Unwilling Subjects: Myware

The worst thing I have seen coming from Linden Lab in two years of being in Second Life is their current handling of the slstats.com affair. I'm very angry about it and so are many others.

Essentially what they've done is take a very controversial issue, that has very polarized sides to it and a lot of forums and inworld drama and a major Herald article, and let it be handled by Torley nee Torgeson Linden, with an astounding amount of insolent hubris, and even allowed the inventor of the controversial stats device, Mark Barrett, to dictate a memo while at RL work to Torley to publish in "Linden brown typeface" on the SL Answers, lending heft and authority to the stats exercise that it certainly *does not* have and *should not have* coming from Linden Lab, its board of trustees, and its funders.

This is a time when people need to scream very hard and very loud now about this improper behaviour and concept, or they will be seeing LL lose not only the trust of the community, but of the world at large by a rash rush to encourage innovation of the platform without any respect for the world and the people existing through the platform.

As I write, I'm wearing the slstats.com wristwatch. That's because I decided I wished to take part in this experiment and see its results. I don't come into a public space on the Internet expecting no one to gather my information. I take it for granted that more is known about me than I know about myself. Still, most websites and companies try to have some kind of standard policy, and that involves a default of opt-out until you opt-in. Information about my purchasing patterns gathered by amazon.com and served up to me upon log-in aren't available to the general public unless I wish them to be by making things like the "wish list".

A fellow is making a wrist-watch like this in RL, and he is calling his concept, "Myware" to imply that unlike spyware, the device will be voluntarily gathering all kinds of "useless information," the favourite term of people violating your privacy and not sure (or not willing to admit) how they or others will gather and analyze your information.

But in SL, you cannot expect your privacy in avatar form or your RL personal life to be protected. I've long ago learned the hard way that Nolan Nash can out my RL on the SL forums with impunity; that Cristiano Midnight can allow it to be published on his site; that Pathfinder Linden can stand idly by for days while everyone makes hay witch-hunting me on Google; that for a year later, people can continue to slander me with the wrong RL they find with a similar name on Google; to continue to harass and bully me in and around SL any way they chose with my RL and SL comparisons. If you think no one in SL can get ahold of your RL info, and that Linden Lab will stop the disclosure of that info; think again!

On inworld info, our expectations can't be higher, unfortunately. That is, the TOS and most of the practice most of the time (with exceptions like my case and a few others) more or less work to protect external RL private information. Indeed "private information" is a term in Linden jurisprudence ONLY meaning RL. There are occasional police-blotter notes of people prosecuted for disclosing RL information in SL -- I'd like to think since the protests I made about inadequate Linden protection in my case, that they worked harder to make sure this didn't happen to other people, especially on the forums.

Not so inworld. Anyone can look at your profile, your partners, your picks your groups and form an opinion on you and take notes on you, and many merchants can grab your avatar key and shopping patterns, just as SL landlords can grab your roomie information, payments, location, and online schedule. There's very little you can do about it; getting overly obsessed about it will only give you heartburn.

I'm a public figure -- very public. I come into contact with hundreds of avatars in the course of my business. If I want privacy, I go on an alt -- and if I really want it, I log off SL -- which is a public boardwalk as exposed as Brighton Beach or Times Square -- and even more so, given the data scraping capacities.

But other people I bump into, who are "seen" by what could be described as a two-way Dick Tracy Watch on crack, did *not* opt-in. When I spotted an ex-friend in the slstats.com lists who I know is utterly scrupulous about his exposure on outside Internet sites and such, I realized that something was happening against people's will. I examined it more closely and saw it hinged on the tripartite notion of gathering "friendship" data about people who spent long periods with the watch on with each other, who may or may not have the watch; people who both wear the watch and are "met" by each other; and people who merely walk into range, and are "seen" by the wrist-watch -- the largest category yielding the most scrapings. It's this last category that has no business being in this list, or scraped by this data-scraping device.

When the community weathered the avatar key scandals of last year, the scrapers and sneerers who called their fellow human beings wearers of tinfoil hats prevailed. In part they could prevail because a name2 key was needed to provide products from third-party shopping sites. Like the swipe cards in supermarkets, that made it easier to swallow for many people.

But a swipecard in a supermarket only records my brand of milk and what cereal I bought to go with it. It doesn't also report to a site Google could pick up about who I chatted with next to in line in the supermarket. Those comparing slstats.com to supermarket value cards are on drugs. The personal relationship data and reputational data scraped out of the pond of SL are nothing like your orange juice brand because they have to do with three things very precious to SL people, and why most of them are in SL:

o conversations

o relationships and networks

o location and movements

The scornful maker of this device and their backers retort that all the device grabs is known info, like your building score, your payment status (!), your name, who you stood next to. But it's putting all that into a searchable accessible data base and matching it with others' interpenetrating data -- the meta aggregation and analysis -- that really begins to trouble people. Information about their alts or rivals, for example, instantly becomes available if for example, their girlfriend is seen talking for an hour to a new friend one day who isn't them. LL doesn't allow the outing of alts. This service enables this, just like third-party sites who harvest IPs to match.

Many on the forums are confusing the Linden's right to take any and all data with *their own* ability to do this in a permissive atmosphere. This is what amazes me. They most certainly do NOT have this right, explicitly or implicitly -- but LL is to blame for not making a very clear policy on this.

When a sociologist comes into this world to gather data and talk to people, the Lindens make him jump through hoops and sign conduct agreements. Other analysts and journalists also find themselves being cleared and steered.

But all of a sudden a script kiddie tinkering in his basement is given a smiling and jovial welcome from Torley in SL Answers -- interpreted as the blessing of the Lindens -- to grab all the data without  first agreeing to any code of conduct.

He isn't sure what he'll be doing with it, as I found from talking to him. He denied any plans to sell the data to mall owners or prospective vendors looking for high-traffic sims with genuine, not fake traffic  -- but he doesn't explicitly state that he will not financially benefit from aggregating this data.

The privacy policy does not explicitly entitle third-party sites run by residents to scrape the publicly-visible data on the profile. Those scrapers then interpret that to mean tacit consent. I don't know where they can expect to assert the "anything not permitted is allowed" concept when it comes to other people angered at exposure.

They're angry. That's what matters. And they should get an opt-out as a default, not a cumbersome option depending on them even finding out about this service, they should get an opt-out as a default, with an opt-in as the voluntary procedure.

They shouldn't be told their concerns are just "noise," in the words of Torley, who is WAY off base with this one, and I mean WAY off base for a community manager in Second Life.

The backers of slstats.com are also clinging to Community Standards no. 4, which says nothing about the scraping, aggregating, analyzing, recording, or storage of profile information -- it only deals with RL info.

They hide behind this statement of LL's: "Remotely monitoring conversations, posting conversation logs, or sharing conversation logs without consent are all prohibited in Second Life and on the Second Life Forums." They say because nothing is included here about publishing relationships, who talks to whom, etc. that they are within the law.

But in one sense, recording the fact that two people spent 4 hours together, and publishing both their names on a data base to be available to anyone *is* recording a conversation -- the outside shell of the conversation, which is that 2 avatars are together. It's a private matter for some, they view as part-and-parcel of their conversation and private Second Life. Like sniffing packets, it may not be technically a reverse-engineering "crime" but it is indeed a grab, an overreach, and intrusion.

It's not ok to publish purloined convos on the forums; yet it is not punished to publish it on third-party sites. Indeed, I make use of this implied non-punishment by publishing chat transcripts that I feel are in the public interest on important social matters in SL.

At one point in the TOS, LL speaks of not being able to guarantee the protection of your private transmission from third parties; but the meaning there is of law enforcement and other outside RL institutions, not third-party fan sites.

Looking at the TOS, some have found this wording to contain language that out to shut down slstats.com:

"(v) take any actions or upload, post, e-mail or otherwise transmit Content that contains any viruses, Trojan horses, worms, spyware, time bombs, cancelbots or other computer programming routines that are intended to damage, detrimentally interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data or personal information;"

Yet evidently Torley's analysis and weekend deliberations on this subject are flying with the powers that be, and they don't wish to see this service as spyware, or as this very enterprising fellow who wants to do a similar thing in real-life brilliantly calls it, "myware".

Still others have found a tacit green-light in the TOS for slstats.com with this wording:

"6.2 Linden Lab may observe and record your interaction within the Service, and may share aggregated and other general information (not including your personal information) with third parties.

You acknowledge and agree that Linden Lab, in its sole discretion, may track, record, observe or follow any and all of your interactions within the Service. Linden Lab may share general, demographic, or aggregated information with third parties about our user base and Service usage, but that information will not include or be linked to any personal information without your consent."

LL, of course, is not "consciously" sharing this data; it is merely allowing it to be sent out automatically by scripted devices inworld. It is allowing the scraping of the data off the avatars.

