for a very long time. I was quick to greet the person and establish an IM conversation. Very quickly I realised that there was a serious problem.

People in genuinely suicidal moods (as opposed to depression or clinical depression) generally fit into one of two categories. The easier category to deal with is those who do something that draws attention to their mood; they can often be quickly identified and, although it can often be difficult, they generally are doing whatever it was that was identifiable because at a very deep down level they DON'T want to give up their existence, which is what someone trying to help them can use to find the key to then help them rediscover their sense-of-self. The harder category are those few people who are meticulously putting everything in order so that they can just slip into oblivion without any fuss and with as few as possible noticing. The person I spoke to was in that category.

In such cases, the ONLY warning sign is the putting things in order. And in these situations since they've already given up, giving such a person reason to go on living is one of the hardest things in existence. It brought me up short, and through a wall of tears forced me to consider something very seriously.

When we first met and got talking, I established fairly early on that the person I was talking with was married. That, to me, puts someone firmly off limits. If a guy is in a relationship, that's a sign to me that they are not for me to try and dissuade for my own personal gain. And yes, I'll admit it, I was tempted having seen this guys heart to tell him to dump his lifemate and come be with me. Perhaps more tempted than I've ever been in my entire life. But I didn't, and now I'm forced to confront the possibility that this was the wrong choice.

In our all-too-short conversation today it became apparent that this person has completely given up. His partner, I've always felt, was not a good choice for him; she uses him shamelessly, is lazy and unsupportive, and would much prefer getting attention than giving it. He has a business, but he told me today that he's winding that up. Alarm bells started ringing. I found myself in shock, ticking off the signs of someone who has lost all hope. His soul, as it were, seemed like it was already dead, and the following of his body was just a formality. Glib as I have been from time to time at Listening Ear, I found myself totally lost for a way to find SOME assurance that he could examine, even cling to, in order to pull himself up from the edge. I still find myself fingering a credit card I can't really afford to use, contemplating heading straight for the airport. If I truly believed it would do any good, I would do it.

But I don't. All the signs are that he's given up, and if that's so then there is nothing I - or anyone else - can do. And if that's the case the best I can do is respect his wishes - give him dignity in his slipping off into oblivion.

But I'll mourn. Oh, how I will mourn if he does indeed slip beyond my help. So many things, so much could have been... so much could be lost. I know he reads this blog, and I'm not trying to guilt trip him. What he decides to do is his choice, and no matter how much it affects me, he will always have my support and my love. If he wasn't sure of it before, he can be now.

I will go on, for those who I can help, for those who have still got enough of a sense of self that I can reach out and touch them and help them find the will to go on. I'm a healer, it's what I do. It's all that I do.

Even when I can't reach those I love.

Stay safe.

The JIRA issue that won't die

In it's long and distinguished career, JIRA issue Web-382 has gone from being a carefully worded attack on a group somebody didn't like, to a moderately serious proposal, to something almost workable and finally back to being a carefully worded attack again.

So why won't this issue die? Quite simple. The original poster won't let it.

And of course, the original poster just has to turn out to be Prokofy Neva, perhaps the most outspoken person in Second Life's history. Prokofy is an unbeaten expert in turning things around and beating people with slightly different things while pretending those were the original things, with being the schoolteacher disciplining recalcitrant schoolchildren and with the most interesting set of double standards which she will never admit to.

Let's have a look at the wording of Web-382 for a moment:

It is too easy for feature suggestions and bugs to be prematurely closed.

This must surely be the point at the heart of the debate, and this point I don't have any problems with. But she goes on to say:

A small group of coders here on JIRA are constantly closing and resolving issues in the belief that they know best, yet they do this at times without consent and support. This results in undue pressures and discontent, and makes it very hard for the author to re-open his proposal in the face of hostility. By providing the authors with a feedback period some of this can be avoided and if deemed appropriate the issue in jeopardy can be kept open.

And here is where the problems and the biases start to come out. It all revolves around the idea that she has of this "feted inner core". Now, she's not big on conspiracy theories. Just ask her if the US government were behind 9/11. But when it comes to Second Life, there's definitely a cabal and there's definitely a 'feted inner core'. Naturally, she's a target for this group because she's the big Defender of the Second Life Freedoms. So, if she opens a JIRA ticket, and somebody closes it, it's because they are in one of these tin hat groups.

