Glutton for Punishment

I’m not sure if it was a good or bad idea, but I’ve decided to return to SL on an occasional basis.

We’ll see if it lasts.

Time to Go

I had been giving it some thought for a while and I’ve made a final decision: I’m done with Second Life. Even though I met a few cool people and had the chance to be creative in ways that I hadn’t before, the negatives outweighed the positives.

To keep it simple, there was too much nonsense, too much bickering, and too much immaturity. It was basically just a pixelated version of real-life.

Virtual Worlds: Real-World Laws?

How much value to place on your Second Life experience? If it’s like many SL users, it’s probably a lot. And that could be the very reason that some people are pushing to have more real-life laws brought into Second Life even though SL isn’t a tangible world. Because the number of virtual world users is increasing—Second Life or any other—the “importance” of these worlds as being community meeting places is growing. That might mean more laws, even if they don’t make any sense in a virtual world.

In the new issue of Scientific American, Michael Tennesen takes a look at how the possibility for tangible-world (RL) laws making their way into the pixelated-world (SL) is increasing.

Tennesen offers these as examples of how some people have put value on their virtual-world experiences and how they’ve entered the legal world:

• In 1993—before the Internet was what it is today—a text-based community called LamdaMOO had a situation in which a user hijacked other uses’ accounts and then wrote that they “describe[d] violent, explicit acts.”¹

• In 2005, Qiu Chengwei from China stabbed Zhu Caoyuan to death because Caoyuan sold Chengwei’s virtual sword from the game Legend of Mir 3 without Chengwei’s permission. (Chengwei received a life sentence in a real-world prison.)²

• In 2007, a Belgian prosecutor asked Belgian police to log into Second Life to investigate a “virtual rape.”³

I’m going to cut to the chase with my opinion on this and say that it’s absolutely asinine for any legal scholar to suggest. Let’s just go through some of the reasons why:

1.) Avatars aren’t real people—they’re pixels on a screen. If you see a pixelated cock, it’s not a real cock; if you see a pixelated vagina, it’s not a real vagina. They’re images on a screen.

2.) “Rape” in SL—since it was mentioned specifically in relation to Second Life—is consensual. No one forces an avatar onto a rape pose-ball. If someone wants you to get on a rape pose-ball and you don’t want to, you don’t have to. If that other person is annoying you about it, you have the ability to mute them. If they annoy you in other ways, or if they bother you in other ways, you can file an abuse report.

Yes, there will always be morons in this world who attempt to equate everything with everything else. On the Virtually Blind site on this topic, for instance, a reader named “Robbie” actually has the nerve to equate consensual “virtual rape” with nonconsensual real-world date-rape. He uses a lot of big words (e.g., “embodied consciousness”) hoping that his ludicrous analogy will carry water, but in the end one fact remains: you can’t polish a turd.

3.) You can’t collect “evidence” for virtual crimes unless we’re talking machinima or screenshots. If a “virtual rape” occurs, you have no DNA; you have no bruising. So then, what do you have? Pictures of a pixelated character and maybe a chat history? Is that what would be taken into the courtroom to “prove” the charge? How silly would that be?

4.) If a crime is committed in a virtual world that has a direct relationship to real-life situation, that crime is already covered under real-life laws. For example, if a person hacks another person’s account to steal their money, it’s a real-life crime in at least two areas: hacking laws and theft (because Linden dollars can be converted to real-life money).

Because of this, these illegalities can happen in both the real-world and virtual world. Moreover, no consent has been given by the victim.

5.) Finally, let’s consider the precedent that would be set if we criminalized virtual rape in our real-world courts: We’d have to begin locking up every person who has ever played any game in which they’ve “killed” a person or committed a crime of any sort. Given that I was addicted to Grand Theft Auto III when it came out for the PlayStation 2, and given that I “killed” hundreds of people, stole hundreds of cars, and even blew up a cargo freighter (several times), I’d be looking at a real-life life sentence in prison. Many other gamers would, too.