I would like to hear from Linden Lab, not from college kids fooling around with scripts, about their attitude toward unwilling subjects. They don't allow unwilling subjects for sociologists to experiment on; why do they allow it for script kiddies at large in the world they treat as their sandbox? They think this data is inconsequential? Take the anger temperature of the avatars scraped against their will like this and you'll find it's not.

Sometimes companies have to back off from things they in fact see nothing wrong with internally when the public expresses enough anger. I urge everyone to express this anger by writing to privacy@lindenlab.com and asking for clarification of their policy about user-created third-party sites scraping inworld data of any kind, and whether a deliberate non-opt-out regimen is favoured and endorsed by Linden Lab.

Meanwhile, I'd like everyone to read this transcript showing below the utter hubris and utter cynical hatred of other users contained in these two very vocal forums backers of slstats.com I ran into at NCI (as you already know if you are tracking me on slstats.com).

The bottom line here is they concede: if they left it open for anyone to join; if they made it merely opt-in, they wouldn't have enough data "to play with" and make their experiment "a success". So they need unwilling subjects.

Don't be a sheep, even an electric sheep, and let yourself become an unwilling subject in the Metaverse. Write privacy@lindenlab.com today.

Karsten Rutledge doesn't care if anybody, including her RL boss, including YOU, thinks she's an ageplayer.

Note: there's ample reason from subsequent convos while I was AFK posting this to indicate that one thing the script-kiddies are trying to do is "crash the sim" as they often do -- provocatively push this issue very, very hard to see if Linden Lab, which  has been silent or vague, will be forced to make a definitive announcement policy. Tyren is also planning to promote a device to monitor and record chat and see how far he can get with that. Welcome To Tyren's Sandbox, unwilling subjects!

