LL's new Age Verification procedure

[Ishtara Rothschild]

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Innula Zenovka wrote:

No, I think you're misreading it.   The KB entry  helpfully defines "photorealistic" as "meaning that images either are or cannot be distinguished from a photograph."  

It's not talking about the quality of avatars' skins -- though I've never seen an unretouched image of  avatar, no matter how good the skin and shape, that I'd  have difficulty distinguishing from a photograph of an actual person --  but about what sort of images you can have on display in galleries and adverts.

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Ok, I stand corrected Although I once had a classified ad deleted prior to the Zindra age, because the Community Standards forbade photorealistic nudity in classifieds. The image in my ad showed a prim genital, not an actual photo. I take that as a compliment for my texturing skills, but this could also mean that LL judge the depiction of genitals to be photorealistic nudity. I vaguely remember that the displays of skin vendors in moderate regions are also not supposed to depict genitalia.

 

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And while you are correct that "There is nothing about nudity (or adult furniture in private homes, for that matter) under Moderate,"  there most certainly is something about both nudity and adult furniture in private homes in the previous section, under General:

A region designated General is not allowed to advertise or make available content or activity that is sexually explicit, violent, or depicts nudity.  Sexually-oriented objects such as "sex beds" or poseballs may not be located or sold in General regions.

Since they say, in terms, that sex beds "

may not be located in General regions

", when it would have been perfectly simple to say "

may not be located in either General or Moderate regions"

or "

may only be located in Adult regions

," if that's what they meant, I can only take that to mean sex beds in Moderate regions are OK so long as they're not being used in public.    

Similarly, since we know -- because we are told -- that you can't depict nudity in General regions and you may only depict nudity that's "photo-realistic" -- a form of nudity LL clearly distinguishes from other forms of nudity because they go to the trouble of defining it as "meaning that images either are or cannot be distinguished from a photograph." -- in Adult regions, I take their silence about nudity in Moderate regions to mean that it's OK so long as it's not in a sexual context.

  It would have been  simple enough to say nudity is banned in Moderate regions if that's what they mean -- they don't have any difficulty making that clear in context of how Marketplace listings are categorised,  after all.

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Yes, I remember that adult furniture can be sold in moderate regions as long as the ads and vendor displays don't depict anything adult (such as photorealistic nudity or avatar genitalia ). However, this means that while adult furniture can be sold in moderate shops and placed in moderate residential homes, using this furniture is a different matter.

Blondin's "don't worry, you can have your sex beds" (paraphrased) always struck me as a "don't get caught using them" kind of rule. I think the KB article makes it pretty clear that sexually explicit activities are restricted to adult land, and I don't see an exception for residential homes.

[Innula Zenovka]

The rules, I think, on images in classifieds and the marketplace have always been different from the rules about what avatars may do in world.     And certainly now, you can't put -- as far as I know -- as explicit pictures in skin adverts in the Moderate section of the Marketplace as you can on the in-world vendor located on a Moderate sim.

Certainly in practice, as Gavin suggests elsewhere in this thread, ARs about stuff on Moderate sims rarely seem to get very far.  Whether that's because LL doesn't enforce the rules or (as I think) the rules are considerably more liberal than some people believe they are, I don't know.   Probably both -- I know stuff's been ARd that I think is well within the rules but  I also know stuff that had me raising my eyebrows has been AR-d several times but is still there.

As it happens, I recently suggested at an Adult Content Group meeting that the FAQ could do with some clarification, and was told that I should raise this with the Community Tools User Group.   It would be good, to my mind, to have some things spelled out more clearly -- I don't have a problem working within people's rules, generally, just so long as I know what they are.

[Gavin Hird]

Right...

The rather unclear definitions and the fact that Linden Lab is unable to enforce their own policy is the reason why I think we will come full circle and be back to two maturity ratings within a year or so. That in combination with the new age verify procedure that in reality will obliviate mature searches as it stands. 