JIRA-382 has ceased to be a productive discussion. At one point I backed her into a corner which she got quite vicious about. Part of debating a propsal where the consequences could be unexpected is to consider hypothetical situations. I posed two: Firstly, if someone were to directly or indirectly insult another person (for example an immediate example of Godwins Law) then where would the JIRA stand on closure? Linden Labs simply don't have the manpower to spend a lot of time on the JIRA and this means that if other residents don't tidy things up (closing duplicates or pure waste of time tickets) chances are nobody will. If issues can't be closed without the permission of the original author, and that author purely wants to use the JIRA like a soapbox or to grief someone else, that ticket isn't going to get closed. The author will just re-open it. 382 itself is a perfect example of that. Secondly, if someone does decide to deliberately misuse the JIRA, and Linden Labs don't notice - who is going to police it?

So now I've been branded a troublemaker too. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be in the 'feted inner core' or the 'coders cabal' - probably the latter - but regardless, the fact that Prokofy Neva has double standards isn't supposed to be relevant. What do I mean by double standards? Well, this self proclaimed champion of SL civil rights holds two very different views about age verification at the same time:

So a list of adult consumers with their avatar names and RL birthdates will be in the hands of one of the most aggressive and persistently nasty BDSM types in Second Life. Maybe the BDSM community won't care -- they like abuse, and maybe even this kind of RL abuse of their privacy. But as it spreads, and begins to be used by any club, or any rental, or anybody who just wants to be free from the plague of kids harassing and griefing you, it could become the device of choice, as it advertises being "better" than Integrity by not taking your RL name and drivers' license or Social Security number.

She gushes in her hate filled blog entry about a resident-created age verification system called agelock. But then she immediately goes on to say:

Hey, give me Integrity *any day of the week*. They are a real-life registered company with a business reputation and a bottom line to fulfill and a board of trustees. If I fear they've abused my trust in taking my info, I can protest -- with lawyers, by getting Congress involved, by getting the media on it. I can't do that with these anonymous avatars in Second Life!

I've got news for you, Prokofy. You can't. Nobody can. It comes down to an issue of contract law. We have a contract that we agreed to with Linden Labs when we all clicked the "I accept" on installing for the first time. That contract is enforceable. If Linden Labs breach it, ultimately they can be called to account for it in a court of law. We have no such contract with Integrity, nor do we have any idea what - if any - safeguards apply in the contract that exists between Linden Labs and Integrity and as such the very reason - unaccountability - that she cites for Agelock, also applies to Integrity. Yet she's passionately in favour of one, and passionately against the other. A double standard.


Ironically, the very reason Web-382 won't ever go anywhere is because the original author of it is the best example of why it should never be implemented. Somebody who absolutely MUST have their say, is abusive of others and won't let the issue be closed.

So I've called on Linden Labs to finally put an end to this self serving soapbox facade, by actually telling everyone what, if anything, they intend to do. Either to say "This part of the issue makes sense, we're looking at the viability of implementing it" or to outright say "this isn't going to be implemented, case closed." While I doubt they'll bother, it does show how badly the JIRA can be - and is being - manipulated for personal reasons, in an issue that simply won't die.

Finger pointing

There seems to be a need among some people to always have an enemy to blame for every little thing. Somewhere down the line we've become a culture of finger pointers, and you can see evidence of it all over the place.

I'm referring, in this instance, to Jira Web 382, which in its original form was quite deliberately worded to be finger-pointing. While I have nothing against backing up a proposal with factual information, finger pointing is always subjective. One persons enemy is another persons friend. To say a group of people you don't like is responsible for something that is somehow sinister and conspiracy-theory isn't a seemly way to conduct yourself in a public forum setting.

Unfortunately the shield the internet provides us all makes that kind of thing much easier. You wouldn't go up to a belligerant drunk who is holding a smashed bottle and shout at him for being wrong about something unless you were prepared for him to take a swing at you, because that's exactly what he'd do - but on the internet it's easy to take vicious swipes at someone just because they disagree with you, and for this reason everyone with even the smallest of grievances can cause an escalation of these grievances to sometimes monumental proportions.

In the case of Jira 382 I've apparently become a hostile tribemember who purely wants to get her own way in everything. I've even been referred to (by inferrence) as a Nazi because I'm taking what I see as a stand for what I see as right. Suddenly there are battle lines being drawn, and I'm taking quite vicious fire from people I don't even know. Aside from reading with some amusement, odd comments on the Linden Blog about how Ann O'Toole keeps commenting a lot, I'd never heard of her, and I've never met her. Yet according to her, I'm a Nazi. According to her and Ciaran Laval I'm part of the "cabal" (Prokofy's term) that is involved with this, despite the fact that I've never actually closed a JIRA issue (other than trying to close this one), which you can see from my JIRA profile.

