he made the devil so much stronger than a man

(Continued from part VIII.)

This may seem like a cheap shot, but I feel compelled to answer something.

(from the media album)

I'm thinking these facts are relevant to this situation:

• In a case involving a priest who sexually abused possibly up to two hundred deaf boys, the Roman Catholic bishops and cardinals overseeing the matter directly chose not to prosecute. One of those cardinals later became the current Pope.
• Donald McGuire, now defrocked, is considered by many to be a 'predator priest', in that he spent the years from 1964 to 1980--at least, if not longer--sexually molesting boys under his care. However, priests who both worked alongside him and supervised him did little to remove him from his holy office, choosing instead to shift him to different communities--which gave him more opportunities for molestation.
• Former priest Michael Baker was charged on a dozen counts of child sexual molestation, was convicted on two, and it all could have been avoided if Cardinal Roger Mahoney had done something back in 1986. He did nothing.

You want more? There are literally thousands of cases from Boston, where priests were routinely moved around the parishes by the Archdiocese to avoid prosecution. And there are cases worldwide, it's not just a US phenomenon.

Now, am I saying that each and every Catholic is culpable? Of course not. And it was a pretty stupid thing for Zen to say, too. But what I am saying--which I think is relevant to the main--is that each priest who knew something was going on, each bishop, each cardinal, and yes, even the Pope himself--these men are culpable. Because any one of them could have stopped this. At the very least, stood up and said it was wrong, and tried to stop the molestation from continuing.

There is a wide, vast world of difference between predatory priests, and a bunch of people who wear pixelated tights and 'fight crime' on Second Life. A truly deep and important difference, in that, at the end of the day, what went wrong in the church cases still carries lasting harm, harm that has persisted for decades.

But, I think it is also important to note that, as long as we're interpreting this argument, I will go on record as saying yes--any individual who is part of the JLU who knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that these are actual transcripts of meetings that they have attended, or that people they know have attended; that they know for a fact that the individuals named took these actions; that (since they have access to the wiki) they have the power to look up meeting transcripts and read them...I'm going to say that for anyone who isn't remaining willfully ignorant, yes--they are as responsible as the people who broke into medical records and put those real life details on the internet. Absolutely.

somewhere where it's not dark, dark, dark, dark

(Continued from part VII.)

Man, I have to find a good wrapping-up point, because I've been talking with friends, and their big conclusion is that this is all pretty meaningless. I'm letting personal feelings get in the way of accuracy (and okay, not for the first time), but more than that, what do I really care about all this? Privacy issues on the grid, sure. People getting lost in their roleplay, fine; it's not really my concern. I'm not affiliated with the JLU, I don't own a PhantomZone device, I don't call them when one of the sims in the estate I work for gets griefed, and I'm not a griefer.

So, seriously, why do I care? As one of them told me, these are the kinds of people that are why the mainstream smiles behind their hands about the internet. They give everyone who's reasonably sane a bad name. They're their own worst enemies, and their own behavior will take them down faster than anything I could possibly say.

While I'm struggling with this realization, more extracts. Starting here:

"The administrator can add anyone he wants to the user list. This allows people to have ban powers without having parcel powers."

Let me see if I understand this correctly. The reason people are given parcel powers (whether that's full controls including terraforming or simply the controls about that parcel, itself) is that they're invested--they're renting the parcel, they've bought the parcel, or they own the estate that that parcel is part of. This statement makes it sound as if the PhantomZone unit can help people who are not invested--who do not own a store on that parcel, rent on that parcel, or own that sim--the power to ban others.

Am I wrong?

Also this:

"Phantom Zone does not collect any data.
Phantom Zone Does Not Collect Any Data!
PHANTOM ZONE DOES NOT COLLECT ANY DATA!!!"

This is the first statement any member of the JLU has made that I wholly and completely disbelieve. There are many things that are up to interpretation, many things that may come down to distress and emotionalism getting in the way of understanding.

But this? No. Because if PhantomZone does not collect any data, ANY data at all, it cannot record and uphold bans. If it does not collect ANY data, it cannot share a global ban list with other networked security devices. If it does not collect any data, then everything previously stated on Krypton Radio's own PhantomZone page is inaccurate. Let me reference one section of that page specifically:

"The Phantom Zone uses flying probes called ‘prisms’ to patrol your land. These are temporary objects that efficiently roam your parcel, detecting and report any avatars that may need to be teleported to their home location and/or added to the parcel ban list. The entire volume of airspace over your parcel is patrolled, all the way up to the 4096m altitude limit. The prisms have been engineered to produce almost no lag and are extremely efficient."

That's gathering data, you idiot. You are LYING.

And this is pointed out later in the same thread:

"It's really, really clear from the words of KalEl that in fact he's all about collecting data. In fact in order for this system to work it HAS TO collect some data, as a technical matter. Otherwise (and Qie and Sione and all the IT professionals around here can correct me if Im wrong) it simple cannot FUNCTION as a linkable device from one node to another."

Exactly.

And this is relevant for all sorts of reasons. Namely, that yes, people who do not have owner controls for any given sim have ban rights if part of the PhantomZone system. Yeah, datamining or not (and remember, the JLU say they're not), THAT right there is wrong.

From Miss Dufaux:

Quote:
Rxx has a number of health issues, some severe enough to be eventually life threatening (read this as "thinks he has nothing to lose"). In specific, Rxx has epilepsy, a condition which severely limits one's lifespan in extreme cases. It is not known how severe Rxx's case is, but he was given a depressing long term prognosis by his doctor in spring of 2008.

"This is extremely upsetting to me. Regardless of his reputation and activities, it's just none of anyone's business what his health conditions are.

"Shame on you."

I agree. And this was what upset me in the first place--that they essentially cyberstalked a dying man, just to verify that he was, in fact, dying.

Let me be absolutely clear on this one: If I want RL medical information out on the Second Life grid, I will release it. While there are some incidents (I'm not that wary of revealing some RL information) I've mentioned on the blog, and in certain chats in SL, that could be collated by anyone who really obsessed on it enough, I have been the one who said that. That's my look-out.

I really, sincerely doubt that either the AIDS patient, or the person who has a debilitating epileptic condition, contacted the JLU in world and handed over their medical records. It's disturbing, angering and wrong that Kalel and presumedly others think it's no problem to collate and use this type of information, because it is, somehow, "protecting the grid". It's monstrous.

"It wasn't until I read the log entries prying into people's lives, and using their medical condition as some sort of information bargaining chip. You people (yes I said THAT) in the JLU while masquerading as fictional heroes have completely lost your moral compass and no longer see the difference between right and wrong, it's all a big game to you.

"But your pixellated fantasies have now twisted into RL stalking and intrusion. We're past the IP harvesting mentioned in the OP title, we're now talking about the bigger picture. What the JLU is doing stinks to high heaven, and I'm hoping at least one of the lurky loos from the JLU reading this thing has at least a whisper of morality left in their soul and blows the lid off this thing so it can end, soon."

Indeed.

And here's where the bottom dropped out again:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Velvet Bikcin
GLE, is this latest transcript accurate?

"Unfortunately, yes."

Really? Confirmation that the JLU routinely busts medical information for the sake of 'saving the grid from griefers'. Really?

Right, that's it, I've had it with the JLU now. There is no one who can now claim innocence, and no one who isn't tainted by this. If you're in the JLU past August 20, 2011--when this comment was posted--then you have no ethical leg to stand on. Not anymore.

More from that comment:

"When we were talking about collecting data, we were talking about collecting people's IP addresses. Of course the node is going to talk to the server and to other nodes, and it's going to have a bad guy list and a good guy list. But it doesn't collect IP addresses. Never has, never will."