The G rules are pretty much sensible as they are. I suppose one could make some changes to the wording to encompass text descibing what is socially acceptable in certain settings. One distinction that I would add is that child avatars can only be seen in G regions. 

For the rest, lump them into an A setting pretty much meaning this is 18+ territory and by entering this section of the grid, be prepared to face situations adult persons may face every day. 

When it comes to search, I suppose you could still have some kind of filtering on parcel descriptions, but have an adult classified section on search where everything (within the law) goes.  You specifically had to include this in your searches. Merchants would have to use this section for announcing their adult offerings.  Same for events. 

The same for profiles, put in an adult tab, and make it only visible if you wanted to see adult content as a preference in your viewer or search.  

As you see I am still keeping the adult content rating for search, classifies, events and profiles, but not on land.  

So we end up with 2 land maturity settings; G and the rest, but restrict certian language used in parcel descriptions visible in search, and an adult classified section people can opt out of in search (same with profiles.)

Where exactly you draw the line, is a bit more complicated. As it stands, I cannot describe a MySQL s.l.a.v.e server without getting an adult rating slapped on my text both in SLM and in a parcel. So they need to get more sophisticated about this than pure keyword filtering. Not sure if the new search engine has capabilities that will help them do this. 

[Innula Zenovka]

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Gavin Hird wrote:

The G rules are pretty much sensible as they are. I suppose one could make some changes to the wording to encompass text descibing what is socially acceptable in certain settings. One distinction that I would add is that child avatars can only be seen in G regions. 

For the rest, lump them into an A setting pretty much meaning this is 18+ territory and by entering this section of the grid, be prepared to face situations adult persons may face every day. 

 

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Not sure how well that would work.    I mean, in RL I far more frequently see children, accompanied by their parents,  in restaurants in and around London's Soho than do I see naked slaves being led around  that area on leashes by their masters and mistresses.

[Gavin Hird]

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Innula Zenovka wrote:

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Gavin Hird wrote:

The G rules are pretty much sensible as they are. I suppose one could make some changes to the wording to encompass text descibing what is socially acceptable in certain settings. One distinction that I would add is that child avatars can only be seen in G regions. 

For the rest, lump them into an A setting pretty much meaning this is 18+ territory and by entering this section of the grid, be prepared to face situations adult persons may face every day. 

 

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Not sure how well that would work.    I mean, in RL I far more frequently see children, accompanied by their parents,  in restaurants in and around London's Soho than do I see naked slaves being led around  that area on leashes by their masters and mistresses.

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There are two aspects to this:

1. They claim they want to roam worry free as children and/or re-experience their lost childhood. I hope that in both those cases it is a childhood free of sexual participation, harassment or abuse. The right setting for that is a G region. 
2. The other is the proximity rule in combination with rather harsh legislation in some countries that easily can incriminate residents if they are depicted in a situation where a child is seen to be in a sexual setting. Since the A region would be everything that is not G, it is possible to both knowingly construct ,or indavertently place a child avatar in setting that is illegal or incriminating. 

[Qie Niangao]

I think underlying much of the confusion is the mistaken notion that Adult-rated regions are going to be All Orgy All The Time.

That wasn't so far from true back when Zindra was forcibly and exclusively colonized by exiled pornographers, and any business on Adult land was horribly penalized by Search, exclusion from the Destination Guide, a broken age verification process (the subject of this thread), and pretty much every other screw-up that LL could achieve through a combination of lethargy and subconscious loathing.

Anyway, most of that is behind us now, more or less, and it's high time we got on with it.  Part of that is recognizing that Adult-rated land will have some adult content too "extreme" for Moderate-rated land -- right next to parcels with General or Moderate-at-most content.  It's always been that way, in fact, but now there's much less disincentive for "normal people" to have Adult land.

