Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Censorship & Online Anonymity

I haven't had enough coffee yet to properly verbalize how I feel about all this... wait... Yup, it's anger and confusion. Decide for yourself how you feel over this.

Burning Life Censored - This is all over Bloglines but the one that gives real there info is on the official Burning Life Blog. [read here] This angers me. Why? Since when did art become broadly offensive? Honestly. One single statue, Linden censorship & a PG sim caused an artist protest & had I known, I would have been there joining hands & dancing naked along side them. This is utterly ridiculous.

Who Are You? - Identity Verification Comes to SL. They want to be able to 'trust' us? As Robin Linden states "identity verification is voluntary for both Residents and estate owners." If it's voluntary, how many will actually do it? I'm on the fence with this issue. I have no problem verifying myself. Do I feel I should have to? No.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I totally agree with you about the age verification thing, I will do it, but I'd rather not have to.

Really, I don't see this affecting many older residents, who are already 'in' (read: addicted to ;)) SL. I worry how many new players this will deter from making new accounts. I know, personally, when I first started SL, if they'd had age verification then, I probably wouldn't have done it, or stuck around probably. It's too much of a hassle, especially if you don't know anything about online worlds, or SL specifically.

Gillian Waldman said...

Yup good point. I think this will probably further slow growth in the short term anyway.

I am taking a wait and see approach. I don't have a problem verifying in theory - but in practice, well I haven't been impressed with the way LL or its partners handle customer data.

tiana meriman said...

i'm pretty much on the fence right now about staying or leaving sl. if linden lab think i'll go and give important documents to them when they cant even keep their game secure and in working condition their crazy.

Anonymous said...

I personally feel the real reason, is so the goverment can tax us on income being made. Right now there is now way to prove who is doing what.

Anonymous said...

..the only problem with verifying is that being in europe it looks like we might have to use our passport numbers ..mmm .. not sure about that ...

in europe credit cards are only given to over 18s . that should be enough ..LL already have that info.. just ban those prepaid credit cards you have in the US and we're done..

Anonymous said...

I agree with Autumn - had this age verification thing been in effect when I signed up, I would not have signed up. Especially since you will have to pay for it - I signed up originally with a basic free account for the very reason of not wanting to spend money until I had learned more about SL, and for basic accounts to have to pay even more for Age Verification than premium account members, that's not helping attract new residents.

There has been only one website that I've ever given any personal info, such as the last four digits of my ssn, and that was my online banking account, but my bank already knows my ssn in person. Otherwise, I have never had to provide any other personal info to purchase anything anywhere online, and I won't do it for SL.