if I burn, you will see the fire in your mind when you sleep

(from yet anotherdate album I need to find a way to rename)

RUN! RUN BEFORE THEY GET TO THE CHILDREN, MARGE!

So, Star Trek Online is going free to play, which I can only imagine is pissing the hell out of people who were essentially kicked to the curb after beta closed. Plus, they're being led by Cryptic Studios, which strikes me as a wobbly move at best. But we'll see how it goes.

Continued from part III, we now turn our attention back to the JLU fracas, and the summary thread, wherein we have found a far-from-unbiased bit of reportage on the Alphaville Herald from early last year. How'ver, that being said, at this point I'm leaning towards believing her. Miss Mousehold can be abrasive, and her speech occasionally verges on, if not bulldozes right over, the line between tactful and blunt. But to miss something as large as "Hi, my name's Corsi, I own FurNation" and AR her as a griefer for getting griefed?? Sadly, that strikes me as something that did happen, pretty much as she said.

From Miss Astolat Dufaux:

I will repeat again to whatever JLU participants may be reading this: from the perspective of a "law abiding" SL resident who has never had contact with your group (and plans on keeping it that way, after what I have read), it is a SERIOUS matter that an organization that professes to be protecting SL residents from abuse, itself resists scrutiny and transparency, even after what appear to be multiple instances of erroneously accusing people of griefing.

Precisely.

Some other scattered things I'd like people to be aware of. First, this post in the original thread. I don't know if Paz is part of a griefing group or not; I'm not 100% on the ground with the griefing community or the circles of random malcontents, mainly because as a resident and later as an estate manager, griefing sucks to clean up, I never understand why griefers choose the targets they do, and I think they're all idiots for doing it in the first place.

That having been said, that's a great call-and-response from Paz to Excelsior.

From there, this post, on the paranoid mindset (especially regarding paranoic souls who don't realize they're impaired, which might be what we're dealing with here). Even not pointed at any member of the JLU, it's an incisive breakdown of a potential psychological type.

Finally, this bit from the data feed off Rodvik Linden's profile, and that's where my brain (temporarily) fell out, because that's always been my monochromatic dividing line. Busting someone's meds--put more plainly, exposing RL medical information--for me goes far, far beyond revealing personal names and RL addresses. Don't get me wrong--revealing that information isn't in any way good, ever, but someone compiling a database of independent details is in a far different category in my mind, to someone compiling a database of medical conditions attached to what's known about RL names and job details.

Then this hit--for interested parties, that entire thing is worth reading through, but this was the relevant part that struck me forcibly:

[18:34:50] The Dark Knight (maverick.grunfeld): If we grab that and bring it back inworld as an AR, I wonder if it will fly.
[18:34:51] Kara Zor-El (kara.timtam): As long as it's not in SL, they dont'care.
[18:35:04] The Dark Knight (maverick.grunfeld): Yes, naturally, I'm not saying we reference the blog.
[18:35:10] The Dark Knight (maverick.grunfeld): Just the chat log itself.
[18:35:22] Alan Scott (phillip.beeswing): It was a web post of a chat log.
[18:35:31] Kara Zor-El (kara.timtam): Ah, so we quote the chat log without the consent of theparticipants. That would make US the violators here.
[18:35:31] The Dark Knight (maverick.grunfeld): LL will record dig on their own.
[18:35:40] The Dark Knight (maverick.grunfeld): Which will mean inworld IMs and local chat.
[18:35:40] Jeremiah The Time Dragon (jeremiah.pintens): Still - it's from outside SL, I don't see them giving it more than an eyeroll
[18:35:49] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): Ordinarily, Kara, yes - but that rule does not apply when you're telling a Linden.
[18:35:57] The Dark Knight (maverick.grunfeld): We don't reference it was collected from out of world.
[18:36:02] The Dark Knight (maverick.grunfeld): Just grab the log.

If I understand this correctly, this was the play by play:

• Someone saw a chat log posted on someone's blog on the web that dealt unfavorably with the leader (or one of the leaders) of the JLU.
• Someone else suggests grabbing a bit of the chat log, and uploading it in an Abuse Report to the Lindens.
• Someone else suggests that might be a wee bit unethical.
• Kal-El states pretty baldly that that would matter, EXCEPT when talking directly to a Linden
• Another participant suggests never mentioning it was collected off the grid (where posting of chat logs does not violate either Community Standards or the Terms of Service, but rather, that it was harvested from in-world chat.

People. Seriously? This is low. This is, quite possibly, almost as low as pushing to find out if someone who was dying in a hospice of AIDS was actually dying in a hospice of AIDS, and not just 'faking it for the lulz'.

These people. I'm not even sure if the people I know in the JLU can be trusted at this point. They're all unnerving me.

From the same entry:

[18:39:20] Hal Jordan (greenlantern.excelsior): What's the violation there?
[18:39:41] Alan Scott (phillip.beeswing): Defaiming.
[18:39:45] The Dark Knight (maverick.grunfeld): I would say defamation.

Okay, for everyone's reference, from Free Legal Dictionary site:

"Any intentional false communication, either written or spoken, that harms a person's reputation; decreases the respect, regard, or confidence in which a person is held; or induces disparaging, hostile, or disagreeable opinions or feelings against a person.

"Defamation may be a criminal or civil charge. It encompasses both written statements, known as libel, and spoken statements, called slander."

and

"Where the plaintiff in a defamation action is a private citizen who is not in the public eye, the law extends a lesser degree of constitutional protection to defamatory statements. Public figures voluntarily place themselves in a position that invites close scrutiny, whereas private citizens who have not entered public life do not relinquish their interest in protecting their reputation. In addition, public figures have greater access to the means to publicly counteract false statements about them. For these reasons, a private citizen's reputation and privacy interests tend to outweigh free speech considerations and deserve greater protection from the courts. (See Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323, 94 S. Ct. 2997, 41 L. Ed. 2d 789 [1974])."

HOWEVER, defamatory statements, concretely, are statements that are demonstrably false, but which do not cross over into accepted realms of satire or parody. So this, quoted on that link:

[18:38:44] The Dark Knight (maverick.grunfeld): [14:30] Atlas Saintlouis: I would also like to thank kalel, for reminding me that in the event i am unable to do anything substantial with my RL, i could always come waste my life away in SL like a self important douchebag

is a personal insult, not a defamatory statement. There's no court on the planet that would convict someone, with legal punitive damages associated, for calling someone "self-important" or even "douchebag". This, quite simply, is not actionable in any way.

Yet--and again, if this is an accurate transcript--that's not only what the leader of the JLU said, but he was onboard for manipulating the chat transcript to sound like it came from in-world.

Look. I know chat logs can be faked. We all do. And it's not even as if that gets more than a shrug these days. But it goes to a pattern of behavior, and that pattern of behavior remains creepy and wrong.