Kyoka Setsuko

Haha, another wonderful Dres post. Anyway, I don't mind leaving a more sincere response because the OP seems to be genuinely seeking information for research purposes- and as for being "offended", I am more or less impossible to offend. I do understand that many people come to SL to avoid their RL restraints or illnesses/ailments/etc., but if so then you could choose not to click on this thread or to reply to it :matte-motes-bashful: Actually, yes, I would forego the funeral unless it was going to be a celebration, and I'd prefer to probably pass my account on to someone else. I have spent a long time working on my avi- tweaking the shape, the creator of my skin no longer sells it, and the exact configuration or contents of my inv are understandably unique. In a sense, I feel like an account on SL is similar to a book, poem, play or song that someone wrote... it is a nice way of carrying on their memory and legacy to continue it. Accounts are imbued with the spirit of the account holder, the person who invested time and expended energy into creating something with their hands. The idea of passing on accounts seems like a really worthwhile prospect and would be a nice way of honouring that person.

I've known of a few people who died in RL, or had seriously declining/deteriorating health. One case was in a roleplay sim, where the roleplayer was well-known and loved by many of the others in that sim. When they died in RL, the sim had a sort of an out-of-character ritual/ceremony where people were able to mourn and talk about the deceased. The RP sim had a small graveyard near the church, so they put a headstone there in honour of that player who had died. Other than that I haven't seen too much about people dying RL, although I know one of the other admin in that sim died of cancer, and several of the other admins/owners have life-threatening diseases. I guess it's a way for them to escape reality, and they tend to have the disposable income and time to either admin a sim and/or fund one since they are either hospitalized or pretty much stuck at home. I'm a Halloween aficionado, and I do wind up visiting a ton of graveyards in SL, but not "memorial" type sims. Most of what I've seen is there for show, as part of a spooky environment/atmosphere, so I can't really speak to those memorial type sites, but I am aware of their existence. People use SL to memorialize things and events- not just people, a good example would be the Titanic creation sim. They hold a ceremony there, I believe weekly or monthly for those who died on the ship.

My advise would be to find something you like and learn in that field. All talents, be they people skills, artistic, literary, organising or selling are needed in SL. It's not only builders and scripters. A lot of people don't script or create objects but offer us invaluable services like opening up and maintaining venues where we can hear music, host and organize events, sing or play an instrument, invent scenarios and quests for our role play. Unfortunately, most things require, at bare minimum, money. You make it sound relatively simplistic, but it's not easy for new users. You want to exercise your artistic talent? Uploading a texture in SL costs $10L. For people who do not want to spend RL $ on SL, they are going to have a difficult time getting sufficient $L without a job or some really good sploder skills in SL. I have several friends who want to become builders, but can't upload the textures for sculpts or to custom texture objects because they don't have enough $L. As for "opening up and maintaining venues" requires a substantial contribution. Typically it is one that you will have to make in something like thousansd of RL $ to keep a sim afloat. If you are just renting a small area, the monetary contribution will be smaller, but you still need to be earning or getting that $ from somewhere. I don't disagree with what you are saying, there are ways to contribute to SL without being a builder/scripter/etc. but I don't want to delude people into thinking it is by any means free. At some point, you will need a lot of $ to own a sim, a fair amount to rent out an area, or a very generous donor to pay for your costs. Sometimes there are places set up by others who have already paid, and you can certainly contribute in other ways.. But yeah, it can be difficult to get by in SL without at least an initial amount of money and a method of earning more, or reliance upon constant RL $ or a premium account to give you some stipend. Singers/musicians need to A) have that musical talent already in RL, B) understand how to set up a stream, C) manage to convince someone in SL to let them play that stream.

