Criticism of Second Life

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Due to constant development, and as an open environment accessible by almost anyone with access to the internet,^[1] a number of difficult issues have arisen around Second Life. Issues range from the technical (Budgeting of server resources), to moral (Pornography), to legal (Legal position of the Linden Dollar, Linden Lab lawsuit). In September 2006, there were also issues with customer security.

Contents 1 Technical 1.1 Quality Assurance 1.2 Frame Rate 1.3 Congestion 1.4 Interface 1.5 Windows Vista 2 Content 2.1 Sex 2.2 Gambling 2.3 Non-Commercial Content 2.4 Griefing and Denial of Service attacks 2.5 Unauthorized copying of content 3 International Issues 3.1 Legality 3.2 Taxation 4 Other 4.1 Customer Security 4.2 Internal Regulation 4.3 Terms of Service changes 5 References

[edit] Technical

[edit] Quality Assurance

There has been a lot of criticism about quality assurance of Second Life. Some users complain that Linden Lab focuses too much on bringing new features to the production environment instead of fixing long-standing bugs that, in the worst case, cause financial loss for the users. On April 30, 2007 an open letter, signed by over 700^[2] frustrated users, was sent to Linden Lab to protest the quality assurance process of the company.^[3] Linden Lab seem to have taken the letter seriously.^[4]

[edit] Frame Rate

Computer hardware and Internet connections capable of smoothly rendering high quality content in other MMOG's may perform poorly in Second Life, resulting in low frame rates and unresponsive controls on even minimal graphical configurations. The problem is especially prevalent when large numbers of avatars congregate in one area. This problem is usually attributed to the fact that the ability of Second Life users to freely edit the world at any time seriously limits the amount of graphical optimisation that can be performed compared to games where the graphical environment is precalculated and fixed. There are many locations in the Second Life world where users are required to remove detailed avatars, animated items, and disable features, in order to reduce lag time for users.

[edit] Congestion

A single region (a 256x256 square of land that is hosted on a single server) may only accommodate a limited number of Residents (40 on 'mainland' regions, up to 100 on private islands),^{[citation needed]} causing some popular locations such as teleportation points to become inaccessible at times. More controversially, it is possible for an area of land a Resident has paid for to become inaccessible because another area in the same region has reached the avatar limit.

[edit] Interface

The control scheme for Second Life combines controls useful for 3D editing with those useful for game play, and as such is highly unintuitive for many, requiring various combinations of alt, ctrl, and the mouse for basic manipulation of the camera and in-world objects. Also, everything in the player's possession -- textures, animations, objects, clothing, sounds, videos -- shares a common directory tree, and can quickly become cluttered if not carefully managed.

[edit] Windows Vista

As of September 16, 2007, Second Life is not yet officially supported on Windows Vista.^[5] However, the latest Second Life client as of mid-May 2007 is now known to run very smoothly under Windows Vista, provided that users have the right hardware configuration and are running the latest graphics drivers with OpenGL support from NVIDIA (v158.18 or later) or ATI. (Second Life is not compatible with some older video cards.)^[6]

[edit] Content

[edit] Sex

Much like in real life, SL participants can form sexual relationships and have cybersex in the mature community in Second Life. Second Life Main Grid regions are rated either "PG" or "Mature".^[7] Builds, textures, actions, animations, chat, or businesses that are of an adult nature are regulated by the Second Life Terms of Service^[8] to only occur in simulators with a Mature rating. PG rated sims exist as an alternative for residents who do not wish to reside in areas where adult-oriented activities and businesses are permitted. Some Residents have protested at the low granularity of the PG/Mature divide, arguing that it results in an extreme division between PG areas where even mildly foul language is forbidden, and Mature areas where explicit and graphical sex and taboo sexual practices are permitted. Some calls have been made for the existing Mature rating to be renamed XXX, and a "middle-of-the-road" Mature rating to be introduced, but these have so far not been responded to.

