The storm breaks

This morning there was discussion on the group "SL'ers against age verification" about child avatar sellers having their products and vendors deleted. Two were banned when they complained in the forums.

This whole thing seems to be spiralling out of all control. Ageplay is already banned, which is one thing, but to start banning the sale of child-like avatars is quite a jump in censorship. It's ominous to consider that people actually wearing such avatars could be the next victims, and then where will it end? Certainly the furry community is worried about this escalation. If one could get banned for wearing a human child avatar, how long until someone says "Furries yiffing is virtual beastiality - get rid of it!" and overnight wearing a furry avatar becomes a banning offense?

I chaired a general informal meeting (at which a few tempers ran high) this morning on Support for Healing island. General consensus was that we're FOR protecting people but AGAINST the methodology being proposed, for a variety of reasons. Linden Labs record of vault security being the main one, since they're required by the PATRIOT act to keep records for two years.

The major difficulty with the internet is that without being able to see someone, face to face, you're always going to be able to be fooled by those determined enough. What Linden Labs are proposing, won't stop those who are out to break the law - which is the very demographic they're trying to prevent.

Instead what they are doing is going to impact a number of people, and if they at some future point decide to make it mandatory, not optional... it's going to impact everyone on Second Life. And I still see absolutely nothing which makes me believe that they aren't going to make this mandatory sometime soon.

The meeting discussed the various options; the flaws in public notary were discussed, but no major new ideas were put forward. We reached consensus that the entire exercise is purely aimed at protecting Linden Labs, rather than being concerned with protecting the privacy of residents. It does seem to be a halfway measure, though, since rational adults would not let their children onto adult second life and irrational adults will just con the system whatever Linden Labs put in place.

If this latest development - the banning of some people who sell childlike avatars - starts to develop into something more sinister, it will only perpetuate the belief that Linden Labs are only doing this to protect their own backs. As for an answer - well, we're all still looking... but surely there MUST be a better way to trust your customers than to demand they hand over personal details... musn't there?