Fortunately, and probably much to the chagrin of people like the aforementioned “Robbie,” United States law tends to shy from dealing with pretend crimes. Other nations, however, do prosecute. Tennesen mentions in his article that South Korean courts view virtual property as real-life property. That, in turn, increases the odds that their real-life laws will cover in a virtual world, no matter the “crime.”

I guess that this means I need to register all the cars that I have in my inventory and have them inspected, otherwise people like Robbie will be calling all the SL “police” to have me cited.

Fall 2009 Issue of "Second Culture"

Second Culture: Fall 2009

The Fall 2009 issue of Second Culture is now available online via Issue.com.

In this issue, I take a look at the world of BBW avatars, child avatars, and the role of freebies in the SL economy.

I also ask the question of why so many nude beaches have visitors who aren’t nude, why some club owners have poor attitudes and huge egos, and I review the sad case of Congressman Mark Kirk.

I conclude by taking a look at the so-called “police” forces that are found in Second Life. They have no real rule-enforcement ability unless given them by land owners and they’re not officially recognized by Linden Labs. In some cases, they’ve even threatened rule-abiding residents.

Teen Grid to Merge with the Adult Grid?

This rumor has been floating around for months, but the following piece of information recently appeared on a blog post from Linden Labs:

— If you haven’t yet noticed, the industrious people on the Teen Grid have sent an entire region across the age gap for our amusement. The Region is named (appropriately) SL6B Teen. It has appended itself to the side of the main event, and can be reached by a causeway from SL6B Polaris. It’s a lovely piece of work, and the Teens are undoubtedly the Future of Virtual Worlds. Come see how they are going to knock you off your pedestal, gramps.

If the two grids do merge (since the teens are the future of SL), I for one might not be sticking around much. Legally speaking, the rules of the grid will have to change. You can’t have anything above a PG rating if you’re going to allow minors and adults to mix.

I’ve read that some merchants are looking forward to the idea of having more teen consumers (read: frivolous spenders) come into the grid, but I’m not sure if they’re considering the possible number of adults who would leave simply because they could no longer be adults.

And I’m not talking about X-rated stuff, either. I’m talking about excessive censorship all the way down to watching what we say, when we say it, and to whom we say it. Consider that in movies, certain obscenities are listed as different ratings. For instance, use the F-word once in a movie and you can get a PG-13 rating; use it twice and you then have to make the movie rated-R. If you want a PG grid for everyone, you can't use that word anywhere, anytime.

I, for one, won’t feel like going to a club and knowing that the only thing I can discuss is math homework and Hannah Montana.

"Protecting" Kids...One Lie at a Time

I’m used to politicians lying but not usually at this level.

Congressman Mark Kirk (R-IL) has decided that Second Life is going to be his target, but instead of simply saying what it is, he instead makes up a few lies about it in order to hopefully make it look as if he’s some kind of superhero representative who is flying to the aid of parents and children across the nation.

Before I continue, please notice that leaving comments on his YouTube videos is disabled so that no one can counter the misinformation that he says.

“Congressman Mark Kirk Discusses the Dangers of Second Life”

• In this one, he actually says the following: “If sites like Second Life won’t protect children from obviously inappropriate content, we should.” Imagine that! A Republican suggesting that someone else (someone other than parents) should be the first ones to look out for someone else’s children! Next thing you know we’ll find out that Republican Congressmen or Republican governors are cheating on their wives while preaching against infidelity. But that would never happen, would it?

• He also says, “Children can commit suicide, go to rape rooms, sex clubs, participate in Satanic worship, hold other avatars captive, visit bondage stores, purchase assault weapons, and simulate human sacrifice. These are only a fraction of the many inappropriate, explicit actions that children can participate in via Second Life.” Would someone please tell Kirk that if a child has accessed the adult section (grid) of Second Life that they have immediately violated the terms of use that were set forth by SL’s creators, Linden Labs? Teenagers who wish to use Second Life have their own “teen grid.” If parents aren’t watching their kids close enough, whose fault is that, Mr. Kirk?

• He then says, “Second Life claims to prevent children under 13 from accessing the site, but no age verifications are built in to the registration process.” This is simply a lie from Mr. Kirk. An age verification system does exist. Many of us have been complaining about how it’s been used for months.
  