Opensource, maybe the reason West asks if LL even consulted members is because LL does, to some extent, have a tradition of asking its members things. You might remember logging in to SL to find a screen asking if your "SL experience has gotten better or worse, and why" with a comment box for reasons. I don't know whether LL actually ever read even a fraction of these, but it was an interesting concept nonetheless, and can help the regular user to feel like their opinion matters. In an interview I found on youtube, the original founder of SL used to give similar questionnaires out to his own staff, asking whether he has gotten better or worse as a CEO, with a comment box for explanations. He said it helped to really make things sink in- things that if people had off-handedly told him individually, might not- but when you're sitting there staring at 4 or 5 unrelated people all giving the same feedback, you know they're probably right. I'm not always in favour of democracy. Maybe people don't really know what is best for them... but if enough users do become unsatisfied, they may leave. Personally, I hate the new search so far. I find the Browser window ugly and feel it doesn't fit in at all with the SL User Interface. Furthermore, I find it slower to load than the original Search Window, more intrusive on my SL Window, and I find the actual search results to be crappier. Searching a resident's name under People used to produce a long list of people with such a name or similar names. Now it is a real pain just to locate such a list. Similar issues exist for all the other searches I have tried. I find my searching seriously hampered. I don't believe SL is actually pulling up different results, I simply think they are being displayed differently- and I do not like it. Another beef if I have with the Search is the images (animated images if I recall) that are pulled up during search, and all the unnecesary banners and information that needn't be there. They contribute to my lag/slow loading and it is frustrating for someone who sometimes has a slower computer and tends to freeze/crash frequently. Just pulling up the new Search can send my Viewer to a freezing halt- old search never did this to me. And yes, I have more or less ignored the social networking element. But my issue is less so with unnecessary features (the more features the better so long as they don't clutter things), but rather I do not like the new search at all so far. And I don't believe it's because I am "just not used to it yet"... though that may be the case. It's been at least a few weeks (I think?) and I still hate the new search.

My intention is not to create a massive flame war because of this comment... So I won't name any names, in order to avoid anyone from any particular community/group getting upset and raging at me or turning this into a Us vs. Them. Frankly, I like to hope we're better than and can maintain a civil discussion, but I can see how these kinds of things can get out of hand. So, without naming any names... Yes. I do judge people, to some extent by their avi. I judge them by the quality of their avi and by the particular avi that they select (at that given moment anyway). I do not only judge them by this, I judge them by many other things, including what they say in their profile (if anything), and by the way they act and what they say to me and others. Lots of people will say they do not do this, but they are largely liars. We instantly assess and form judgements based on what we see immediately before us ("first impressions are everything" and so on). Furthermore, not only is this a feature of human beings which we cannot escape, but I would argue it is highly useful. For example, let's say you see someone's avi, and it looks extremely noobish (poor quality clothes/skin/shape/no AO/etc.) That doesn't neccessarily have to be a negative judgement, it's simply a judgement. The idea that "judgements" are a negative thing is an idea we should do away with. We do form opinions of most things we encounter, and that can't really be helped. That opinion is informed and developed as we come into greater contact with that thing. However, and this is a real sticking point.. Generalizations are not necessarily always untrue. I know we have modern civilized standards, where we believe that bigotry (roughly meaning, making generalizations about others based on various groups they belong to) is a horrible, terrible thing... But forming judgements based on experience and based on knowledge of those groups isn't necessarily wrong. Prominent scholars have argued it is a survival mechanism that is built into us. I am with Celestial Nightfire on this. Our RL judgement making skills are (so long as they tend to be accurate, which I think mine are) very useful things indeed, and it's asinine to cast them aside. Psychologits have more or less proved, as far as I'm concerned, that at a very young age we begin to form generalizations. The ability to categorize things is essential to learning. We cannot possibly comprehend the world as a series of completely distinct objects. If we had to refer to each object as a new object, we would have an infinitely long list of objects we could not possibly keep track of- thus we group things together and classify them. Just because we classify and group things together, it doesn't mean exceptions fail to exist. Exceptions certainly can exist. The "grouping" or generalizatioon only brings things together based on generally common attributes. If similar traits emerge, those traits are only similar, but not always necessary to that group. Furthermore, to argue the case, I would suggest that people choose to belong to these groups in SL. For example, if you have a Robot AV, you had to have made the conscious choice at some point to have a Robot AV, and either acquired it by purchase or for free. Either way, you chose to acquire and wear it. And, I believe, we can see certain traits emerging from certain groups. Some of these traits do frustrate or annoy me. For example, people who intentionally talk in baby talk ("Hewwo, how awh yew, awh yew doing okays? *giggles*"). I cannot stand this kind of thing. I also cannot stand gesturbators (people who constantly spam or hotkey gestures), or people who constantly run in circles and act hyper. I don't like people who act nosey (they usually claim they are "curious"), or people who I feel are harassing me. I'm not openly accusing any particular group of committing these grievances, but I do feel