French taking aim at Second Life.
On 1 June 2007 press release the Fédération Nationale des Familles de France (FdF), a non-profit and non-partisan parental association born after World War 2, is apparently taking Linden Lab to court. The watchdog organization is seems to be concerned about the virtual casinos, tobacco, alcohol and drugs…on simple grounds of ethics…. not to mention their thought of minors having access to the “unbound site” where scenes of rape, bondage, zoophilie and scatophilie with clickable items that redirect to the internet sites of pornography.
Game Politics’ regular forum poster Soldat Louis says of the FdR:
In France, they’re as known and hated as Jack Thompson since 1999, when they launched a crusade against violent video games. It was important enough to get support from a part of French mainstream media, and it even forced retailers to remove some violent games from their stores for a short time.
…most French gaming sites reported this [Second Life] news, and it provokes as [much] hilarity as anger, because here, Familles de France is despised and hated with passion (and I’m not sure this hatred is totally justified).
Soldat Louis’s post in Game Politics Forums give a nice background of the Fdf.
June 4th, 2007 • 
Weirdharold • 
comment | June 4, 2007 at 08:50 | individual comment-link
This will be interesting. It is hard not to see Linden Labs as responsible for the content as long as your monthly fees are paid to them and they’re the ones hosting your content. Once they open the server, then all responsibility belongs to that of the jurisdiction your server is in.
That said, they are a US company with financial ties (via card processing) to the EU. so who’s laws apply? Will the French ban Second Life?