[Innula Zenovka]

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Gavin Hird wrote:

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Innula Zenovka wrote:

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Gavin Hird wrote:

The G rules are pretty much sensible as they are. I suppose one could make some changes to the wording to encompass text descibing what is socially acceptable in certain settings. One distinction that I would add is that child avatars can only be seen in G regions. 

For the rest, lump them into an A setting pretty much meaning this is 18+ territory and by entering this section of the grid, be prepared to face situations adult persons may face every day. 

 

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Not sure how well that would work.    I mean, in RL I far more frequently see children, accompanied by their parents,  in restaurants in and around London's Soho than do I see naked slaves being led around  that area on leashes by their masters and mistresses.

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There are two aspects to this:

1. They claim they want to roam worry free as children and/or re-experience their lost childhood. I hope that in both those cases it is a childhood free of sexual participation, harassment or abuse. The right setting for that is a G region. 
2. The other is the proximity rule in combination with rather harsh legislation in some countries that easily can incriminate residents if they are depicted in a situation where a child is seen to be in a sexual setting. Since the A region would be everything that is not G, it is possible to both knowingly construct ,or indavertently place a child avatar in setting that is illegal or incriminating. 

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Quite possibly so.  It just struck me that, whatever the merits of  your suggestion that child avatars should be restricted to G rated areas while  "For the rest, lump them into an A setting pretty much meaning this is 18+ territory and by entering this section of the grid, be prepared to face situations adult persons may face every day ," the suggestion has very little to with "situations adult persons may face every day" in RL.

In RL, it would not -- does not -- surprise me in the least to see a family eating together in a Pizza Hut two doors down the street from an Ann Summers Sex Shop (which, in SL, would be OK on M-rated land, I think).   It would, however, surprise me rather a lot to see a naked slave being led into either of those establishments on a leash. 

In other words, the "situations adult persons may face every day" in RL, including situations involving children,  tend to be those one might expect to encounter in M rated land in SL, rather than Adult land.

So, assuming I've properly understood your proposal and that you don't -- in fact -- want to make the whole grid G & M and to exclude altogether much of what is presently allowed on Adult sims, I think "situations adult persons may face every day" is a rather poor guide, in that the situation you seem to be describing -- children excluded, naked slaves being led down the street, and public orgy rooms OK next to vanilla shoe shops -- is not one many of us encounter in everyday life.

 

[Gavin Hird]

Families with children will have plenty oportunity to do what families with children usually do in G regions. 

– there is a destinction here, being that in RL no grown up can masquerade as a child without immediately being spotted and possibly taken care of by law enforcement or something.  Because of that we usually don't have legislation regulating this as we do have for digital environments. So you can't draw the parallell. The law says you can't. 

Also, you usually don't bring your children into unsafe areas, and the A rating in this context unfit for children (real or depicted.)

There is another aspect of this also; if Linden Lab wants a wider family oriented audience in SecondLife, there will possibly be real children behind an avatar. In that event, we don't want to have grown ups running around like children together with our real children in any region. 

 

When it comes to slaves being led naked down the street, this has more to do with behaving in a socially acceptable manner around the grid. This is fine in a designated roleplay sim clearly marked as such, but not in general anywhere on the grid. We must be able to transfer our widely accpeted social norms for behavior also into the grid in general without having to resort to artificial zoning. 

[Qie Niangao]

Do not care.

I have Adult land.  I bought it specifically for the freedom to do whatever the heck I want on it, within the ToS.  I don't happen to have a child avatar, but regardless: I want the freedom to decide to have one on my Adult land (with fully General-rated content) any time I d*mned please.

Maybe there's some third party grid that has all its ratings neatly sorted to suit OCD control freaks, but SL ain't that grid and shows no sign of adopting any such policies.  Thank god.

[Innula Zenovka]

I agree.   The reason I made our private sim, Freedonia, Adult at the time wasn't that we wanted to hold wall-to-wall orgies but that I wanted to be sure that my tenants and I could continue in precisely the same way that we had previously.  