You: Tyken you have a seemingly limited understanding of the larger issues involved
in slstats
You: it's not the personal info of any one avatar
You: it can't get your CC
You: but the aggregate of the hive mind it keeps tabs on
Tyken Hightower: Oh?
You: and the connections it can demonstrate
You: yes
You: I've worn it and watched how it outs my tenants
Tyken Hightower: The connections are pretty irrelevant..
You: outs their affairs
You: outs their alts
You: misreports who is my friend
You: and reports my enemy who argued for an hour at a public meeting
You: and so on
You: people don't like forced opt-outs
You: it's spam
Tyken Hightower: It pretty plainly states that 'friend' only means people within
vicinity for 1 hour or more..
You: he should encourage people to wear the wrists watches
You: well that's bullshit as you know
You: it's called friend
You: that's how it enters the hive mind
You: and the worse most evil thing about this
You: is the way in which it will be used to do "governance"
You: by the "community"
You: with "reputation points"
You: which are all bogus and all suck
You: that have no concept behind them
You: which are just wiktatorships
Tyken Hightower: You must be joking. Like the ratings system IN-game means dick.
You: so it needs work
You: um yeah
You: der
You: until they are used for governance
You: then they mean something
You: and that's how the Lindens are shaping it up
Tyken Hightower: Nothing will be 'used for governance.'
You: have you studied any civics in school Tyken?
You: um guess again
You: read what he "dictated" to Torley
You: that was over the top
Tyken Hightower: People aren't willing to actually govern themselves in here,
otherwise we'd see land swooper being pushed the hell out.
You: when he did that bullshit
You: making Torley his secretary
You: I declared war
You: well guess again
Tyken Hightower: Torley isn't his secretary..
You: they indeed govern by publishign names of swoopers
You: and pressuring them morally
You: if not legally
You: Wrestling Hulka will never get a sale from me
You: or a buy
Tyken Hightower: Torley just makes her own point that she believes he's done nothing
wrong, and because of that, everyone thinks Torley is his lapdog. Odd.
You: no
You: he dictated text to her she published in brown
Tyken Hightower: I admit, those people are probably miserable fucking landswoopers.
Tyken Hightower: The ones on 168 hours a week.
You: um because she republished his note???
You: huh?
You: well no they just use bots to keep their multi-user avatar non-AFK
Tyken Hightower: Real people sleep once in a damn while. Yes, exactly.
You: they are like gold farmers
Tyken Hightower: Dragon Keen made a PM to me when I implicated land swoopers of that
in that very thread. :O
Tyken Hightower: What a dork. Just PM'ing me proves my point. I hate them all.
You: well perhaps they are crazy methed out idiots who don't sleep
You: I dunno
You: I think it's more likely they are boiler room accounts
Tyken Hightower: He said, 'ARE YOU TRYING TO TAKE POT-SHOTS AT ME?' Well, you just
made it look like you're damn guilty.
Tyken Hightower: They are BOTS. Fuck 'em.
You: when I have had to deal with them
You: I find their patterns of speech change
You: with Anshe too -- she's at least 2 if not 3 people
You: let me find the very dangerous thing that your big friend Mark said about
governance
Tyken Hightower: Well, Anshe probably isn't as bad about the swoop griefing, but I
don't like her anyway.
You: he's really a very arrogant and cocksure dickwad if I don't mind saying so
Tyken Hightower: Haha.
You: no she never swoops
You: that would be insane
You: there is no profit in swooping
Tyken Hightower: Yeah, she runs a real business.
Tyken Hightower: Dragon Keen and the plot pals are losers.
Tyken Hightower: Mark could well be considered an arrogant ass for doing what he
did.
Tyken Hightower: But the fact is, the data is all public, and according to LL, free
to post.
Tyken Hightower: He doesn't even need to obtain consent.
Tyken Hightower: So until LL changes its stance or says 'no sir,' there's no issue
at hand.
Tyken Hightower: So, I'm basically wearing this watch to panic people who are likely
to overreact about it. Press the issue and at least we'll get some official
statement. Or at least more forum drama, mmmmm.
Tyken Hightower: Hiya, Karsten.
Karsten Rutledge: Hey.
Karsten Rutledge: They seem to be getting this place filled up.
Tyken Hightower: Carl mentioned adding the mall part above soon.
You: Here's the evil part
You: "such as laying the foundation of what essentially is going to be a community
owned and regulated system using the potential of peer-review to hopefully allow
residents to do really cool things."
You: over my dead body
Karsten Rutledge: :P
You: people who loosely bandy around the term "peer review" have NO CLUE
You: what they are talking about
You: and I don't wish them to govern me
Tyken Hightower: It's basically like putting the 'my notes' profile tab on a web
page.
You: no
You: please
Karsten Rutledge: Does that have anything to do with the fact you would be rabidly
rated as a loony by most of the forum goers? :P
You: read it carefully
Tyken Hightower: What do you think it'll be used for then?
You: that's fine
Tyken Hightower: :P
You: they make up .002 percent of the users
You: the thousands of others who are my tenants won't be doing that : )
You: coders think they can always "make things for the community"
You: this is arrant bullshit
You: the "community" needs them not
You: they didn't get its consent
You: they mean nothing
You: they are just coders in their underwear in their mom's basement
Tyken Hightower: You seem to be in the 'privacy entitlement' camp.
You: why should I be having them set up my community?
You: I have this watch on
You: so watch out, you'll be listed as my friends in a minute
Karsten Rutledge: I couldn't care less, honestly.
You: I'll just work at exposing its idiocy and harm
You: yeah well people always let their freedom slip away that way
You: "I don't care"
Tyken Hightower: The wonderful thing about SL is that we have such freedoms. People
going out of their way to bring forth these sorts of systems are doing a favor to
the broad capacity of what SL can do.
You: "The guard is tired"
You: I didn't ask for it
You: it doesn't represent me
You: most of my tenants loathe the idea of being tracked
You: by a system forcing THEM to op-out
Tyken Hightower: You don't mean letting their freedom slip away, you mean their
privacy and opt-IN abilities, which never existed.
You: that didn't respect them enough to ASK for volunteers
You: no
You: they sure did
You: until last week
You: no one would know that some girl was visitng her ex behind her boyfriend's back
Tyken Hightower: Freedom is what you want to remove, privacy is what you want to
protect, don't misuse them.
You: would they?
You: now they do
You: no
Tyken Hightower: They doesn't make it clear.
Karsten Rutledge: IF she's embarassed about that, she shouldn't be doing it.
You: privacy rights exist under the tOS
You: no
Tyken Hightower: Perhaps her ex had found her and was harassing her.
You: LL can scrape data under the TOS
You: YOU can't
Karsten Rutledge: No they don't actually.
You: that's the other thing getting blurred ridiculously
You: Hardly
You: the point is the matching up of names and networks is pretty sinister for some
people
Tyken Hightower: Actually, it's not about LL. Disclosure is in the community
standards. Residents can post such information, minus resident convos.
You: and unfair to inflict on them
Tyken Hightower: And RL info.
You: They cannot post things about their alts
Karsten Rutledge: Yeah, everything on SL stats is public information.
You: exposing alts is wrong, and discussing private life on the forums is heavily
discouraged and is even bannable
Tyken Hightower: Also, give me your opinion on this: How would you feel about a
service that posted users wearing XCite products?
You: The meta-aggregating of the scraping is NOT however
Karsten Rutledge: And it's a third party site, so LL can do about jack-shit about it
anyway.
You: that's the malicious little prank you play
You: Yeah that's why I wage war on people with an attitude about "jack-shit" to
others
You: they are scum
You: inconsider of their fellow human beingsg
You: I can see where you stand on the food chain here
Karsten Rutledge: How's that war going? :P
You: pretty good
Tyken Hightower: The food chain, ehn.
You: I've kept Cristiano on the run and hopping for a year
You: so did you two graduate from college yet?
Tyken Hightower: So what about the XCite thing?
You: what was your major?
Karsten Rutledge: I'm firmly in the 'not-a-paranoid-psychopath-who-can't-possibly-
give-a-crap-about-this-nonsense' camp.
You: good
Tyken Hightower: I'm still in college, computer engineering major, I'm sure that
slumps me into your clear-cut categories.
You: I hope someone works especially hard to aggregate your data
Karsten Rutledge: Same here.
You: have they told your RL boss that you are an ageplayer in SL?
Karsten Rutledge: I hope they do, too!
Tyken Hightower: YOU ASSUMING ASS.
Tyken Hightower: Karsten isn't an ageplayer. Look what you just did.
Karsten Rutledge: Actually, my boss knows, we're a grant-funded research institute
that has two private islands in SL, among other grants.
You: I hope you don't mind getting your picture
You: taken
Karsten Rutledge: I sure don't.
You: because I'm a thirdarty site
Karsten Rutledge: Have a ball then.
You: and no one can do JACK SHIT about me, eh?
You: yeah
You: yes well grants are not everything in life, they come and go on a cycle, eh?
Karsten Rutledge: They sure do.
You: respect of your fellow human beings is forever tho
Tyken Hightower: Well, my picture is already posted in the forums with an ugly paper
bag on my head. And possibly in more embarassing situations. Not sure what you'd
want with it.
Karsten Rutledge: Yeah, you should get in on that sometime. :P
You: well I don't care about you or your private lives
You: I think you have no idea what you are doing to other people and it's your
utilitarian attitude toward them that troubles me
Karsten Rutledge: Really? Cause you seem awfully interested up until now.
You: Bolsheviks, ends justifying the means
Tyken Hightower: There are no ends.
Tyken Hightower: SL is a completely open community.
You: Just the endless gathering of data for its own sake
Tyken Hightower: Private islands were added so you could go hide in them.
You: no it's a vicious closed little walled garden
You: of freaks
Tyken Hightower: The rest of us can enjoy the freedom of the grid.
You: Freedom means freedom from coercion.
Karsten Rutledge: That makes you a freak too. :P
Karsten Rutledge: Welcome to freaksville.
Karsten Rutledge: It's a party every day!
You: It's coercion to have someone forcibly put your SL name into Google this way.
Karsten Rutledge: Yeah, bullshit.
Tyken Hightower: There's no coercion. You have no right to privacy from having your
SL data posted outside of SL.
You: They are right to resent that.
Karsten Rutledge: They can resent it all they want.
Tyken Hightower: They might be right to resent it, but they signed up for it. So
they're just dumb.
You: That's not what is implied by the TOS and the Lindens statements.
You: No they didn't sign up with YOU.
Tyken Hightower: It's not implied, it's explicit.
Tyken Hightower: Yes, they did.
You: They signed up with LL scraping, not YOU.
Tyken Hightower: It's the COMMUNITY STANDARDS, not the ToS.
Tyken Hightower: Read the item on Disclosure.
You: I'm so glad you can make these distinctions
You: but they aer collectively referred to as "the TOS" so no need to split hairs.
Karsten Rutledge: Also, LL has officially said there's nothing wrong with
slstats.com, so, uh, if they don't like it, I recommend alt+q.
You: I've read the materials ondisclosures.
Tyken Hightower: Yes, Alt+Q is a good deal for all.
You: I think you will find a sizeable body of people here and in the RL media
disagreeeing with you.
You: AltQ is what you all substitute for IQ
Tyken Hightower: Well, disagree as they might, they already agreed with LL and the
terms.
You: I'm aware of that
Karsten Rutledge: It doesn't amount to a pile of horse shit what anybody here or in
the RL media think.
You: you think you can just mute dissent or things you disagree with LOL.
You: You're children.
Karsten Rutledge: If LL says it's go, it's go. It's a private service, they make the
rules.
You: Oh, are you all powerful, Karsten?
You: Becuse you made the game Greedy Greedy or something?
Karsten Rutledge: Wow, random.
You: Could you explain why you are all powerful again?
You: I missed the memo.
Tyken Hightower: We're just some jerks who say it like it already is.
Karsten Rutledge: I said LL made the rules, where the hell did I get involved?
Tyken Hightower: You're just some jerk who says it like he wants it to be.
You: by saying it all amounts to a pile of shit?
You: and you decide?
You: well you are interpreting the TOS by your own desires and lgihts
You: I haven't heard LL say they bless the scraping of data by others
Tyken Hightower: We're taking the words directly from LL. :\
You: and the outing of the names on other sites
Karsten Rutledge: I'm going purely from what LL says.
You: haven't seen that
Tyken Hightower: They haven't said it's wrong.
Karsten Rutledge: They said it's cool, so there's nothing anybody can do.
You: if Torley Linden gushes about it, that's not an endorsement
Tyken Hightower: They don't endorse it, because they don't have to.
Tyken Hightower: Yes, it is.
You: oh, so they didn't say it was wrong, and that's ok?
You: anyone reading this transcript
You: will see the utter contempt with which you hold others
Tyken Hightower: Torley wouldn't make a statement like that without putting an
official comment from LL.
You: your fellow human beings here in SL
Karsten Rutledge: The Lindens said slstats.com was not violating the ToS in any way.
You: your scorn for their concerns
You: your unwillingness to create OPT-IN
Karsten Rutledge: The amusing part is that you're entirely missing the point.
Tyken Hightower: I don't scorn anyone, and Karsten is right.
You: no one could object to those wearing the watch tracking each other
Tyken Hightower: These PEOPLE are missing the point.
You: it's tracking the "seen" that's wrong
You: well they didn't miss it, they expressed their dislike
You: learn to know the difference
Tyken Hightower: Their dislike is also entirely missing the point.
You: did you miss the empathy stage as a toddler?
You: well it's just your view
You: there are those who dislike this
You: they have the right to ask for opt-in, not opt-out
Tyken Hightower: I understand why it would seem like I have no empathy, but that's
really not the topic at hand.
Karsten Rutledge: You know, for someone who keeps saying this is all about
respecting your fellow human beings, you're sure awfully empty of it yourself. :P
You: and they'l get their way, of that I'm confident
You: I haven't made an invention putting people's names into Google without their
will
You: just because they signed up for a closed, subscription site that promises
privacy
Tyken Hightower: Since when does google have anything to do with this?
You: it doesn't say "make an avatar and find his name in Google the next day with
names like Ima Trollope"
Tyken Hightower: LL never promised privacy of anything but that you provide to them,
and not to the in-game world.
You: because that's how people are finding themselves
You: oh but they do
Karsten Rutledge: No, but it doesn't bother you to avoid carrying on any kind of
civil conversation and instead resort to belittling and insulting other people.
Tyken Hightower: No, they don't.
You: they say chat logs cannot be disclosed
You: they say that alts cannot be outed
Tyken Hightower: Right.
You: and they do not imply any ability to do meta data aggregation
Tyken Hightower: But nothing about the profile stats and who you meat.
You: none at all
Karsten Rutledge: They do not forbid it either.
You: they do not allow you to be able to match up RL and avatar names
Tyken Hightower: It doesn't have to be marked as right to be right.
You: people don't feel that it is
Karsten Rutledge: And LL has publically said slstats.com is not a ToS violation, so
it doesn't really amount to a hill of beans what you or I think about it.
You: you need to respect that as a point of view
Tyken Hightower: That's the fun part about the experiment.
You: your utter arrogant unwillingness to do that is shocking
You: just shocking
You: it's hateful really
You: you cannot respect a person's wishes?
You: why?
Karsten Rutledge: I respect it as a point of view, I'm just saying it doesn't
matter. :P
Tyken Hightower: We do that in freakin' RL.
You: you can't play your game with the DIck Tracy watches by just doing it among
yourselves?
You: surely if it is so popular
Tyken Hightower: This is a place where people shouldn't have to worry about
experimenting.
You: you'll have many many signing up?
You: you won't have to scrape data from the unwilling
Tyken Hightower: So Prokofy, tell me your opinion on the other service idea I
mentioned..
Karsten Rutledge: I like how you're spewing venom and bile at me, and I'm not even
using a watch.
You: hmmm?
You: afraid you won't get enough subects if you make them willing?
You: eh?
Tyken Hightower: Listing all the avatars found wearing XCite parts.
Tyken Hightower: How would that service go over?
You: I have no idea
You: I can't imagine the Xcite people would wish it tho
You: they don't disrespect their customers' privacy
Karsten Rutledge: I'm not using the service, but I'm vile for saying that neither of
our opinions matter. :P
You: yes you are vile
Karsten Rutledge: Wouldn't have to be the xcite people doing it.
You: for defending the scraping of data of unwilling subjects
You: that's wrong
You: Linden Lab makes RL sociologists adhere to certain rules
You: when they come in here
You: they police them
Tyken Hightower: If this data scraping were more relevant, I'd actually empathize
with these people.
Tyken Hightower: But anyone can find this information.
You: what, a third-party site of kids scripting crap they don't half understand has
to go through less vetting than sociologists???
You: huh?
You: it is relevant
Karsten Rutledge: I'm not defending anything. That's the part that you missed.
Always with you it's black and white. I'm simply saying that it doesn't matter
whether any of us agrees or disagrees with it, LL has given it the go, and the buck
stops there.
You: in the aggregate
Karsten Rutledge: You seem incapable of comprehending that.
You: especially when it comes to this:
You: "such as laying the foundation of what essentially is going to be a community
owned and regulated system using the potential of peer-review to hopefully allow
residents to do really cool things."
You: THAT is where it will become truly dangerous
You: when you use this dump of ridiculous crap
Tyken Hightower: It's profile based info. The contours of who you meet have
extremely little provable or even useful purpose.
You: to shape governance
You: and reputation systems
You: when the 477 means something
You: and it will
Tyken Hightower: When you say governance, what, praytell, do you expect happening?
You: because you will enforce it
You: reputation systems created on the basis of an existing system
Tyken Hightower: Who will enforce such bullshit ideas?
Tyken Hightower: Seriously?
You: now answer my aquestion
You: answer it
You: you don't have enough willing subjects?
You: you have to take unwillling?
You: what not enough people would join?
You: if it is so right and so great and so popular
You: you couldn't do it that way?
Tyken Hightower: Hmmm..
You: well?
Tyken Hightower: Nope, not enough subjects.
You: ok
Tyken Hightower: :)
You: then why the hell do you have to inflict it on people?
You: taking unwilling subjects and chloriforming them to scrape their data?
You: they never heard of you
Tyken Hightower: What will people do with this aggregate data.
You: they look in Google to see if they are there
You: and they are
You: yes and that's the kicker
Tyken Hightower: You still haven't been very specific about it.
You: aggregated and analyzed it becomes more sinister
Tyken Hightower: Okay. How?
You: because it is based on one falsehood after another
Tyken Hightower: How would it be sinister?
Tyken Hightower: Give me some concrete ideas here.
You: it portrays people as groups of friends who have no relationship
You: perfect for mass banning from clubs
You: from private island rentals
Karsten Rutledge: OH yes, we're chloroforming you and scraping your data by
recording that we ran into you at NCI. Dastardly.
You: someone is shown as 4 hours with another
You: yes you are
You: not me
You: I have a watch on
You: I opted in
You: but [newbie]
You: did he opt in?
Karsten Rutledge: I dunno, let's ask if he cares!
Karsten Rutledge: He [newbie]....
You: did [newbie] opt in?
Karsten Rutledge: Do you care that the giant watch Tyken is wearing is recording
that he met you here?
Tyken Hightower: The sad part is that such paranoid generalizations are only
applicable to people like you. No one else who is that worried will actually analyze
the data in such a specific way.
You: no they will
You: the Lindens or anyone could create decision-making structures on this basis
Tyken Hightower: Club owners aren't going to go through those contours and start
banning people on the basis that someone might have happened to be in the same sim
as some griefer.
You: oh?
Karsten Rutledge: Naw, you just dropped in on the rantings of a lunatic conspiracy
theorist. Please carry on. :)
You: just you wait
You: you have no idea
Tyken Hightower: I'll be waiting.
You: you have never lived in a RL society without these protections you take for
granted in the US or UK
Tyken Hightower: Protections?
Tyken Hightower: Are you shitting me?
You: the protections of freedom and privacy yes
Tyken Hightower: The violation of my privacy in RL is a million times worse than
here.
Karsten Rutledge: haha privacy and freedom in the us
You: Bush doesn't record who you stand next to on 42nd street
You: no
You: you are naive children
Tyken Hightower: There are websites that know more about me than my own mom.
Tyken Hightower: In RL.
You: basking in the fake victim status of the most spoiled generation since World
War II
Tyken Hightower: Oh shut up, you're in the same boat, dork.
You: Most of all what I have ascertained
You: is that you could not have an experiment
You: if you had no unwilling subjects
You: only by garnering the unwilling and the indiffernt
Tyken Hightower: Congrats. So go find a way to prevent us from experimenting.
You: like any fascist government
Tyken Hightower: You'll not find that way in SL.
Karsten Rutledge: We should come up with some more statistical systems just to annoy
Prokface.
You: Your arrogance and hubris is what is most troublesome
You: THAT is the worrisome thing.
You: The actual data may never amount to much
You: you are clueless ijjits on trying to analyze conceptually any
You: you just like to do fun tekkie goofy stuff
You: but your ATTITUDE stinks to high heaven
Tyken Hightower: Sure. I get it, more, and worse violations of privacy down the line
as a result.
You: yes
Tyken Hightower: Oh noes.
You: this:
Karsten Rutledge: Can't you just FEEL that respect for fellow human beings, Tyken?
:P
You: the community governance
Tyken Hightower: If that happens, indeed, LL will draw the line somewhere.
You: oh?
Tyken Hightower: Governance my ass.
You: if LL is made up 1/3 of residents?
Tyken Hightower: People aren't willing to get off their ass and do such things.
You: LL is made up of people like you?
You: OK I'm done
You: Posting to my blog now
Tyken Hightower: Can I friend you? :P
Karsten Rutledge: Sweet.
Tyken Hightower: You're awesome.