certain groups do commit these acts more frequently than others, and my experience really confirms this. I'm not saying that every member of those groups do this. I'm not saying that members of other groups never do this. There are always exceptions. But when i find a group that is by-and-large, committing these, and numerous other annoyances (or breaches of ToS), I tend to want to further avoid those particular groups. I have numerous theories on why particular groups behave worse than others. Perhaps it's that particular group or type of avatar that attracts those kinds of people. Or perhaps people in that community think it's acceptable (it becomes normative) to behave in such a manner. I don't have statistics to back up any argument, I'm merely speculating here... Hilariously enough, it tends to be those very groups who get the most "butthurt" and tend to engage in flamewars. They overzealously defend themselves, and act like they are entitled to rights above and beyond anyone else, rather than equality. This, in my eyes, does not help to encourage me that these groups are mature, non-annoying, or worth my time. In fact, the people who usually intentionally attack or insult these particular groups do so simply because they know they will get such an over-the-top reaction. If these groups simply ignored the insults/attacks, the attackers would lose interest, and simply stop targetting them. They make themselves easy targets, without even realziing it, by being so utterly defensive. The fact is, I can treat people however I want to- and I will, as long as I'm following ToS and the rules of the particular sim I am in. If you don't like that, tough luck. And the truth is, by and large my intuition and experience has been correct. So the fact is, I'm going to keep on avoiding and ignoring those people who fall into groups/categories that tend to annoy me... I still give people enough of a chance. If you can prove you're not going to act like a moron, then I'm not going to judge you at the end of the day. In my eyes, judgements based on things like AV and other affiliations help to inform my decision on how to react to someone. And really, come on. You consciously chose that shape/those groups/etc. You must have thought at some point about how you are portraying yourself to others. Image is so malleable in SL, if you choose a particular image (whether by youor AV or your profile), I think that says something about how you chose to be portrayed, and how you choose to represent yourself to others. And at the end of the day, sorry, but there's no such thing as Robotism (just an example, I am not neccessarily a robot-hater, per se). It is not a constitutionally protected right to "be a robot", nor a hate-crime to dislike or bash robots. As for the Vampire/Werewolf discussion: If we're talking about Bloodlines or something similar, I feel like that stuff was a big trend back in like 2008 or 2009 or something, but it's not nearly as active anymore. Back those days, everyone used to get those annoying "bite requests"/"invites". It got to the point where some guy created a "Garlic necklace" which was supposed to be scripted to prevent them from sending those to you. I also saw on SLX a HUD that send annoying invites right back to anyone who tries to send you a bite invite.. And many sims have signs (largely relics from back in the day when it was more popular) saying "No Bites/BL Invites" or that they will boot you from the Sim if you do so. I personally feel like Bloodlines is a huge pyramid scheme/scam. It's a huge money making venture for the creators. My explanation will be a bit rudimentary because I hate BL and have never actually engaged in it, but I will do my best. BL creators essentially built a HUD, and to play their little game, you generally have to 1) purchase their HUD for $L, 2) send invites to get more people to join, in order to "stay alive" or whatever. This invariably constitutes harassment, and annoys other people and barely even gives you much to stay alive on. 3) Drop a crapload of $L on items that will keep you alive longer, items which are essentially useless after being used, and which you will need to keep repurchasing over and over and over. And these items are not cheap by any stretch of the imagination. 4) Join a clan where they split some of the proceeds with BL by having vendors on their land. Every time you make a purchase, BL gets most of it, and the clan gets a small portion which helps keep them afloat. So basically, it's a huge money-making scheme for the owners. They have you buy into a "game" where you purchase their HUD which does nothing except slowly deplete energy until you die, and then to stay afloat, you have to harass people and/or drop more $L. Even 7Seas is more reasonably priced and at least you walk away with useable items (the caught fish are wearable and have numerous scripted features. Sometimes you can walk away from places with special items including clothing, fishing rods, and components for builds that you can piece together). Oh, and as for the actual "roleplay" that goes on in BL. I don't know every single clan, but by and large very few that I've ever seen engage in much actual RP. If you want RP, you're better off going to a real RP sim. That being said, I've heard BL is ok as a social tool for meeting people. One last thing, based on Celestial's point. Sometimes when you're offering or getting help, others don't need or want it. Have you ever had someone really pushy try to force something on you? Like trying to push you to buy a piece of clothing you don't want ("It'd look great on you!"), or to get a certain hairstyle/hair colour? It happens in RL and it happens in SL too. Sometimes sticking your nose too far into someone else's business and trying to dictate who and what they should be isn't actually helpful at all. When I do help people in SL, I only do so if they actually ask me for help first. Usually they have to come to me with a question or request. I won't go out of my way to stick my neck out for them unasked, because I refuse to give assistance where I'm unwanted. And even then, I always try to understand their goal and help them achieve it. Not my goal. Not my interest. But theirs. On a down note, I've had a lot of experiences where I helped someone, only to feel like I totally wasted my time, because they do the exact opposite, or don't use what I slaved over making for them. In those cases, it really discourages me to bother helping people much at all. I also find a lot of people tend to just ask stupid things. I know they say there aren't any stupid questions, but there are. Actually, what my problem is with is lazy questions. Things people could've looked up on google or the SL website to learn the answer to (yes there's a whole huge FAQ and Help Forum where people have undoubtedly experienced similar issues before). I am tired of answering people's questions, when those questions more adequately and accurately have already been answered and are easily located on the web. Stop being so lazy and look it up yourself before asking people >_>