Then, and now, almost everything on the sim (and people's conduct) could comfortably be accommodated by an M-rating, but the tentacle monsters who've colonised one bit of the woods, some rather lively statuary and a few other little surprises hidden around in discreet corners to amuse visitors couldn't.     

The advantage to the A rating is I don't need to worry about someone seeing my tentacle monters and raising objections.

 

[Ceka Cianci]

 

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Ishtara Rothschild wrote:

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Ceka Cianci wrote:

where did you see that it said nudity was not allowed on moderate?

strip clubs are allowed on moderate as well as nude beaches hehehehe

and sex beds are not adult content..not unless you have models on them going through the poses as part of your advertising..

 

can you post the link to that part of the wiki?

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I see that the Wiki entry has been moved to the Knowledge Base:

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/Maturity-ratings/ta-p/700119

Photorealistic nudity, which includes nude avatars with photorealistic skins, is only listed in the Adult section. There is nothing about nudity (or adult furniture in private homes, for that matter) under Moderate.

The Moderate section lists bars, s

tores that sell "sexy" clothing, and dance clubs that feature "burlesque" acts (according to Merriam-Webster, burlesque refers to "theatrical entertainment of a broadly humorous often earthy character consisting of short turns, comic skits, and sometimes striptease acts"). Since nudity is only listed under adult, I assume that these burlesque striptease acts are not supposed to go beyond the pasties and thong level.

As with adult furniture and pixel bumping in residential areas, we only have Blondin's words that nude beaches and nudity in strip clubs are allowed in moderate regions. Even depictons of illicit drug use are now only listed as adult content. Didn't this use to be moderate?

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photorealistic is when it cannot be determined from real..putting a realistic skin on the mesh does not have an avatar looking real..photochopping it can get it pretty close..  but  out walking around the grid  nude it does't..nudity has always been allowed on those regions and still is..

besides.not everyone wears a photorealistic skin..so this wording isn't saying nudity is not allowed on moderate..if for some reason  someone on this mesh ends up looking to where we cannot tell the difference..then ya..but thats gonna be kind of rare and not the majority..

 

as far as a sex beds go..the only place where it is mentioned that they are not allowed is In General lands not moderate.

if it were not allowed in moderate then they would have came right out and said it just as they did  for general

it's use is not allowed to be advertised in moderate..most of these ratings are for businesses using search..what they go into that is not allowed in a business using search doesn't apply to a private resident home.

a private residents home doesn't fit an adult rating nomatter what we keep private..because adult is not about private..it is about drawing attention to it..



"General 

A region designated General is not allowed to advertise or make available content or activity that is sexually explicit, violent, or depicts nudity.  Sexually-oriented objects such as "sex beds" or poseballs may not be located or sold in General regions.

there is nothing saying sex beds are not allowed in moderate..imagine if they listed everything that was allowed..that would be a huge list hehehe

 

ETA..Sorry Ishy i see Innula already responded to  all this..i just read your post and responded ..just waking up now so sowies hehehehe

[Anaiya Arnold]

I suppose I should have ignored the RSI and typed out "content not intended to be accessed by persons under the age of 18 years" rather than "adult content".  Please accept my apology and just imagine that is what I typed.

 

Nothing about my comments indicates that I think LL are here to babysit anyone.

[Ceka Cianci]

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Anaiya Arnold wrote:

I suppose I should have ignored the RSI and typed out "content not intended to be accessed by persons under the age of 18 years" rather than "adult content".  Please accept my apology and just imagine that is what I typed.

 

Nothing about my comments indicates that I think LL are here to babysit anyone.

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well what i meant with the babysitting is that a lot think LL is supossed to stop them or has to  or is responsible to making sure they do not get in..