So we get a situation that's gone from factual to hearsay to bitter contention. People aren't researching before they shout their mouths of. If we were all in the same room, I wonder, would that happen? In my RL job I have had to deal with drunks wielding broken bottles, and let me tell you it isn't a situation you really want to be in. But the confrontation is limited to those who can see what's going on - the whole picture - and still want to risk being hurt if they become involved. Not so these internet confrontations, where anybody can - and does - wade in, often far more viciously than they'd ever dream of doing IRL.

I'm sure they get something out of it. They must do, otherwise they wouldn't do it. But it seems a really sad aspect of the internet, reflected in some ways in Second Life that those who would be sitting quietly at their chairs looking the other way in a confrontation, are at the forefront of finger pointing and shouting from the safety of their keyboards on the internet.

Could this be the most reliable form of age verification yet?

I have some of my best ideas while lying in the bath. This one came about as a result of me thinking that if I wanted to start a “mature” MMORPG, how would I go about age verification in such a way that it was the most secure and policeable ever? I then attacked it with two criteria: How would I implement it, and if I was deliberately setting out to abuse it, how would I do so?

And then it came to me.

What I would do would be to make a deal with a telephone service company that provided specialist premium rate numbers. I’d tie my computer system to theirs in a similar but more extensive way that Ebay and Paypal use. The age verification routine on my website would give the person about to go through the check a unique identifying number. It would also feature prominently the warning “CALLING THE AGE VERIFICATION NUMBER WILL COST $5 PLUS APPLICABLE LONG DISTANCE CALL CHARGES. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS CHARGE, AND BY CALLING THE NUMBER AND PROCEEDING YOU ACCEPT LIABILITY FOR ALL CHARGES RESULTING FROM THIS CALL.”

Here’s the thing. The number it gave me to call and give my identification number that I’d just been given can ONLY be called from a domestic residential landline. It can’t be called from a mobile, and it can’t be called from a public callbox or a business landline. It can only be called from a domestic landline, which, correct me if I’m wrong requires the owner of the landline to be over the age of consent in their country.

So, I call the number, and I enter my code, and I’m age verified. I haven’t passed ANY identifying information that could be abused to any third party, and by verifying that I called from the number at that address, I do provide a method for legitimate law enforcement to track me down should that ever be necessary.

Now here’s the kick. I know you’re all thinking “How does that prevent my 12 year old calling the number?” Well, the answer is, it doesn’t. BUT, when the parent/owner of the bill gets their monthly telephone bill, ONE call costing at least $5 is going to stick out like a sore thumb. What happens if my 12 year old has done this? Here’s part two of my idea.

Say my underage son/daughter has done this, and I get my bill and find out someone made a call to “ age verification” which cost me $5. I contact my phone company, and ask who the hell this is? They do a check their end, and they say “Well, we can’t refund the money, but there IS an abuse line on their record for people who feel that they’ve been the victim of fraudulent use.” I call that number, and register my telephone number, then I go and ground my kid.

My kid throws an almighty sulk, and decides that while grounded they’ll play the mature game. They go to sign on – and their account has been banned. Raising a query about the number automatically results in an account ban for the misusing account. Furthermore, the telephone number is ALSO banned, so when (s)he goes to open a new account and tries to age verify again, the number won’t connect from that landline. Without it connecting, they can’t verify.

I’m not claiming this is foolproof. I don’t know any system that WOULD be foolproof and implementable across the globe. But as far as I know It’s the best I’ve seen to date… I would welcome feedback on this, and if anyone wants to knock the idea around a little, I think this is a firm foundation for a secure method of age verification that doesn’t require giving away potentially illegal information, it would work worldwide, it wouldn’t require very much in the way of equipment to make it work and I recommend this idea to the population!

It figures

The latest big thing in gaming for virtual world enthusiasts is bringing your avatar to life in the form of a miniature figure. I didn't realise that a company called "Fabjectory" has already been producing Second Life figures for almost a year, so when the news broke that my other favourite virtual world, World of Warcraft, now also had a company producing miniatures I thought this was completely new.

I have to say, I am surprised that Linden Labs didn't link it from their blog. A quick search on the official Linden Blog confirms that no, I didn't miss it, there never was a link about it.