I think the general answer everyone has given you is "time", and I guess I will add to that chorus. It really does take time. For me, I am the type of person where I become fascinated in one narrow thing and will obssessively learn about it until I know as much as can possibly be known before moving on to the next. I have a thirst for knowledge that only lasts so long as my interest in an area, and then when I know sufficiently I quickly lose interest and move on. A lot of my knowlege came from outside of SL to be honest. Almost 11 years ago now, I learned HTML, Java, Javascript, and other coding. I also learned Photoshop and primitive 3D Modelling. Coincidentally, nearly all of these features are extremely helpful for SL, but more on that in a minute. SL is, I find, one of the most confusing UI (User Interfaces) as compared to most software. Viewer 2 (and other parallel Viewers) have made an effort to simplify their User Interface a bit. Giving "basic version" to newbies is a further attempt to attract people by simplifying the UI. The fact is, with a complex, and unintuitive UI, you will necessarily have a harder time learning it. I pick up software easily- and my failure to quickly learn SL was not my own fault, but, I believe, the constant counter-intuitive nature of SL, the many unnecessarily complex things, or functions which (I believe should but) simply do not exist. This often means that doing things takes 10 x longer than it should because of some poorly created, or limited element. In some cases, these things have finally been fixed, in other cases they have not. A couple annoying things that come to mind include Notecards that don't save (with no autoave!), which is why you basically need a Word Processor with Autosave open if you ever plan to write a lengthy NC (Notecard). Believe me, the frustration is very real when your 10 page long NC won't save... and you immediately lose everything (worst. feature. ever., if you can even call that a "feature". If it doesn't save, it should at least display the content, not wipe it completely! &*(@#ing annoying!). Another annoyance was User Permissions (ie: changing permissions on things), because you could not En Masse permission change (ie: you couldn't select 20 objects and make them all "Copy", it had to be done one at a time). One handy trick I did learn is that you select numerous objects (holding down shift to select them all), and going to Permissions, it opens them all in little tabs that you can click through. Still annoying, but less annoying. Multiple attachment points was another thing that ticked me off for the longest time. You used to have to attach things in the weirdest places to try to get them on (ie: Necklaces & Collars that fought for coveted chest positions, glasses/goggles and hair that fought for head position, etc.) thankfully this has been done away with, by way of the multiple attachment points feature. Oh and I can go on... SL has so many stupid little quirks that do not aid ease of use. Some have been fixed, and others have not. Given these inadequacies and quirks, it is no surpise that SL should take a while to learn. Also the sheer complexity of SL contributes to this slow learning process. There is so much in SL to know, and even I am still always learning more and more... Who knows if anyone can ever know it all. Myself, when I first joined SL initially, I was content to just learn the basics. I had a very slow computer so I lagged from one place to the next, and was thankful not to constantly freeze or crash. As time wore on I became interested in SL Photography because I had an interest in it RL too. Now this is where things like natural talent/having an eye for things comes iin handy... As well, my prior 8 or 9 years of Photoshopping skills came in super handy, since a lot of the stuff that makes a good SL Photo often involves some post-processing to get t to look really good (unless you're a in-world photo purist or something! Some of those exist). Of course, the lighting settings were a bit more limited back then... so it was harder to accomplish a nice image without significant retouching. For retouching I use everything from brushes, filters (sparingly, too much filters is like murdering your photo 50 x over!), blending options and good old fashioned drawing skills with a brush. I dabbled in LSL (scripting), which meant my coding background came in super-handy. Most coding languages are pretty much the same, with some different formatting. In LSL you have to learn the different built-in functions (ie: llSleep, etc.) each of which have a pretdetermined effect n SL. Other than picking up these functions, LSL isn't too much of a hop, skip and a jump away from other coding languages... Then I began to learn building. Building in SL is in my opinion, fairly limited without aid of external software and requires a lot of different skills. Texturing has once again largely depended on my knowledge of photoshop- particularly the Blending Options menu and my ability to draw. Building sculpts/meshes depends pretty much on your ability to sculpt thigns in 3D programs, which is where knowlege of that comes in handy. Oh yeah, and for product advertisements, my SL Photoshop skills once again came in handy. Blending Options on text and layers helps a lot. DJing in SL, which I've never done, but know would depend on your actual skills to, of course, find and select decent quality music, to set up a shoutcast, and probably your vocal skills on mic. If you were a performer, you'd be relying on your musical ability RL, and having a good mic set up and a shoutcast again, I assume. Animation making I taught myself relatively simply using some basic free software. I'm sure you could get more complicated if you wanted to. I don't make clothing (yet) but I asume it's largely a matter of texturing (again) in a graphic editing software, and sticking to the available templates, which you can download