LL knows that is not possible to stop them..they just have to put up something that protects them..which also happens to  protect us as well..

as far as 18+ content on moderate..what is really out in site that they could see from standing in a general sim looking into a moderate sim that is allowed out in plain site?

an avatars standing nude in the lawn wouldn't get LL into trouble..nudity itself is  not illegal in the U.S. to anyone under 18..not unless those avatars were having sex or forplay ect..

if they go camming into buildings and seeing all kinds of beds and things doing nothing is not  anything but seeing a bunch of beds..

getting a sex bed is not breaking the rules..rezzing it  on General land and not disabling it is breaking the rules as well as using it if it were not disabled..

camming into someones private home and watchign them on their sex bed does not fall on the people in their private home..the general user knew or should know by reading the rules where they belong..

if the people on moderate followed the rules and made sure they stayed private by keeping it behind closed doors..then onlookers are responsible for the content they cam into..

in other words..16 and 17 year olds are old enough that they do not need a babysitter..they know how to read the maturity definitions and know what they are allowed to do and not to do..

 

just because they can cam over doesn't mean they should..but if they do it's not anyone elses problem but theirs if their parents have a problem with it..

 

now 13 to 15 it would be a problem..this is why they are stuck in school sims hehehe

 

if you were talkign about actual adult content that is on moderate lands and should be on adult rated sims..well that would fall on the users cheating  the rating system..not LL

 

ETA: i do agree LL needs to enforce  their rules more..i don't know if they could get into trouble for being undermanned or not..maybe.

 

 

[Anaiya Arnold]

I'm not so concerned with that so much as the fact that the current situation is not as ideal in terms of LL's policy for under 18s, as a separate G continent (rather than separate A continent) would have been, and yet of the two options it was the more inconvenient to residents.

LL could have had a more effective barrier that better served their policy of preventing under 18s from accessing A and M content, while saving a lot of headaches the whole Zindra relocation caused for many residents, if they'd made a G continent and left mainland as a mix of M and A. 

Causing more headaches to residents is bad enough, without the added insult that this inconvenience was in pursuit of the less effective of two solutions.

[Ceka Cianci]

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Anaiya Arnold wrote:

I'm not so concerned with that so much as the fact that the current situation is not as ideal in terms of LL's policy for under 18s, as a separate G continent (rather than separate A continent) would have been, and yet of the two options it was the more inconvenient to residents.

LL could have had a more effective barrier that better served their policy of preventing under 18s from accessing A and M content, while saving a lot of headaches the whole Zindra relocation caused for many residents, if they'd made a G continent and left mainland as a mix of M and A. 

Causing more headaches to residents is bad enough, without the added insult that this inconvenience was in pursuit of the less effective of two solutions.

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i agree they did it wrong..

they could have just made everything on mainland  moderate and kept adult there as well..that zindra was more than big enough for the teen grid..they only had like 100 sims and thier mainland..that woudl fit right in the center and still have tons of room for them..

it was irritating to find out just how small of an amount of teen  users were being merged and then to think back to how many were moved  for them..then they brought their land and mainland anyways LOL

i agree it was a big cluster and now looking back looks like something planned as they went along rather than a plan well thought out and in the best interests of everyone..

 

[Deltango Vale]

In my opinion, the solution is blindingly obvious: revert SL to 18+, which it was for the first seven years of its existence. The teen merge was a galactic mistake. We now have a normal, legal age-declaration process, which protects Linden Lab. It is time to scrap the whole 'adult' policy and go back to where we were before all this nonsense began. I agree with Gavin: two maturity levels (Mature/Normal and PG/Disney). If someone wants to live in a PG sim, fine. The rest of the SL population should be allowed to go about its business as 18+ adults.

I did not know Blondin had left, but perhaps it's a good thing that he Jack and Blue have moved on. If those three were not directly responsible for the problem, they were certainly not part of the solution. After four years of sloppy thinking and destructive policies, it's time for Linden Lab to grow up and turn professional. This legal age-declaration process is a step in the right direction. Now ditch the kids - officially. Then ditch the anonymous accounts. That will go a long way toward giving Second Life a second life.

