The argument over the Conroy proposals is about whether they will work and whether they contain appropriate safeguards for free expression, not whether they offend an abstract canon.

There’s been a remarkable amount of silliness written about the Conroy proposal on Second Life. It is a press release. It will require legislation. Conroy does not have the numbers in the senate to pass his main proposal, let alone this facet of it. (In a parliamentary system the government always has a majority in the house of representatives because there is a change of government if it does not)

I am still a lot happier with the public process by which the Conroy proposals can be contested than with the Linden Lab equivalent of wikis, forums and (timezone-gerrymandered) office hours where victory almost invariably goes to the loudest with the most time.

As far as foreign diplomatic intervention goes, Australia’s current growth rate is negative 0.4%. The US figure is negative 2.5%. The average OECD figure is negative 4.3%. Various excitable comments around the blogs about the economic clout of the US against Australia would seem to be somewhat exaggerated. I am not completely certain that a ban on Second Life would immediately bring our economy to its knees.

The US has, according to both recent US administrations, no better diplomatic or military ally than Australia.

I am not completely and absolutely convinced Obama or Clinton will be eager to degrade that alliance by lobbying for the interests of a private corporation that claims to be beyond the law and thinks the sight of child avatars wandering around Zindra is desirable.

Banning Second Life would be seriously bad policy for any number of reasons. The single best thing that those who want to help us oppose the Conroy proposals could do is explain to Linden Lab that their child avatar enthusiasms are insupportable.

If virtual worlds like Second Life were subject to the rule of law, the courts, the Congress, and the government, here’s what we would have:

o freedom of speech under the First Amendment — no more bans from forums or JIRA because somone criticizes a Linden pet or persists to report a bug as a bug and not a feature; no more requirements that a birthday celebration can’t show nudity, etc.

o no more seizure of property without due process — no more “any reason or no reason” TOS that could arbitrarily seize your land and boot you

o more court accessibility to stem griefing and grievances that occur because some people hog resources, harass others, etc.

There are many, many advantages to having these lawless serfdoms totally under the arbitrary control of game gods subject to the rule of law and the courts. It would improve life online immeasurably.

If Australia is cracking down on the Internet in general, and pornography is something that is subject to law, then it has to be tackled on that basis, in the manner in which you’d fight a court case in the U.S. Supreme Court — and change your laws if you must.

The solution is not to make virtual worlds even more lawless and even more oppressively under the diktat of game gods just to escape a legitimate democratic government’s law.

The idea Philip espoused of having SL a country is great — but countries have governance and the rule of law.

Behind every avatar there is a user and that user is the bearer of rights. Natural law advocates would argue that rights are inherent and cannot be taken away by any government or by any entity, such as Linden Lab, created by a government. Positivists would take more restricted views of what rights users have and the content of those rights.

I seriously doubt anyone would argue that users have, or should have, only those rights defined by a corporation for its own benefit. The court in Bragg v Linden Lab agreed.

Each government has its special style to the enforcement. China aggressively filters and prosecutes those who avoid those filters or distribute unwanted content. The United States government has been remarkably hands off (although specific classes of behaviour will get your teeth kicked in effectively enough, and the RIAA has acted as an non-government actor that has the impact of government enforcement of copyright). Other countries will vary in between these two extremes.

This is no different from the Internet, and it points out why it is important that Linden Lab get its house in order (ala the great migration of adult content to a more controllable zoned and filtered area) if they want to continue being accessable around the world. Should they be forced to become nannies is a different question, and ultimately moot as well in the face of a battery of governments that plan of enforcing their local standards. Being blocked around the world is *not* a growth strategy.

Australia and others will do what they want in regards to game censorship. And right now, I can’t say I blame them in regards to SL.

And the discussion seem to be very actively held all over the world. We in Germany just had a bill passed which wants to ban child porn via DNS redirections, like done already in the scandinavian countries.

All arguments the net community came up with (including a petition signed by 134,000 people, making it the biggest ePetition so far) have been ignored by politicians. They like more to hide stuff instead of fighting it (there’s also an election coming up) and thus doing nothing criminal content. Of course such an infrastructure once built will soon also be used for other content, stored on secret “ban lists” which might or might not contain also legal content.

So here the service area is under attack and there also are voices to make such filtering EU wide. And while I wouldn’t call blocking access to child porn censorship nevertheless an infrastructure for possible censorship is built, esp. because our federal police agency is controlling the list and only resistence from the net community now made politicians put a group into place overlooking it minium all 3 months (but only random samples). No judge involved in front. No rechecking of sites if they still belong on that list.

As for games we have a debate about so-called “killer games” which are said to be the reason for recent amok runs. There is also talk about banning such games and also putting sites with them on these lists. You can now wonder if SL is a killer game or not because you can indeed build a gun and point it to other people.

We are in a very dangerous development right now as more and more government try to regulate something they have no idea about. We call them “old men with ballpen” or internet printers. But they are usually in the ruling parties and I can only urge everybody to contact their MPs and tell them about this wonder we call the internet. Try for a personal meeting, be well informed, be polite and try to explain them why filtering and banning is no solution.

So please don’t think there is too much difference between Europe and Australia. Look at the first versions of the EU Telecom Package and you will find a lot of ideas regarding internet filtering.
And in Germany we see that we have a troubling development towards censorship infrastructure partly circumventing the division of powers.

PS: Of course I don’t want to defend child porn here and in no way do I think it should be available on the internet or elsewhere. But you need to investigate it and get the people who put it online, not just hide it between STOP-signs. Give police more money and know-how and then this might actually help abused children.