No, see, YOU don't understand this. The folks commenting on the JLU were never talking just about collection of IP addresses--they were talking about the collection of IP addresses, personal RL medical information, real names, addresses, places of work, and suspected alts.

You know--data. To which you said PhantomZone collects no data and we all called you on it as the liar that you are. Now you're trying to hedge that you were just reaffirming that PZ didn't collect IP addresses.

One suspects you of having a working brain, GLE, but I'll still use small words: you know better than that.

From the original thread:

"Does anyone really mean to try to insinuate that a group supposedly dedicated to 'protecting' people really doesn't see that by providing a place where personally identifying information can be readily found, they are literally putting people who *were* safe in real life into real life actual danger?"

See, that's the thing. No one--who hasn't been stalked in real life--gets how scary it can be, how deeply it undermines confidence, how it increases stress, paranoia, worry, fear, and can result in exacerbating ongoing medical conditions (think heart problems from panic attacks, say), or plain out starting new ones. In fact, I'd be willing to go out on this limb and say that no one in the JLU even connects gathering all this information on 'griefers' and presumed other 'suspicious types' with stalking.

And really, to me, that's the scariest bit of all. That they think of as protecting the innocent fits with the legal definition of a cybercrime.

From another comment on the thread:

"There is a popular misconception that the term 'data mining' is somehow a bad thing."

There's more on that comment, but okay, let's break this down. Data mining--as a concept--involves collection of data from a variety of sources, compilation, redistribution, and analysis. Technically, data mining is neutral.

But how most people use--and understand--data mining is far simpler--the collection, collation, compilation, and analysis of data to determine things that single-stream sources would not reveal. Say, I get someone's name, but I don't know their ID number. Someone else finds that ID number, on an Ohio ID. Someone else discovers that someone's been married. Someone tracks down the wife's name on an ID from Nevada. Someone else discovers magazine subscriptions made out to the wife. One of those magazines is designed for parents of autistic children.

When all this information is collated and properly organized, we can know at least suspect that:

• Person A is married.
• Person A lived in Ohio before moving to Nevada.
• Person A has at least one autistic child.

And that is why people think data mining--in this sense--is a scary thing. Because what the JLU does with it is take avatar names and translate them through data mining (from what's suspected to be a variety of sources at this point) into concrete suspicions, or actual proof, regarding:

• their real names
• where they work
• where they live
• their marital or relationship status
• how many children they have
• what medical conditions they have
• who their family members are
• who their friends are

And the JLU is trying to maintain that they're the good guys. Riiiight.

Back to that one comment:

"Linden Lab seems to be listening to a mob of villagers with torches and pitchforks, metaphorically speaking. There are extensive threads on the official forums and on SL Universe, but they're the same sixty or so people posting over and over again, many of whom are alt abusers themselves."

I need a term defined. What's an "alt abuser"?

And one more extract:

"To put the flame war and ad hominem attacks in perspective, the Green Zone Users appear to be about 70% BDSM, about 4% age play, about 3-4% griefer alts, and about 5-6% business people or landholders. Somewhere between 10% or 20% are alts of other members, mostly belonging to just a half dozen people - mostly there just to 'stuff the ballot box'. For the most part these are people with something to hide, not political activists."

This goes directly back to that "doing perversion" comment quoted much earlier, I think. Let me test my understanding here.

To Kalel, these people are equal:

• griefers
• alts
• people exploring alternative sexualities
• ageplayers
• land owners
• business owners

and apparently all bad? Or am I wrong?

Miss McMillan voices a concern:

"See this was what i was talking about. What is going to happen is DC will come in to sl and remove all likeness to their heros.

"I DJ at a Heros club where the customers and staff dress as superheros DC ones and just dance and have fun. Also the owner of the club makes hero clothing"

And see, this is where the labyrinthine multitude of effects and interpretations from application of the DMCA just fly over the heads of most people (and really, I can't blame them, it's pretty dense legalese). But in brief, in simple terms: not only won't this happen, but it can't happen. Why? Because to file a DMCA cease and desist order, DC Comics has to name specific individuals--either by RL name, or--as has happened in the past with other companies--SL name. That takedown will be employed by the Lindens, and that person, and all associated content of DC's from that person, will be stripped from the grid.

DC Comics won't bar all DC content from Second Life, unless they feel like hiring 30,000 more paralegals and naming the entire grid in individual letters. And that purely won't happen.

From the Department of Irony:

[17:46] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): The flashy costumes and comic book personnae are a lot of fun - if it wasn't fun, we wouldn't do it. But they do more than that. These costumes are a part of our culture.
[17:46] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): They stand for something people want to believe in. They represent truth, and justice. We're more than people in brightly colored costumes. We're symbols of hope.
[17:46] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): And hope is what the people of Second Life need probably more than anything right now.
[17:47] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): Banded together, we can come to the aid of the good people of Second Life.
[17:47] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): We can earn the public trust, and come to their defense. but we can only do this if we demonstrate, time and time again, that we're on their side. And the only way to do that is to take the highest road we can.

So, that means you're going to stop the datamining and the doxing and take down PhantomZone? Great!

I guess it speaks something about a personal failure of utter cynicism that I'm even shocked by some of the things that are coming out. But yeah. Still shocked about things like this.

I guess, in the end, the things that are still bothering me are that people I don't know are going after people they don't know by accessing medical information. There are two types of people who should have access to medical information in my opinion:

• the individuals (and perhaps extended family directly in contact with them) themselves; and
• the doctors directly working with those individuals.

In my mind, no one else needs to know. Period. Including insurance companies, but I know, that's a fine line, managed HMOs being what they are.

But if you're some random wandering pretender-to-the-throne type, and you determine all on your own that Xavalenxia911 Resident is a threat to you, and you crack her files and discover she has any medical ailment...and you then post that information online anywhere...yeah. You've crossed a big line, right there. And that line is not going to change no matter how many posts you put up saying you're misunderstood and you regret doing the awful things you've done and you're not perfect, and all you're trying to do is protect people.

Screw you. YOU ARE IN THE WRONG.

More when I get back to it; for now, I'm leaving the keys, and going off, and looking at flowers or something, so I can convince myself the entire world doesn't need to burn just because people are stupid on the internet.

(Apropos of nothing in particular, and certainly nothing JLU-related, I am terribly, terribly amused by this. And I'm so with Moss on that--I doubt I'd buy twenty copies a month, but I would definitely make space in my budget for one copy a month, and possibly even subscribe formally and get it mailed to the house!)

I snagged myself on your barbed defenses

(Continued from part VI. And my apologies in advance--this had formatting taken to more closely resemble the quotes pulled, but then I hit Preview on Blogspot, and that erased all the formatting. No idea why, really resent that that happened, and just do not have the energy right now to go through and fix everything.)

Miss McMillan commenting on the SLU's JLU thread (hey, that's kinda catchy) reminded me of something.

[09:41] Kal-El [Kalel Venkman]: I also need to fix the PZ nodes so that they rename themselves to 'Object' on installation. A little conversation in the GreenZone Users Group (a group dedicated, apparently, to the destruction of any networked banning system, not just RedZone) showed that their detection devices relied on sensors that checked for the names of installed prims.
[09:41] Kal-El [Kalel Venkman]: This will make PZ invisible to such sensors and protect PZ users from attack by griefer coalitions

There's only one problem with this. Simple onboard estate tools allow searching by name of owner, name of prim, number of scripts, number of collisions, among other things. I could go on any sim for which I'm part of an estate team and pull those figures. This is not a 'griefing sensor', this is how Second Life is designed to work.