from the SL Wiki. There's, of course, unlimited things to do in SL... But I think building, scripting, and editing images/texturing tend to encompass the larger ones. And yes, tutorials and wikis and tremendously helpful, but not the be-all and end-all. I am largely self-taught in scripting/coding, photoshop, and 3D modelling. I don't claim to be a guru in anything, per se, but it's definitely all learnable... And yes, I realize that most of these things are not actually SL, but SL lacks a lot of tools for quality content creation- it relies on the uploading of Sounds, Animations, and Images (Textures) to really create rich, immersive and custom experiences for others. Often these things are tailor-made for SL (ie: 3D models made to be sculpts, textures made for upload into SL, etc.) So, in a roundabout way, to be really "pro" at SL, you may need to venture into other software and learn how to use it in tandem with SL... Of course, it's possible to achieve many of these things without any external software, but you will not be working with really truly original content. As with anything (including external software, and SL itself), I always learn best by just playing around with things, as I'm self-taught. If I need to learn something for a particular goal, I tend to look up tutorials/instructionals on that thing then and there. I'm against the verbal diarrhea method of spewing all info at someone unnecessarily, like the way you would go through a course textbook on a subject. It's so much more useful to only learn what you need, when you need it. I don't think anyone ever knows everything about SL, there is simply too much to know. People tend to specialize. But to not be "newbish", you need to at least understand the basics (Camera Controls, Viewers, Preferences, a little about Advanced Menu, etc.) I have friends who are not newbs that have never built a prim in their life, and never scripted a single script in their life... But they have good taste of what to shop for, and know where the good stores are.. They hold jobs in SL hosting or dancing, and they understand the basics of SL and various sims. If I talk to them about "lag" or "clearing cache" or "ruthing" or "rebaking" or other such terminology, they'll understand. SL has a lot of key terms that you'll get the hang of at some time or other...

Ever since the sim I had my home at closed up, I have begun working in a sandbox. To be honest, my home was on land owned by a friend, and generously provided for free. However, my friend was nearly never on SL for months at a time, and the manager in charge of the land was given no powers to even ban people from the land. I was griefed really badly during that time by some guy who told me I should commit suicide, and who would constantly harass me. I ended up muting him (he is one of the only two people i have ever had to mute in SL). At whcih point, he began rezzing prim all over my build to block my access to it. Any time I TPed into the sim, he would see it on his radar and come over to harass me my trying to push me or place prim in my face to knock me around, which he was able to do even when muted. In the end, I used the Select My Objects tool and returned my entire build to my inv and never went back I filed two ARs (first for the harassment, and second for him blocking out my build), but so far as I know, LL to thsi day has done nothing, despite his harassment. I find it a bit absurd personally, but I am aware as far as the land goes, it was really up to the absentee land owner to have prevented this guy's build rights and/or banned him from the land. Anyway. I do build currently in what I consider to be one ot the more aesthetically pleasing sandboxes in SL. It does have certain rules which are enforced by admin: 1) No weapons or griefer HUDs, 2) No large buildss, 3) No harassment/griefing of other members, etc. The rules are generally common sense things. I do get n00bs and other people being nuisances. I've had No AO noobs run right into my builds and stare at them (because they probably have no idea how to cam so they have to be right up against it to see what I am doing). I find this extremely rude. I also get people who interject into conversations I am having with others- absolute strangers who have no idea who we are, and will interrupt rudely without so much as a "hello" or self-introduction. I find these people alo really rude. On the whole, however, it is generally somewhat peaceful (especially at certain hours of the night). I have a similar story from a friend- she TPed into her mainland home to find someone stripping and pole-dancing in her home. When she banned them from the parcel, they proceeded to sit on the very edge of the parcel (right outside her doorstep because the parcels are so tightly cut) in the public area, and harassed my friend further- then acting indignant and haughty about being booted out. Really rude. My suggestion to you, would be, since you seem interested in having an open-door policy, but don't really want nudity, etc. one or both of two things: 1) A simple texture sign (like that Private sign someone else posted) by the entrance or TP-in point with a list of simple rules, ie: "No Nudity, No Griefing" the way you see in most Sandboxes/other sims. Or that "Private" sign if you really don't want anyone uninvited entering. 2) These are annoying, but can be effective: a pop-up upon entering the sim/vicinity, or slightly less invasive: a message in Local Chat upon entering the sim, stating the rules. To make these notices less annoying, have them only appear to users once, preferably. To be honest, rules in sims are quite common (especially Sandboxes, Roleplay sims, Nightclubs and most other high-end sims). I don't see it as necessarily tacky, and it can help to maintain some sense of order and unity. As further security, for more long-term members, you can put it in the land Covenant if you have access to editing that. I know I always look at Land Covenants when I TP in somewhere as they can have useful tidbits of info. These suggestions allow for a simple statement of what's allowed/preferred without being super-invasive, and without banning certain people off the bat. If you want to be a little stricter, the having an access list in your doors will prevent anyone from entering unless they sit-hack (box-sit or sit on furniture inside the house). And even harsher would be simply maintaining a ban-list or a strict allow-list. It seems like overkill unless you are constantly plagued though.

