"I for one can certainly think of someone who inhibits my ability to enjoy Second Life, though this clause is hardly enough to stop them." Aimee Weber
"Quote:
Originally Posted by Cocoanut Koala
But the way I'm seeing it, he is harrassing and extorting and in general making a mockery of all our freedoms. |
http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=78682&page=8&pp=15
Yeah, me, too!
It's really annoying having to chase Aimee on the forums. I really decidedly DO NOT enjoy it. But I am honour-bound and duty-bound to fight back each time someone harms me, especially when they menace me, and attempt to threaten me with as serious an action as getting me booted from the world itself of Second Life, causing me thousands of real dollars of loss. That sort of hateful, vicious threat can't be allowed to stand, and won't be allowed to stand. And when I am told about this sort of threat and attack, I write the Lindens about it, and I refute it here. You don't get to throw your weight around and hint that you run things with the Lindens and can "get people banned" lightly -- oh, no.
You see, if you give these people an inch, they have a mile. (Indeed, that's really the whole problem the Lindens face with this monster they've created called the FIC.) Aimee may be labouring under the illusion that she "got me banned" from the forums because one of my last posts was about her name being like a prom queen's name. Well, her name IS like a prom queen's name, so we've got the truth defense on our side there lol. Others like Hiro Pendragon also fancy they are the ones who got me banned. In fact each of the little fanboyz and fangirlz imagines they are the ones with the power to get me banned, but in fact, it's merely the banal fact that collectively, by pushing their pudgy little tekkie fingers on the AR button over and over enough time and deluging the Lindens with IMs, they drove them nuts and drove them into selective prosecution -- selective prosecution we still see today.
By waving around this stick like "I know what policies would have the general public's support" or "I know what the Lindens would do if they had the general public's support," Aimee can appear to be the Voice of the People. It's the worst kind of populism. As katykiwi rightly remarks, is she some kind of mascot of the Lindens? Some sort of public spokesman? She sure acts like one!
Any one who yammers on about someone else "interfering with their enjoyment of Second Life" about something happening OUTSIDE of Second Life, and OUTSIDE of the forums needs to get a real better grip on reality. Interfering with enjoyment of SL as we can read from the TOS and CS language involves griefing, verbal harassment, and so forth *in the game or on the forums*. It's actions that actually affect a person's Second Life. It's not something happening outside on a blog.
Aimee's actions against me are inside the world, and on the forums. Documented. My critique of her is on my blog. Whose skating around the TOS and falling through the TOS ice here? Not me.
If the FIC goads the Lindens into overreach and stretching their long arms out to curb people's expression on their blogs (and I think even they will be given pause before they go down that route), they're going to hear from a lot of people about this. The Lindens do care about freedom of expression. So they don't overreach like that and they use this argument to defend their non-action on Lazarus signs.
One thing is abundantly clear from all these discussions -- the FIC has a very warped notion of freedom of expression, not unlike their torqued notion of commerce, and it's like "no business but my business" and "no freedom of expression but my expression". Pretty skewed stuff.
Aimee's sense of rulership of the forums and the world of SL and even the blogosphere beyond it is unfounded and unwarranted. I'm not sure what gives her that illusory sense of power -- that she can chill speech, and curb criticism and affect what someone is saying on a blog outside the LL domain. She imagines she can affect policy inside the LL domain by her undue influence over the Lindens. But outside it? How can she do that? Or even imagine that she can? Such as to menace a person with the threat of being banned?
We've already asked the question the Vox Populi was asking about her being "Philip's blood kin." BTW, Shaun Altman and other sophists on this issue: we're not making any "tortious claim" that Aimee IS the blood kin of Philip; we're reporting that people do ask if she is and do spread this rumour. It's common among the common folk to imagine that their betters are somehow related, or that one better is a better because she's related to an even bigger better. It works that way in RL -- why not SL? So the thinking goes. Of course, we're not so unsophisticated. We know you don't even have to talk to the Lindens, let alone be related to them, to be FIC and have undue influence. We've asked if she is. She hasn't answered. Well, nevertheless, we have no grounds to conclude she is, and so we don't : )
If the Lindens look at the removal-of-content issue very narrowly, yes, that's why they don't remove Lazarus. It's legitimate political expression, in and of itself. Where I would draw the line on it is that it is used with an intent to spam, transmit, replicate, interfere with enjoyment, etc. The Lindens can't seem to see the forest for the trees here.
I don't have to comment a whole lot on the hypocrisy of Aimee yammering on about me "making a career of harassment" merely for having *my own blog in which I express my critical thoughts about her ideas* and thinking she can sic the Lindens to take me down, yet not lift a finger to get the Lazarus signs to stop devaluing land. Astounding!
If Aimee and her little friends like her lawyer, Jake, want to see her less on this blog, they need to prevail on her to cease her constant direct and indirect attacks on me on the forums. Each time an attack appears, I'll be rebutting it and exposing it as I am now.
And I will not cede the right to comment and critique her ideas, which remain odious to me.
