Second Thoughts

Avatar Rights are Human Rights

At the event sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation and Global kids yesterday on Annenberg Island in SL, we could find ourselves on the horns of a dilemma. If you're going to advocate real-life freedom of expression protection in SL, then you have to suffer racism and vandalism -- because it's all pixels (speech); yet we don't even have a free forums and the removal of the "permaban" and "any reason/no reason" crippling of free speech such as to take governance in our hands sufficiently to mitigate this vandalism.

On the one hand, the meeting was taken over by discussion of the Patriotic Nigras, the racist, anti-Semitic, destructive griefing group in SL. So score one for their Leninist Dept. of Agitation and Propaganda, because once again, they got the liberals to obsess and hang-wring about them for a psychoanalytical 50 minutes.

That meant that Jack Balkin, an expert on the First Amendment and the Internet, could posit that in the name of free speech and protection of First Amendment values, while you found the PNs repugnant, you had to tolerate their hateful, juvenile, racist, inane expression in SL.

I suddenly realized for Jack and apparently Annenberg, anything happening in a virtual world is merely speech. Anything. It's all speech, as if words/text/voice on a website. It's not behaviour or actions, so they can write the entire thing off as a freedom of expression issue, and never really delve deeply into property rights, privacy, etc. -- although of course, many in the audience who live and work in the immersive environment of Second Life and other worlds want them to do just that: to understand that it is not "just speech".

On the other hand, Jonathan Fanton had some tough questions for Linden Lab. How do they make the rules? What due process do they offer for termination of accounts? What about this vandal behaviour described in Wired? (It seemed as if the thrust of Fanton's invocation of Wired was more of the type "what do you do with people threatening to destroy civil society" but it may have been "how do you handle people who are criminals under your TOS but who are merely engaging in free speech -- I couldn't quite tell which it was).

And here Robin Linden, for the first time ever in the history of Linden Lab that I can tell, condemned griefing as vandalism and as "like a gang" in real life that destroys a neighbourhood. Oh, sure, you imagine that LL condemns griefing -- they prosecute it occasionally and it shows up on their website. But even when Philip mentioned in passing that LL had banned "60 accounts" (it seemed to be only about 25) back in October 2006, he didn't really condemn the groups. Now, Robin was condemning them -- and that's something I've actually urged them to do for a long time. I think that until you can separate right from wrong, and separate speech on a website under the First Amendment from vandalism in a world that fits under any state's criminal code, you don't have a world. What the Patriotic Nigras do isn't cultural; it's criminal. The question is how to apply the law. Here Benjamin Duranske, whose prosecutorial zeal reaches instantly toward banking experiments, all of which he views as unsustainable Ponzi schemes, can't help us -- he doesn't find what griefers do in virtual worlds wrong at all -- he thinks it's annoying, but not real, and therefore real-life law can't apply to things like "a rape in cyberspace".

Woodbury Watch: Where's the Woodbury Group?

Has Woodbury gotten religion?

Like some of the Woodbury goons, the group "Woodbury University" itself is gone from the Group list now. That means it is no longer showing as a group affiliation on any of the profiles of the protagonists of the latest episodes in the Woodbury Hoax -- no "school flag" to wave for Alyx Stoklitsky, Trebesan Clary, Blak Hax, MC Fizgig, and all the rest of the gang.

Now, that doesn't at all mean that the group was disbanded by the Lindens, my God, our hippies would have to have been dosed with some really bad acid to be doing *that*. No, it's likely the Woodburries have simply hidden their group, so that no one can see what's going on with it, either because they wish to be surreptitious or because their RL supervisors have asked them to stop representing Woodbury in SL until they can put in place more constraints to bad behaviour -- and rampant mispresentation. That would be my guess.

MC Fizgig hasn't taken the strange title "Chief Resident Executive Woodbury Island" off his avatar (changed from "administrator" the other day), but this may represent some odd skirmish with his supervisors or concerned colleagues in which he is fisking and literalizing and saying that "Never Never Land" (his other affiliation) and "Woodbury Island" (a Never Never Land itself, as it is now gone) represent his "fantasy role play" in SL on his own time. Right.

Currently, the grief build with the lolcube flashing textures made by Ben Linden (nota bene) has been retired from Furness, and in its place is an elaborate simulation of St. Basil's Cathedral from Red Square (or so it seems, could be another Russian Orthodox Church) by Trebesan Clary. The reader will recall that Dr. Clift has a great interest in Russia and belongs to a Russian communications association where he has given a paper about "hyper capitalism". Fizgig's first-life profile continues to say, "Associate Professor and Chair, Dept. of Communication, Deputy Director, School of Media, Culture, & Design, Woodbury University". Madelena Rossini's says nothing.