I have to say, though, you can see where business backers and professionalism tell. The Figureprints site is slick, modelled on the WoW site and the quality of their models is fantastic; as you might expect from a company set up by the former VP of Microsoft Gaming. Figureprints got a whopping ONE MILLION hits in the first week to their website, and are now so popular that they actually have to have monthly draws to decide who gets the figures. The figures are manufactured by a 10,000 line script that actually grabs the exact details of the original avatar from Blizzard's studios and renders it in dull grey. It's then hand painted and finished, lacquered, placed in a glass display dome and shipped out to the lucky recipient. Signs are that the other big boys, including Sony Interactive Entertainment are very interested in Figureprints, and looking to get avatars from their world produced too.

Which begs the question, since Fabjectory have already been around for a while - why aren't they getting all the good press? Chances are it's at least partially down to their presentation. Fabjectory meet your avatar within SL and take pictures and measurements, dimensions and details required to make your avatar from scratch. They save the time in the print process, by having the miniature made from coloured materials, but the end result isn't as pretty and they also charge substantially more if you have a complex avatar. My normal wood elf avatar in Second Life would cost around $99, but my furry complex werehouse avatar would cost quite a bit more because of its complexity and detail. In comparison, Figureprints charge a flat $95.

I can speculate that Figureprints also have a much better, newer, next generation printer than Fabjectory (four of them, in fact, each costing $50,000) and this is also bound to influence the quality of the finished figure. While I'd like to see a Fabjectory model "in the flesh" so to speak, a quick youtube search doesn't turn up any hits, which again would probably decrease their marketing traffic.

By contrast, look at this guys jaw drop when he sees his WoW figure. While I'm already in the draw for a Figureprints WoW figure, I think I'll give Fabjectory a miss...

Cory Linden leaving: could this result in a viable rival to Second Life?

With official confirmation that the Chief Technical Officer of Linden Labs, Cory Ondrejka (a.k.a. Cory Linden, the Spaghetti Monster) is leaving the company at the end of the year, this has the potential to have serious repercussions to Second Life.

I can't help but wonder if Cory and Phillip have had a falling out over Age Verification. There have got to be some Lindens who think that going against the wishes of the majority of Residents is a seriously bad idea, and when Cory joined the fledgling team (he was the fourth ever employee to join Linden Labs) back in 2000, the emphasis was on a company that interacted with its userbase, something that has lessened increasingly in the past year, first of all with Lindens being able to make their online status hidden, then with contact directly with Lindens being removed via the live help vanishing, and now with them being unwilling to listen to their userbase over age verification.

Which begs the question, since Cory did a LOT of the coding for SL (he also wrote the LSL) - what will he do now, and is it likely he will join a company, or even found one himself, that produces a rival to Second Life? Certainly he's got the technical know how to do that, and maybe even develop something better starting again from scratch, because part of the reason he coined the term Spaghetti Monster was that the coding for SL was becoming so twisted and difficult to follow that a bug wasn't easy to find and eliminate purely because the code of the monster was no longer simple and neat.

I've said all along that in my opinion, Age Verification when it's made mandatory could conceivably destroy Second Life. Cory, who has always been an advocate of the Open Sourcing of Second Life, may already be planning to make his own version of it, and if he does AND leaves out Age Verification... well, a few years down the road it might be HIM that's the CEO of the successful company, him doing the hiring and firing while the memory of Linden Labs is consigned to computing history and an article on Wikipedia.

Watch out for Cory Ondrejka. He might be leaving Linden Labs, but I really doubt very strongly that this is the last Second Life residents will here of him.

GOOD LUCK WITH THE FUTURE, CORY!

Robin Linden confirms today, what Daniel Linden said a while back.

Taken from today's post, written by Robin Linden:

Voluntary Status
As currently implemented, age verification and parcel flagging to create adults-only restricted areas rely completely on voluntary participation. However, there is no assurance that either feature will always be voluntary for all Second Life Residents. It’s possible, for example, that we could be required at some point to make one of these features mandatory for the citizens of a specific country. Should that happen, we will do everything we can to provide maximum advance warning.

This echoes Daniel Linden's position from way back, that they'd make Age Verification mandatory across the board if they felt self-regulation had failed.

From Aristotle/Integrities point of view, this is an absolute goldmine. They collect a huge amount of new information, then if at some point LL goes bust they're free to do whatever they want because of the clause in the ToS that says in the event of LL's bankruptcy, there will be no liability for misuse of any data collected during SL's existence.