I mean, in essence, I get what he's trying to do here: he wants to hide prims on parcels or sims unobtrusively. What greater invisibility can there be than one more Object in the midst of all the other Objects? (I admit, I once named every single prim in a house build. Mostly, it just made me smile when someone touched one of the door prims, and heard either 'Estella' or "Priscilla" open.)

The problem with that, though, are those estate tools, plus other tools like Thomas Conover's full-sim scanner, which will pick out individual prims and tell you not only where they are, but how many scripts they contain, who owns them, what their name is--all information that an estate owner or estate staffer desperately needs on occasion. I guess it slides it by the standard folks, but most certainly not everyone.

Still, it's interesting that Venkman's thoughts turn to concealment and blending in, over open revelation. You might think he had something to hide...

And from the long-suffering maintainer of the summary thread, her own response to GLE:

"Further, please stop with that tired nonsense about broadcasting your IP everywhere. It's not applicable. No one ever argued the notion of IP recording being a problem in and of itself. They argued it once it was *tied to an account name* and used to tie it to *other account names* in order to establish potential alternate identities. That was the problem. The tired old 'oh you leave your IP all over the internet' thing was debunked MANY months ago, and zFire himself tried the same tactic of clouding the issue and pooh poohing it. It didn't work for him and it's not going to work here, either."

In more cogent form, that's what I've been trying to get at. It was never the strict gathering of IP. That wasn't the issue. It was the subsequent aligning with actual (or, in many cases, presumed) alts or similarly-named avatars. As she says, the linkage is the problem; not the IP collection itself.

She goes on to offer a really great example of this mode of thinking:

"Let me put it this way- there's an argument that religious folk like to use against atheists. There was a thread about it on SLU recently- about morals without gods. The fundamental premise was that there are some religious people who believe atheists are fundamentally immoral because they have no fear of an all powerful deity who will punish them for wrongdoing. The atheists counter that they don't need the fear of a powerful deity or punishment- they're capable of ascertaining the right thing to do without an authority figure making a rule about it.

"That was what I was getting at- not the timeline of how this came down because you all are still arguing over what PZ does and does not do. My point was that you supported alt detection and it took the Lab(see: powerful deity in this case) to come down and decide against it. You didn't come to that conclusion on your own. You are obeying the rule- but a rule had to be made *first*. You don't support the actual premise- just the rule.

"Again, that's a big deal."

Yes, it is. And at least GLE in word and deed, and Kalel in word and deed (and who knows how many others in the JLU) don't seem to understand that they're on the other side of this argument.

Another mention from the original thread:

"The argument that a hashed ip isn't an ip combined with the argument that anyone who doesn't want their alts tracked must be hiding something makes a very ugly mess.

"A largely self-inflicted mess."

Again, I would agree.

And from the comment directly below that one:

"The fact that Kalel started contacting peoples real life jobs and schools is enough for me to be honest.

"Seriously you internet hero fuckwits, when you call somebody's employer they don't get upset that their employee fired 1000 dicks in a virtual world sandbox. They care that some deranged psychopath from some internet game is calling them."

He has a point, too, for all that it was bluntly phrased.

And Miss Zenovka's entire comment is worth your time to read, but I'll still boil it down if required:

• She posits that the JLU may not be collecting IP addresses and collating them with other data, but that they are possibly acquiring other data lists and links, then comparing them, and entering them at that point to the wiki or the Brainiac server.
• Due to this potentiality, they might also not keep their scripters (nor their poster children) properly informed of the potential conflation of outsourced data (and gosh, Zen not up to date on what's really going on, there's a shocker)
• Finally, in no way meant to be a direct part of the above, members of the JLU are also members of the GreenZone group, which has not disbanded long after the actual threat of RedZone has been removed (and that, while not directly tied in, I do find fascinating)

There's another comment on the thread that, while it repeats some of the information seen on previous comments, pulls a few more things together and makes everything a little more clear. (Which is like saying we've moved from mud to murk, but hey, it's a start.)

And then this from Sione:

Quote:
Originally Posted by AEther
Again, no. Nothing overrides a local pass created by a network owner or admin on their own network. In fact, network owners may set their networks to not accept global bans at all ("trusting") and/or to not share local bans with other networks ("sharing"). Turning off both would, for example, give you a completely isolated network that simply shares bans between all the land you protect with the system.

"Hang on hang on. Share bans with other networks? So are you saying that unless specifically turned off bans propagate between networks? If you are banned by someone with it on then you have to IM your way around the grid hoping the sim owner is online."

As Kurmin noted in the summary thread, this was the awful sound where the penny dropped. People were so focused on being outraged, for good or bad reasons, that they hadn't honestly stopped and thought this through.

Again, correct me if I'm wrong, but this is what I take from that quote in this context:

• There are no global, nonremovable bans--any user of PhantomZone may allow avatars even other sims don't allow.
• Estate owners can also allow PhantomZone to operate solely as a wider ban list, isolated to their particular land alone.
• However, if that sim owner wishes, they can leave those options on which accept global bans, even those that propagate on other systems.

So...my question is now, which systems? All of them? Some of them? If people had the foresight to somehow search out and keep the global list of RedZone bans, could they then import those into their PhantomZone units? Does it centralize ban lists from any other ban system, like Voodoo? Like the dozens of other, less invasive security orbs on the grid?

From a later comment in the thread from GLE:

"His account was hijacked. He is no longer a member. He was a good guy who didn't deserve this treatment. He enjoyed patrolling sims and interacting with the other members of his 19th Century roleplaying group, but someone decided it would be funny to burn out his account just to steal some pages from the wiki. The result was not amusing."

I do believe we're talking about Baht McMahon again, and I'm still wondering what got him into this. If GLE is to be believed--someone hacked his account, logged in to the Brainiac server, and that's the source of the second batch of leaks?

So...is Baht even on the grid anymore?

Back to security issues--this comment is well worth the time to read, but I will pull one extract from it for here:

"You need to stop hiding your toy. People need to be able to CHOOSE to not go to a location with your device, and they must be able to choose to opt out ***BEFORE*** the data is collected. KalEl's advice to rename the device is specifically and solely a dodge around that premise. Period. The end. There is no other explanation."

I will be honest, people want security in Second Life. Even if they don't seem to really grasp the difference between secure (logged off of SL) and insecure (in world), they have this idea in their heads, and they never let this go. This idea says:

• In this perfect world, the best security orb is cheap
• In this perfect world, the best security orb keeps an unlimited ban list
• In this perfect world, the best security orb is unobtrusive, will not warn, will instantly ban people (or deny them entry in the first place), and will offer great protection with limited set-up

Why? Not because people want to defend against griefers. Not because people want to prevent copyright infringers from accessing their personal homes and stores.

No, largely, the average user of any security system in Second Life does it because they don't want to come home to strangers having sex in their bed. Flat out.

How does PhantomZone address this? By the same methods RedZone did, and I'm not talking about the physical scripting, here. I'm saying PhantomZone plays to the same fears that RedZone did while it was operational:

• If you don't use PZ (RZ), you won't be able to protect yourself from avatars who will come into your homes and touch your things
• If you don't use PZ (RZ), you'll be cut off from the "best" protection that's offered on the grid
• If you do use PZ (RZ), it's free--we'll never charge for it and any updates (or at least, that's the assumptions I'm getting from its proponents)
• If you do use PZ (RZ), you can take part in helping to ban anyone you object to, for whatever reason, to keep your things safe
• If you do use PZ (RZ), relax: it's just like Banlink, a system you trusted to keep people away from your things

The problem with these modes of thinking is not that PhantomZone doesn't live up to its end of the bargain. I'm quite sure it does. The problem is it plays into that culture of fear we've developed on the grid. We fear things, and we fear people, and we fear people who can do things we don't understand.

