United we stand…
It seems like another open letter is in the works. This time it’s about the latest crackdown on governing policies. While Linden has in the past claimed that they’re all about the community and what the community wants, they don’t seem to tell the community exactly what the rules are when we (the community) ask for some hard definitions. Leaving it up in the air clearly is against the wishes of many groups involved, especially those that are using their sexual rights as part of their freedoms of speech.
We’ve covered this some already, but it’s definitely getting to the point where it seems that the community has to make a stand every time we want Linden to actually listen to us instead of blowing us aside. It doesn’t seem like the community affairs division of Linden is doing a tremendously fantastic job, or else you wouldn’t think it’d come to another open letter. Judging by some of the conversations, it’s hard to tell if Linden is under wraps because their legal staff is advising them to do as such to cover their own butts, or if it’s just the same old issues dealing with problematic communications between the upstairs, and the rest of us downstairs. Either way, there’s only three solutions to this:
1) Linden makes note that we the community want some hard answers and gives us the answers.
2) Linden makes note of the hard answers and gives us the runaround speech again.
3) Linden blows us off altogether.
At this point, I really don’t care anymore personally. I signed off on the open letter hoping it’ll make a difference, but I have to say that this website itself is somewhat disconcerting with a .nu address and such. You would think that they’d just place it all under the open letter domain again and start up a nonprofit for Second Life or something. Maybe that’ll be in the works later on. Regardless, there needed to be something done, and this is a step in the right direction.
June 17th, 2007 • 
Darius Sartre • 
comment | June 17, 2007 at 13:47 | individual comment-link
Are you attending the office hours of Robin Linden? If not you should, especially this topic was discussed in detail (unfortunately Robin will be on vacation next week though). She made clear though that it’s next to impossible to define the concrete answers.
So here’s her statement about the Blogpost by Daniel.
” We have tried to create a world where everyone takes responsibility for their own actions, within some broadly stated guidelines called the communitiy standards. We’ve relied on the Residents to let us know when those standards are violated. Nevertheless, as we’ve grown and as we’ve spread out across the globe in RL, there are different sensibilities that we face in different places.
This is a new situation for us, and one we have to navigate through. We would like to maintain our approach where the community lets us know when they believe the community standards have been violated. Hence the reminder to use the reporting system.
That said, we may find there are times when behaviors that we have allowed in the past, e.g. ageplay, are viewed strongly enough by some jurisdictions that we have to decide, for the sake of the business that we aren’t going to allow them any more. I doubt very much that ageplay is the last behavior that will come under this scrutiny.
What Daniel said in his post is that we have standards, we have a reporting system, and we need to work to gether to try to maintain those standards. In retrospect perhaps it seemed like a new policy because it sounded more proactive than in the past. There may be times when we decide to fight something that the RW tries to impose on us. One case I can think of would be if some government asked us to give them information about political activities among their citizens.
But there will be other times when we have to decide that non-compliance will result in a harm to Second Life and we can’t allow that to happen. The reason I can’t say that this or that activity, or slant on BDSM, or degree of forced sex is or isn’t allowed is because I don’t know the answer.For now I would say use your heads, live by the laws of your own jurisdiction, try not to be in other people’s faces with activities that you know might draw ciriticism in the RW.”
Not sure if that helps you but I though I post it here again for reference. OTOH Robin should have posted more about this on the blog. And definitely she should post chat logs.
Beside that here’s the list of office hours:
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Office_Hours
(and well at least it’s better than flickr which is censoring germans now.. so LL is ahead of them actually).
comment | June 17, 2007 at 18:54 | individual comment-link
The problem with this answer (non-concrete answers) is that it’s actually not impossible to define concrete answers. That’s what attorneys are for Every large corporation that I’ve ever worked for has policies that are dictated as such. Linden shouldn’t be any different.
Here’s the issue with not drawing lines in the sand. Conservative America disagrees with sex outside of marriage. This is also viewed very strongly by those of the Judeo-Christian faith. So why don’t we ban that too? Where exactly do you draw the line?
Again, standards have to be posted if you start pulling certain types of things. Because obviously there is a standard, but that has to be communicated. If they can’t communicate that, then give us an attorney that writes their policies and standards.
The point is, if they want to cover themselves and say that gambling is up to local jurisdictions, then this then is in the same type of legal arena. Picking and choosing policies is their right to business since it is in fact their business, but if you don’t communicate your business practices, then you’ll get shunned by customers.
The whole Daniel post and Robin chat logs have been what we call in the business world: PR runaround. You don’t get the answer to your question and you get some generic public relations answer. In the end, local jurisdiction is the best way to protect Linden. But the moment you make a decision against that rule, you’re in a whole new ballgame. That’s the reason for this open letter and why many have been annoyed by this fiasco.
pingback | June 22, 2007 at 15:04 | individual pingback-link
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