I may be a little paranoid, but I can actually picture Aristotle being poised to make a grab for ALL the data for a sum of money, in the event Linden Labs goes into receivership. From their point of view, it's a win-win situation.

Hat tip also to Nika Talaj, who points out:

May 2007:“[10:12] Daniel Linden: it’s vaulted to provided a government-required audit trail for two years, but neither Linden or Integrity can access that data unless an audit is initiated.”

Which is essentially my beef with them about the PATRIOT act. They HAVE to store this data. Just dumping it is against the law. You can't claim that just because it's 'sealed in a vault' it doesn't exist. Either it's being retained or it's not, and by the PATRIOT act's requirements it has got to be retained, for two years. Vaults can be cracked. A lot can happen in two years. We've been lied to a LOT by Linden Labs over this. Our details will be retained for two years, as is the law where Linden Labs is.

Sorry, but no. This won't work voluntarily, at which point they'll make it mandatory. Then push will come to shove, and those who are serious in their threat to leave - myself included - will do so. At that point, either LL will survive, or it will fold. If it folds, I'm betting Aristotle will get all the data that's ever been held by Linden Labs in whatever form, and hold a bidding party over who gets it first.

This isn't the way to treat your customers, Linden Labs.

Here it is - confirmation that Age Verifcation WILL be mandatory

"In the event we encounter abuses of self-regulation, Second Life may have to require age-verification throughout the world."

Thus saith Daniel Linden. And it's the first clue that Age Verification WILL become mandatory. HAVE to require, not keep optional. Just like when Linden Labs first said "We are considering a method of Age Verification using a third party" they didn't mean 'we are considering', they meant 'we are going to do this'.

Age Verification argument rages on

There seems to be three camps developing among residents with reference to age verification.

The first want it, have done it (or not, depending on whether Integrity actually has their information) and are annoyed at everyone else who doesn't want it.

The second is those who are generally okay with it. These are normally non-US residents whose only reservation is whether or not they are breaking the privacy laws in their own countries. More often than not, the age verification process fails for them anyway, but they're willing to try it.

The third camp is the one that I - and the vast majority of Residents - are in. That is, we don't want it, we won't use it, we won't flag our land and we'll inform relevant authorities where we see breaches of the law. In my case, since I live in Canada, I don't break the law if I voluntarily give my Social Insurance Number (SIN) to Linden Labs or Integrity, BUT, if I choose not to, Linden Labs DO break the law in Canada the moment that they deny me access to something on the grounds I haven't given my SIN number to them.

A pattern is beginning to emerge about Integrity's database. A number of people have failed to verify with their current data, but have managed to verify with data several years out of date. This indicates that Integrity are gathering public records to add to their database, but these records are often out of date. In the UK, for example, they buy data from the credit check company Equifax (which performs credit checks on consumers) however, Equifax only have data about those who have applied for credit in one form or another, or who have home facilities. Take my 42 year old brother, a sad individual who still lives with his parents. He's never applied for a credit card, hasn't bothered to tell the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency the last three or four times he's moved house, doesn't bother with bank accounts (he lives off welfare, cashing his cheque every two weeks at a post office who know him and never bother to ask for ID) - He wouldn't be on Equifax's database. He holds a driving license and passport, but has never had the internet at home. He is on the electoral roll, but the list that is not available to the general public (only available to government bodies).

As a test, I asked him to try age verification. Surprise surprise, it failed, despite the fact that the data he provided was correct. However, what was most interesting was he provided state information (passport number and driving license) - which would NOT normally be available to anyone but the UK government. It wasn't in Integrity's database. Which leads me to have serious doubts that their claims their data is taken from governments worldwide is genuine.

To me, Integrity has always seemed like a data mining company, that gets its profits by acquiring tiny pieces of the huge jigsaw that is a persons life, putting those pieces together and selling the completed picture for far more than the individual pieces cost. By age verifying, what a person actually does is to alert Integrity to their existence. Nobody has been able to find a privacy policy for Integrity, but my guess is that it's something like the policy for facebook; by providing them with ANY information, you expressly authorise them to collect any and all information they can about you, including but not limited to, credit card data, bank data, address data, religion, voting preference, membership of clubs etc etc. In other words, anyone trying to age verify with Linden Labs systems, whether they pass or fail, is actually authorising Integrity to start data mining on them. Again, this IS only my guess, but until someone can find a privacy policy I'm standing by this opinion, bearing in mind the discovery that it was indeed the case for Facebook.

