Linden Lab is pressured from all sides. They are being sued (along with ten Internet Service Providers) by French parent-teacher group Familles de France. Their Terms of Service have been found to be legally unenforceable by Judge Eduardo Robreno. German TV News Magazine Report Mainz has raised a scandal about Second Life and child pornography.

Linden Lab is on the back-foot, and struggling to find a place where it can meet these varied legal and media challenges. In positioning itself to meet these potential threats, fresh conflict has broken out on a new front, Second Life's own resident population.

The Community Standards say: "Content, communication, or behavior which involves intense language or expletives, nudity or sexual content, the depiction of sex or violence, or anything else broadly offensive must be contained within private land in areas rated Mature (M)." (My emphasis)

Robin Linden, on what is appropriate to be flagged as adult content which was still to be permitted in Second Life: "adult content is that which is overtly, graphically, or explicitly sexual in nature or intensely violent." (May 10)

Daniel Linden, on what is forbidden content: "Real-life images, avatar portrayals, and other depiction of sexual or lewd acts involving or appearing to involve children or minors; real-life images, avatar portrayals, and other depictions of sexual violence including rape, real-life images, avatar portrayals, and other depictions of extreme or graphic violence, and other broadly offensive content are never allowed or tolerated within Second Life." (May 31)

In an email interview with Hamlet Au, Daniel Linden says: "There is no new policy in yesterday's blog posting-- our Community Standards have always prohibited broadly offensive behavior." (June 1)

Except that's not what they say, Daniel. What they do expressly prohibit is intolerance.

Tell me, gentle readers. Do you feel that Linden Lab has changed stance? Or do you agree with Daniel Linden that Linden Lab's position remains unchanged. If the latter, do you think Linden Lab's position was never adequately communicated in the first place?

The only limits are the ones we place on your imagination.

Second Life communication channels are buzzing with talk of intolerance, and thought crimes. The topic is humming around the grid inworld and it's starting to appear on blogs. It's tricky, in some quarters, to find a conversation that isn't about this.

Daniel Linden (Linden Lab's director of community affairs) has posted what one resident has described to me as "Second Life's Patriot and Domestic Surveillance Act". While it seems like it is intended to clarify what Linden Lab does and does not permit, insofar as content goes, it has left many Second Lifers upset, confused and afraid.

On the 8th of March we sought clarification for an ambiguous-seeming sentence at the end of a warning notice that was being distributed by Chadrick Linden. That sentence was:

"Any account asserting an age that does not meet Second Life's minimum age of eligibility will be closed."

What we wanted to know was whether that referred to the claimed age of the avatar (particularly where it came to role-playing purposes). After all, it was pretty clear that the claimed age of the user was covered by this - but what about role-players, you know, role-playing?

Linden Lab's Daniel Linden has posted an expansion on the age verification system. It's still short on a lot of the details people are asking for, though. Daniel provides the basic premise, "Credit cards do not provide an adequate means of age and identity verification, making real and robust age and identity verification vital."

Vital it may be, but is it even possible under the circumstances? That's less certain. There's no way to tell if the information used for verification actually belongs to the person being verified, is there? I could obtain the details of a non-SLing friend or relative, for example. There's no way for Linden Lab's verification provider (announced to be Integrity Services) to demonstrate that I am or am not the person described by the provided details - the best you can say is that I had access to them somehow.