Peering Inside: Pleading the fifth
As you are probably already aware, Linden Lab have suddenly decided to take an active role in the Second Life fifth anniversary this year, overriding the organizing committee and excluding a number of the invited communities from presentation this year.
Decisions, ultimately, get made because they seem like the best of the available options at the time. Nobody sits down and thinks, "Hey, this is my second best option. I should go with that!" -- they only go with the worse options when nothing better seems to be possible.
So -- why did Linden Lab make this one?
Well -- right now, Linden Lab hasn't made any official statements of policy, but we can infer some things from the statements of Linden staff to Second Life users. Particularly when they were explaining why certain groups would be excluded.
Linden Lab feels that its provision of land for the fifth anniversary event, their sponsorship, constitutes implicit endorsement of the groups that will be attending and using that land.
According to Linden Lab staff, the Lab is deeply worried that the whole of Second Life could be effectively shut down as a result of that sponsorship.
How could that happen, you might well wonder.
Between the deceptive sham that Sky News staged recently, and the sadly ill-informed Mark Kirk who is, we understand, introducing bills that will regulate access to Second Life to make it 'safer for kids' -- well, things are getting a bit rocky.
It would not be unprecedented for a regulatory bill to be passed that was technically or practically impossible to comply with, that would essentially shut down the virtual world service, or restrict it to USA users only (through arcane identity requirements).
We're told Kirk got a congressional hearing in the last couple of weeks, where he was able to tell his fellow members of government about all the evils and child-predation that he mistakenly believes exists within Linden Lab's virtual world.
Surely such bills don't get passed, do they? Ah, but they do.
Every year, tens or hundreds of thousands of US taxpayer dollars are spent on bills for 'the protection of children' that the people involved know will be struck down on federal First Amendment grounds. And they are. Over and over again. The bills are passed, at great expense, then overturned at even greater expense.
Your US tax-dollars at work, purchasing the family vote. Shouldn't that money be spent on schools and child-support or something? Statistically, the odds are that your elected representatives have either already voted for such a bill, or will do so within the next year. Even if they aren't after the votes, voting against such child-protection bills (however ill-thought-through) is considered a form of political suicide.
So, yes. Linden Lab does face a threat here, and quite a severe one. It does run the risk of being shut down by politicians greasing for the family-friendly vote. As a bonus, it is an election year. Are you worried yet? Linden Lab certainly is!
Even a small risk of such a shutdown (partial or not) is too great a risk for Linden Lab to be willing to take. Keeping the virtual world alive is, to Linden Lab, more important than anything else. More important than any communities, businesses, or anything else at all.
It is a risk the Lab simply cannot take -- if Linden Lab owes Second Life users anything, it is to still be around tomorrow.
Update: Linden Lab has changed stance in their official statement.