And this is what makes it dangerous. Particularly the section in Linden Labs own terms of service, that states in the event of bankruptcy, Linden Labs can no longer be held responsible for anything done with ANY data collected by the Second Life system. Linden Labs remains completely silent on the questions being thrown at them by residents along the lines of "What guarantee do WE have that your third party company (Integrity) won't misuse or sell our information." And the answer to that is simple. None at all.

Looking at it from a legal point of view, a resident makes a contract with Linden Labs when they sign up, for the provision of a service called "Second Life" in return for complying honestly with their terms of service (it's far more complicated than this, of course, but this is what it boils down to in its simplest form) - This means that the resident, as a consumer, and Linden Labs, as a service provider, can hold one another liable in the event that one breaks the conditions. As it's part of the terms of service that users of the adult grid are over 18, anyone who isn't and uses the service is in breach from the moment they log in for the first time. Bringing a third party into it, however, muddies the waters.

Since a resident has not agreed to anything with this third party, there is no contract, and nothing to regulate the residents behaviour toward the third party or the third parties use of any collected residents data. Effectively what this means is a resident is perfectly at liberty to be totally dishonest with the third party, because there's no agreement to stick to, but it also means the third party is equally at liberty to do whatever the hell it wants with whatever data it does get provided. No agreement, no contract, no protection.

Some Residents will sign up to age verification right away (and indeed, some already have). Some will be willing to sign up when the database is more complete and they're likely to be on it. Most will refuse point blank to give this data. When push comes to shove, and it becomes mandatory, Linden Labs will risk their existence as a corporate entity on getting enough people to use the system. Ultimately, if enough rebel and leave, the costs of running Second Life will rapidly overtake the revenue - at which point, bye bye Linden Labs.

In closing, try this for a bit of fun. I created a facebook based on my best friend from school's details, except in the facebook account she lives in Canada, has a much more glamorous job, is a member of a number of respectable organisations and is most definately over 18. I created this facebook account when Age Verification was first being discussed for Second Life, so it's a over six months old now. Using a fictitious Ontario driving license number and a fictitious passport number, both authentic in the layout of their numbers and special characters, I tried to take her through Age Verification, using the same details with Integrity as I had put on her Facebook profile - and passed, proving that one of Integrity's sources is indeed facebook. The only problem with this is - she doesn't actually exist as a Canadian citizen, and her birthdate as given in her facebook account is one day wrong from her actual birthdate. Also, her address is the middle of a cemetery, but the postcode and street number do exist.

She's now verified. The thing is, she doesn't actually exist (with the details I provided to Integrity) so she should not have passed the age verification. I'm betting somewhere there's a very puzzled computer failing miserably to put together the missing pieces on her. This just shows how much of a sham Integrity's system is, and in my mind vilifies my position: I'm not using this system, ever, and if it gets made mandatory, I'll say goodbye to Second Life.

Another nail in the coffin

The storm has once again broken out on the official Linden Blog with the announcement that age verification will be introduced with viewer version 1.18. Predictably, Linden Labs have released this well before it's ready (as usual) and there are a mass of problems with it, even if you don't count the fact that the actual age verification system doesn't work.

Firstly they've bought a registered digital certificate with their entire domain in it, which isn't accepted by most modern browsers. Firefox in particular refuses to take "secondlife.com" as valid when it's visiting a site where some of the features in a page are secure and some are not. The result of this is that Firefox displays a warning that the certificate may not be genuine, because some of the content comes from http: and some comes from https: - users aren't told by the browser what the difficulty is, only that the certificate is not fully valid to cover the page that is being loaded, but this is the page that they are being asked to put their personally identifiable information on - not a good sign.

Secondly, it's illegal in some countries to provide this information, and this means that even if someone does so it can't legally be verified. Aristotle/Integrity will add it to their database, but they have no means of verifying it. Although they claim to have data from all over the world, I do seriously have doubts about the legality of verifying such data.

Thirdly, 90% of Second Life users DO NOT WANT THIS. Some - myself included - won't be able to verify anyway, due to things like only just having emigrated from one country to another. When I came to Canada, I gave my UK license to the Ontario ministry of transportation, who then issued me with a driving license number in Ontario - but if you cross reference my driving license with any other database, you won't find a match, because as of yet I still don't have a Canadian passport. So you can't check my Canadian driving license against my UK passport because they don't share that information, and you can't verify my UK license against my UK passport because my UK license has been canceled due to having an Ontario license instead. So even if I wanted to do this, I'd fail the procedure, and several people have already responded to the Linden Blog posting with tales of woe about using genuine details and being declined.

