Goodbye to Kin Keiko

I just read this at pixelpinup.

Goodbye to Kin Keiko

This is horrible, horrible news. But kin Keiko, the hair artist we’ve all been crazy about over the past monthes, is gone.

At first some of us noticed she was banned, but figured she’ll come back. Only a few hours ago her stuff were still available for sale, but now their gone too.

Here’s what happened from her boyfriend’s profile:

If anyone is wondering where Kin went… She spent all summer trying to sell hair and make money to give her spending cash this semmester at school. When she tried to sell it for USD, they cross checked her account info, and found her old brother’s account that had been banned in 2004. So they banned her. All her money is gone and now she probably cant go back to school in Sept. She asked me to say goodbye to you all, and that she’ll miss the people she got to meet.

We’ll miss you too Kin.

IM Dazzo Street to sign a petition asking LL to let Kin back.

:(

Written by Canimal Zephyr on 13 August

This does make me think, if SL is supposed to transform into the metaverse, do you think people should be able to be banned from it? Banned in 2004, banned forever. Should you be able to be banned permanently from the Internet? To my knowlegde only serious crackers get banned from useing computers, if they don't get job at the CIA/NSA. But atleast they are told how long the sentence is.

Besides that, getting punished for the sins of your brother, how rediculious is that. I know we might not know the whole story. But if you advertise with "Come to SL and make a RL living" maybe you should not ban people and deny them their hard earned cash. Create tools for us to use to determine if someone is trustworthy or not.

Lets hope this gets quickly resolved.

Update: Iris Ophelia interview Kin, and it seems LL have paid Kin her money, but the ban is still active.

"They closed Nakama for Kin. She cried. She is getting her money back, at least. Toni and I interviewed her last night. We're hoping to publish this in next week's M2, and hoping to have an official Linden statement. It would be great if we could report them letting her back in. Restoring her inventory. Technically speaking I don't think that's possible."

And Hamlet has some Linden words on the whole incident.

"The [Kin Keiko] account appears to be closely associated with a series of account that were previously expelled from Second Life for behavior and fraud," Linden Lab Director of Community Services Daniel Linden tells me by e-mail. "Our staff are reviewing that association, and will return the account to active status if assertions about the account's use and ownership can be verified. I expect and hope that this can be cleared up quickly; it sounds as though Kin Keiko is a popular member of the Community, but it is beholden upon us to ensure that individual who have been expelled from Second Life remain expelled."

I wonder if the out cry on the blogs had something to do with it.
Might prove that without the forums we are still being heard. ;)