The cat is out of the bag

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6638331.stm

Second Life is being investigated by German police following allegations that some members are trading child abuse images in the online world.

The investigation follows a report by a German TV news programme which uncovered the trading group and members who pay for sex with virtual children.

The police are now trying to identify the Second Life members involved.

Linden Lab, the creator of Second Life, said it would help identify users and pass on details to prosecutors.

Unfortunately, they're obviously going about it the wrong way. Integrities name checks, by all account, don't work. One person who attempted to join bud.tv with their second life avatar name, a DOB that was over 21 and a genuine postcode that they obtained with a bit of work from multimap.com and the australian post office site was completely successful, despite the fact that the chances of someone with her second life avatar name living at the address she gave, born on the day she gave was practically nonexistant.

To all intents and purposes, Integrity appears to be a cover for Aristotle, a political database collection company in America. It is looking more and more as if they don't actually have access to all the databases that they claim to, which means that although they may make a claim they can indemnify Linden Labs according to US law - it's a big risk for LL to take. After all, if Integrity is a child-company (no pun about the current situation intended) then the parent company can let it collapse if it gets heavily sued, which means if it does collapse then LL may not have been indemnified after all, and can be sued - it may well collapse itself under such a burden.

Plus, there is a huge resident backlash building about Integrity, mainly because of the details they seek and their ties to a political database company. In a society where a prominant academic can be banned from flying for giving a speech critical to President Bush, there is a strong feeling that Big Brother is trying to get into Second Life, and residents resent this. If Linden Labs start making age verification mandatory, and the information Integrity wants is too intrusive, people will start leaving in huge numbers (assuming they don't just all use their second life avatar names, manufactured DOBs and genuine postcodes in different countries.)

We could well be seeing the last days of Second Life, which would be a real shame. They are in a tentative position legally, and could end up driving their own customer base away trying heavy handed methods of complying with the ever more intrusive and draconian laws that their virtual world touches on. Yes, of COURSE the paedophiles and child abusers were going to come to SL sooner or later, because their is no tracing and Linden Labs try to avoid interfering with residents land. Of COURSE they were going to set their land to entry-restricted by group. This is going to happen when you give people an easy avenue to do what they want. People will take it.

Then along comes your investigative reporter, who has spent a few months infiltrating these organisations, gets himself a group invite and suddenly it's front page news, and everyone is shocked and horrified about how "widespread" it is in SL - when it isn't widespread at all.

There has been no formal response from Linden Labs following the BBC's publication of the story. I will be interested to see what - if anything - they say... and where we go from here.

From an illegitimate complaint to a legitimate complaint

It's interesting that this story should break just after I'd blogged about the Bragg vs Linden Labs issue. As I've already said, I believe the Bragg case is without merit; he broke the rules and he got caught. Case closed.

And now comes Furnation, who appear to have been quite deliberately targeted for victimisation. It's well known that groups that love to have something to sneer at or go for often target the "furry" community and this appears to be a carefully laid plan to do just that.

You can read the details at this posting: The Shady Side of Second Life but basically, somebody came forward pretending to be wanting to donate to the community, and donated fraudulently obtained funds. They then hacked into sim administrator accounts not just once, but TWICE, destroyed items and tried to irretrievably destroy sims and basically sabotage the entire community.

Now you'd expect Linden Labs to be very hot at tracking down the perpetrator and banning them (especially if they can hash identify hacker's computers) - surely they could work out who had hacked the accounts, and hash-ban them, then unfreeze all the furnation accounts they'd frozen to stop the fraudulent funds being distributed, right? And then restore all the funds but the fraudulent ones, which they would seize. That would be the proper way to handle it.

But no. They failed to deal with the compromised account - TWICE - and then first froze, then confiscated the ENTIRE funds of the sim owner. Legitimate questions the sim owner asked were either ignored or fobbed off with "We can't answer that, because doing so would compromise sensitive information".

Just as I have no hesitation in delivering a blog-slap to Bragg for wanting his access restored after purposefully and deliberately committing fraud, so I believe that Linden Labs have not delivered ANY degree of customer service to the Furnation community in this incident. The confiscation of all the managers assets has left the entire operation in virtual-financial difficulty, as some of the virtual funds was stored in banks and used to generate interest that in turn was used to fund the operation. Not to mention alienating over a thousand users (yes, this particular furry community is BIG) and jeapardising the future of 9 complete sims.

We're not talking about trivial amounts of real world cash here either. Consider this: 1,100 users of an active community, the bulk of whom came to Second Life as a side effect of already belonging to the community. Furry roleplayers demand detailed avatars, which has led to the establishment of a thriving community of builders and scripters (the average avatar goes for between 800 and 1300 Lindens) plus all that that entails, such as premium accounts and land ownership.

Now, if Furnation decide to pull out of Second Life, that presence WILL be felt. NINE full sims, costing $200 a month in rent alone - $1800 PER MONTH lost immediately. Let's say half the furry community have premium accounts (furries by and large don't do things by halves - if they dedicate to something, they go for it fully) so that's another $10 per account per month. 10 x 550 accounts = $5,500 per month. So without counting any extra money that might be used to buy the virtual currency, Linden Labs are putting on the line $6,300 per month by failing to offer support and help and by being heavy handed. I ask - does this make ANY financial sense, particularly given the fact that it should be possible to track down the user who perpetrated the entire vandalism and hash-ban them permanantly.

I have no doubt if a group message went out saying "Furnation is moving from Second Life - please support us by joining us on a rival system" the vast majority - 80% or more - would close their Second Life accounts within days.

Surely it's not asking too much of Linden Labs to give some quality support to a big customer?

Bragg vs Linden Labs et al

If there's one thing that would make my RL job much easier, it's people who take responsibility for their own actions.

Linden Labs provide a service. If you breach the terms of service, Linden labs reserve the right to withdraw that service in their ToS. I would liken that to the state ability to seize assets gained by fraudulent methods.

This entire case, to me, drops into the category. Mr Bragg obtained this virtual property by deception; it was therefore forfeit. With regards to any property he gained legally, he knew he was jeopardizing that when he tried to cheat the system. He knew the risks. Breach of ToS equals banning with no compensation.

This comes down to culpability. It's got nothing to do with what Linden Labs can and can't do, want to do and don't want to do. This was one person who purposefully set out to break the rules, IN THE KNOWLEDGE that if he got caught, Linden Labs would ban him. At the end of the day, that's the issue at the back of this - whether or not he should take responsibility for deliberately breaking the rules and the consequences involved in getting caught.

The fact remains, if he hadn't deliberately tried to cheat the system, there would have been nothing for him to be caught doing and nothing that Linden Labs would have banned him over. I do agree that if Linden Labs just close your account with no explanation and seize your assets you'd have cause to bring case against them, but everyone seems to be of agreement that this person DID CHEAT.

If you're honest, you don't risk anything. This person wasn't, and he got unlucky and got caught. He paid the price. He can't expect the judiciary to come to his rescue because he committed fraud in the first place. Sorry, but I don't have ANY sympathy for him, and neither do I believe that he has a case.