Still going...

slDM has been a bit quiet lately. This however does not mean we are about to give up.

Granted, the lack of disobedience of the general SL populace during the implementation of the new adultcontent-policy was again not inspiring at all. It would have been a great opportunity for us (SL users) to stop a widely unwanted policychange from happening, yet we didn't. What we did do en masse was complying with the policy. Many of the adultcontent creators moved to the adult continent, complied with flagging of content, many of us complied with the Aristotle ageverifying-scheme; we did everything LL demanded from us. I am still wondering why, especially since all that was required by us to completely stop this policy from being implemented was to do nothing at all!

Anyway, next to the fact that some of us in slDM are currently very busy with first life as well, we are at the moment thinking and discussing possibilities how to be better able to campaign for our goals, maybe to try another way of communicating and acting.

In any case, slDM will continue with campaigning for user-rights, -protection and -participation, ie. the goal of full user emancipation. I say 'full' since I understand that SL users have in some ways a lot of freedom, for instance in creation, but slDM stands for the recognition of the user throughout the relevant social and 'political' spheres, not just the economical. The economical sphere is an important one though, since here lies the basis for our claims on the necesity of userparticipation in the other spheres. The fact that the Second Life world is created by the users changes the mere consumer relation and should be reflected in all relations between LL, SL and the user.

The goals of slDM can only be reached through the collective effort of the majority of users, thus necesarily through organisation and participation. This is the same for slDM itself. Your contribution in whatever way is welcomed and needed; write for the website, help decide on action to take (through our membership meetings every Sunday at 11 am SLT or leave your ideas at our forum), help with hosting our discussion and/or music-events, help us pay for the land and HQs etc.

As said, despite slDM being a bit quiet at the moment, we will continue to raise consciousness and agitate for activity around these issues and part of this will be by means of a new magazine or paper on which we are now working and of which we want to publish our first issue in Jan 2010. If you feel like contributing to this IM Rin or me inworld or leave a comment.