Some media attention has been given to sexually related activity involving avatars with a child-like appearance,^[9] although residents on Second Life's Main Grid must be 18 years or older,^[8] for the most part making the issue one of role-playing between consenting adults. In spite of this, certain countries are introducing laws giving computer-generated pornographic images of apparent children the same status as child pornography, on the grounds that society should permit no indulgence of paedophilic desires. These countries include the United States of America (via the PROTECT Act of 2003^{Citation in linked article}), and the United Kingdom [1]. As of May 2007, two such countries, Germany and Belgium, have launched a police investigation into Age of Consent-related offences in Second Life (including both trading of non-virtual photography and involuntary virtual sexual activity with childlike avatars by means of virtual identity theft) [2][3]. Linden Lab responded by finally issuing a clear statement that any "depiction of sexual or lewd acts involving minors" was a bannable offence. [4]

In France, a conservative family union, Familles de France, sued Linden Lab in June 2007, alleging that Second Life gave access to minors to sexual content, including bondage, zoophilia and scatophilia, as well as gambling and advertisements for alcohol, drugs or tobacco. Linden Lab pointed out that the virtual world is not meant for children.^[10][11]

[edit] Gambling

Until July 25, 2007, gambling was allowed in both PG and Mature regions. The exception was the Teen Grid, where all mature content is disallowed, including gambling.^{[citation needed]} Gambling was most commonly conducted using scripted gambling machines created by residents. There was no central authority verifying the workings of these gambling machines,^{[citation needed]} therefore it was entirely possible for these machines to "cheat", never allowing a player to win, or to include "back doors", allowing the programmer of the machine to be certain to "win" from the host.

[edit] Non-Commercial Content

Second Life originally implemented systems of dwell and developer incentive, whereby owners of areas that attracted a large number of visitors received a subsidised income in L$ from Linden Lab. This removed the need for such areas to include money-making schemes, such as malls or rental areas, in order to recoup the costs of owning the land. However, these schemes were removed in April 2006, requiring the owners of these areas to raise the money themselves. This has had the net effect of making it substantially more difficult for areas with a social/artistic focus, as opposed to a money-making one, to survive without becoming a drain on the owner's real life finances.

[edit] Griefing and Denial of Service attacks

See also: Griefer

Second Life has been attacked several times by groups of Residents abusing the creation tools to create objects that harass other users or damage the system. This includes Grey Goo objects which infinitely reproduce, eventually overwhelming the servers;^[12] orbiters which throw an avatar so far upwards they cannot get back down in a reasonable timeframe without teleporting; cages which surround avatars, preventing them from moving, and similar. Although combat between users is sanctioned in certain areas of the world, these objects have been used to cause disruption in all areas; attacks on the grid itself, such as Grey Goo, are of course strictly forbidden anywhere on the grid. Recently Linden Lab announced that new plans to combat Grey Goo attacks are under consideration, including changes to the back end code to minimize damage from attacks, and possible restriction of scripting privileges to trusted or verified accounts.^[13]

[edit] Unauthorized copying of content

Second Life features a built-in digital rights management system that controls the movement of textures, sounds, scripts, and models with the Second Life servers at Linden Lab. At some point, though, this data must be sent to a user's computer to be displayed or played -- an issue fundamental to any system attempting to apply restrictions to digital information.

In November 2006 controversy arose over a tool called CopyBot, developed as part of libsecondlife and was intended to allow users to legitimately back up their Second Life data. For a brief period, an unmodified CopyBot allowed any user to replicate SL items or avatars (although not scripts, which run only on the servers at Linden Lab). Later changes to the SecondLife protocols prevented unmodified copies of CopyBot from working. Nevertheless, the basic issue of users being able to duplicate content that is sent to them remains.