Comments

[Tyken Hightower]

Way to:

- Make generalizations about my friend (Karsten) that many people would consider offensive,
- Twist and misinterpret quite a few of my comments; esp, crash a sim? I'm lost on that one; not enough subjects for our evil tests? no, at that point I was just eggin' you on; promote a chat-monitoring device and post logs? hell no, that's off the wall..
- Call Torley 'insolent;' how dare you to begin with, as if the authority on these issues was in your hands and not LL's,
- Misspell my name twice. TWICE. The 'r' is nowhere NEAR the 'k.' This is hardly ideal.

Also, I had been wearing an enormous oversized SLStats watch around myself with the floating text "I'm stalking you on SLStats.com with this watch! :D" pretty much for the purpose of exposing the issue to more attention and attracting this sort of bile. I thoroughly enjoy your paranoia. I'm also a huge jerk, sometimes.

As for your bit on 'governance,' I seriously doubt club owners or whowhatnot will be analyzing this highly accurate and oh-so-telling data to figure out what dorks to ban. But that's just me.

Finally, nice additional pot-shot at Electric Sheep. 'Boo' I say to you, good sir! 'Boo!'

[Prokofy Neva]

Gosh, did I make generalizations about your friend that many consider offensive? How could that happen? Why, I bumped into her in a game and looked at her and drew conclusions. Imagine! And...somebody could do that about me, too? Figure out where I shopped. What my groups are? Match it all up with who I spent four hours with in SL from slstatis.com? And gosh arooney, they could come up with the *wrong idea*. Imagine!

Isn't that *awful* how that can happen in SL! People jumping to conclusions...on the basis of somebody wearing a little-girl avatar! My word!

Um, "crash a sim," is what we like to call a "simile," a literary device. It doesn't mean literally "crash a sim" which is why it's in what we call "scare quotes". It means figuratively, cause a stir going against the grain, and pushing things to the limit. Which you are indeed doing : )

You don't have enough subjects, that's just the point. Counting a hundred avatars with just "who have seen" and excluding the "mets" and the "forced friends" from proximity, you have very piss-poor data. Not worth doing. Which is why you are doing it this way. For shame.

Oh, you didn't talk about a chat-monitoring system and pushing that? Here's your chat. Among other things, it shows your interest in making a "sensor" and pushing the limits; it also shows your ready zeal for jumping to conclusions, like "I'll bet so-so-and-so is an evil land-swooping scumbag" merely because he's online for long periods. So you're already prove to us just what justice and impartiality we might expect from having this data scraped by your, and in your hands and your friends hands.