For example:

• If someone you don't know rezzes into your store, and stands at the beam-in point, and doesn't move, there are some schools of thought that tell you this is a copybot.
• If someone you don't know rezzes into your store, and is wearing newb clothes and a newbie skin, there are some schools of thought that tell you this is a copybot, or a griefer.
• If someone you don't know rezzes into your store, and turns in a circle, there are some schools of thought that tell you this is a copybot, or a griefer getting their bearings.
• If someone with the last name Resident rezzes into your store, there are many schools of thought that say this is a copybot and a griefer.

Fear. And the fear escalates.

Let's think about this in a different way:

• If I've never been to a certain store before, and I stand at the beam-in point, and don't move, it's likely because that sim (or my system) is lagged enough that I can't move. I hardly think I'm alone in this, but for several months last year, some merchants had rules signs posted at their default beam-ins, saying If you don't move in 15 seconds, we're banning you. NO COPYBOTS!
• If I rez into your store with a newbie skin and newbie clothes...well, first, there's obviously something wrong with me, because I don't generally do that at five years in--but if anyone else does that, the stronger possibility is that they're just new, not evil. These days, with the proliferation of really well-done freebie items, it's getting harder to peg someone's that new just by looking.
• If I rez into your store, move off the beam-in point, and turn in a circle, I'm not scanning your store for items to copy onto my system. Over two years ago, that was the way to force things to rez in--turn once (or twice) in a circle, taking in all aspects of the store, will help textures turn from grey to crisp. Then--if still having problems--moving the bandwidth slider up and down rapidly will usually do the trick.
• And if someone rezzes in with the last name Resident, they're not evil, a copybot, or a griefer by default--they're just unlucky enough to be born on the grid after last names were abandoned as a bad idea.

Yet, fear and paranoia on the grid continue to cripple us. Why?

(And note, I am not saying, I say again, I am not saying that PhantomZone and RedZone are the same product. I am ***not*** saying that. What I am saying is that, in terms of marketing, they're serving the same function: "Keep them thieves and miscreants away from yer wife! This is the best shotgun on the mark.)et, that'll larn 'em!" When in fact, fear never creates anything positive beyond more fear.)

trees here might be green, but their hearts are black as black can ever be

Extra Credits has now officially moved to Penny Arcade, with episodes debuting each Wednesday. Today's episode was on pacing, and if you've ever wanted to write anything--whether that's a video game, a roleplay scenario, a movie script, or a novel--you need to watch this video. I'm completely serious. In just a few short minutes, the EC team analyzes pacing, why it works, when it doesn't, how you can break it down, and how you can make it work.

Some notes from this year's Burn: the Dalek Art Car, and the Steampunk Octopus. Enjoy.

I want to start today's rambling journey (which would be continued from part V) with something taken from the official response from the JLU on the Krypton Radio site:

Is the public outrage posted on SL Universe real?

We think some people are genuinely indignant or upset, but we also think they’ve been given a lot of false information in order to enrage them.

In the SL Universe thread as of August 25, we note that an astonishing whopping 1036 posts were made by members of the banned Second Life group, "The Wrong Hands" or the person posting supposedly un-doctored pages from our wiki (and in one case, someone whom we discovered to be impersonating a police officer and who has been trying to phish private information from people within Second Life).

So, note: they're saying that first, all the postings we've been reading are false constructs intended solely to defame the JLU. It's a good stance to take: "It wasn't us! They're smearing our good name!"

But then this:

Was the information actually leaked by a disgruntled JLU member as they claim?

We had originally thought that the information was stolen from our systems by a hacker, who managed to compromise the account of a (now former) JLU member, which was then used to steal the connection credentials necessary to breach our database. Linden Lab notified us that a member account was breached, and that they had detected spyware placed by that account in our in-world headquarters. The chat spy devices (there were two) were active between August 3, 2011, when they was placed, and August 18, when they were removed (about fifteen days).

We now know that an alt of Cheergirl Allen, a Wrong Hands sympathizer, had managed to sneak a mole account into the League and had ready access to the BrainiacWiki over the span of about three month's time. Our records indicate that this account was shared with others who had no legitimate right of access – once again, the content was not "liberated", or "reported", but simply stolen.

So...that seems to pretty well confirm that it was them. Which is it? Either it is their information, or it isn't, and they've claimed both. Also, if you read on in the original link, they're claiming that (once again) it is their information, but that it's been substantially revised and in some cases, outright fabricated. So they're claiming once more that it's not their work.

Guys, chill. Either claim it or deny it; doing both makes you look like fools.

Moving on to the accusation that, at least at one point, Rodney Linden was considered a griefer by the JLU? What? I'm up-front about my frustration and upset with the Lindens, a great deal of the time, but actually calling one a griefer? Guys, even I've never done that. Tone it down.

I had to take a screen capture of this one, I just couldn't believe it actually took place. Starting from a mention about halfway down in the summary thread section I'm now in, came this line:

Zen tries to tell everyone that because PZ is free, and not sold, it shows good faith and a lack of bad intentions. Everyone calls him on this because that statement is STUPID.

I clicked the link, I couldn't not, and I'm also providing visual proof:

(from the media album)

Wau. Just wau. This is completely and utterly insane. So, just to test Zen's hypothesis, here:

1. When a copyright infringer lifts texture UUIDs, re-uploads them into SL, and gives them away at welcome centers and newbie stores, that's okay, because there's no profit being made?
2. When a copyright infringer lifts clothing templates, re-uploads them into SL, and gives them away for free, that's okay, because there's no profit involved?
3. When someone makes an exact duplicate of Britney Spears' face, or Wonder Woman's costume, or a Nike shoe, or a Gucci bag, in SL, that's fine as long as they don't charge for it?

Seriously, that's what he's saying? That it's okay that these info nodes are proliferated across the grid, because they're the good guys, and they're not charging for the system?

Way to massively, massively fail, there.

So let's talk about their 'personal and private' wiki branch. First, it seems to be neither of those things if Miss Mouse's information is accurate. So I checked.

(from the media album)

Is this the JLU official wiki? I don't know enough, nor am I a member of the JLU, to tell if it's the current, 'live' version; but digging into the source code revealed this:

(from the media album)

Is this the actual feed from the JLU's source?

But, in wandering through those pages, I discovered a few things. The only thing I want to mention specifically, though, is this:

Alt Links
(currently being implemented)
The Alt Links Brainiac feature allows us to connect all the alt accounts used by a particular griefer (or other account). A link may be established by any JLU member between any two Second Life identities currently in the database. Each link shall have one of the following possible status values:
Not Present
The link is not present in the database.
None
The link was once present, but was broken by someone
Suspected
That the two identities are one user's alts has not yet been proven, but is highly suspected.
Confirmed
It has been proven that the two identities are alts of one Second Life user.

That phrasing does make me wince, a tad--"used by a particular griefer (or other account)". In essence, that tells me that the Alt-Link feature of the Brainiac server can collate between any two known accounts, anywhere, and decide by some as-yet-unmentioned method (*cough* like IP addresses *cough*) which accounts match up and which don't? Or am I misreading this passage?

Note: I'm not saying positively that I believe the JLU are lifting IP addresses. But the whole thing, including their recent behavior concerning the first and second Bwiki leak situations, has been fishy to an extreme.

(Oh, and this is just too damned funny for words.)