[Ceka Cianci]

if you ask me they could have still kept the teen grid and still put it on this grid..

all that grid really ever wanted was content access anyways..

being on the same grid that could have been possible at least with the market place..

access to it and from it could have been the same as it was before..but now they would have been able to buy content and sell it to and from the main grid..

 

i doubt they will get rid of the teens...but you never know..

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Deltango Vale wrote:This legal age-declaration process is a step in the right direction. Now ditch the kids - officially. Then ditch the anonymous accounts. That will go a long way toward giving Second Life a second life.

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Ditching the anonymity would just make Second Life a part of First Life. At that point, why come here when I could be on Facebook?

 

[Ceka Cianci]

i think he was meaning PIOF accounts and closing the doors on throw away accounts..

thats how i took it anyways..

i don't think they will do that either..but again ya never know with them..

[Ishtara Rothschild]

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Qie Niangao wrote:

I think underlying much of the confusion is the mistaken notion that Adult-rated regions are going to be All Orgy All The Time.

That wasn't so far from true back when Zindra was forcibly and exclusively colonized by exiled pornographers, and any business on Adult land was horribly penalized by Search, exclusion from the Destination Guide, a broken age verification process (the subject of this thread), and pretty much every other screw-up that LL could achieve through a combination of lethargy and subconscious loathing.

Anyway, most of that is behind us now, more or less, and it's high time we got on with it.  Part of that is recognizing that Adult-rated land will have some adult content too "extreme" for Moderate-rated land -- right next to parcels with General or Moderate-at-most content.  It's always been that way, in fact, but now there's much less disincentive for "normal people" to have Adult land.

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I agree. Before the Zindra age, mature land was a lot more popular than PG land. It was like the choice between living in a virtual GDR with AR-happy Stasi volunteers at every sim corner or in the liberal West, which is a pretty obvious choice for most people.

When LL added the third maturity rating and disneyfied mature sims, I already suggested that all liberal-minded people move to Zindra and all business owners change their sim rating to adult in order to send a clear message to LL. I suggested this again when LL merged the two grids.

But alas, the new adult maturity rating was all but liberal. In a way, it was more restrictive than the mature rating had been before, at least for business owners. But now we can finally turn SL back into the adult environment that it was designed to be from the very beginning. Not to turn SL into a giant red light district, but to bring back the colorful, intense and unpredictable metaverse experience that Neal Stephenson imagined in the 90s.

[Ishtara Rothschild]

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Pussycat Catnap wrote:

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Deltango Vale wrote:This legal age-declaration process is a step in the right direction. Now ditch the kids - officially. Then ditch the anonymous accounts. That will go a long way toward giving Second Life a second life.

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Ditching the anonymity would just make Second Life a part of First Life. At that point, why come here when I could be on Facebook?

 

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It is entirely possible to sign up with accurate RL information, have payment info on file, and nonetheless remain anonymous within SL. I agree that anonymity is important when dealing with other residents, but Linden Lab should still have everyone's RL information on file for legal reasons. Especially in case of business owners.

[Ishtara Rothschild]

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Qie Niangao wrote:

Do not care.

I have Adult land.  I bought it specifically for the freedom to do whatever the heck I want on it, within the ToS.  I don't happen to have a child avatar, but regardless: I want the freedom to decide to have one on my Adult land (with fully General-rated content) any time I d*mned please.

Maybe there's some third party grid that has all its ratings neatly sorted to suit OCD control freaks, but SL ain't that grid and shows no sign of adopting any such policies.  Thank god.

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Signed. When I use my adult-rated homestead sim to build and script, I wear avatars that don't distract me from my work (such as wooden mannequins, kittens, giant spiders and whathaveyou). As of yet I don't have a child avatar, but being allowed to wear any avatar I damn well please is a matter of principle for me. That's why I own adult land after all.