Glad if I could help to paint a clearer picture, and thanks for the welcome Dres. Of course, as an addendum, my previous post merely outlines what I believe the law suggests, based on binding precedents. There is also the reality of the situation. Realistically speaking, LL (nor any other company) will typically engage in a law suit unless there is money to be gained. Law suits are expensive and lengthy processes. That means, while they are able to take action (suspension/wiping of your account) without fear of a legal battle, so long as they act within the ToS, LL will be highly unlikely to pursue YOU legally for violating ToS, unless: 1) the harm you have committed by breaching the ToS is somehow substantial or egregious, 2) the breach of the ToS has somehow cost them significant financial losses which they wish to recouperate. Also, realistically speaking, even if they did pursue it legally, most legal battles do not make it to court. Which means it would probably be settled out of court. Finally, we should always remember that the breach is between Person A and LL. If you are Person B, and Person A has shared or posted logs which you are partially the author of, insofar as I know, there is no breach between you and LL (I do not believe the ToS promises residents that it will absolutely prevent all users from sharing or posting your information, it merely states that LL has the capacity to take action, so LL has not breached ToS). Therefore, the breach is between Person A and LL, with LL having no absolute obligation for which you could get involved. And, once again, there exists absolutely no contract between person A and person B. I don't know where people have gotten that notion, but no such contract exists (there is no shared contract between all members, only a contract between each member and LL which governs us), meaning legally you do not have the grounds to engage in a legal claim against them for breach of ToS. You can only go after them, as has happened, for breaking actual laws, such as Copyright Law (ie: the sex bed case). For you to initiate a claim against someone regarding a contract (which a violation of the ToS would be a breach of), you must be a party to that contract. And you are not a party to the contract which was breached... so you cannot pursue it legally. I suppose, you could be brought in as a third-party into the action if it were theoretically a legal battle. Anyway, I have never heard of any actual battles getting to court or being pursued over sharing of IMs. As others have stated, yes, it happens- people share and log IMs. And yes, they usually seem to get away with it. That being said, it always struck me as a particular brand of idiocy to put such a disclaimer in your profile. What you are essentially doing is publicly advertising in your profile "Hey LL! I am going to violate the ToS!" If ever there was a good reason for them to take action against you, you are simply inviting them to do so. So, word to the wise, if you actually do intend to violate ToS (which I wouldn't advise or condone, obviously), don't announce to the world, and LL, that you are doing so. It just is not clever. :smileyhappy:

Solar Legion wrote: Like it or not, most of the US is comprised of single party consent states. Only one person in a conversation needs to give their consent to legally allow them to "record" and do whatever they please with the conversation (within reason). To sum this up? Are the disclaimers legal? Why yes, yes they are. Do they circumvent the ToS? No - no they do not. Can someone log you and then share the log over other web sites/message systems? Yes - yes they can. ToS or not, you IM a person, they have every legal right to log the conversation and pass it on if the need arises. At present, this can only be done (safely) outside of Linden Lab's servers. So far as I am concerned, they have no valid reason for this whatsoever.  Actually, my argument is rock solid. "Rightful" sharing of logs has zilch to do with the Terms of Service and everything to do with legality and the situation. It's just that simple - in fact, it's just as simple as the boilerplate "You can't do that because it's against the ToS" responses to things like this. Solar Legion, I wonder upon which legal laurels you rest your argument that "disclaimers are legal" and that they "do not circumvent the ToS". Are you a lawyer, or perhaps a legal expert in the area of Software License Agreements? Upon which legal precedents do you rest your broad generalizations? I see none provided to substantiate your claims. Let me begin with the basics. As part of the current ToS, the "Community Standards" are included. Within these "Community Standards", we find the statement as follows: The Community Standards sets out six behaviors, the 'Big Six', that will result in suspension or, with repeated violations, expulsion from the Second Life Community. And under the Disclosure section we find the following statement: Remotely monitoring conversations in Second Life, posting conversation logs, or sharing conversation logs without the participants' consent are all prohibited. First we need to understand a little bit about the ToS. The ToS is known as a software license agreement, and is a form of contract which forms between the "licensor" (Linden Lab) and the purchaser of the right to use the software. These licenses