This will kill Second Life off. It's going to be the final nail in the coffin. As sim owners are threatened with banning for not marking their entire sims as "adult" just because one vendor, somewhere on their sim, sells a prim-penis or cage, so the revenue from these land owners will die. As organizations like CARP can't raise their tier because half their members no longer play owing to either being against age verification altogether, or unable to verify - so those sims will also vanish because their owners can't afford to pay tier. Newcomers to Second Life will be asked to age verify immediately or threatened that they can't see some content, and either they'll refuse to verify and not sign up, or they'll fail verification and not sign up, so the new revenue stream will dry up.

Seriously, Linden Labs, you could achieve a much better method of disclaiming responsibility for underage misuse of the grid if you made everyone type a declaration manually into a textbox. Something along the lines of "I hereby certify that I am the account holder, over the legal age of consent in my country, and absolve Linden Labs and all their employees and representatives of responsibility for any actions that I may engage in when linked to this service." Granted you couldn't sign it, but if anyone accused Linden Labs of letting underage users in, what's the difference between someone typing that sentence into a box and someone providing details when you can't see that person? How does a child with their parents driving license and a child entering this paragraph differ?

Age verification cannot work over the internet. Not with the current technology. Maybe in years to come when everybodies details are on computer, and you can verify yourself by fingerprint, retina scan or facial scan, then there would be a foolproof way of making sure that an internet user was who they say they are, but that time isn't yet, and probably won't be for at least a decade. Even then it will be America, Canada, the UK and other such countries that will get it first, with other countries lagging behind by many years if not decades.

In the meantime, Linden Labs just banged another huge nail into the coffin that Second Life is destined to be buried in.

UPDATE: Take a look at this site, published by the Government of Canada - it proves that what Linden Labs is asking for is NOT something the Canadian Government agrees with:

The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) sets out ground rules for how private sector organizations may collect, use or disclose personal information in the course of commercial activities.

Since January 1, 2001, the Act applied to personal information about customers or employees that is collected, used or disclosed by the federally-regulated sector in the course of commercial activities. It also applies to information that is sold across provincial and territorial boundaries. As of January 1, 2004, the Act covers the collection, use and disclosure of personal information in the course of any commercial activity within a province, including provincially-regulated organizations, except in provinces that have enacted legislation that is deemed to be substantially similar to the federal law.

Under the new law, organizations like banks, telecommunications companies and airlines cannot require you to consent to the collection, use or disclosure of your personal information unless it is required for a specific and legitimate purpose.

This means that unless an organization can demonstrate that your SIN is required by law, or that no alternative identifier would suffice to complete the transaction, you cannot be denied a product or service on the grounds of your refusal to provide your SIN.

In other words, if Linden Labs refuse me access to a SIM on the grounds I won't provide my Social Insurance Number to them, they are committing an offense by Canadian law. And why is it so important?

Computer technology makes it possible to use the SIN to find and match your information from one database to another; without your knowledge, a detailed profile could be drawn about you. This amounts to "data surveillance" or monitoring of your daily life, which can pose a serious threat to our privacy and autonomy.

I don't see why other countries wouldn't have similar legislature.

Fancy a new viewer?

It hasn't taken long for the open source community to rip the Second Life viewer to bits and learn how to modify or even delete the bits they don't want.

Nowhere is this more evident than the BDSM community. Marine Kelley's new viewer is a variant that works with scripts available for free from her shop, designed to compliment her existing range of, erm, toys. The viewer reacts to the scripts by removing items from the menus and pie menu that appear when you right click the avatar. It's aimed at "hardcore" BDSM players (though how you can be hardcore when it's your pixellated avatar that's getting the whipping, not you) who want that little bit more realism. Drop the script into a ballgag, and you can't speak through that ballgag on the open channel. Not 'can't speak by mistake', but viewer-enforced can't speak at all. Drop the script in a set of cuffs or other restraints, and the "detach from avatar" options all vanish. If you get locked in, you're locked in, and you can't get out from this viewer.

It's an interesting new development, certainly far from anything Phillip Rosendale ever dreamed, and I can see similar developments coming in the not too distant future. Just today the furry community was polling its membership about disabling scripting and building to anyone outside their group; the next logical development from that might be a viewer that has an identification string that an in-world item can ask for, and sends home anyone that doesn't have the FurLife Viewer. I can see it coming, and it wouldn't be too hard to do.