I did hear back twice again from Dr. Rosen of the Dept. of Communications in RL, in follow up to my queries.

Woodbury Watch

I don't know how much time I'll have for this, but I think I'll take Dr. Rosen of the RL Woodbury University at his word and start a watch on this Woodbury bunch next door.

"At this time, the university does not own or rent space in SL nor has it authorized anyone to represent Woodbury there. We do not and will not condone any behavior that would not be acceptable in real life on this campus."

He also said:

"The university has taken several actions to safeguard against a repetition. Among them we have established a board to oversee all activities in SL, and we require all students to conform to the university's code of conduct there or undergo the appropriate sanctions here."

So that means that some sort of oversight is ostensibly being exercised over these goons, and that they cannot act a they would on a real campus. Of course, on real campus, their physical ability to mount grief towers or disrupt events with giant phalluses would be restricted by physical limitations and the laws of real life -- they couldn't physically put up a tower. And if they could, somehow, they'd be stopped.

So I'd be interested to hear Dr. Rosen's attitude about the giant grief tower going up now in Furness, with lolcube flashing textures (made by Ben Linden) built by Alyx Stoklitsky, who also pretends he is innocent and never griefs. So...why is *he* building the grief tower? And also learn his attitude toward the abusive disruptive of a group event by another Woodbury student.

Fizgig is Back; Griefer U Resumes?

Hehe -- for all those who think that Prokofy has somehow used his special powers or special insider relations or special friendship with Lindens like Robin -- guess again! And my belief in the system -- filing abuse reports assidulously and getting justice -- has just been undone.

Guess who the real FIC is? Agent Linden has the land in Furness set to $0 to sale to...MC Fizgig. And MC Fizgig is back in the list. He is now sporting a new title on his profile, that used to say "Woodbury Administrator":

Chief Resident Executive (whatever that means)
Woodbury Island
Never-Never Land

And it still shows him as a member of Woodbury University. Woodbury still shows the same officers, from Alyx Stoklitsky to Madelena Rossini to Windowlic Klaar.

I immediately fired off an email to Dr. Rosen asking him what's up, since he had insisted that nobody had the right to buy or rent land on behalf of Woodbury. What's up?!

What Eric Erases: The Threat of Open Sims to the Metaverse

Eric Reuters has a good report on progress with Open Sims (reverse-engineered Second Life operating outside of the SL grid), but when I commented on the report, he censored it.

He returned my comment to me, urging me to remove the part about Intlibber (see below the fold). That was because he believed it was a personal attack, a flame, whatever -- and feared having that on his website. And that's how people are able to manipulate the press, and never get made accountability by the press or blogs -- because of fear and reluctance to take responsibility for what in fact is protected speech under Times v. Sullivan.

And that's why the press around Second Life, which becomes so supine, is really worrisome, as it stops behaving as it would in real life. I pointed out to Eric that this wasn't mere speculation, that Intlibber was already on the record for 2 days on the official Linden blog calling for a boycott of my rentals, in the malicious and false belief that I was "getting people's land confiscated from them." I urged Torley to take down this example of incitement and falsehood, and she ignored me -- although boy, she was sure quick to permaban me from that self-same blog for speech not a tenth as acidic or inciteful regarding libsecondlife and Corey's town hall -- remember? I then tried the inworld abuse report system and finally it was removed today.

Of course, for abuse-reporting the chronic griefers of Woodbury in SL, who we've discovered are not currently (and may never have?) represented Woodbury, and weren't authorized to rent or buy land, I take full responsibility, and if that leads to their land being seized because they are repeating the same bad behaviour that they engaged in to get their land seized last year, I can only say -- that's life in the big city. We need more spine like this from the Lindens, and less faux rights hand-ringing from blogs like the Herald.

Why should someone get to keep their land in Second Life and keep using it to harass and stalk and grief others, crashing their sims, destroying their Second Lives? At a certain point, you can't expect a landlord to allow a tenant who constantly destroys property and bothers all the other tenants to be able to go on renting their apartment. Housing court would recognize the landlord's right to evict such a tenant for cause.

Eric wimped out on this, because he didn't get it, and feared taking on Intlibber. But Intlibber's emergence on the scene as somebody very ideologically controlling, very much willing to use goons to attack others and to lie on the Lindens' blog, is the kind of person who really needs to be exposed constantly by the free press as a menace to the freedom of the Metaverse. If the Metaverse becomes basically an archipelago of these lawless egos controlling access to finance, housing, business, socializing, etc., my God, it will be a fearsome thing.