Now, from Aether--who at least sounds rational, if not completely trustworthy--comes this bit:

"Now, on the topic of IP address logging and alt detection I can certainly say we have considered the possibility of doing this in the past, and even made experimental evaluations of other groups' such mechanisms before the Second Life Terms of Service and Community Standards were changed to forbid the sharing of such information in-world. But the truth is that there's very little point to it. I fully believe that if we could do it reliably there would be ways to utilize such information while still remaining in compliance with the disclosure clauses of the Second Life TOS/CS and without undue threat to residents' privacy, despite RedZone's obvious failure in this area. However, there are still some very dissuading practical considerations, which is why we have never, in fact, utilized IP collection from SL in our own systems.

"First, IP collection for alt detection is far too unreliable. NAT, proxies, and the prevelent use of dynamic IP addresses lead to far too many false positives and false negatives alike. The fact is that human interaction and observation is still the surest way of learning about alt accounts, and griefers are usually all too happy to reveal such associations behaviorally; their sheer need for attention almost demands it. Failing that, it's simple enough to catch the next act of griefing, whether or not the griefer is an alt account of a previously banned resident."

I can, weirdly, get behind that. If one of the coders of the PhantomZone project can be trusted at all (which is still up for debate), the fact that he's willing to go on the record as saying "Yeah, we thought about it, it's not a good way to do things, so we don't code it like that" means something, even if it's something small and insignificant. It may not be much--it likely isn't--but it definitely feels more honest to me than anything out of Kalel's mouth or Zen's keyboard.

The problem with that feeling? It only feels like it's more honest; that doesn't say it is. As Anguissette says in a later comment:

"The thing that stands out most to me as the biggest problem with that PR whitewash is that its writer is essentially saying (forgive the paraphrasing but the original wording is so long and inelegant) that they are here to answer questions, but only to particular people in a particular way on a particular subject...that totally makes it sound like they've got lots of things to hide, things that really wouldn't stand up to even mildly intense scrutiny and questioning.

"Also, it strikes me as a little contradictory that one could be demanding that people be civil with their questioning, when one's own statement includes all sorts of insults, including what seem to me to be rather rude and damaging allegations and accusations."

Yeah. She's not wrong.

And one from Miss Dufaux again:

"I'm super confused now, pun sort of intended -- I just read the front page of the Krypton Radio site and there's an article there about Linden Lab removing Power Rangers merchandise from the grid after receiving a notice from Saban Entertainment (copyright holder).

Linden Lab is in something of a no-win position, being obliged to respect the legal rights of intellectual property owners and yet also acknowledging the large role media-inspired sales play in the virtual economy. Savvy media creators often avoid scrutiny-and Linden Lab’s restrictions-by rebranding their wares so as to avoid overt use of copyrighted names or sales images.

The article's tone is pretty soft in regards to the issue of blatant copyright infringement by content creators -- I was surprised, frankly, as I also read in the JLU's mission statement that it 'follows absolutely strict adherence to the Terms of Service and Community Guidelines for our own behavior, as well as a strict moral and ethical code.'

"So I guess I'm finally 'getting' the purpose of JLU: That they are more concerned with griefing, and not so much about copyright infringement? Which would seem to makes sense, based on their use/adaptation of copyrighted DC Comics material.

"This seems really odd to me... and to be honest, makes me question the integrity and intention of the group all the more."

Again, I have to agree, but that, at least, I've said before on this blog, it's not a new concern where the JLU are...well, concerned.

From the next bit of the summary thread:

GLE comes back to reply. He seems to miss the point of what he was told, and overall starts sounding *amazingly* like zFire.(it should be noted for the record that GLE "sounding like" zFire is in the types of things he said-we've heard this stuff before, and not an indication that he has any connection at all with zF.)

So what's the linguistic connection to zFire Xue here? Things like this:

"Alt detection is useful to protect people whose sims are under constant attack from the same two or three people. The sim owners eject and ban the griefers, who instantly create new avatars and come roaring back. Same computer, same IP address, same evil intention, different avatar name. It would be nice if a sim owner could ban a griefer no matter what name he used while attacking."

Very zFire.

"The system never became reliable enough to be able to consistently ban a griefer from a sim no matter what name he used. It was still under evaluation when LL added alts to the disclosure rule."

Also very zFire, though I will grant, GLE knows how to spell words, which zFire never bothered to learn, EVER.

"One of the most interesting aspects of the alt detection discussion was watching how some people reacted so violently to the concept."

Oh, and this one nearly coils brain cells. I want to break that one down. What I think he's saying:

• He was interested in the alt detection discussion, not because he thinks it's a bad thing, but because it was fascinating to watch people get so upset over something he thinks is no big deal.
• It amused him that some people--emphasis mine, but one would assume from the phrasing, people obviously not "rational about these things"--reacted so 'violently' to the concept.

Bet me, he's one of those people who thinks that no one should have undiscovered alts; that the mere fact that someone wants an alt to be hidden is evidence that they're going to do untrustworthy things with it. Presumption of guilt before innocence, in other words.

Back to the main comment, though:

"To them, the concept was wrong for the simple reason that it was wrong, and if you asked for an explanation of why it was wrong, then there was something wrong with you, because obviously you didn't think it was wrong."

Which is very odd coming from him, because by and large, though there were hysterical moments, and lots of them, throughout the entire RedZone debacle, there were also strong cogent points made for why, precisely, alt detection is a bad idea. It was never--at least, in those articles I read, and posted in the blog, plus my own comments--wrong "simply because". Everyone I read, and everything I wrote, pointed to specific reasons why.

"A lady in one of my groups who was pretty much a basic Second Life user was absolutely terrified of alt detection. She had no concept of how it worked, and she didn't oppose it on the grounds that it was an invasion of privacy. She was unable to articulate why she thought it was wrong, but she absolutely did not want to be anywhere near anything that might identify any of her alts. It always intrigued me to wonder what she had going on that she was so afraid to have brought out into the open."

And sadly, I called this one. This is the other side of the alt detection argument that is just as specious as the 'it's wrong because it's wrong' argument. Namely: You wouldn't be upset if you didn't have something to hide. Which, though it was stated by a different person entirely, flashes me back to that "doing perversion" line. That presumption that only the guilty want to hide their actions.

All right, I'll grant you, especially with certain politicians (in the US at least), that presumption can--on occasion--be valid. But as a widespread belief, it just doesn't pan out. I'll even give you a good example. Desmond Shang, a man who seems almost incapable of hiding any SL avatar link where his tenants are concerned, still has at least three accounts--all of them known by the Lindens, two of them at least who work closely with the Lindens, or who have in the past--that are alts. He's hiding nothing "untoward", or perverse, or criminal, in the least, by concealing these alt names. Mostly it's a simple issue of contact--there are times he needs to get on the grid--for private consulting purposes, or when directly working with Lindens on a sim/estate issue--where it's just not viable for him to get ten new IMs every three seconds. For that, he has designated alts.

Put plainly, Desmond Shang himself is an alt, of his former main account. The presumption that anyone with an alt wants nothing more than to hide griefing, malfeasance and nefarious, illicit sex acts is inaccurate. It's a wrong belief.

"You have a partial page from the Brainiac wiki showing a conceptual discussion of how Phantom Zone might work some day, and omitting the rest of the discussion where the IP addresses were planned not to be visible, and you call that 'proof.'"

Uh...does GLE know he just admitted that the PhantomZone banlink device was, at least at one point in time, then, collecting IP addresses?

"What you are calling 'proof' does not stand up to close examination."

Neither does yours, GLE.

This seems like a good place to stop for tonight. One more associated entry, and then there will be Deep Thinking involved on whether I want to stay mucking through all this, because it's not going to get any easier.

and old ladies with toads for pets, who mumble incantations that make you scream

(Continued from part IV.)

