By Reporter Yonsay GontineacOk, so this might sound a bit like the title for a high school essay, but if you are prepared to put that side for one minute it's just that I have a story I want to tell.
There is a lot of talk lately about what is wrong with Second Life, and I am not saying any of that is wrong, but I just want to point out something I have found to be very good about it, apart from the usual bring the world together stuff.
I think second life is fantastic because for some people it is the only life they have, maybe permanently or for the lucky few temporarily, but the only life they have all the same.
I, myself in Real Life, am a carer. I have a wife who has become victim to an industrial ailment, whom the courts have failed for one reason or another, some of which is because we are not important enough, I'm sure, then my son Jacob, has just recently been diagnosed as on the Autistic Spectrum. Ahhhh, you might say, but frankly I'm not after sympathy. It's been a while now and I'm used to it. The point is I don't have a life as such. I can't leave them for a minute, and even when everybody is a sleep I still have to be around. Second life has stopped me from going cabin crazy, has perhaps saved my life. But you know I'm actually one of the lucky ones. My wife, is little by little, getting better and Jacobs autism isn't all that bad and he may even lead something resembling a normal (whatever that means) life. There are others for which Second Life is even more of a lifesaver.
I will only mention one person, anonymously, as I think she does not wish this knowledge to affect her Second Life. Oh, it is a she, but I won't say any more than that about her. She is also autistic, quite severely, to the point that she can only understand spoken conversation with extreme effort. Not only that, she also has another condition that means she looks like a child even though she isn't. In real life conversation's with her are a trial as she needs to speak through written text, but her uniqueness often so confuses so called normal others that they are unable to talk with her. This is not the case in Second Life. Here as she uses text her speech difficulties are unnoticeable, and she looks like, well, how she wants to look.
My avatar has blue hair, is young, good looking, and a bit effeminate, but in RL I'm bald, fat, broken nosed and old, and....Who cares! She, she, ahhh, your not getting me that easy!
I have used these two examples to make the point, that in these times of knee jerk reactions from Linden Labs where they are shutting down avenue after avenue of expression within second life, Second Life is still an object of value and not just frivolously, at that. That I think Linden is being a little slap dash with this fantastic commodity to the world, this a shared self created universe, it should protect itself. Second Life should have it's own laws, decided by the citizens of Second Life.
Ok Yah, it's a dictatorship, theoretically, and virtually, but what's that got to do with what's right! Also, and more pertinently, Second life should be based in more than one country, it should be a distributed system with appropriate fail safes. It should, in short sell itself, whilst there is still something left to sell! Let other companies run the sim, parts of it, nationally. There should be built into this overhauled design the ability for these sims to run alone, or in conjunction with others to avoid crashes or attacks from real world governments.
Sure, Linden could keep the copyright and perhaps charge ridiculous fee's for updates to prospective buyers, but then any one country on some whim couldn't close it down.
Could you close down the Internet?
Maybe once upon a time, but now?
I know companies can buy the code and can choose to link it to the sim but this is not the same. These companies are running it for themselves, as platforms for their expression. Areas could and should be run independently. Issues of who you pay could be worked out on a percentage system, and if one node is closed down, fail safe financial issues could be planned for in advance. It isn't an impossible task, just one that requires intelligent planning.
All that I am waiting for, dreading, is some politician, looking for some publicity ticket, to focus on Second Life, and that would be it, the end. Because they could do it.
The USA Government could shut down Second Life tomorrow, but not if it was a distributed system run in various countries. Even a UK politician could do it. They could raise issue about VAT or purchase tax on transactions within Second Life. Sure, a lot of us pay purchase tax to buy L$, but since when does that matter to the tax departments of the world. There are a lot of ways they could do it.
All I'm saying is; Linden Labs, protect your own interests, and ours. You bring something of value to the world, with or without realising it and don't let it go down the pan trying to milk it of the last possible dollar.