Tyken Hightower: Hey, Prokofy should be happy that we're going to push the issue even further. If LL actually DOES something, it'll most likely be to his side's benefit.
Tyken Hightower: Why bother experimenting like Mark, when we can push the issue over the edge and get an official stance. Then all the arguing is over.
Karsten Rutledge: "Remotely monitoring conversations, posting conversation logs, or sharing conversation logs without consent are all prohibited in Second Life and on the Second Life Forums."
Tyken Hightower: I see.
Tyken Hightower: But I thought monitoring scripts were illegal in world, regardless of their purpose.
Karsten Rutledge: Gray area.
Della Street is offline
Karsten Rutledge: They're in pretty common use.
Tyken Hightower: Well, either way, we'd not be monitoring convos.
Tyken Hightower: Nothing to worry about for us.
Karsten Rutledge: A lot of store owners have them in their vendors and stuff.
Tyken Hightower: Yeah, I'd imagine.
Tyken Hightower: Brb, potty!
Karsten Rutledge: I think generally if the monitor is on your own land, LL isn't going to get their panties in a wad about it.
Karsten Rutledge: Not sure how much that's been tested though.
Karsten Rutledge: I think it's more that the monitors that exist aren't definitively known about, or in most people's cases, even considered.
Karsten Rutledge: So they never get reported and/or investigated.
Karsten Rutledge: It's hard to prove that an object was listening to you.
Karsten Rutledge: So they never get reported and/or investigated.
Karsten Rutledge: It'd be nice if we could beacon listens the way we can sounds and stuff.
Tyken Hightower: Yeah.
Tyken Hightower: Even cooler if we could sensor them.
Tyken Hightower: That'd flood the sensor, though.
Karsten Rutledge: Yeah, as if sensors aren't overused enough as it is. :P
Tyken Hightower: Oh, did you see the post where Taco Rubio blatantly named a land griefer?
Tyken Hightower: I thought that was pretty quality.
Karsten Rutledge: Yeah.
Karsten Rutledge: Taco's good stuff.
Tyken Hightower: Taco is hilarious.
Karsten Rutledge: Prokofy probably thinks he's an evil little naive child like us, though.
Tyken Hightower: Yeah, Mr. Prokofy. We need governance, it's a double-fuckin' edged blade.
Tyken Hightower: We need it to regulate scumbag land-swooping douches.
Karsten Rutledge: You thought of that too eh?
Tyken Hightower: Among other criminals.
Karsten Rutledge: Oh.
Tyken Hightower: Prokofy should support Taco.
Tyken Hightower: He hates swoopers too.
Tyken Hightower: I should so post that PM from Dragon Keen. I'd be so banned.
Karsten Rutledge: It wouldn't amount to much anyway.
Tyken Hightower: He'd feel mighty more awkward.
Karsten Rutledge: Not really, he didn't admit to anything.
Tyken Hightower: But everyone who would see the post already knows.
Tyken Hightower: Haha. Just PM'ing me implicates him.
Karsten Rutledge: Trivia in the scheme of things.
Karsten Rutledge: Probably nobody would care.
Tyken Hightower: The fact that he's online every hour in a week implicates him, and he denies it. How would a normal person stay online like that?
Tyken Hightower: I know.
Tyken Hightower: I just like seeing jerks get slammed.
Karsten Rutledge: With not much difficulty.
Karsten Rutledge: I'd do it probably if I didn't turn my desktop off at night.
Tyken Hightower: I mean, you NEED third party stuff to stay online.
Karsten Rutledge: Just stay connected and go to bed.
Karsten Rutledge: Godmode does it.
Tyken Hightower: Otherwise you'll idle and log.
Tyken Hightower: Well..
Karsten Rutledge: That's technically third party, in a sense.
Tyken Hightower: Doesn't support r disprove the theory, then.
Karsten Rutledge: The god menu can toggle off the whole idle/away situation.
Tyken Hightower: Yeah.
Karsten Rutledge: So you never get idle booted cause you're never idle.
Tyken Hightower: I'd sure like to have me some detatchable camera. :(
Tyken Hightower: And some working building tools and optional LOD. But ehn.
Karsten Rutledge: Yup.
Karsten Rutledge: When 1.12 comes out you'll have it.
Tyken Hightower: D:
Tyken Hightower: Err, :D
Karsten Rutledge: Level 200 godmode is builtin to 1.12, which allows you to use the detached camera and select limits.
Tyken Hightower: Hiya, Bugz.
Karsten Rutledge: The debug menu has a 'hacked godmode' option.
Tyken Hightower: I still find it funny that there's levels.
Tyken Hightower: Yeah, I played the preview.
Karsten Rutledge: Well, it just sets what level of functionality you get from the godmode.
Karsten Rutledge: Calling it 'levels' is purely arbitrary.
Tyken Hightower: Meh.
Tyken Hightower: Man, I'm so lucky to have met Prokofy.
Tyken Hightower: Now all I need to do is find Jonas and I'll be set. My week accomplished.
Tyken Hightower: Well, I need to get him to AR me first.

[Prokofy Neva]

Futher:

Torley is the insolent one, not me, calling people's concerns mere "noise" and taking dictation from a controversial figure simply because he couldn't just log on and type it himself??? Huh? It couldn't wait until he could get on line?

Yes, it's clear you're doing this to harass and provoke people into anger, something that is called "trolling" on the forums and is a bannable offense.

I find that despicable. You manipulative little prick. I'm glad to be explosing you.

As for the land swoopers you are so keen to prosecute, we can see now *exactly* why this program cannot be allowed to take root. People jump to awful conclusions. They'll decide people are land-swoopers merely if the are online. You are living proof why "community statistics" like this cannot be the basis for governance.

[Tyken Hightower]

Again, more misconceptions.

Okay, I wasn't clear on the 'crash the sim issue.' I understand it was a literary device, I just didn't much appreciate the way that sounds. Crashing sims is not in the business of anyone who can say they know how to script in LSL.

The subjects thing was me saying something random to egg you on.

Please reread yet again, for I never mentioned desiring to make a chat monitoring system.

Coming back to what Karsten said a couple times, way to show the respect and empathy to other that you expect them to show to you.

[Tyken Hightower]

To add a response to your addition to your response to my response..

Done with the Torley issue. Take it up with Torley.

I'm not trying to provoke anyone, I'm trying to bring attention to the issue, and yes, perhaps be a little playful. I'd certainly never outright harass anyone. But like I said, it also attracts bile, provoked or unprovoked, exactly like yours.

I admit that my perceptions on land barons, land sweepers, and the said numbers from SLStats are unfounded and just a weak-sauced conspiracy of my own (you should be proud of me!). I've not even had personal dealings enough with any such people to make such suggestions, so yes, I'm just some dumb jerk who doesn't like the idea of land swoopers. Sue me.

[Ordinal Malaprop]

I wish people would keep name2key databases out of this issue, because they're not really the same, except on the basis that they're out-of-SL databases of SL information (which is obviously not an intrinsically bad thing). In fact a full name2key function may be coming in in a future release, I've heard it mentioned by Lindens. Linking a key to a name isn't significant - it's just another unique identifier, you can't gain any information about somebody's activities by knowing their key.

Logging movement data, however, is. I doubt that slstats is going to become some vast grid-spanning surveillance network but a similar system could, quite easily, be very widespread - logging presence and uploading it is pretty simple and you could spread sensors around all over the place. Perhaps people could be encouraged to do so as part of the War Against Terror. Er. Griefing.

I can think of lots of "exciting" things that you could mine out of a large enough data set, regardless of *why* people submitted those data - it doesn't really matter, the importance is having a unified database. I am positive that I am not the only person in SL who does this professionally in RL, either.

Initially my opinion on the matter was "hmm", and then it was "maybe this should be opt-out" and now I'm actually leaning towards opt-in, and I hardly think I can be accused of being reflexively anti-technology.

[Ordinal Malaprop]

Oh, I see in-world that he's actually going to be releasing a traffic meter using the slstats interface - well, there you go.

[aEoLuS Waves]

Well you made a good point here Prok. Didnt see it that way. Although I love the liveblog feature I will "disable" my watch script and see what the future will bring.

aEo

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

When I first saw the "slstats.com" site, I thought it was a clever clone of the Xfire (http://www.xfire.com/) system — a tiny widget that you can install on your computer and tell a central server how long you've been playing your favourite MMORPG, and use it on cute signatures.

Since Xfire is Windows-only, it leaves out the crowd using Macs (or Linux), so I thought that SLStats could be an alternative, even one that had a big advantage: it doesn't install anything on your computer, since it's a in-world attachment, ie. no fear of virus, spyware/malware, etc.

The opening paragraph seems to indicate that:

"Second Life Stats allows you to see how much time you spend playing Second Life, and can even keep statistics on other interesting things! It does this using a small attachment that your avatar can wear."