Now, there was mention in the original SLU thread about a JIRA issue that was almost instantaneously pulled from public view and archived, because the comments went from neutral to obscenely inflammatory within hours. There is a comment preserved from Soft Linden on that JIRA:

"Working backward from the list of resis in the recently published resi IP list, I was able to build a list of the locations visited by a large share of those resis. Working from the location list, I pulled historic simulator states for those locations and found several of the IP collection probes.

"The operator is affiliated with a large group of resis who were previously banned from SL, and who were told they were not allowed to return. I've referred that to Governance. It's up to Governance whether they blacklist, ban, or warn. I suspect their action will be swift on this one, given the prior history.

"I also see that members of a 'policing' group acknowledge having operated their own IP collectors. They claim they stopped collecting around the time Red Zone was removed from SL. I've asked the policing group for confirmation and details while I'm doing my own research, and I've referred that to Governance as well. It's pretty clear that if they did/do have their own collection, it's not the same as the recently published set.

"How you can help:

"If anyone finds an object that's still making suspicious media requests to a third-party site, or back to an object on the simulator itself, please file an Abuse Report against the actual object. You can assume we'll have heard about any second-hand reports that you see circulating in blogs and forums - reporting those just muddies up the AR lists. Governance gets very few legitimate first-hand reports about these probes. These are the smoking guns that can help Governance act more swiftly."

Which is all well and good, but for me, what's unnerving me is not the question of whether or not they're gathering IP addresses (which Soft seems to assert that the system isn't doing, anyway), but that they're fully willing to compromise, falsify, or manipulate chat transcripts in order to gain ARs that will hold up in world; that they're willing to cyberstalk at least one dying man (and griefer or not, that is so beyond morally, ethically, legally and psychologically wrong it's not even funny); and that they're planting recording devices that record any kind of resident information (a la CDS Gemini) without estate owner permission or compliance.

Yeah. IP addresses, at this point? It's fairly simple to get them, it's being done all over, from Google on down. But the rest of things, the proveable actions they seem to have taken? That to me says "crazed stalkerbait" and that scares me. Especially because there are members of the JLU I'm hearing from in the chat logs that I know personally.

In the past two days alone, I've gone from a shrugging acceptance to seriously, literally, wanting to ban, block and mute them from my friendslist. All of this is that unnerving to me. And I don't mute people; to this day, it is still extremely difficult for me to mute any resident in world, because I believe so strongly that anyone should be allowed to speak their mind to me. (Whether or not I listen, or act on it, that's beside the point; no one should be blocked, to my admittedly idealist thinking, from the simple act of airing grievances or concerns, one avatar to another.)

But the members of the JLU have blown past all barriers in their narrowly focused, single-minded pursuit of griefing in any conceivable form, that they're willing to discard their own oath to wage further war on the groups and individuals they see as harming the grid.

Which, at this point, could be any of us. When Avril Korman receives a threat in her email, for writing about as fair and even-handed an article on the JLU as I've read over the past three days--friends and neighbors, we're all under the gun, and Kalel's hand is on the trigger.

I do mean that literally, by the way. Reference this comment from the original SLU thread, followed by this comment. Back to back, they're chilling in their demonstration of how far Kalel at least says he will go.

And let me be clear here--I am not saying griefing is Happy Fun Time. I believe the Wrong Hands group was a griefing group, and most of them were banned for it. I believe the Patriotic Nigras were also a griefing group, and still make incursions onto the grid for no good reason (in my opinion), even after most of their original members were banned from the grid. I believe, by and large, most (if not all) griefers on SL are griefing for the wrong reasons, and there is real, genuine, and sometimes occasionally even proveable hurt that occurs as a result.

I also believe that the Encyclopedia Dramatica's lists of RL addresses, not at all infrequently linked to SL avatars, is wildly in the wrong. Once someone has your address, any number of harassments become more possible. I'm not saying there are any "good guys" in this mess at this point.

But to blithely say that you'd shoot someone? Just for knocking on your door? With no moral grey area, no indecision, seemingly no empathy for the fact that he'd be killing people? Innocent or not, that ups the stakes. Anyone--anyone, whether they're an estate owner or just another flunky on the mainland--who threatens to kill another RL person...that makes that person dangerous in the extreme.

This directly from this part of the summary thread:

"Tux, in order to show the depth of the info that the JLU is amassing, posts his own entry from the bwiki. It's a showstopper. It also takes FIVE POSTS. Read it. If nothing else it shows you the sheer granularity of what they're after. It's horrifying."

Now, remember what I said a couple paragraphs back, on griefing being a waste of time and energy better spent doing anything else? And that, to the best of my knowledge, the Wrong Hands was/is an active griefing group? (If anyone has information that says otherwise, do let me know.)

Even knowing that, the level of output, with RL names, places of residence, assumed occupation, accusations of pedophilia and ageplay...it's really, really horrifying, on a gut level. That, and if any of the chat transcripts are accurate, we're dealing with some fairly disturbed folks here. I quote:

[19:38] Vakesh Ishtari: Sir, i was at bloodmoon, Tux was on voice, while zen was
also on voice, doing perversion with their slave pet and minor they pulled off
the teen grid. Zen's kids were in his room and he was doing this on voice.

In order of importance, at least to me:

• Having your kids in the same room while having voice sex is pretty wrong. But I would ask: how old are the kids in question? If they're all teenagers, say (assuming more than two, hence 'kids'), then that just levels out at sleazy. If they're under ten, while not criminally actionable, that's flooring the drama pedal and screaming right into full-bore creepy.
• However, that phrase of 'slave pet'. Thus, drawing the conclusion that any acts of domination and submission (or other forms of BDSM) are beyond the pale on SL. Excuse me? Congressmen own leather whips and butt plugs and share hotel rooms with rentboys now. It's 2011. Grow the hell up.
• But that also pairs unsettlingly with the phrase "doing perversion". What, pray tell, does that mean, exactly? Round of spanking? Blowjobs? Forcing an old-style Sion chicken to collide with someone's kneecaps over and over? Sex with three human avatars and a Meeroo? We have zero idea what "doing perversion" means, save that it sounds far worse than it likely was in actuality. Also, it's really stilted phrasing, so I have to ask, how old is Vakesh? And if there's religion involved on Vakesh's part, especially Christian fundamentalism, then "doing perversion" could be anything from "OMG they weren't MARRIED!" to "she's underage, he's a horse, and he's slapping her with a flounder wrapped in bacon". We just don't know.
• And of course, my end question has to be: this was all happening in voice in main chat? Okay, that's just gross. But also, even were all this happening in voice, Vakesh had to be pretty damned close to hear everything clearly, so now we have this avatar lurking (one hopes for the love of all things inconspicuously) in the vicinity, listening with bated breath for any hints of "doing perversion". That's sick, and wrong.

Another bit from the summary thread:

The fun wasn't nearly over yet though, gang, because TheListSL stopped in for a charming dump of some more info from the bwiki, proving that KalEl Venkman was indeed Drone1 Resident, and that the W-Hat group was in fact destroyed by him. Further, that he fervently supported and continues to support alt detection all the way through the RZ saga and indeed, to this day.

Personally, I could care less about the W-Hats or whose alt is whose. I'm not a proponent of alt detection, I just don't care, and frankly, having been in groups where one user gained control and killed the group, that's a flaw of group ownership--don't give ownership rights to anyone you don't absolutely trust, because bad things happen. That's a duh channel moment.

