To my friends that think I've just disappeared, it's not true. I'm still here and 'quietly' trying to keep up with everything...and admiring your efforts. However, besides everyday life I've also been exploring other places and hoping to be a help in establishing a vibrant activist community there...which is why I need your help.

Please consider signing this petition even if you don't frequent secondlife. It's not about secondlife but about animals and how they are treated by people. Virtual worlds such as second life do not make a new person out of you...they only let you be the person that the norms of everyday keep you from being. That can be good...but it can also be bad - especially when it can lead to the real world abuse of others or reinforcing those tendencies.

A Better Community

Target: Philip Rosedale (Founder and CEO, Linden Labs, Inc. )

There is a direct correlation between violence towards other animals and violence towards other human beings. While there are laws protecting animals from all sorts of abusive treatment in the US, depictions of this abuse still manage to make their way to various sites on the internet and by default, it becomes the responsibility of the host and provider to remove images and depictions of illegal activities from their systems.

The virtual world of Secondlife has Community Standards in place which should facilitate the prompt removal of offensive material and Linden Labs does punish offenders of these standards. However, the standards are vague and leave too much room for interpretation as to what is offensive.

With this petition, we request that the Community Standards of the virual world of Secondlife be modified to specify that display or depiction of real life animal abuse will not be tolerated.