So far so good... but the next thing that comes up by reading further was:

"At regular intervals (usually every 5 minutes) the watch script sends your name, key, location (including region name, position, rotation and velocity), the current time, the time passed since the last update, and a list of residents you've met to this web site."

Uh oh. The problem here is "a list of residents you've met".

So if you are volunteering your own information (like Xfire does), that's ok; it's fine to submit your own data, for a stated purpose (ie. allowing everyone in the world to know how long you're online).

But this device is not limited to that. IT TRACKS DOWN OTHER PEOPLE.

So, effectively every user of this device is an active spy — logging others WITHOUT THEIR EXPLICIT PERMISSION. And MAKING THAT INFORMATION PUBLIC.

Now, Prokofy is absolutely right when stating that this violates too many rules world-wide on privacy that not even a regular blog entry could cover them all.

Basically, SL Stats' tracking of information of specific avatars, with explicit correlation (ie. no anonymity of the data), without their owners' explicit permission (and lacking a way to give notice to people that they're being tracked and not providing an opt-out mechanism) is a violation of Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, which is implemented on national law in all countries in Europe, and through the US Safe Harbor Arrangement, extends to US-based companies as well.

Mark can however submit his organisation to the Safe Harbor list to comply with both US and European law. Under that mechanism, a method to immediately inform people that they are being tracked has to be implemented, an opt-out procedure (web-side form, etc.), as well as a method for the relevant US authorities to being able to verify your claims (ie. that you effectively remove people from your list that have not given you explicit permission).

One should check http://www.export.gov/safeharbor/ for more information; the submission form for registering a company with the Safe Harbor list seems pretty straightforward, and can even be done online.

This means that if Mark wants to be compliant with US and European law, all he needs is to fill some forms online, provide all required mechanisms listed on their system (ie. a way to notify an avatar that they are part of the list; an opt-out mechanism; and a way to allow access to the authorities to verify his mechanisms).

If he fails to do that, he's effectively violating all sorts of local, national, and international law on data privacy, deliberately and intentionally.

Linden Lab should have hardly anything to do with this; they're not "police" and neither do they interpret US (or European) law for us. I can't believe that Linden Lab actually posted something like that!

I have nothing personally against Mark or question his intent; naivety and ignorance of the law, however, are never mitigating circumstances.

I seriously encourage all of you to get in touch with Mark to ensure that his system is fully compliant with all applicable law. After all, he doesn't need to do much for that.

(BTW, his alleged opt-out mechanism is frankly not admissible; the page is not even clearly marked)

[Prokofy Neva]

I'm not certain that any of the law that Gwyn is citing is going to relate to a game or a virtual world at all. I'll bet it doesn't.

What I hate about this is the smug, nasty, condescending tone that these tekkies and their Linden backer, Torley, are taking on this issue -- and the automatic discounting of any criticism as being "uneducated". In fact most of the people criticizing or urging qualifications are more educated that these college kids and Torley, including in computer science, so I simply don't buy this line of reasoning.

They assume that anyone who criticizes this controversial system is technologically backward and full of FUD. They assume they have limitless rights to play with everyone's private data revelatory of their personal lives when aggregated, even if individually, they show nothing that isn't visible already. They also assume that they can deliberately troll and bait and incite the whole community to anger and force a Linden "reading" on that as we can see from my chat transcripts -- and that's perhaps the worse of their offenses.

People like to make social connections voluntarily, willingly, without exposure, in concentric circles of trust. People keep saying on the forums -- but they are coming on here to relax, have fun, fool around with friends -- not to be tracked. Something that constantly burns and exposes them and blows them out of the water, discredting them by being next to other people with bad reputations, for example, rips away that social fabric of trust. It's wrong.

My concern about it has also been more long-term, once I see the greedy, ambitious, power-mad desires of these people in grabbing hold of the "peer review" system and managing it. Hell, no. I don't want THESE people designing WHICH peers do WHAT reviewing, especially through IGNORANCE.

Why? Well, fortunately, we've had an early, visible, and very, very excellent of example of why you can't let stupid happy-go-lucky sandboxing script-kiddies playing with their tracking toys run your governance for you, because they are assholes at a very deep level.

Left to their own devices, they decide, based on a mere chance association, that anyone who is online "too long" in their view, like a Dragon Keen or a Wrestling Hulka, *must be* a low-life scum landswooping land thief.

Well, perhaps they are. There's lots of circumstantial evidence that they may be. I personally don't wish to deal with Wrestling because a) in general I find it distasteful to deal with avatars who deliberately chose aggressive names like that and b) when I asked him inworld if he gave back all swooped land that people objected to, I didn't get an immediate satisfactory answer. It's not because of Weedy's vicious campaign -- she has no credibility, either.

But that's just it. None of us have been able to property find the facts in these cases, to hear some kind of unbiased account of them, and to hear some competent deliberations of these facts against actual laws. And the fact remains, that under the law of the land, the short form of these stories is: tough titties. You are stupid enough to let your land go for $1 despite ample warning screens, then learn from your mistakes.

That some exploit these mistakes is aggravating, and a lot of hatred can be accumulated against those who do, but they haven't violated the law, and substituting lynch mobbing and social pressure on them for law doesn't make for a very good civilization, does it? Either education people to make less of these mistakes or start a Good Samaritin society to buy liquidated land back to give people, or find some other method. Screaming and hollering and bullying people and hoping that will substitute for good law and justice is the makings of a very poor world. Using police-state tracking devices to make the case for lynch mobbing is completely wrong.

I don't want a wrist-watch to be the thing that is taking the evidence in these cases. I don't want to be judged by my "wristwatch friendship" with Cristiano, nor will he want to be judged, either. Arguing in a public meeting strenuously and merely being within 20 meters of each other isn't friendship. It erodes the very idea of friendship and also undermines the social fabric. Saying that "well the system just calls it that" is fucking stupid -- YOU can call it something different like the more neutral Proximity. It is SO typical of fucked-in-the-head tekkies that they label something with free will, over which they have complete control, and then shrug later and say "the system just calls it that". Type a different word into the field, dumb-ass.

Another thing that is annoying is that these tekkies call it "useless statistics" with a big grin and nod because of course they know it will be useful if they can just grab enough of it. If they were so useless, why couldn't the just gather them from those who agreed to play the game, why capture every passer-by?

I blame Philip for this, once again, because he has overtly, enthusiastically, and deliberately called for "civic redress". That has unleashed the sniffing hound-dogs of trackers everywhere and created an enormous appetite to aggregate data and make mass ban lists.

He refuses to rule and deliberate and judge and manage and solve disputes. He is a bad King. But he isn't a bad King now willing to step under the authority of the Magna Carta, or cede his authority to parliament who could manage these things with other branches of government.

Instead, he urges the unruly mob to take these things over, mass-aggregating statistics using these types of wrist-watches and then mass-banning people. If someone wasn't going to ban a Dragon Keen before, now that he's been exposed as a bot-user, they will. Many people will be pleased at that use of this pernicious system, but all it takes is for one person who really did stay up for 20 hours to be registered on there, and for someone to determine they must be land-swooping or sharing account information, and their reputation is damaged. You can't undamage a damaged reputation easily in these virtual worlds.

Another thing that's hugely troublesome is Mark Barrett's idea that he can start anew a reputation situation of plussing, without any recognition of what went before in Second Life and how it was gamed and discredited. In fact, he incorporates the remnants of that gamed and discredited system still!

As far as I can tell, he never *explains* what the "SL Score" means and how he has compiled that, and whether HIS METHODOLOGY is subject to THE SAME PEER REVIEW HE'D LIKE US ALL TO LIVE UNDER WHEN HE RULES THE SYSTEM.

Many people will not want to live with a system in which every 3rd asshole can pin a balloon on you and say "you suck". People would react with immense hysteria about being negrated, which is why the Lindens completely defanged that system, making it stupid.

Any system will be gamed. But if you build it on a house of cards made up of all kinds of false data -- enemies called friends, sleepless nights in Seattle called land-swooping, proximity called suspicious activity -- then you will compound the error.

I do not wish to have peer review in the manner in which these assholes understand it as my governance system. Peer review will turn out to be whatever they feel like doing, imposed on other people they can get control over, however they wish. No thanks. Peer review often makes no use of the rule of law, has no agreement on standards to which all are bound, and amounts to tribal suppression of dissent and mob rule in the settings in which people don't understand its real-world limitations.

There's nothing intrinsicially beneficial in peer review by itself. In real life, the academic peer review of a journal, the government peer review of a system like the ILO conventions or the African Union peer review -- these are all systems that require lots of staff work, education, expertise, fact-finding, and guidelines. And none of these systems rule *the rest of* your life.