But jumping to this, let's see if I'm tracking things accurately:

The base station then relays all the information gathered about the avatar and relays it to the Phantom Zone server, but only if the correct hash code is received. The unique hash code protects the base station from receiving spoofed identify packets. Packets that do not carry the correct hash code are simply discarded.
The transmitted data would contain the following information about the given avatar:
Avatar Name
Avatar DOB (in SL terms, the inception date of the account)
Avatar Height (griefers don't plan on being able to keep an avatar more than a few hours, and so usually don't bother such refinements as adjusting avatar height - a default avatar height therefore is a valid marker either of an inexperienced player or a throwaway account.)
Avatar UUID
Name of client being used
Version of client being used
Name of operating system being used
Version of operating system being used
An encrypted hash of the IP address used by the client
The use of in-world HTTP-in servers precludes the use of cookies to establish a 100% certainty that a given machine is being used by a given avatar, as cookies are not supported by LSL. We sacrifice a certain amount of accuracy by using the in-world servers to firewall our system.

Of course, assuming--and that's a heavy assumption--that this is actually accurate information...let's break this down.

• Avatar Name. Publically available information. Result: null issue.
• Avatar DOB. Publically available information. Result: null issue.
• Avatar Height. That's interesting if true, and something I never really considered--that griefers won't really bother with changing their height, because they're using easily disposable avatars to get in and get out. Plus to me, making most of my avatars shorter than the norm. But end result is still (to me, at least): null issue.
• Avatar UUID. There are several ways to get this information, from LSL code lines on down. Virtually anyone can do it, and some third-party viewers do it automatically on the in-world profile. Result: null issue.
• Name of client being used. Again, with most third-party viewers, it's listed over the head of the avatar. Result: null issue.
• Version of client being used. See above. Result: null issue.
• Name of operating system being used. Ah, now we're getting into interesting territory. Why is the operating system on the user's computer being accessed? And if that information is being accessed, at least to the extent of how well the viewer in question verifies that information, is that a privacy violation? Result: ISSUE.
• Version of operating system being used. See above. Result: ISSUE.
• An encrypted hash of the IP address used by the client. And BIG FLAMING ISSUE for this last one.

I swear, I just don't have a settled place in my brain for any of what's turning up. Here I thought Zen just had a creepy hobby, along with half the Wulfenbachs, now it turns out half the Steamlands and a tenth of everyone I know is moving towards the "EVIL; DO NOT TRUST" category in my mind. I do not like feeling like this!

[09:06] Hal Jordan [GreenLantern Excelsior]: We're going to have to start being careful about calling out people's alts. Next time the wiki is stolen it could cause problems

You THINK?!?

You know, I'm actually glad I'm going out to wrangle with my bank in a few minutes. It gets me out of the house and away from all this lunacy. When, precisely, did the good guys become the bad guys? And why?

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.

Lionel and Dave and the Butcher made three

(Continued from part II.)

First, the non-JLU news: the Lindens have increased benefits for their premium members, including exclusive gifts (most people seemed blah on that) and private sandboxes (for most people, me included, that's enough to have us jump for joy. Hells, that's nearly enough to end my long-standing ban on supporting the Lindens financially until they stop being stupid, and buy in again).

And Firestorm has today been updated for mesh.

Also, while I'm here: Archangel Mortenwold, the maker of the 'accidentally' stolen Daleks? Turns out he lied about that. And he's now being welcomed on board as a loving supporter of the JLU.

So...the members of the JLU care about griefing, but could care less about copyright infringement...Oh, what am I saying, they walk around as trademarked superheroes, of COURSE they don't care about copyright infringement!

Oh, and Mortenwold apparently is also Raife Resident, which wouldn't be relevant, save that apparently in the drama-filled world of Whovian fandom (since when? Seriously, since when? I've always found the fandom to be almost Xanaxian in its laid-back lack of attitude), he's holding Raife up as the example of a 'good' person to be involved in his company, because he's never infringed on copyright.

But...Archangel is Raife. So...incredibly dense end-run achieved, that ultimately convinced no one and placed him farther behind on embattled trust issues than he was before? Way to go, Archangel?

Back to the summary thread on SLU.

Again, I may be wrong here, but going by my initial impressions: Tux, a member of the hacking group Wrong Hands, was following the RedZone thread closely, and missed something that in retrospect becomes glaringly obvious: the RZ-like collation program, as yet unnamed, was being hosted by a JLU server. That's very daunting, if true.

And of course there's this entry on Potosi's blog. And see, personally, I have a severe problem just there, because I don't trust Zen now, flat out. Him telling me--telling anyone--that we can trust the JLU just because he does? That's a big neon sign for me, and it reads "YOU CANNOT EVER TRUST THESE PEOPLE; RUN, RUN FOR YOUR LIVES".

But that has to do with personal history, more than anything, as depressing as it is. Back to the thread--oh, wait, one note from the original I just ran across. This from Desmond Shang:

"Here we've got... group A, that has been fixated on harassing certain people for years.

"And on the other hand, we've got group B, fixated on harassing certain people for years.

"Prok's certainly not a sympathetic figure, but only a fool at this point wouldn't think that 'real life' wasn't dragged in. Seriously, hand puppets made to look like Prok, pictures, you name it... and the fixation continues to this day.

"Now, what has happened, there's the JLU also getting into it on a similar scale (see above posts &c &c). On that measure, the 'bad guys' won their day, big time. The JLU is down in the mud also. They did one tiiiny step in the right direction (presuming they actually deleted the RL data) but... meh, that ain't much. Just like the 'griefer' crowd, it's the same game as before.

"And, why? Because I think both groups *like* doing this. Why not play around on a platform where you *can* pound your opponent all day if you like? I'd recommend lineage2, it's ancient but at least it's hardcore and you can really torment an opposing group there and make them regret playing for years. You can be a total tard on either side, put alts in the enemy camp, betray, lie, steal and do pretty much whatever else you want within the game. Would that satisfy the need to be a tard for all sides?"

In total agreement, here. JLU wouldn't be in this mess if they hadn't wanted to, to co-opt superhero parlance, use their powers for evil. They're pretty much all playing Parallax and claiming they're still playing Captain America. It just doesn't work.

In Search Engine Watch news, Axi's been busy with the JLU thing as well: it starts here, and will likely spawn other articles; and, intriguingly enough (considering the Second Names campaign, especially), an article on what a colossal failure Display Names have been. My favorite part of the latter:

"Then there's the unicode abuse.

"The reason unicode was allowed for display names was reasonable – it allowed people whose names were not written in western English characters to set a display name in their native language. That's a nice, inclusive reason to include them, and in fact they have been used for that purpose.

"Sadly what they've also been used for is to use a bunch of funky looking characters to make your name look 'cool.' It doesn't look cool. It just makes it harder to read.

"Turning your name upside down does the same thing. In a busy location, or even on your own friends list, the use of unicode to simply 'coolify' your name makes communication more difficult, not easier, and caused even more people to turn display names off entirely. Unintended consequences strike again."

For the love of all gods, YES. This is my single largest complaint on display names choices. I've pulled out unicode names on the blog in the past, because I look at that as a name choice, and it just irks me. Why would you ever, for any reason, make your name less readable, and less memorable, for onlookers? They may want to hire you for whatever skills you might have--maker, scripter, sculptor, model, photographer--and if they can't remember whether your name is "SallyAnnNickels (Resident)", or "¿$ª£Ļ¥ Ąŋʼn ŊīĉĸêĻ§?"...well, they're just not going to find you, cupcake, are they?

More when I next have energy for more. This is labyrinthine and mentally stunning. (Not Axi's column, no, just the whole JLU thing. How does the phrase go...Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. And in setting out to answer the question of whether the JLU is corrupt, I think I'm starting to swing towards 'absolutely'.

just leave the hot bright trash in the shopping malls, leave the hawks of war in their capitols

(Continued from part I.)