Residents who copy content belonging to other users face being banned from Second Life, but Linden Lab has so far never sued any of these users for copyright infringement; since the resident creators (and not Linden Lab) retain ownership of the rights, it is not clear whether Linden Lab would legally be able to do so. Linden Lab does, however, comply with DMCA Takedown Notices served to them against resident content; serving a DMCA Takedown Notice is the normal procedure recommended by Linden Lab for having copyrighted content illegally resold on Second Life.

[edit] International Issues

[edit] Legality

Second Life users are expected to obey the laws of their own local countries with regard to their actions in the virtual world; however, a problem can arise in countries which have tough laws regarding material downloaded from the Internet, such as pornography. It is possible, for example, for a US user - even in a non-adult area - to approach German users and create an object displaying an obscene uploaded image which is illegal under German law but legal under US law. Although the US user has broken the Second Life TOS as a result, and faces suspension or banning from Second Life, the German user has broken a real-life sex offence law by downloading the image and faces a far worse penalty. Even if the user is eventually deemed to not be responsible for this download because it was unsolicited, they will still have been investigated for a sex offence with all the reputational and other damage that entails. So far, no actual prosecutions have resulted from actions of this type, but it is a possibility that has created concern.

[edit] Taxation

In September 2007, Linden Lab announced that they would be required to charge VAT on land fees to users inside the European Union, thereby increasing the business costs of many businesses in Second Life and making it impossible for them to compete with non-EU businesses on price. Real life law in the EU provides protection for European businesses in this case: businesses can "VAT register", which requires them to agree to collect VAT from European customers, but in return they do not have to pay VAT on their business supplies, enabling them to sell to non-EU customers at competitive prices in their markets. Although Linden Lab allows VAT-registered businesses to claim their VAT exemption, most Second Life businesses are unable to take advantage of this, because Linden Lab have not provided any means for them to meet the obligations they are legally required to meet in order to become VAT-registered. They cannot tell whether a customer is European or not in order to know whether to charge them VAT, and because L$ is not considered a real currency, transactions purely in L$ are not legally eligible to satisfy the obligations anyway. In addition, a VAT-registered business must be legally a complete business, with complete accounts that can be audited, whereas many Second Life "businesses" are simply private individals making things because they enjoy it and selling them to help with their land fees.

In addition, when VAT was introduced, it was abruptly added to the monthly bills for European users without giving them a chance to reduce their service consumption after the announcement, thus meaning that customers for whom the non-VAT price for their current services was affordable while the VAT price was not were forced to pay an unacceptably high bill. Some users are considering an action against Linden Lab regarding this, arguing that even if Linden Lab legally should have been charging VAT all along, this does not grant them permission to draw extra money from users' credit cards without permission from those users; the users should have had the option to underpay (and have the unpaid part of services withdrawn).

[edit] Other

[edit] Customer Security

On September 8, 2006, Linden Lab released a news bulletin that revealed their Second Life database had been compromised and customer information, including encrypted passwords and users' real names, had likely been accessed.^[14][15] However it was later revealed that the hacker had in fact been focused on trying to cheat the in-world money system^[16] and their access to personal information was believed incidental, although a full alert was still raised for safety's sake.

[edit] Internal Regulation

Linden Lab have made it a strong policy that they will not act to investigate or enforce any contracts or agreements made purely between users of Second Life, although they will co-operate with real-life courts or law enforcement in doing so. This has led to occurrences of low-level fraud within Second Life, in which users swindle other users out of money (via Linden dollars which are later traded for real money). Linden Lab will not act on such fraud, and the amounts of money involved are usually small enough (less than US$100) that it is unlikely the victim will wish to spend the money and effort involved in real-life legal proceedings.

[edit] Terms of Service changes

Linden Lab typically offer no compensation when a change to the platform or Terms of Service is made, even when it has a serious negative effect on users. For example, when gambling was banned on Second Life in July 2007, several users who had spent upwards of US$5000+ on land to build casinos on were left high and dry with no warning or compensation.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] References

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