Where does the line get drawn?

On Thursday after normal office hours, Daniel Linden posted the following:

The diversity of things to see and do within Second Life is almost unimaginable, but our community has made it clear to us that certain types of content and activity are simply not acceptable in any form. Real-life images, avatar portrayals, and other depiction of sexual or lewd acts involving or appearing to involve children or minors; real-life images, avatar portrayals, and other depictions of sexual violence including rape, real-life images, avatar portrayals, and other depictions of extreme or graphic violence, and other broadly offensive content are never allowed or tolerated within Second Life.

Please help us to keep Second Life a safe and welcoming space by continuing to notify Linden Lab about locations in-world that are violating our Community Standards regarding broadly offensive and potentially illegal content. Our team monitors such notification 24-hours a day, seven-days a week. Individuals and groups promoting or providing such content and activities will be swiftly met with a variety of sanctions, including termination of accounts, closure of groups, removal of content, and loss of land. It’s up to all of us to make sure Second Life remains a safe and welcoming haven of creativity and social vision.

This makes a disturbing ambiguity which really needs to be closed up. Especially worrying is his term "other broadly offensive content" which is neither defined nor elaborated on. Who defines what is "broadly offensive" and what is not, and where do Linden Labs stand on such a matter? If the owner of a banline using plot of land or sim decides that nude pictures of his avatar in compromising situations with another avatar is fine, or a picture of a nude real life model is fine, where do Linden Labs stand if someone disables their camera constraints to look into the sim and reports the content?

I'd very much like Daniel Linden - or any other responsible Linden - to say who would be responsible and what action might be taken under the following circumstances.

1. Open land, no group, no banlines. The land owner places a large image taken from the internet of two nude adults engaged in a sexual act. Is this unacceptable and if so, who gets punished and what would be the punishment? (I figured I'd start off with an easy one)
2. Open land, no group, no banlines. A visiting avatar places a large image taken from the internet of two nude adults engaged in a sexual act. Is this unacceptable and if so, who gets punished and what would be the punishment?
3. Group land, banlines for anyone not in the group. The land owner places a large image taken from the internet of two nude adults engaged in a sexual act. Is this unacceptable and if so, who gets punished and what would be the punishment?
4. Group land, banlines for anyone not in the group. A Group Member places a large image taken from the internet of two nude adults engaged in a sexual act. Is this unacceptable and if so, who gets punished and what would be the punishment?
5. A shopping mall, with an item vendor selling a BDSM item. The vendor has an image of a furry or human avatar trapped within the item, portrayed in an obviously uncomfortable or painful position. Does the owner of the vendor commit an offense meriting punishment? Does the owner of the mall also commit an offense for not returning the vendor? Could either be banned over it?
6. Open sim, free to join group, privately owned island. A visiting avatar leaves a prim decorated with underage sexual images, but sets it to group ownership so that it won't be autoreturned. Would just the avatar concerned be subject to action, or would the island sim owner also be subject to action for not discovering and returning the item?
7. This one's a doozy. Open sim, free to join group, privately owned island. A visiting avatar leaves prims containing explicit pictures of children being raped or tortured while the owner of the island/sim is away (on vacation for example). The content is reported to Linden Labs who then pass the blame to the sim owner and send an email instructing him to remove the content and/or ban the avatar that placed it. The owner, being on vacation and therefore not receiving the email, fails to comply. Would the owner return from vacation to find that their account had been closed, their land and possessions seized and their machine hash-blocked?
   

You can see from these few examples that there is no proper line that has been drawn by Linden Labs about what is "broadly offensive" and who exactly has to take responsibility for it. One thing is for sure, and that is that Linden Labs themselves don't want to be the sole responsible party - but where does the line get drawn? In a civilization specializing in shifting blame to other parties, would innocent accounts not responsible for the placing of "broadly offensive" content be as guilty as those actually placing the content? And are Linden Labs simply giving a free pass to anyone with a grudge against someone to pop over to that persons land, on a fake free account, and placing "broadly offensive" content so that he or she can get the person they hate banned?

