Innula Zenovka

Are you on either the Magnum or Le Tigre release candidate channels? They been having severe problems since the last update, and are being reverted to the previous versions .. http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Second-Life-Server/Wednesday-Morning-RC-Updates/m-p/963089#M1204

Darrius Gothly wrote: If we start judging right vs. wrong by the price tag on the crime .. below this price is okay but above is a no-no .. then I fear we turn our legal system into a "For Pay" business and forever destroy its purpose to protect everyone regardless of their means or situation. And that's why I see them as the same .. Mesh or "Legacy Build" .. it's all the same to me. Stealing it is a crime, and the criminal should be exposed and punished and stopped from doing it again. It's "for pay" anyway, in that if A sees what he thinks is are ripped copies of his work on sale in the Marketplace and files a DMCA takedown notice against B, who then responds by filing a counter-claim asserting that, on the contrary, this is his original work, then LL, quite properly, will leave the stuff up until a court decides who's in the right. And I, in the UK, certainly would think twice about going to the expense of trying to persuade an American court of the rights and wrongs of the matter. I'd think twice about whether the expense of trying to persuade a county court here would be worth it, come to think of it. More generally, the first question I ask of any proffered remedy to a present problem is whether it's likely to cause more problems than it solves. Requiring PIOF for people to upload mesh seems to me a proportionate measure, with few ill-effects, possibly because it's being introduced right from the start. However, changing things retrospectively so everyone has to be PIOF sell anything, while it undoubtedly has its attractions, seems to me, at least, to risk of fixing one problem by creating some new ones, so I'm less convinced it's a desirable solution. I'm not dead against it. It's just I can see some considerable draw-backs I don't see with insisting people be PIOF to upload mesh, so I think the two have to be considered separately.

Darrius Gothly wrote: Innula Zenovka wrote: I completely agree about mesh and PIOF. And if Turbosquid or whoever come after someone whom they suspect of ripping their content, LL can refer them, in appropriate circumstances, to PayPay or the credit card company, who will certainly have more reliable information about that person's RL details than anything LL might have on file. Then having agreed to PIOF protection for Mesh, do you also agree that sellers on Marketplace should also be vetted in the same manner? If not, what is the difference that serves to keep your mind divided on the subject? Because mesh is a new, and rather specialised, medium and the dangers of the marketplace being flooded with pirated copies of stuff downloaded wholesale from TurboSquid, the Sketchup library and elsewhere, to the detriment of all legitimate mesh creators and the horror of LL's legal department are obvious. Those dangers are unique to mesh, and require a solution that's not necessarily applicable to other forms of content.

I completely agree about mesh and PIOF. And if Turbosquid or whoever come after someone whom they suspect of ripping their content, LL can refer them, in appropriate circumstances, to PayPay or the credit card company, who will certainly have more reliable information about that person's RL details than anything LL might have on file.

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.

Ishtara Rothschild wrote: 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. 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?

Domitan Redenblack wrote: Wait... I did read the wiki, Darkie, not a fair comment. I can see a number of totally crappy ways to link things. What I want is the "clean way" for example: use comms to have the rezzed object tell me it's UUID then link it. Crap! Surely there must be better ways, e.g. rezzing something from contents in "linked already" etc etc But, if I've properly understood what you're trying to do, the example in the wiki does what you want -- rezzes an object, grabs its uuid in the on_rez() event, as Qie suggests, and then creates a link with the rezzed object as the child prim. Where do comms come into it?

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.

Gavin Hird wrote: Innula Zenovka wrote: 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. 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. There are two aspects to this: 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. 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. 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 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. 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.

Yes, as Darkie says, it moves things through the desired rotation once. So I guess it would be good for an actual "lazy Susan," but if you want to make stuff rotate continuously, llTargetOmega is a lot less resource-intensive than calling llSetLinkPrimitiveParamsFast several times a second (to achieve smooth movement) on a non-stop timer.

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.

Ishtara Rothschild wrote: 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? 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. 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. 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.

Vladi Hazelnut wrote: I will tell you what will get you in hot water though. Posting chat or IMs in a group IM or notice. If you are tired of sl and want to get banned try it lol. A couple of years ago a friend of mine was not best pleased when she found a lengthy business conversation she'd had in IMs with the owner of an RP group about some RP equipment she was offering to make them that ended, she thought, perfectly amicably with him turning down the offer because he thought the price she wanted to charge his members was too high posted as a notecard to the whole group, with an introduction to the effect this showed what a nice guy he was, looking after the members interests, unlike the owner of another RP group. She was very upset and ARd it, and so did a lot of his members. Nothing seemed to happen to him.. he certainly wasn't banned, and from what we could make out, he wasn't suspended either. And the notecard in question remained in the group notices until it expired naturally.

