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.
2 comments:
Wow, I just read your comment at SL's official blog. As I read it, it dawned on me just what had happened -- I'm not quite up with all the technical side of this issue, but I think I read it right -- that your fictitious details had been scooped up by the data collecting company and placed on file as true.
I'm kinda amazed!
Yes... but this is the problem with a data mining company. Any information that they find which builds a picture, they have to accept as genuine in the absence of being able to confirm it through official channels.
There would be no way that Canadian government would release any information confirming or denying the status of Miss Facebook, so her information was added - probably by a bot - to Integrities massive database.
Computers are fundamentally stupid, so there that information sat together with millions (over 23 million if Integrity's TV ad is to be believed) of other peoples information, until the day a company (in this case Linden Labs) contacted Integrity saying "Hey, this person has asked if you know them, providing these details."
Lo and behold, the details match those that were on file, so the fundamentally stupid computer simply scored the level of matching of information, and on the balance of probability that the person was telling the truth about the information they had originally provided with what they were now saying, it provided a positive hit.
Which brings me back to the issue of a company that buys such information and then uses it for less than legal purposes, such as my scenario that a porn site buys a mailing list from Integrity, which is then seized by police who shut down the porn site, and that information about a genuine person could then get wrongfully recorded as a false positive on official records. Say the person then applies for a job working with children, and their new potential employer finds out from the police that they're under suspicion of being involved in a porn ring - they're not going to get that job, and they're not going to know why, even though the reason ends up not being genuine.
This is why using a data mining company like Integrity is such a really REALLY bad idea.
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