Second Life Closes Banks

It's Benjamin Duranske primarily who says Technology Review *was* responsible for LL's policy(because of his interview for it?), although when I pointed out that his blog helped precipitate the Ginko collapse, he denied it. So which is it?

While I don't believe you can credit the blogosphere or online tech media or even mainstream media for a decision Linden Lab has been discussing for months (as we know from their office hours and meetings inworld), we still have to ask very real questions about the power of the blogosphere and tech media sphere to affect virtual worlds that do not have robust democratic and liberal governments like real life countries, and don't have the checks and balances of real life.

When the Wall Street Journal investigates an Enron situation and helps bring about prosecution of Enron, it is doing so as an institution established for a century, with an editorial board, a public face, a sense of accountability to  advertisers and shareholders and a sense of the public trust, and so on. And it isn't making the pronunciation of "guilty" and deleting the buildings of the company with an executive authority, or influencing an executive authority so swiftly and directly. It's publishing fact and opinion, and then *other* separate bodies then pursue the crime to resolution of prosecution and confiscation of property. There is due process. There isn't due process here in this virtual situation.

Blogs that have existed for a month or a year run by one person; online tech journals are a relatively new phenomena and aren't the kind of institution that that largest-circulation business newspaper in America is, like the WSJ. THAT is the difference, Rob.

I'm the first to root for the rights of individual independent uncredentialed bloggers to speak out and play a role in investigating matters of the public interest. But I don't attempt to pronounce something in a virtual world as unlawful and incite prosecution of it and confiscation of property.

In your Metanomics series, Rob, Benjamin Duranske incites prosecution of Philip Rosedale as an accomplice to money scams in SL, then doubles back and says in fact Linden doesn't have much exposure as liability. Well, which is it? And that's a serious thing to be doing. I don't believe the Metaverse can be run by anonymous and incompetent kids making "banks," but I don't think the answer is to have blogging lawyers and tech journal pundits inciting runs on the bank and swift concoctions of power, either, and deciding what is legal or illegal by their lights and by their own interests.

I think this has to be more consumer-driven than it has been by protecting rights, not prosecuting wrongs that only the elite get to identify. Rights are protected when people affected are part of the process of finding the facts and deciding how to prosecute wrongs. The media can have public support in "trying a case," when it is diligently finding facts.

David Talbot asks the plaintive question: who is this owner of Ginko's and where is the money? I've sent him emails on my theories about this; so have many others. It's a good question, but it's not enough to ask a good RL question in a world where this anonymous avatar he finds so disturbing in fact keeps logging on, in fact keeps attempting to solve problems, and others make decisions about his assets and take responsibility for his liquidation who keep logging on. If David is serious, he could assign journalists to pursue all the leads and attempt to answer the question, as the Wall Street Journal would do about Enron. The WSJ didn't just post op-eds saying "We think Enron is guilty because they don't answer our simple questions". They did the legwork to interview people, find documents, put together hypotheses, check them. Nobody makes time for this in the online tech media and blogosphere. And could a tech journal justify long hours and resources spent mucking around in a virtual world pursuing not a tech story, but a common fraud story, even if the hook is "wire fraud"? I'm not sure.

As for "No one elected the Wall Street Journal to write critical articles that may have been the proximate cause of Enron's collapse.  Other than, of course, the reputation the WSJ has earned with their readers" -- the difference is that the Wall Street Journal has credibility in pronouncing on public affairs. It participates in them. It reports diligently on business and the stock market on the world that it is reporting on.

Tech Review is parachuting in and may never return to this story again.