When functions are tested on the Release Candidate channels of the main grid that normally means they're pretty close to being rolled out generally. Quite how close depends on how a lot of things turn out, but it should be weeks rather than months under normal circumstances. It might be an idea to ask in the Second Life Server forum and maybe join the (open enrollment) Second Life Beta group in world. If you're a member of the Beta group you can go and play with the new functions in a Release Candidate sandbox on the main grid, which is often more convenient than trying to find somewhere on the Release Candidate channel in which you are interested.

Pussycat Catnap wrote: I've been wanred by a Linden before after sending that Linden a chat log of a conversation with people who -told me- to send the log to that linden... The conversation being how to proceed over a land issue that needed linden help - and people discussin what was going on. All I could gleam from that is that for some Lindens, its not ok even to share the log with LLs employees. Though had you posted the whole conversation in your blog or Pastebin and sent the url to the Linden, that would apparently have been perfectly acceptable, at least as far as the ToS are concerned.

Murdoch Bekes wrote: It isn't really against TOS since it's on RLV slave collars etc., such as the spy security menu in the collar and or a sim spy to check for any griefing etc. Which are all used in and is allowed for selling SL 2.0. This is what LL has to say on the subject: Remotely monitoring inworld conversations (text or voice chat) without the knowledge or consent of all parties involved is a violation of the Terms of Service. If you feel recording a conversation is necessary, post a clearly-visible sign in the recording location so that all Residents who enter can see it. Note: If you record a conversation, and someone complains, then the abuse team will determine if you provided sufficient notice to the Residents recorded. Proceed with caution, provide documentation on your efforts to inform all parties they are being monitored, and find a secure area before recording begins. https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Residents'_privacy_rights#Remote_Monitoring All the collars with which I'm familar only monitor what the wearer is saying, if they monitor chat at all. And, as far as I recall, they warn you when that's turned on. I think there's one that monitors everyone in earshot but it notifies you first, as soon as you come into chat range, that's what it's doing. Certainly if you or your friend is using a device that monitors people's conversations without their being aware of it, you're asking for trouble.

You can only call Target Omega from the root on Blue Steel sims at the moment, but it should be available on the whole grid before too long . https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/PRIM_OMEGA Otherwise it's llSetLinkPrimitiveParamsFast and PRIM_ROT_LOCAL

Ceka Cianci wrote: i guess what i was trying to get at is this..payment info for becoming account verified was just that it was used for account info.. not the age verifying process..it did not use banking or credit card information of any kind.. why would this change be impacted by things it never used or asked for? this change is to the new age verification..not a change to account verification.. Yeah, I see what you mean. Though I suppose it could be that PayPal or whoever took the attitude that using account verification with PayPal as an alternative to Age Verification with Aristotle amounted to using PayPal for Age Verification and took exception to that. I guess it would be instructive to see what happens if you create an account that's PIOF and then try to access Adult content without first going to the age verification page and saying "Yes, that's my correct date of birth". But I can't be bothered to set up yet another alt to test yet another mystery about Age Verification -- I'm just glad the cumbersome charade seems to be coming to an end.

Yes, Gavin, but I think we're at cross purposes. What I meant was that LL and Aristotle, right from the start, had clearly been at a complete loss about how they might reliably verify the age of European customers while staying within European and national laws governing this area. Then along came Dragonfish, who do actually have some expertise in this area, and I expected -- mistakenly, as it turns out -- that LL would take the opportunity to sack Aristotle, at least when it came to verifying EU residents' details, and ask Dragonfish to undertake the task instead. As it happens, that's now academic because LL's simply decided that they don't need to involve a third party to check the veracity of what people say their ages are. But, if they'd felt they needed to be seen to undertake some sort of independent check, they had a ready-made solution to hand, at least for many non-US residents. But I suppose it could quite well be as you suggest and that the matter's primarily been decided by PayPal's attitude to how US customers' details are verified. After all, the clear fact that age verification was broken, or illegal, or both, when applied to non-US residents has never seemed to bother anyone in the past.

I've only twice submitted ARs about this -- both times for Adult content on G rated land rather than Mature, as it happens, and maybe that's the difference. Both times I did it through the normal AR procedure rather than bothering Blondin with it, and both times the matter was resolved in a day or so, once by the content being removed and once by the sim being re-rated.