can define the ways under which the copy of software may be used. Many of these forms are contained in digital form, presented as a click-through where the user must "accept" the agreement. The basics of contract formation are relatively simple. We can look to the typical offer and acceptance analysis. Agreement consists of an offer by an indication of one party to another of their willingness to form the contract based on certain terms. Once the offer has been accepted by the other party, the contract comes into existence. In many cases, however, it is neither profitable nor efficient to engage in a period of negotiations prior to contract formation. Thus many companies, especially in the case of software license agreements, will use contracts of adhesion. Contracts of adhesion are presented on a "take it or leave it" basis, wherein the offeror does not give the offeree a chance to negotiate the terms of the contract. I would refer you to ProCD v. Zeidenberg 86 F .3d 1447 (7th Cir. 1996), wherein a software license was ruled enforceable as it was necessary for the customer to assent to the terms of the agreement by clicking the "I Agree" button in order to install the software. You will find that use of SL requires the same thing, therefore ProCD is an applicable precedent. It does not matter, in the eyes of the law, that SL was not physically purchased (or even necessarily purchased at all). However, to simply state, as Solar Legion has, that a term of the ToS is "boiler plate" or that LL has "no valid reason whatsoever" to prevent people from posting or sharing logs proves nothing, in the eyes of the law. None of these claims counteract the simple facts, as stated above and simplified here: 1. LL extended you an offer for contract formation, in the form of a software license agreement (known as the ToS). 2. By clicking "I Accept" to that software license agreement (the ToS), you formed a contract with LL, the terms of which you are bound to (under ProCD). The essential formation of the contract occurs because LL offers to give you access to their service (Second Life), under their terms (those of the ToS), and you consent to it. If you disagree with the terms offered, you can simply not use Second Life. It's as simple as that. Now, where do these Disclaimers come in? Certain people post on their profiles, or in auto-response messages that they log IMs and will use, post, or share them as they see fit, and that by speaking to them, you consent to this use. This is extremely problematic for a number of reasons, although there is one primary one that I will get to. But first some minor issues. The "single party consent states" you speak of allow for certain communications to be recorded, so long as the person recording is one of the parties involved in the communication. However, even if you did live in the United States, in a State with these "single party consent" laws, they are not as open and free as you may be lead to believe. First off, as an example, if Caller A was in one of these single party consent states, and they called someone where there was a stricter law that did not allow single-party consent (such as California), they cannot freely record under their own law. You may refer to the precedent of Kearney v. Salmon Smith Barney, where a company from Georgia routinely recorded business phonecalls with clients from California. In that case, the Supreme Court of California held that the failure to apply California's law would "impair California’s interest in protecting the degree of privacy afforded to California residents by California law more severely than the application of California law would impair any interests of the State of Georgia.". I can only suggest that it becomes even more complicated when another country (a large number of residents are from outside of the United States) is involved. In other words, it isn't going to be so easy as to say "I live in a single-party consent state, therefore I can record anything I want and it is legal". This is naive and simply wrong. Turning to the validity of such disclaimers for a moment. Typically, under the United States law, for example, private communication will be covered by statute. First, we must determine whether a conversation is private or not. A private communication will be one generally where the people engaged in the conversation can reasonably expect their conversation to remain private. A phone call is one such example (so your argument about "Anyone can walk by your screen and see what you wrote!" is invalid, because anyone could happen to overhear what you say on the telephone, but under the eyes of most Courts of Law, it will still be considered private). I believe a reasonable court, based on the varying precedents that exist, would find that there is more than a reasonable expectation for privacy in an IM conversation on SL, and that the sharing or posting of it would contravene this. The second step to this process is determining whether or not there has been consent. Often, notice will be considered sufficient for a court to find consent. For example, when you call a company for tech support and they tell you the call will be recorded. Most courts will hold that you have given implied consent by speaking after having heard the notice. Herein lies the problem. If the "Disclaimer" which requires you to implicitly