It seems that Second Life is having problems with illicit materials being passed through their system - which is a direct result of Linden Labs deciding to allow complete anonymity (on the back end - anonymity within Second Life could be maintained) on the part of users.

I'm wary of demands for authentication, but it all depends on what you're trying to build. Based on the article I linked to, Linden Labs is going through some fairly extreme contortions due to that policy. It's not clear to me why they don't just return to a policy of demanding a real credit card linked to a real address - seems to me that such a demand is a gate mostly for people who are unwilling to pay anyway.

Technorati Tags: web2.0, second life