Of course, this makes a mockery of age verification, since viewers will be able to ignore parcel flags, which makes you wonder why Linden Labs are still talking to Integrity at all. More ominously groups might be able to use it to keep themselves underground and away from the prying eyes of law enforcement, but that's technology for you.

The pandora's box of Open Source Second Life has been opened. I wait with interest to see what it lets out!

Prokovy goes off on one again

It's been interesting from time to time to see what recognized antagonizer Prokovy Neva thinks of various things going on in Second Life, but even I was surprised by her rant about the Agelock system I talked about in my last blog entry.

His [Benjamin Sycophanske, a favourite ranting target] latest gushing excess is of a new ugly and vicious system called AGELOCK. I'm not surprised that this awful new invention on the SL landscape comes from Allana Dion and Jamie David, as we know from long, long exposure to their manipulations, power-plays, and shenanigans on the old official LL forums, Second Citizen, and on this blog, that they are hugely aggressive and persistent.

When I spoke to Jamie David initially about Agelock, he seemed pretty proud of it but definately didn't come across to me as 'aggressive'

So a list of adult consumers with their avatar names and RL birthdates will be in the hands of one of the most aggressive and persistently nasty BDSM types in Second Life. Maybe the BDSM community won't care -- they like abuse, and maybe even this kind of RL abuse of their privacy. But as it spreads, and begins to be used by any club, or any rental, or anybody who just wants to be free from the plague of kids harassing and griefing you, it could become the device of choice, as it advertises being "better" than Integrity by not taking your RL name and drivers' license or Social Security number.

Hey, give me Integrity *any day of the week*. They are a real-life registered company with a business reputation and a bottom line to fulfill and a board of trustees. If I fear they've abused my trust in taking my info, I can protest -- with lawyers, by getting Congress involved, by getting the media on it. I can't do that with these anonymous avatars in Second Life!

And this seems to be the crux of the matter. What the extremely long rant boils down to are two essential points:

1. Nobody should touch this because it doesn't have the official "Prokovy Neva seal of approval" - mainly because she doesn't seem to like the authors, rather that whether the idea of the agelock system has merit or not.

2. Because Prokovy Neva trusts Integrity/Aristotle, so should everyone else.

With the latter part of her comment, I actually laughed when I read the part about complaining to congress. Integrity/Aristotle provide detailed information to congress, why the hell would they take any notice of someone's complaints?

Let's take this extreme example of how the information that Integrity collects could be harmful in the real world, and I have SPECIFICALLY steered clear of politics in this so that Prokovy has no excuse to label me a "lefty".

Let's says that I've given my detailed information to Integrity for age verification. They put it all on their database. But let's face it, Integrity is a data mining company - that's what they do, that's how they earn their money. So without telling me, what's to stop them also collecting information from second life that would be freely available, such as the groups that I'm in.

So for arguments sake let's say they do that, and find that I'm a member of a BDSM group in SL. That information then also goes down not only against my avatar name, but against my real life name.

Now in this little fictitious scenario, a BDSM hack magazine comes to Integrity hoping to drum up business, and buys a list of people who are members of BDSM groups. Shortly afterwards, editors are found to be peddling paedophilia, the place is raided by the police and FBI and gets shut down. In the raid their computers get confiscated, and subsequently datasearched. Now the legitimate law enforcement agencies find my RL details on the computers and suddenly I'm a suspect. Not only that but when I try to get a job that requires a background check, this gets flagged up and I'm turned down, and I don't even know the reason why.

Now, in this case the law enforcement agencies have got hold of my details doing their legitimate work - but those details should never have been there. I didn't give Integrity permission to resell those details, or our fictitious magazine permission to buy and use them. ALL of that happened behind my back.

And this is my main sticking point with the Integrity/Aristotle scenario. I agree with Prokovy to a point, that the government wouldn't need to buy that information off me because they already have access to it, but it's not the government I'm worried about. This is the flaw in Prokovy's main argument, because she claims this as a reason Integrity should be trusted. It's Integrity selling my details to anyone who comes up with the right amount of cash that is the major concern, not whether the government gives a crap about the details (because chances are, they don't).

Which is why alternatives need to be found. I've already said I don't think Linden Labs will go for this, but we do need some viable alternatives if we're going to stop them using Integrity. And I'd far prefer if the proverbial genie gets out of the bottle, all a company being able to harvest is "Untameable Wildcat claims she's over 18 and claims this as her birthdate" than detailed information that also contains RL details being available to the highest bidder.