Ex-Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble has been banned from Second Life for allowing his 12 year old son to use his Second Life account;
I let my son use my Second Life account. I’m not allowed to do that. Only 18-year-olds are allowed to play in Second Life. Yesterday I publicly broke that rule by having Patrick build me a new part of my office while I was on stage running a panel discussion titled “a higher resolution.” The panel discussion wasn’t all that good cause I was incompetently running it, but Patrick was having fun building stuff and showing off how Second Life worked.
At the end of the session Beth Goza, a Linden Labs employee, caught up to Patrick on screen and said “you’re toast.” (We had both been warned about the rules before, so we both knew what that meant — we were about to be kicked and banned). - Scoble
The irony is that Linden Labs is in no position to ban someone for letting an underage child to use Second Life when they recently removed the credit card check, to verify someones age, when signing up. Removing this check has allowed under-eighteen's to jump onto the Main Grid after filling in a standard sign-up form, also removing any use for the dwindiling Teen Grid.
The simple fact of the matter is that Linden Labs is more concerned with upping the largely inaccurate resident statistics than protecting the safety of underage teens. Linden Labs has come under heavy fire for the credit card check removal and by banning Scoble they've only backed themselves further into a corner which will be tough to get out from.
I hope they finally see some sense and give Scoble his account back. I'm not holding my breath though, it was stupid to think Linden Labs was any different from any other customer statistic obessesed company out there.
I'm a Second Life Lawbreaker - Scobleizer (via Digg)
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