Nlogging with Scoble: An Electronic Gnosh

The other day we had Robert Scoble's chubby, smiling face in Second Life, in the form of a very lifelike avatar designed by Reuters' client Electric Sheep (I guess). Except, Scoble wasn't really "there" (in more than the way none of us are really "there" in "here") because an ESC staffer puppeteered the chattering cherub for him, while the real guy was in a stand-up with Reuters' correspondent Adam Pasick in Davos, arrayed against the awesome snowy mountains.

Still, it was strangely homey, having that avatarization of Scoble, who in fact is banned from Second Life for attempting to use it in tandem with his underage son at a tech fair where a Linden staffer spotted him and decided to make a big example of this former Microsoft big guy.

Like the curious puppeteering of Desmond Tutu by Reuters last year at a world media summit, even when he was repeated, and you knew for sure that the real Tutu was nowhere near SL, it had a curious realistic presence effect, something more than Madame Tussaud's wax museum, even something more than a replayed clip of a news segment on Yahoo News -- opening up the concept of having your avatar do stuff for you while you're offline like explain boring rentals info, or even, with AI, speak reasonably realistic clips for you, based on the input from your whole media footprint as scraped from Twitter, Google, etc. Yes, we'll live to see the day and it will likely have many downsides along the way (removeable of privacy and further control by coders or your personalized AI).

Meanwhile, the real Scoble was busy making me and other viewers a tasty electronic sandwich. While keeping one foot in Second Life, as it were, he peg-legged over to qik.tv to keep nlogging from Davos with his Nokia 95 which evidently enables you to broadcast from anywhere using your mobile phone and the link to a site like qik.tv (Scoble also uses kyte.tv and advertises from Twitter to get people to flash-mob into his interviews). (Every time I see that site, I think of "kiting checks," and how basically, these folks are kiting attention away from the big mainstream media companies, even those with Internet sites).

I call it a "sandwich" because of the way the layers pressed and mushed right up close *like this*. Here I am, 6 am, having a waffle and a Diet Coke sitting at my terminal in real life and whoops, I'm smushed into a live Davos scene. Because the next thing you know, this Scobleshow, which is a kind of window in the Internet through his phone on to the corridors of Davos, has the looming face of Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales staring into it. I have to say, I never focused on Jimmy before, as I'm not the geek that so many people are, and I was startled to see that he looked like he was on drugs, manic and red-eyed -- which of course may have just been the condition you get in, being sleepless in Davos. The other flash-mobbers were typing, "Hi, Jimmy, how's that new search engine coming along," and I typed: "Jimmy, do you read any newspapers? Where do you get your news?" I guess I just wonder how this admitted Randian shapes and maintains his worldview on a daily basis. We didn't get much from Jimmy but it was like, wow, the Wikipedia guy, and me, just a typed line away from being noticed by him!

The big takeaway from this little breakfast byte wasn't any answers to any questions - he didn't give any! -- but Jimmy's casual asides to Scoble. "Oh, I saw Serge and Larry," he said offhandedly, referring to the Google gogol-moguls (paging Vladimir Nabokov!). He then said something in a sort of comradely and confidential matter about "our industry" i.e. all those media thingies, of which Scoble is a big part. A sandwich with a telescope built in, to gaze into the sequestered and privileged world of these peeps who spent $16,000 to buy themselves a space as "technical innovators". Today, they're in the minority, sharing conference space with old-fashioned meat-world magnates like Greek shipping magnates. Tomorrow, they'll take over.

In some ways, I learned more from Scoble in those few minutes he was nlogging away, then I've ever learned about Davos even when I've chanced to work for people who go there. I always thought you had to get invited to Davos...it turns out you can buy in.

"The University Has Not Authorized Anyone to Represent Woodbury"

I hope I can put an end to all the nonsense around "Woodbury in SL" perpetrated by the b/tard griefers, the Herald, Nobody Fugazi, and Shaun Altman, to the effect that there is something "authentic" about this supposed "university" in Second Life.

There isn't.

I've just heard back from Dr. Rosen at the real-life Woodbury Communications Dept. Here's his reply to my letter:

Subject: RE: Second Life Harassment
Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 07:16:49 -0800
From: "Rosen, David" Add to Address BookAdd to Address Book Add Mobile Alert
To: "Random Unsung"
CC: "Clift, Edward" , "Littell-Herrick, Dori"

Dear Ms. Fitzpatrick,

In the wake of the recent events at SL involving a Woodbury communication class, I take your allegations seriously and will have them investigated thoroughly.

The university has taken several actions to safeguard against a repetition. Among them we have established a board to oversee all activities in SL, and we require all students to conform to the university's code of conduct there or undergo the appropriate sanctions here.

At this time, the university does not own or rent space in SL nor has it authorized anyone to represent Woodbury there. We do not and will not condone any behavior that would not be acceptable in real life on this campus.

I appreciate your bringing your concerns to my office. You did the exactly right thing. I will be back in touch when I have more information.