“Second Life and Online Predators”

• Similar to the previous video, Kirk flat-out lies. He says that, “They don’t properly screen for children. In their own user agreement they say adults can be in the child area, children can be in the adult area.” This is clearly false. Here’s the Second Life terms of service agreement with respect to user ages (I’ve bolded the areas which contradict the veracity of Kirk’s comments):

You must be at least 13 years of age to participate in the Service. Users under the age of 18 are prohibited from accessing the Service other than in the area designated by Linden Lab for use by users from 13 through 17 years of age (the “Teen Area”). Users age 18 and older are prohibited from accessing the Teen Area. Any user age 18 and older who gains unauthorized access to the Teen Area is in breach of this Agreement and may face immediate termination of any or all Accounts held by such user for any area of the Service. If you reside in a jurisdiction where the age of majority is greater than 18 years old, you are prohibited from accessing the Service until you have reached such age of majority.

By accepting this agreement in connection with an Account outside the Teen Area, you represent that you are an adult 18 years of age or older. By accepting this agreement in connection with an Account for use in the Teen Area, you represent that (i) you are at least 13 years of age and less than 18 years of age; (ii) you have read and accept this Agreement; (iii) your parent or legal guardian has consented to you having an Account for use of the Teen Area and participating in the Service, and to providing your personal information for your Account; and (iv) your parent or legal guardian has read and accepted this Agreement.

• He also mentions that extra care should be taken because kids might lie about their age. Mr. Kirk, if that’s the case, the child is the one who has initiated the problem.

• He tells the TV viewers that the average gang shooter in his district is in the seventh grade. The seventh grade? Hmmm...Mr. Kirk, it sounds like you have more serious issues to worry about than a bunch of people playing on Second Life.

“Dangers of Second Life”

• Even though SL has been around since 2003, Fox News refers to it as a “new Website.” This is par for the course of Fox News, however, since last year they referred to Slash as being the guitarist for Guns ‘n’ Roses, even though he left the group in 1996.

• Again, Kirk lists the drug labs, rape rooms, etc. He fails to inform the viewers that none of that is on the teen grid. If he told the truth, Kirk’s argument would be shot to hell.

Since Kirk makes it impossible for anyone to challenge him on any of his assertions, I’m doing it now. And it’s not difficult to do.

Oh, and since Kirk seems to know about many children who are using the adult grid (as he claims), that means that he has their account information or knows of who they are. I’m hoping that he turns over this account information so that Linden Labs can delete them. If Kirk knows about these children who are violating the terms of service and doesn’t turn over this information, he’s not protecting anyone. Actually, he would then be helping them violate the terms of service.

Would a Congressman do that?

Child's Play

This might be my only visit to Zindra. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
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After all the hullabaloo regarding age verification and moving all things “adult” off the mainland, Linden Labs has just released the following information on their June 27, 2009, update on the new “adult” area known as Zindra:

9) Are child avatars allowed on Adult land? Child avatars are allowed on adult land as long as they are account verified like any other Resident. Those choosing to represent themselves with a child avatar do not represent a minor as the account holder. Not all adult land is going to be hosting adult content either. There is plenty of protected land on Zindra that will technically be adult but safe in terms of content. This however does not change any prior policies regarding child avatars. Sexual ageplay is not allowed anywhere on the grid, regardless of rating.

Yes, we’re going to ensure that only adults are behind the avatars, but we’re going to let those adults don the persona of children to frolic in an area that has been made especially for “adult” content. (Or does this mean that the adult content is going to banned there, too?)

I readily admit that I don’t understand why people use child avatars in SL. I also understand—and support—the idea of creativity and individuality. Even though I enjoy seeing realistic-looking avatars, I also welcome seeing furries, zombies, robots, and any other oddity that might appear on the grid.

With that said, I must say that I question the purpose of having a child avatar on a sim that is designated “adult.” More specifically, it reeks of the idea of pedophilia. After all, if a “child”—in this case an adult posing as a child via the child avatar—is roaming around an area that is otherwise free of anything childish, how many purposes would it serve to have the “child” there? For what reason would a person want to role-play a child in an adult landscape? For what reason other than one of a sexual nature?