More oddity regarding the JLU:

Archangel Mortenwold, you all need to add that name to your watch/banned lists. This person was caught copybotting stuff by the Doctor Who community on SL a while back. Currently he has suddenly become a big defender of the JLU and has called out one of the Dr Who groups as a griefer group. So unless you want somebody who will tell everything to the JLU (or just copybot your stuff) around then be sure to add him to your lists.

And there was a link, which led here. Does anyone know for a fact that this person has definitively engaged in copyright infringement, a, and b, has accused a known and active Dr. Who fan group in Second Life as a griefer group? I'm not finding anything, searching on my own. I found this but all it paints Mortenwold as is a fellow Whovian. The hell?

[Note from the Editrix, prior to publication: tracked down Mortenwold's account of the infringing incident in question. Seems that yes, he's guilty, but he contacted the original maker, paid him, and then withdrew the pirated items. So stupidity 1, trying to make it better 1, outright evil 0?]

(Though I can't help but agree with Ryokashi's reaction to Zen...)

And, on more RedZone-centric matters, it seems zfire Xue was released from prison? Why on earth was he released??

Anyway, getting back to the JLU crisis, I honestly started plowing through the thread on SLU surrounding the issue and hit tl:dr pretty damned quickly--the thing's over four hundred pages long at this point and wanders ferociously. Thankfully, Axi Kurmin is willing to put her sanity on the line in a summary thread, so now I'm reading through that first.

Some pertinent points in the conversation:

"It should be noted, with no small amount of irony, that the JLU is violating the copyright of DC comics, for which they do not have official sanction to use. This would not normally matter, as DC is usually pretty mellow as long as you're not acting like a jackass under their label, but in this case it's an important note."
-- Axi Kurmin

She's absolutely right: especially if accusations of copyright infringement are part of the fiasco in question, infringing on copyright themselves does not make the JLU look good. I'm not even sorry for stating that one--it's bare, unvarnished fact, though I will grant, most of the JLU's general mission statement seems more concerned with protecting people from griefing attacks.

Now, general paraphrases (and I'm struggling with this whole 'no real names' issue, because these are all coming off of other sites, so...how does this policy apply in this case?) from the summary thread.

"Phantom Zone is free. You can set it to "trust" other PZ nodes, in which case it will ban anyone who they have on their list. If you don't turn on the trusting, it will only ban people you have on your node's list. It works well, and I would be happy to rez it and demonstrate it for anyone who's interested. I tried to enter a sim that had me on a ban list when it was undergoing testing, and at most I was able to fly around for 6 seconds before it kicked me out."

Okay, I get the general principle behind the PhantomZone device, but I have a couple problems.

1. Why are they globally linked? Why isn't it simply an extension of the ban list on a per-parcel or per-estate basis?
2. Why did they tie it in with RedZone (because seriously, yes, I get the Superman reference, but RedZone/GreenZone/PhantomZone, they're all going to hit people the same way, because they're all banlist supplemental programs)?

There's another point in the summary thread. Seems, after the last wiki leak of JLU-related material, Kalel Venkman filed DMCA takedowns against people who hosted that list of IPs and/or names. Several JLU members have come forward and stated boldly that they don't and never have collected IP addresses; they've also stated firmly that all the wiki 'leaks' purporting to be from their wiki site are scams, mockups, not their work.

The only problem with that? The DMCA filings. If you file, you're claiming you own the work. If you're filing about presumed fakes, you are now claiming them as truthful hacks of your system. The thing with DMCA is that it's primarily designed, even now, to be the first step in the legal paper trail that ends in court. It's still only supposed to be used by major corporations against other large entities; it was never designed to be used by private citizens. Moreover, it was never designed to be a moral trump card: "You're being bad, now you hafta stop! Nyaah!"

Whether or not the original leaked information was actually from the JLU's servers, or wiki page, or not, the inescapable conclusion of Venkman filing DMCA c&d notices is that he has now, legally, formally, claimed all information so leaked as his. Because that's the catch-22--the law doesn't care if you were simply trying to stop the spread of "bad" information, or trying to stop the spread of necessary information--once you file DMCA, it's yours by law.

"Let me back up for a moment and be clear: I don't condone the serial harassment and stalking of SL residents, including "outing" the alts of SL residents, creating alts to further harass specific residents and circumventing account bans, or breaching SL resident privacy by publicly connecting their real life identity to their SL identity -- which, BTW, are all against SL Terms of Service. (More on that later).

"But 'griefing,' as subjectively defined by the JLU, is a pretty broad spectrum of objectionable behaviors -- even something as simple as disagreeing with them (which for U.S. citizens, is a First Amendment right) -- in fact, by my writing this, I'm very likely now listed in their logs as a griefer, if you can believe that.

"My definition of griefing is obviously far removed from the JLUs: When residents are purposely disrupting the livelihood of SL merchants and land owners, that's griefing -- oh, except most people call that copybotting, not griefing, which is a far greater disruption to the grid than self-replicating penises."

Miss Astolat Dufaux said that on her recent JLU-themed entry, and I vehemently agree with her. Because this:

(from the Solace Beach album; the griefer attack on NekoZone with boxes marked VR6-KABOUL.)

is griefing, particularly, shouting boxes spawning randomly over NekoZone (for no reason we could ascertain).

This:

(from the Solace Beach album; these were spinning particle forms that emerged from an invisible rotating prim; each of the particles spawned said "BAD LAB OPEN CARTEL".)

is griefing. And this:

(from the Solace Beach album; each of the zombies we had to specifically hunt down and delete)

is griefing; hordes of single-prim headcrab zombies that cried like children and giggled like clowns, attached to invisible prims that the sim never properly saw rez. None of them showed up to any form of sensor, and even when selected, the sim was so lagged from other attacks that it would take some time to delete them.

What happened on NekoZone a few weeks back? Griefing. What happened in Rivula for the first few years of my SL experience? Griefing.

Simple protest, or speaking out, or having doubts or concerns? Not friggin' griefing.

More from Miss Dufaux:

"Before all this information became public, I probably would have welcomed a group that was devoting time reporting copybotting to merchants and to Linden Lab.

"So why doesn't the JLU monitor alleged instances of copybotting? That would be a far greater service to the SL community. That absence of concern would seem to speak to the collective mindset of the group's membership... their 'policing' methods are more closely aligned with those of totalitarian regimes than it is a selfless effort at true community service."

It's a damned good question.

What I'm taking away from this is that there are really only two categories within the database itself (and please, I'd love to hear differently, leave your comments after this entry): either "G" for Griefer or "P" for Noteworthy P Person. First, how is category G separate from category P, or am I getting it wrong? Because it seems to me, how I'm reading it, is G is for Griefers and P is for potential griefers.

Am I right or wrong?

Of course, the problem at this point is one of perception, too. Taking this picture for instance: I don't see a group of concerned citizens clustered around a Linden asking for answers. I see two vaguely normal-looking avatars surrounded by griefer avatars (or at least generally annoying avatars) who belong to shady groups that might contain griefers on their own. I realize that's just a short visual jab, but that's what I get looking at that image.

I realize this is wandering, but the problem is just bizarrely huge, and seems to have sprung up only in the past couple of weeks. I'm beginning to think my current spate of isolation is actually something good for me now, because I haven't been to most of the places that these recording devices seem to be placed; and I never say anything in main chat (or much in IM) that I wouldn't bat an eye saying in front of a group of disparate souls--after all, email's only as secure as the number of stops it makes, and various purveyors of ill thoughts and ill deeds can hear things and see things at random on SL.