consent to their sharing or posting of the communication lies in their profile, either on the main page, or worse yet, buried in their Picks, it would have to be asked whether or not the other person even read that person's profile. Unlike a telephone conversation, where the consent is aired over the line, or a contract where a term would be laid before you prior to signing, if the disclaimer is in their profile, it will be a sticky matter for a court to decide whether or not that disclaimer counts as "notice" or not. My guess is that the person with the disclaimer will have to first of all prove that 1) The disclaimer counts as reasonable "notice", that it was displayed in such a fashion that it was mandatory for all others to view it prior to communication with that user (such as an auto-response that always appears prior to IMing that user). 2) The person who supposedly consented actually did so, by actually seeing the notice and still continuing to engage in conversation, thereby implicitly consenting (analogous to the phone conversation example). But wait... There still lies one more serious issue. In fact, this is the big issue that I mentioned before. All that dicussion I just went through about single party consent states and disclaimers/notice/consent is utterly inapplicable. Why? It's simple. Because of the precedent set by ProCD. This is essentially what happens: 1. Both Person A (Alex) and Person B (Bob) sign a contract with Person C (Carrot Corp.) 2. One of the terms of this contract was that Alex and Bob will not eat any carrots, or feed anyone else any carrots. 3. Alex then finds Bob, and says to him "You consent to me feeding you carrots". 4. Alex then feeds Bob carrots. The problems are numerous with this reasoning. 1) The initial contract was formed between A & C. A can only negotiate terms of that contract with C prior to contract formation (prior to clicking "I Agree"), or afterward if forming a new contract. 2) You cannot alter a contract between two party members without both of those parties present. 3) Neither Bob nor Alex can obviate their original responsibility to Carrot Corp, especially not by means of an agreement with each other. First of all, you cannot alter the terms of a contract, or obviate responsibility of them by creating new terms with a third party (for Alex, the original contract is with Carrot Corp, so the third party is Bob. For Bob, the contract is with Carrot Corp, so the third party is Alex). If this was the case, any contract I didn't like, I could just turn to my friend (or any third party) and ask them to change the terms with me. This is completely illogical. Second, you cannot alter the terms of a contract, or obviate responsibility unilaterally. Otherwise, I could just sign any contract I liked, and then get out of it by showing up in court and saying "Yeah, I decided I didn't like the contract, so I decided to change the terms by myself". No, both of these cases are clear breaches of the contract. At which point, the other party could sue for damages. What people don't seem to understand is that the contract is not between A (Alex) and B (Bob). The original contract's terms are the ToS, which was the software license agreement offered by Carrot Corp, signed by users (A and B both, each forming individual contracts) when they first clicked that "I Agree" button. The ToS is good law under ProCD. The ONLY people capable of changing the terms of that agreement are the user and LL, and that would require the drafting of a new contract to be upheld in court, most likely. So, to put a disclaimer in your profile is useless, because it is not up to person B to consent or not consent... they are not capable of giving consent- implicit or otherwise. They are already bound by the ToS (as are you) when you both began using SL, and you cannot obviate that responsibility, no matter what you say or do. I believe this is the position that any other legal expert will offer you. No court will be willing to lightly cast aside the ToS, or it would bring into question the reputation of all software license agreements... and it would cause a lot of uproar for businesses, I suspect (since these license agreements are useful in numerous ways, such as providing them protection where copyright law does not normally extend). So, before you make these inane generalizations about single party consent states, or the legality of disclaimers, please know that the terms of the contract you have with LL (the ToS) takes legal precdent which would be upheld in court over any other agreements you make with users, and that anything you do which breaches the ToS is a breach of contract, over which you could be sued, and LL would likely win in damages. LL is not required to give any reasons for the terms of the ToS, they only needed to have set terms which are reasonable... the court will only knock off terms from the contract if they are so egregious that they unconscionable, or there is an "absence of meaningful choice on the part of one party due to one-sided contract provisions, together with terms which are so oppressive that no reasonable person would make them and no fair and honest person would accept them." (Fanning v. Fritz's Pontiac-Cadillac-Buick Inc.). The ToS' expectation that private conversations remain private is not "so oppressive". Therefore, they would be upheld in court.