Although Linden Labs has repeatedly made it clear that sexual role-playing is prohibited using child avatars anywhere on the grid, I don’t understand why they would increase the chances of risking such a thing by allowing child avatars there in the first place.

Lately they’ve been repeatedly making moves to clean up parts of the grid in an apparent effort to make it more palatable for users—both current and potential—who favor PG-rated content and words. They’ve gone so far as to say that profiles must have PG- or G-rated words in them. For example, if you have a “pick” that is an adult-level location, you can’t have any words in its description that might be on Linden Labs’ super-top-secret naughty word list.

So you’re going to have a super-top-secret list of bad words that are going to be censored on profiles that have been made by people who have not only agreed to the terms-of-service that state the user is 18-years-old or older, you’re going to also require a second-round of age-verification of those users, but then you’re going to allow child avatars in adult-rated areas?

The irony is that I probably won’t even visit Zindra once it’s up-and-running. I’m honestly not a regular at any adult-content area. (And I’m not referring to the beaches that I mentioned in my previous post. My classification of that as being R-rated as opposed to X-rated is because it can be nude but non-sexual. I know people in real-life who view some health books as being X-rated simply because they show illustrations of human reproductive organs. You can see how subjective this becomes.)

I must say, however, that I’m confused by this contradictory approach to what’s allowed and what’s censored in SL. It appears that the potential pedophiles are given more leeway than those of us who aren’t questionable SL users, who are clearly adults, and who clearly have no reason to be treated like criminals when we’ve done nothing wrong.

Overexposed

I go to nude beaches quite a bit in SL, and not always the same one. One thing that I’ve noticed at each is that very few people are actually naked. Moreover, I’m greeted with shock and awe when people notice that I am fully unclothed. I’ve encountered several people who have viewed their avatar’s nudity as their own real-life nudity, and have exhibited obvious concerns of modesty.

A recent interaction with another person went like this (her name is withheld as it doesn’t play a role in my point):

[Avatar’s Name]: OMG! You’re naked!
Slick Munro: Yes. It’s a nude beach.
[Avatar’s Name]: Yeah, but you have no clothes on! I see your thing!
Slick Munro: Yes. It’s a nude beach.

It’s actually becoming more and more difficult to find people even wearing swimwear at nude beaches. Many are wearing T-shirts, jeans, and shoes.

Perhaps they’re simply preparing themselves for the gradual “PGification” of the grid. Bikinis on women and skimpy trunks on men might soon be too “adult” to see and those of us who dare to bare any skin will be relegated to Zindra.

Slow Down

My watch, glasses, and necklace aren’t causing your lag even if you’d like to believe it. Your low-end graphics card is causing your lag.
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How many times have you found yourself at a club, party, or beach and you begin to notice major lag? How often did you find yourself being blamed for it because of your hair or your jewelry?

Well, it wasn’t your fault—but the party hosts probably don’t want you to know that.

Gwyneth Llewelyn has written a great post on understanding what really causes lag. It’s worth reading the post from beginning to end, and here’s why:

• Lag isn’t caused by high-prim items like hair or jewelry, and it’s not caused by scripts. That may have been the case several years ago when Second Life was in its infancy, but technology has changed since then even if people’s views on lag have not. As Gwyneth points out, graphics cards don’t even understand what prims are; graphics cards view avatars in terms of polygons and triangles.

• Most of the time, lag is created due to your computer and it’s not experienced the same way by all users. Users will have inappropriate graphics settings or low-grade graphics cards on their own computers and simply blame everyone else for their computer’s poor performance. I can attest to the truth to this point because having used SL on two different machines, the machine with the better graphics card gave me far less lag than the older machine with a worse graphics card.

• Open spaces create more lag than places with more structures. This is because your computer is forced to increase its view (draw distance). Want less lag? Make more rooms in your store or club.

• If many avatars are in one place and not moving around much—such as a club or beach—you’re going to experience lag because “the physics engine is constantly working to keep up with the amount of information it needs to calculate everything, and never ‘catches’ up.”