Gavin Hird wrote: Innula Zenovka wrote: I'm sorry, but I think you're over-interpreting the reasons for changing the age-verification method. The only interpretation I have done is saying that using credit card info as verification for age is a breach of terms of the major credit card companies. :matte-motes-wink: We know for a fact they changed payment processor for obscure reasons, and had all kinds of issues with PayPal. Getting rid of PIOF for account verification should bring them back in the clear with the payment processors. You don't have to be CEO to understand that. ... and as usual money talks. If you say so, though I have to say it seems rather odd that, if what you say is correct, it didn't occur to LL earlier that using PIOF as an alternative to age verification would be in conflict with PayPal's or MasterCard TOS and that it's taken so long for any objections raised by PayPal and the rest to become so serious they've had to abandon the practice. Actually, I expected them to jump the other way when I learned Dragonfish were handling their non-US payment processing, since Dragonfish are used to operating in an enviroment where it's a legal requirement on them and most of their customers to verify people's ages if they want to keep their gaming licences. I don't know how Dragonfish do it -- I would suspect they ask companies like Experian or Equifax, who offer a bona fide identity verification and credit reference service as opposed to whatever Aristotle provided , to check people's ages on their behalf at the same time they're checking that the card numbers offered are genuine and are trying to determine what credit limits to apply to gambling accounts, at least when they're dealing with European applicants. But certainly, the new relationship with Dragonfish should have made verifying many people's ages considerably easier for LL. Maybe Dragonfish told them what it would cost to get the job done properly.

I'm sorry, but I think you're over-interpreting the reasons for changing the age-verification method. It had never worked properly, both in the sense that it was all too easy to "verify" your age by providing false details and also in the sense that it was frequently all too difficult to verify your age using your correct details, particularly if you were not a US resident or had changed your address in the last year or so, Furthermore, no one -- certainly not Blondin on the various occasions we asked him about it -- has ever provided a coherent explanation of why LL needed to do more than ask you to confirm that you're 18 or over, that you want to access adult content and that it's legal for you so to do wherever you're accessing it from. That works for most websites whose main business is providing adult content far more graphic than anything you're likely to see in SL, after all. So, all in all, LL were paying for a system that didn't verify anything, annoyed those customers who were trying to play by rules but couldn't get Aristotle to recognise their credentials and cost LL not only whatever they paid Aristotle for a broken product but also the management costs of processing people who were having manually to verify because Aristotle couldn't cope, and that wasn't really necessary anyway. They've replaced it with the system just about everyone else uses and that, in practice, is no less reliable or less dependent on peoples' giving truthful replies than was the old one, is far easier for customers to negotiate and doesn't cost LL anything. Bit of a no-brainer, if you ask me. I've always thought that account verification and maturity ratings were, and still are, two separate issues that got conflated, and thus confused everyone. One of the main drawbacks of buying or renting mainland, after all, was -- still is, to an extent -- that there's very little control over what other uses the sim is put to. And the fact you have no problem with adult content, and want it in your private residence, doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be too happy if someone opens a newbie-friendly free sex dungeon right next door to you. Private estate owners are normally alive to that sort of issue, and that's always been one of the attractions of buying or renting privately rather than taking your chances on the Mainland. Maturity ratings for the Mainland still go some small way to answering that problem. Also, though this is maybe less of an issue now than it was then,keyword spamming meant search was a complete mess two or three years ago. I used to get irritated when I was trying to search for "hair" or "shoes" and got confronted with lots of listings for orgy rooms (and, contrariwise, when I was looking for orgy rooms and found nothing but shoe shops), and I make adult content, for heaven's sake. And I'm certainly aware that there's plenty of people in SL who aren't into Adult stuff particularly, and they must have found it even more irritating. While I still think search has a way to go yet, and that the automatic filtering is a complete mess, that's an argument for maturity ratings that doesn't have much to do with asking people to "prove" how old they are. Frankly, I attribute this change in the verification procedure -- like many other welcome changes over the last year -- to nothing other than the current CEO being far better at running the grid than were his predecessors. Simple as that.

Just to add to the others' explanations, if you're looking for an example of faux-rez system, take a look at the Builders Buddy tool in the wiki script library.

Lindal Kidd wrote: Anyone who believes that a company whose primary business is selling demographic information doesn't retain said information...I have some soon-to-be-beachfront land in Nevada for sale. So are you saying, in terms, that Aristotle lied to LL and LL repeated the lie in good faith or that you think they were in it together?