[Innula Zenovka]

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Ishtara Rothschild wrote:

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It is entirely possible to sign up with accurate RL information, have payment info on file, and nonetheless remain anonymous within SL. I agree that anonymity is important when dealing with other residents, but Linden Lab should still have everyone's RL information on file for legal reasons. Especially in case of business owners.

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While it may or may not be a good idea for LL to have everyone's RL information on file -- I can't comment, since they're outside the jurisdiction of EU data protection law, so I have no idea how well they're legally required  to protect people's data from potential identity thieves and fraudsters, nor what their hiring policies are with regard to people who handle such data -- what do you say are the "legal reasons" that might require them to have people's data on file, and what legal problems has LL's not having such data on file caused them in the last 7 or 8 years?

 

[Ishtara Rothschild]

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Innula Zenovka wrote:

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Ishtara Rothschild wrote:

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It is entirely possible to sign up with accurate RL information, have payment info on file, and nonetheless remain anonymous within SL. I agree that anonymity is important when dealing with other residents, but Linden Lab should still have everyone's RL information on file for legal reasons. Especially in case of business owners.

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While it may or may not be a good idea for LL to have everyone's RL information on file -- I can't comment, since they're outside the jurisdiction of EU data protection law, so I have no idea how well they're legally required  to protect people's data from potential identity thieves and fraudsters, nor what their hiring policies are with regard to people who handle such data -- what do you say are the "legal reasons" that might require them to have people's data on file, and what legal problems has LL's not having such data on file caused them in the last 7 or 8 years?

 

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With "for legal reasons", I meant that it should be possible for Linden Lab to disclose the RL name and address of any resident when ordered to do so by a judge or subpoenad by an attorney. Think of defamation / libel, money laundering, the uploading of illegal material (such as CP images; remember the scandal back in '07 and the following police investigation), and of course copyright or trademark infringement.

Especially in case of IP infringement, LL would be well advised to work more closely with their content creators, and to make sure that previous offenders can't easily get back onto the grid. Their failure to do has already led to a class action lawsuit against LL (by Stroker and Nomine).

 

ETA: By using Linden Lab's California-based SL servers, EU residents choose to venture outside of the jurisdiction of EU data protection laws. It's the same as signing up for a WoW account on US servers. While SL is free to "play", I think that LL should nonetheless require payment information (the way they used to do prior to 2006). This would also help to ensure that teenagers under the age of 16 are less likely to gain access to SL. At the very least, having payment info on file should be a precondition for listing products on the Marketplace and receiving L$ payments inworld.

[Innula Zenovka]

But since there's no point in asking a court to order LL to hand over something it doesn't have, I don't see how "legal reasons" come into it.     Seems to me a good way to embroil LL in needless litigation, since I hope they'd defend the applications, and require the applicants to show the court a good reason why the information had to be handed over.

And I know that EU residents choose to venture outside the jurisdiction of EU data protection laws.  I also know that we're advised, when we so do, to be very careful about what personal data we divulge if we aren't confident it will be kept secure.  

That's because there's an active black market for that data, and if, for example,   some unscrupulous employee of the company to whom we divulge our data decides to resolve some of his or her financial problems -- of which his or her employers may well be unaware --  by selling our data to fraudsters or indentity thieves, the consequences for us could prove very expensive and inconvenient to put right.   

That advice holds true whether we're considering handing over potentially saleable personal data to people in Russia or Nigeria, or California.

So I really don't think it's a good idea to advocate that people should be required to expose themselves to that sort of financial risk and incovenience, when it's not apparently been necessary in the past, without knowing what measures LL already have, or would put, in place to mitigate it, and what remedies would be available to us if something went wrong.

I wouldn't have such a problem with making people be PIOF or something, though that might well create problems elsewhere, because then my personal data would remain in the hands of PayPal or my credit card company, whom I do trust to take good care of it.    But I'm really not sure about why LL need to have it on file.