To conclude, if you want your beach or your club to be lag-free, don’t tell the attendees to take off their hair, jewelry, glasses, boots, capes, hats, or scripts—just tell them to not show up in the first place. That way, you’ll have a nice lag-free environment all to yourself.

Fantasy vs. Reality

If my avatar is here and a human being is controlling it, and if the dockside club in the image was created by a human being, is Second Life completely fantasy or just an extension of real-life?
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Having been an SL user since 2007, one thing that I have yet to come to a conclusion on is whether or not SL is or isn’t a fantasy world. Here’s why:

The virtual world of Second Life is one that is not tangible. The images are pixels on a screen and information kept in computers. When we view particular images while in-world, we’re viewing that information. We’re viewing the pixels of the information that has been created by someone, somewhere. If we see a house, for instance, the house’s walls cannot be touched, they can’t be set ablaze, they can’t be vandalized, they can’t be torn down.

They can, however, have our avatars “touch” them or lean against them; they can have animated flames set upon them; they can have pixelated spray paint applied to them; they can be removed by having the owner “take” them and put them back into their inventory.

The act of doing such things must be done by human beings—the same human beings behind the avatars. (This is not including robot avatars which have substantially invaded the grid over the last few months.)

As such, can it not be argued that SL must be an extension of real-life, if only because a “real-life” person has undertaken the action in the first place? For example, the grid itself was invented by human beings. Thus, their real-life led to its creation. My avatar’s skin was created by a person, thus making it an extension of that person’s real life. I clicked “wear” to wear the skin, and thus my action caused the avatar to don the skin. Had I not done so, the avatar would not have donned the skin on its own.

When a human being logs in to SL, their avatar becomes “alive” or “awakes” from its state of non-existence. Indeed, it’s not even “slumber” because the avatar doesn’t exist anywhere on the grid until activated. Had no human being logged in, the avatar would not have “lived” on its own. It wouldn’t walk around on its own, nor would it build or shop for merchandise on its own.

Therefore, the argument can be made that SL’s very existence comes from real-life, and more specifically, the people on the other side of the computer screen.

On the other hand, one of the most popular philosophies that I’ve encountered while in SL is the idea that real-life is real-life (behind the computer screen), and Second Life is Second Life. The concept is that they are mutually exclusive and they have nothing to do with each other.

This argument does have weight because the concept of “fantasy” comes into play regularly on the grid. If I’m lounging naked at a nude beach (which is a post for itself, because I’m usually the only one naked at the nude beaches which I’ve visited), am I “really” at a nude beach? Am I not simply projecting an avatar on a computer screen? Is it not simply a collection of pixels which look like humans and sand and water, instead of actually being people, sand, and water?

Thus, it becomes a fantasy world.

This view has actually been upheld legally by the United States Supreme Court. In 2002, the Supreme Court ruled on the case of Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition and said that broad laws against “virtual child pornography” were unconstitutional. In essence, they said that a pixelated image of a child isn’t actually a tangible victimized child. Germany views it differently, however, and has established jail time for up to three to five years if convicted of having “virtual” child porn.

This post isn’t to debate that ruling or “virtual” porn or porn in general; I’m simply using it as an example. Because of this situation, we see that, again, an argument has been established that forces us to view the situation both ways: the United States views virtual worlds as a fantasy land; Germany looks at the virtual world in terms of what is represented on the screen and in the private messages.

Keeping with that, however, how do we interpret furries, child avatars, zombie avatars, silly avatars, space sims, war sims, sex sims, and everything else in between? If a human avatar has virtual sex with a furry avatar, can or should it be punishable for having committed bestiality? Is it just a fantasy land, or is it an extension and representation of real-life? If a child avatar is spotted on a mature sim (which has been happening too often from what I’ve been reading and hearing), should the use of child avatars there be banned? Should the use of child avatars anywhere on the grid be banned, given that all users supposed to be 18 years-of-age or older? Or do we simply go back to the “it’s just fantasy” argument and support the idea that anything permissible by Linden Lab is what can occur?

I’m tempted to add a comment here about “partnering,” but that should be a post by itself.