The point of all this is mute...Linden Labs owns Second Life..As such they can do as they please. Having listen to the meeting, what they said is true...Linden Labs already had the right to do this anyway.
That being said, they also admitted that online status can be seen a dozen other ways...IE Groups, which is part of the V3 viewer setting BTW.Or simply (most common) IM the person.
Finally, I play another game with an economy and a land-deed system..The game(not sure if allowed to put it here) has the inials E and U. They a few years back replaced their system-Engine and more or less nearly lost their gamers to it...They offically are still in some trouble...They finally listened to their gamers...and appear they will recover...They have one offical viewers(bad to very bad) at best...they have lost many gamers(normal players) to the requirements of a fast and high memory computer. So before we get crazy and go nuts calling Linden bad names; worrying about TPV possible bannings, online status that isnt really an issue anyway...it could be worse...much worse