That's why I always object strenuously when Gwyn cites software company practices as a blessing for every thing LL does in SL, or when anyone supporting slstats.com cites grocery market swipe card practices. These practices *don't govern the aspects of your life that Second Life governs in your second life*.

As I've stated already; a grocery story doesn't record my chat for 20 feet or decide that the neighbour I sat next to who also has the card in her purse is "my friend" while we listen to music on our plaza. It stays out of my personal and social relations and sticks to my orange juice.

Peer review at a journal I might send my article to sticks to the article it hand, it doesn't see who my partner is, doesn't monitor my online time, or see what my orange-juice brand is to see if I've cheaped out and not bought the Sunkist. Of course, I'm well aware that the interconnectivity of the world so many seek will soon make it possible for me to apply for a job and have my future employer not only find out that I stood next to Cristiano for an hour in a game, but that I cheaped out and bought the White Rose juice, and find somebody better to fill the position.

Still for now, anyway, these RL systems *don't judge me* on the basis of the "useless data" they've garned.

Mark Barrett and his friends *do judge*. That's what's wrong with THEM and why the system they've made and the rules they create around it suck, and have to be redone.

[Tyken Hightower]

The only real part of this issue I care to be at odds with you about is actually still your bit on 'governance.' Whether the silly numbers or the new ratings system Mark has made for his service mean anything at all, I just don't see people being likely to apply them for any purpose. I seriously doubt anyone will even credit the ratings of a system which they already hate because it signed them up to have their own data tracked without their consent. Aside from that, even people severely lacking in common sense and intelligence would have a hard time taking *any* sort of ratings system seriously, when it's clearly just loose peer review. What some dork who barely knows me writes on me with his little pin-on balloon isn't going to change squat.

I find it funny that you still actually wear the watch. Abusing other people's privacy yourself, and all too willing to clamor only about the system that makes it possible. You wrote in your fourth paragraph that you don't come into this sort of world *not* expecting people to gather your data. So, uh, why have you changed your mind? Ugh.

[Karsten Rutledge]

I'm not an 'ageplayer', that was something you came up with out of the blue. You are correct, however, I don't care what you or anyone else thinks about me or my avatar. And yes, my boss knows that I run around Second Life with a kid avatar a lot. Guess what, doesn't bother him a bit.

The whole conversation centered around you berating us for not respecting our fellow human beings by using SLstats watches (which, by the way, I wasn't and don't. Good work.) and at the same time making every childish jab at us you could think of, from calling me an ageplayer to telling us we're naive children and worthless human beings. Hard to take you seriuosly at all, really.

On that note, something you failed to understand during the entire conversation was that I was not 'supporting' SLStats, I was simply pointing out that either of us can support or rally against it all we want, but it doesn't matter if LL has given it a green light.

Cheers,
Karsten

[Prokofy Neva]

You're a backer of this system, Tyken, and people call you Mark's alt you are such a supporter. Mark himself has said that the long-term social purpose of his system is to make community peer review. So I weigh in very heavily when I see such a crappy foundation for such a system, when he is justifying this as the end that the means must be put to.

The means are being laughed at now, like they are all stupid. But then they don't get so stupid when strangers see you roll in to their club or their rentals island and see you have thousands of negrates, or balloons that say you are a griefer or a landswooper. You can harm people forever with things like that *and they have no recourse*. There's no system of appeal or adjudication built in with this. It's just you and your pals goofing around and saying OH, wow, woot let's grief everybody with this invasive tool that we think is loads of fun and make them all squirm.

Yes, I'm going to go on wearing the watch and exposing what you're doing. I want people to become aware what happens. If you think it invades people's privacy and you can scold me for doing that, you are more of a dickwad than I thought, because you can slam others over a value that you don't hold yourself. It needs to be changed to opt-out as a default, opt-in as a choice.

I don't come into this world expecting Linden Lab not to scrape what they want, or expect residents not to be able to gather my name, my picks, my partners, my classifieds, my land groups, my information on my profile, my payment status, and to put it together however they wish manually on an individual basis.

What I don't expect or authorize though is for these unaccountable third-party cites, who flout the TOS impudently and aggressively, to harvest and aggregate and BENEFIT FROM, socially, politically, or financially, or in any way, what they themselves do not own. It's wrong. I haven't authorized them to benefit nor has LL explicitly said this. This issue came up with scraping the land menus and sniffing packets to take advantage in the land market. Taking advantage in the social reputation market and the commerce patterns market is no different.

If you can't make up enough data to be relevant with opt-in, you don't have a good device.

Karsten, oh, you're not an ageplayer? Well, I'm not a friend of Cristiano's either. And my proximity to Avatar12342 on the night of August 4th doesn't mean I have had an affair with her. And my 12 hours online doesn't mean I'm a land sooper if I'm AFK for most of that time. And lots and lots of other stuff.

So, see how it feels? Just on the basis of seeing you in a child's avatar, somebody has lept to a judgement! Imagine! But it's a virtual world where everybody can know everything about you, Karsten. What, you have something to hide? But you look like an ageplayer, just like somebody else looks like they're having an affair behind their boyfriend's back, or swooping and stealing land. Well, it *looks that way to you,* so those people are rightfully pounded, eh? Well, it looks that way to me, TOO. See how it works? I hope you do, asshole.

I could care less about your avatar or your boss. But you had better believe that just as you feel you have a right not to have anyone prejudge you or post-judge you based on a glance at your avatar from a casual encounter, they have a right not to be judged by a casual proximity to a watch-wearer. See how it feels? See?

You are naive children. You're spoiled brats. Get over yourselves and grow up.

LL has not given any green light. Torley has given it an enthusiastic and biased push and thumbs up. I believe Cory has mentioned it in his blog. But I don't see that as a green light. I don't see any evidence that they've studied the issues or heard out the OTHER side of the community on this. So I'd like to see the responses they get from people's letters on this before agreeing that they've given the green light.

Lindens give the green light to ageplay and to landswooping and to the Bush Guy's signs. You hate landswooping and think it's wrong and want to punish those people severely and viciously. Your hatred of them is immense.

Well, that just happens to be YOUR issue. For somebody else, it might be ageplay or the Bush Guy. LL does nothing. So you want community governance.

OK, then let's have it. I'm all for community governance as long as we ALL get to play. Have legitimate community debates and democratic participation and see just how much support you get for the wristwatch scooping data. Or about ageplay, where some communities simply ban it outright, no questions asked. Or about the Bush Guy, where thousands of people would wring his scrawny neck.

You dont' get to have "community governance" just on your issue and use it as a weapon to whack at swoopers, and then deprive everybody else of getting to use it to whack at scrapers.

Honestly, what do they teach you kids in school these days???

Lindens themselves cannot be tracked on it by default, unless they are wearing the watch. Interesting. So what's good for the goose...

[Karsten Rutledge]

Prokofy Neva said:
Karsten, oh, you're not an ageplayer? Well, I'm not a friend of Cristiano's either. And my proximity to Avatar12342 on the night of August 4th doesn't mean I have had an affair with her. And my 12 hours online doesn't mean I'm a land sooper if I'm AFK for most of that time. And lots and lots of other stuff.

So, see how it feels? Just on the basis of seeing you in a child's avatar, somebody has lept to a judgement! Imagine! But it's a virtual world where everybody can know everything about you, Karsten. What, you have something to hide? But you look like an ageplayer, just like somebody else looks like they're having an affair behind their boyfriend's back, or swooping and stealing land. Well, it *looks that way to you,* so those people are rightfully pounded, eh? Well, it looks that way to me, TOO. See how it works? I hope you do, asshole.

I could care less about your avatar or your boss. But you had better believe that just as you feel you have a right not to have anyone prejudge you or post-judge you based on a glance at your avatar from a casual encounter, they have a right not to be judged by a casual proximity to a watch-wearer. See how it feels? See?

---------------------

Exactly! Couldn't have said it better myself, the information on that site and on appearance means absolutely nothing. Glad we're on the same page now. And I think you missed the part where I said 'I don't care what you think about me or my avatar.' If it amuses you to jump to random assumptions about someone based on their appearance, run with it, doesn't bother me. Send me a postcard! I don't think I have a 'right' to anything regarding what's in your head. Think what you want about me, it's no skin off my nose.

You also keep conveniently forgetting I'm not using SLStats and not supporting it, but somehow I'm still worthy of being called an asshole because I don't passionately despise it as an evil monstrocity out to enslave us all like you do. You really are quite entertaining on occasion.

Karsten

[Prokofy Neva]

One can go on objecting that "information means absolutely nothing". But information becomes opinion when it attaches to the receptor nodes of mind-memes. Anyone seeing a child avatar in SL is going to feel revulsion if they are not happy with "ageplay" in SL which is a very creepy second cousin to outright child pornography. So you're on your own there -- you don't get to recapture people's impressions after the fact, and undo their sincere feelings. If you don't want people to assume you're an ageplayer, don't run around in a child avatar in an adult game.