Daniel, if you're going to ask the community for help, you're going to have to be far more specific about "broadly offensive" content; what it means, what it includes and excludes, and who will be to blame when it gets discovered. Yes, we all must play a part in keeping Second Life safe, but this isn't the way to inspire confidence. Don't be surprised when people don't use it for fear that they too might be warned or banned.

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?

Here's the mailing list

In a conversation between two Lindens and a group of concerned residents, Daniel and Robin Linden were backed into a corner, and forced to admit that yes - data WOULD be stored... For an entire TWO YEARS!

[10:12] Robin Linden: Tao the data is never saved to be deleted. It’s matched only
[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.

Here's the mailing list, folks! Who wants a copy?

Seriously, you now have to ask who can initiate an audit? Can the RIAA? Can the US Department of Homeland Security? Can the DoJ? What about law organisations in other countries - will they be able to request an "audit" so that they can keep track of what their citizens are doing? And how secure IS this vault, given that Linden Labs failed to protect credit card details last year?

Unfortunately, as time passed, more questions arise than get answered. Linden Labs in fact haven't made ANY attempt to answer residents concerns. Their latest blog entry on the subject once again repeats the same things "It won't be stored, it's entirely optional, it's only for adult content" - well, we now know the FIRST of these things is a lie. It WILL be stored, as is a legal requirement. The second is only true for the moment; watch this space for that changing. And just wait until the anti-furry brigade starts making noises and it'll be extended to all sorts of things.

I've seen many complaints about upcoming features in my time here, but NOTHING - absolutely nothing - has come close to this. Whereas normally 10-15% of the population complain about something new while 85-90% like the idea, here it's the other way around. 85-90% of the residents do not want to give their personal data to someone on a non-contractual assurance that it won't be given or sold or shared with third parties.

It now looks as if the Electronic Frontier Foundation is thinking about getting involved - Linden Labs, you're playing with the big boys now. There may also be European Union concerns about privacy... believe me, this is a can of worms you don't want to be trying to open.

To be continued.

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.

Data Mining in Second Life

http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/05/04/age-and-indentity-verification-in-second-life/#more-946

There are a number of things that trouble me about this. The main thing is that a third party is going to be used. I made an agreement with Linden Labs that they could utilise my credit card details to pay for a service they were providing me, but this goes well beyond that. While I agree that some form of age verification should be done within Second Life - I don't think this is the way to do it. I think they are opening a dangerous Pandoras Box here.

It doesn't much bother me from a governmental point of view. Governments can already collect my data. But where is it going to end from a private point of view? To site one example very relevant to Second Life, let's look at our old friends the music industry.

Already the music industry is making a concerted effort to price many internet based music radio stations out of existence. For each track broadcast they want a fee, and they've set fees very high considering the fee has to be paid not for each broadcast of the track, but for each person listening to the track. And here's where it overlaps the boundary into Second Life.

There are a large number of clubs in Second Life, and an even larger number of non-club plots that stream music in. My question of the day is this: If a company is allowed to collect my name, address, date of birth and other such personal information, and the RIAA (I site them as an example because of their very active campaign to chase people for money) then comes to this data mining site and says "We believe that this person is playing music into their lot on SL, hand over their details" - will they do so? And will I be told about it? Or will the first thing I hear about it be when a bill drops through my letterbox saying "You've played 500 tracks this last month, and we believe that they've been heard by 10 people, so here's the bill."

Data Mining using a third party is the top of a very slippery slope. While I would be prepared to supply, for example, my driving license number to Linden Labs direct so that they could run a check to see if a license in that name existed and was valid, that's the extent of it. I would balk at providing even THOSE details to a third party, since that third party is going to have other interests that Linden Labs doesn't (not to mention the fact that they might not even tell Linden Labs that they were giving away residents details to avoid being sued). I am certainly not prepared to provide detailed information such as my name and address, DOB and passport number just to play a game, ESPECIALLY if those details are going to be shared with a third party. When they demand that for entry to mature areas, I shall simply not enter mature areas. When they demand it for entry to the grid, I shall leave Second Life completely.

I suspect I won't be the only one.