Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Giggle, I am in the wrong business

The real goal of LL is "AOL Sex Chat Rooms with VR." That's why they want gender verification online. You will note that they are not going to do "marital status" verification, even though the same public records that tell the world your legal gender, also say whether you have a legal marriage. Now I am going to have to identity and gender verify to keep escorting, it is going to be required. Not only because many places that I work, both as an escort and as a club consultant, are going to be restricted, but because of course, clients are going to want to know, if they can know for free, what my sex organs, legally speaking, are. And marital status is as large a part of "trust" as gender, because as pixel bailey oh so correctly notes : the feelings are real.

We are going to have licenses for providing sex services and building services in SL. I will play because I have to keep doing what I do. But it means that there is going to be defections, lots of them, the first day that someone opens a VR where people can make things. Kaneva? Are you listening? Get a mac client and let me build, and I am there part time. Let me actually get compensated, through say paypal, and I am there full time.

Now consider the SL standard for running a "bank." There is none. I can set up ATMs any place I can get permission, and call it a "bank." Now this is completely illegal of course, but SL doesn't verify financial institutions in world, nor do those financial institutions have to comply with any local banking laws.

That's LL for you: require people to get a license to do what is legal, but not require anything to do what is openly illegal. I'll believe otherwise about LL when they require that financial institutions show that they have complied with local laws, and everyone can easily check what laws the bank or stock exchange is operating under, and there are flags to prevent people from using them who are not within the bank's legal sphere of operations.

Will this do anything? Not really for most people. I will bet a great deal of money, because I have examples of how things work now, that "restricted" will not be enforced, because mature isn't enforced now. I have proof of this.

What this is really about is assuring married guys that they are doing it with a girl, and don't have to let on that they are married, and protecting LL from accusations of minors seeing dirty pictures for free. Voice isn't working for the first, because, as I warned people before, plenty of women don't want their voices spattered over the internet. This system won't do anything about the second, because a minor that wants to fish through their parents drawers, wallets or purses, can get everything they need for the second. There are already escorting groups in sl, I won't mention any names, that "verify" the escorts, and then have people run several escort alts, often 5 or 6 at a time, that have been "verfied." This isn't going to actually provide any assurance to anyone, at all, over anything, unless LL starts providing stalking fodder and having your address in your profile.

What this is not about is the law.

1 comment:

  1. Lillie, you've been brilliant today, and this is an amazing post. It really puts the "trust" issue in context, doesn't it?

    Thank you for this - I'll be crediting your arguments a lot as this discussion rolls on.

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