Best,
David

***

If you have trouble believing this authentic statement from real life, and can't seem to grasp how the goons have hoodwinked everybody, contact the RL Woodbury director yourself: [email protected]

Lindens Finally Take Action Against Woodbury Griefer U Ringleader

After my assiduous abuse reports and appeals for over a year now, the Lindens have finally taken action against a group of people who have been stalking and harassing me -- the so-called "Woodbury University."

Land bought in Furness next door to me in Ravenglass for the sole purpose of harassing me and my tenants has been confiscated by LL, in a move which some might find as suspect and controversial, but others might see as part of a growing willingness by Linden Lab to leave their hippie anarcho-capitalist technolibertarian days, and become a more established business determined to make a grid viable for civil society online.

For more than a year now (more like 2, if you start observing the harassment to which Hazim Gazov's earliest alts subjected to me), each time the Woodbury group harassed and stalks me, often on fresh alts, I have to spend days -- weeks -- trying to abuse report each little infraction, trying to get them to see the patterns. When I saw that Tizzers Foxchase was finally permabanned for harassing numerous people and groups, not only me and my tenants, I realized the Lindens may be finally getting over their hippie reluctance to enforce their own TOS in some consistent and systematic matter. They certainly have enough incident reports over a year showing that Woodbury is not a university, not involved in education, not doing any legitimate research, but only designed as a gigantic grief spoof to torment others and keep everyone tied up in thumb-sucking knots presumably about the rights of researchers, but they have been very, very slow to move -- until now.

Land of Tier Fee

A funny parody by Lindal Kidd, with apologies to Francis Scott Key, on the forums

Oh, say, can you see,
In the morning WindLight
What so fiercely we railled
At the last pixel's seeming?

Whose casinos and bars
Through the short SL night
Thru the banlines we watched
Were so laggily streaming?

And the griefers were there
While porn flew thru the air
And bots were a blight
And the campers on chair?

Oh say do my neighbor's
Tower'd ad farms yet spin,
O'er the land of tier fee
And the home of the prim?

Reminder of My Blog Rules

It's not easy putting a permanent piece of content on these blog sites, so I will publish the reminder again.

There are two rules for this blog:

1. RELABLE IDENTITY. You must post with a recognizable first and last Second Life name, or real-life name, or blogger's name. If you need to remain anonymous, go on your own blog. If you think posting here will cause you grief in Second Life, you're always welcome to send a private IM but don't count on me as an interlocutor.

Now, any person acting with good will and in good faith will understand this means that they don't take some unused SL alt and try to put over a post with it; they don't claim that their RL name is John Smith; and they don't make a day-old Live Journal blog with no posting or profile merely to claim they've obeyed the letter of the law.

It means what it means: a *recognizable* identity, which means it's reliable even in our virtuality, so that you take responsibility for your posts within a community of users, so that you comments attach to that identity.

2. NO DAMAGES. You must not incite or cause real-life or Second Life damages. So that means you must not repeatedly accuse me of libel, since that's incitement of a lawsuit causing harm. You must not repeatedly post material that will violate the terms of Typepad.com, which are fairly liberal, but still contain the standard blog type of restraints -- if you put 1,000 posts, that will be spam; if you write "nigger dick" like the typical PN, that will be removed and you will be banned. If you call me at home in real life, you will be banned. If you send me death threats on email, you will be banned. Damages are damages -- they're harm. They're not made up; they're demonstrable. If you have trouble understanding how your behaviour is damaging, perhaps that's why you are causing damage. In any event, take it elsewhere.

If you attempt to set me up to be sued by others by publicizing their real-life information, for example, you will be banned. I don't care, for example, about Intlibber's real-life information or the status of his family, or Christiano Midnight's real identity, or any number of other fascinating topics that people use to try to harass these speakers outside the realm of reasonable polemics and debate. Put them on your blog -- they aren't viable debate tools in any event.

So somebody who types ROFFLEKOPTER as their name is automatically a violator of Rule No. 1 -- banned. They can rant about how this is censorship, but they can go talk on their own typepad.com blog they pay for, and link to this one if they feel the need.

Or a character like the SL avatar Jim Schack, publishing material he claims is disclosure of Intlibber's life would have his content removed for that alone, but he'd also be eligible for a ban anyway for griefing me inworld, accompanying griefing posses to my sim to hover and harass me.

Ditto Alyx Stoklitsky, who has come along with the griefing posses numerous times and flown around and been a nuisance. To continue fussing about how this isn't griefing is to confirm that it is : )

Most people concede that people can do anything they want on their blog. I feel I have to have rules that are demonstrable guidelines that anyone can understand if they are in good will. I think they are great rules, and they help ensure freedom of speech, not end it.