Or how bout this? Make a Child Avvie Anti-Defamation League and fight for the rights of all people to wear child avvies without being discriminated against in the belief that they are age-players. See how much traction it gets?

The evil monstrosity isn't the data mining device by itself. It just dumply collects what is scanned into it. It's the *uses* to which it is being put, and will be put by *people* who are not good and in fact often evil in their intentions.

Their evil intentions can be seen in spades by:

o cocky and defiant remarks to any critics
o nasty, cynical, and trolling responses to people on the forums
o cynical and jokey text on the opt-out dialogue box
o hateful and aggressive vigilante campaigning against landswoopers
o a plan for a community peer review system based on a reputation system

When you behave badly, cynically, aggressively, and insensitively, gosh, don't be surprised when people think your intentions are evil.

The happy-go-lucky attitude about "well, let's run it up the flag pole and see if anybody salutes" is typical of tekkies just making bombs and seeing what they do when they blow up. They don't care what effect it has on people. I don't understand how such irresponsible and unaccountable technicians are being created in our RL society. I'm thinking they just don't have any real input from parents and schools anymore and are raised entirely by the Internet itself. So we get what we get.

Yes, you're an asshole, Karsten, for aggressively defending this device, even if you don't wear it, without conceding that there might be some measures to mitigate concerns.

And I'll bet you're like a lot of arrogant tekkies who go to great lengths to mask their own IPs with anonymizers when registering for sites, and do all kinds of things to hide data scraping of themselves, and then cynically tell everybody that they're wearing tinfoil hats if they complain about data harvesting. Fuck you.

The Lindens in fact are essentially like that, by saying that they have the right to scrape data, but we when someone invents a data scraper like slstats.com, the first thing we discover about it is that Lindens are immune to it.

So if the Lindens give slstats.com their blessing, I want them to turn off whatever makes them immune to scanning, too. I want to see just who is proximate to them, and for how long : )

[Tyken Hightower]

Newsflash: SL information != RL information. Having your RL personal info outed, sold, misused, or aggregated would be far worse than SL info. So don't compare or ever make remarks breeching the gap between the two. I'm sure you've experienced that at one point, like most of us have, right? I'm sure you understand the difference.

Also, apparently news to you, Lindens have been immune to llSensor() for quite some time. That's how the device scans other people, you know. llSensor() is unable to detect the source of the scan (the object calling the function, meaning the person wearing the watch), so instead of sensoring them it just gathers their information plainly and sends it out. That's why Lindens appear 'immune' unless they wear a watch themselves. As if it makes a difference, it's their own creation after all.

[Prokofy Neva]

Guess what, you're wrong! If one party in an SL relationship/circle/group/proximity range is a person who *has* given out their RL/SL connection, then everybody else in the scanner suddenly gets a connection to that person. That person, who made the connection between SL/RL -- or had it made for him against his will, as has happened to me and others, then drags along into the net everybody else who touches him.

Furthermore, outing of RL and trying to cadge details about RL is the forums sport of choice in the official forums and third-party forums. Both LL and these third-party sites are guilty of circulating big email lists in mass-mailings that out some people's work emails, leading griefers to discover of RL/SL connections.

If anybody really sat down and made a study of the RL/SL interface, they'd find it is as leaky as a sieve.

Tekkies of the sandbox script kiddie variety have infinite scorn of people who accidently or inadvertently, leave clues to their RL identity around. But they are usually found by vicious manhunts. Somebody's jpg address on their site housing a photo; somebody's work email given when an email contact was asked for somewhere; somebody's occupation or location put together with other data bout them -- perhaps they had the same handle in another game, etc. etc.

The SLCC is also a venue where everyone gives real names to sign up, and of course presents their real bodies. And the Herald is there to take pictures, and the fanboyz have the cameras rolling endlessly and they cackle over the footage all year long and make endless swipes at people all year long for the way they look in RL.

It's an awful hatefest. Constant speculation is made of people's real lives. There is no culture accepted that people should cease that and make a sharper division between the two. It's because breaches of the division are not swiftly and effectively made on the forums by the Lindens.

It wasn't just news to me, but NEWSFLASH it was news to a Linden I explained the watch and the issues to.

If it is easy to set LSL commands not to operate on Lindens, then it should be easy for all people in SL to do the same thing. Except that Lindens, who want the ability to track everybody, for good or for ill, will not enable that to happen. So I'd like to hear their plan for how they will keep malicious types like you from doing it.

[Karsten Rutledge]

Prokofy Neva said:

Yes, you're an asshole, Karsten, for aggressively defending this device, even if you don't wear it, without conceding that there might be some measures to mitigate concerns.

And I'll bet you're like a lot of arrogant tekkies who go to great lengths to mask their own IPs with anonymizers when registering for sites, and do all kinds of things to hide data scraping of themselves, and then cynically tell everybody that they're wearing tinfoil hats if they complain about data harvesting. Fuck you.

-----------

Hahaha, you're hysterical. I'm not defending the service, and I haven't from the beginning. I'm not using it either. I only said it's out of our control, and that I personally don't give a damn about it. If that's 'defending', then I guess I'm guilty as charged.

I also don't care if he makes an opt-out function, or makes it opt-in to begin with. While that would be a good faith gesture on his part, he's under no obligation to do so. But that's more 'defending' in your view, since I'm just making a practical observation and haven't readied my torch and pitchfork at your behest. My apologies.

And nope, I'm not. I use no anonymizers and I sign up for everything with my real name and contact information. Doesn't bother me. I also said I entirely respect your right to be incensed at the service's existence, it's a shame you can't respect my right to NOT be incensed at it. My only point all along from the original conversation was 'Neither of our opinions amount to a hill of beans if LL OKs it.' We can agree or disagree with them doing so, but it doesn't change anything either way. Be vocal about it if you want, make it heard, but calling people assholes, naive children, whatever else, for not agreeing with your opinion reflects more on you than it does the people you're attempting to belittle, and accomplishes nothing to boot.

Cheers,
Karsten

[Tyken Hightower]

Yes, Prokofy, life is full of sad people who want nothing more than to speculate about you, hate on you, criticize you, and just insult you.

This is especially likely to happen to someone who vehemently defends their convictions and beliefs. You can't carry the torch and hope that somehow you aren't illuminated.

Of course it's a miserable thing when someone goes out of their way to make connections between someone's avatar and their real life, then uses that to antagonize and belittle. But miserable things are done by miserable people. They can speculate and hate all they want, but people have been doing that to each other from the time they had just gotten out of their diapers.

Being able to tell all about who you really are and accept all that comes with it, both the praise and the venom, is a wonderful thing as well. People go to the SLCC with all of the good aspects in mind, but you can't expect the excrement that comprises the 'fanboyz' to go away if you're unwilling to show them your face and put up with their mud-slinging.

The Lindens do try to encourage the better half of this spectrum, and yes, you're right in saying that they don't also discourage or even punish the worse half. But their world is just an experiment, and they're just giving it some direction to flow, not pouring it into a mold.

I know I've been a fair amount of mean and short-sighted. I antagonized you in our conversation, and I probably overreacted much like the people on the other side of the issue seemed to do. I don't mind being accused of whatever you so choose, especially since I have terrible first impressions of most people and issues, but I'm not deliberately trying to be part of the excrement.

[Prokofy Neva]

Of course you're defending it, and you did as I stood there in NCI the other night. You're are a disingenuous ass. It is not "out of our control". Just because some asshole tekkie inflicts some scraping device on us all doesn't mean we have to roll over. Just because the Lindens haven't responded yet or grapsed the problems entailed doesn't mean we have to resign ourselves to this status quo. We don't at all in a world that is ALWAYS changing and often *with our pressure and involvement*.

Don't confuse a robust push-back with somehow "lack of respect for your position". You're entitled to it. Indeed, you have it, no? Has anyone taken it away from you? No, of course not.

You *are* an asshole and a naive child, and your behaviour in world, and not only on this occasion, bears that out for me, repeatedly.

Being able to tell all about who you really are and accept all that comes with it, both the praise and the venom, is a wonderful thing as well

I don't think that anyone in SL should be FORCED to concede any higher valuation for "real life in second life" with their real names, and be made to feel that they are second class citizens. The whole premise of SL is that people can have SECOND lives.

LL goes to a fair amount of effort protecting privacy and not letting people be spammed in world our outworld.

So they'll definitely need to step up and look at the issue of third-party sites.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

hello prokoshit, seems as usual you can't spend one week with your mouth shut and need to drible on another person?

You are an asshole and a stupid child although you are closer to the grave than i am.

[Ordinal Malaprop]

Word is now on the forums that the "opt-out" does nothing of the sort, although I have yet to confirm this personally.