A recent interview with Philip Rosedale in Information Week by Mitch Wagner ranged over a number of Second Life topics including the issue of legal jurisdiction. Linden Lab has recently been linked with the FBI, regarding the issue of on-line gaming, and with unnamed German Law Enforcement authorities regarding the unfounded allegations of child pornography existing within Second Life. While acquiescing to requests made by the agencies mentioned above seems self-evident, to do so without a formal policy outlining under what circumstances assistance would be provided – seems almost irresponsible. This was nicely highlighted during the interview when Rosedale was asked what he would do if he were asked to share information with an authoritarian regime – the Yahoo! China challenge. Rosedale replied that he did not know (excerpt of interview below)
While using the Yahoo! China example is a way of getting at the issue, it fails recognise that even if the government in question is not authoritarian in nature, clear guidelines should be established for beaching an individuals privacy rights relating to their activities in virtual worlds. Especially as in a 3D world identities are much richer being supplemented by actions and speech. A public declaration of when information could be shared with government agencies would be a useful and transparent tool for virtual world makers, such as Linden Lab to introduce. Arguably, information should only be shared when investigating serious crime, terrorism, or large scale fraud. It is therefore, debatable whether Linden Lab should have assisted German authorities regarding unfounded sex-play allegations or the FBI regarding minor (relatively) gaming. However, clear guidelines would greatly assist both the companies and the governments in developing regulation between virtual and real worlds.
Excerpt from Information Week Interview:
“The company has to behave legally, in every way possible,” Rosedale said. Also, residents have to obey the law in the content they create and control, and in their behavior. Linden Lab will cooperate with local authorities in their investigations, he said.
Does that extend to authoritarian regimes, I wondered. Second Life is an international service, with more than half of its users outside the United States. Would Linden Lab cooperate with an official directive from, for example, China, ordering the company to turn over information on residents who’d used Second Life for dissident action?
It’s a decision Linden Lab will inevitably face if it achieves the kind of global penetration that it hopes to get.
Faced with the same decision, Yahoo decided to cooperate with China. U.S. lawmakers took Google, Yahoo, Cisco Systems, and Microsoft to task last year for complicity in aiding Chinese repression.
I asked what Linden Lab would do in that situation, and Rosedale thought about the question for a long time.
“Honestly, I don’t have an answer to that,” he said. “I think it’s incredibly important that we preserve people’s freedom as much as we possibly can. I, like many other believers and participants on the Internet, believe the world is a lot better off without national borders between people.”
He added: “I think that on principle, we believe that people in Second Life should be safe and free to express themselves as they choose,” particularly in political speech. “We would have to balance growing Second Life to have the broadest access to people around the world, against preserving those freedoms in a way that maximized the value of the whole community.”
He continued: “We will act to maximize benefit to everyone in Second Life, before we will maximize, say, revenues for our company.”
He noted that Second Life, unlike companies like Yahoo, does not use local companies as intermediaries when doing business overseas. As a result, it wouldn’t be subject to the kind of pressure placed on companies like Yahoo, where local governments were able to apply pressure on the service by applying pressure on the local subsidiary.
“I think the fact that there are 50,000 landowners in Second Life, and not 50, is an enormous win for the future of this platform. The loss of an entire country at this point would be inconsequential in terms of revenues,” he said.
