Peering Inside: The Second Life year in review (part 9)
Law, government, fear, uncertainty and doubt
The laws of our respective physical nations affect us everywhere and in every way we interact with other people or other species. The wheels of law grind slowly, however, and it isn't uncommon for some to seek to subvert them, or to ignore them entirely.
Over the last twelve months, Linden Lab has intently watched assorted legal actions, and even been involved in one. Their staff have spoken of concerns of ill-considered laws by otherwise well-meaning lawmakers, and of the potential threat to not only Second Life but to other, fledgling virtual worlds of both this and future generations.
Linden Lab has expressed those fears by acting on them, increasingly over the last year — and in so doing, ensured that none of us can ignore those threats, real or imagined.
- Eros LLC made the newspapers with their copyright lawsuit, and Paypal divulged the user's identity with haste — Linden Lab also coughed up the name, but not until much later. Eros LLC joined with five other content creators for a second copyright lawsuit.
- Congress started talking about taxation within virtual worlds, rather than just profits obtained from them. A British accounting firm suggested that the HMRC was using staff and technologies like Xenon to winkle out virtual world profits. As it turned out, that wasn't so.
- Manchester Cathedral wanted all virtual worlds and games to conform to "sacred digital guidelines"
- Zee Linden (Linden Lab's CFO) said that payment fraud in Linden Dollar purchases was a significant and expensive problem.
- Short avatars were increasingly threatened, insulted or banned.
- A fraudster sold the same island to multiple people, running off with the profits.
- The gambling ban on July 25 which was widely presaged to spell the doom of Second Life and of Second Life's economy, and ... err ... didn't, although Ginko began to collapse seriously at this point. It was widely speculated that this was because of an FBI investigation, but Linden Lab says that this was not so, and that it was solely their own initiative in order to comply with law.
- Ginko itself finally closed, leaving investors with little, and the owners with almost three quarters of a million US dollars. Apparently it was only a failure for some.
- Linden Lab reminded us again that the Identity Verification vaporware was still going to happen. Someday. Eventually. When the beta finally rolled out, Linden Lab said the failure rates were unacceptable within a few days. Aside from the odd reminder that it's still there, there seems no sign that the technology will actually be fixed or finalized — or that anyone is working on it at all anymore. It seems to just exist for the purpose of being used as a leverage item. Linden Lab assured us last week that this is still going ahead, but refuses to discuss the topic beyond that. As it turns out, the Identity Verification system may not have anything at all to do with either identity, or verification.
- Repeated allegations of both terrorism and money-laundering in SL, though not the slightest shred of evidence has yet emerged to back up any of these claims.
- Linden Lab came to an undisclosed settlement with Marc Bragg, who later got bored and left when Linden Lab didn't appoint him CEO in Rosedale's stead.
- Guide Hawk used Second Life user creations to market his products on eBay, and claimed that he had express permission from Linden Lab to do so. Linden Lab would not confirm or deny that it had given him that permission.
- Content theft, in fact, remained as large a concern this year as last year.
- Congressional Representative Mark Kirk frightened everyone with misleading claims.