Protests Against Ad Farms Gathering Steam -- and Steampunks

Various protests against the ugly and devaluing ad farms in Second Life are heating up.

Steampunk Genius Ordinal Malaprop revived her Flickr group against grief-builds, and spotlighted the nasty Cytherea Eagle -- who I tangled with in the past as you can read about here. Ms. Eagle claims she's raising money for the American Indian Movement (AIM) with her sign extortion -- hey, that's of a piece with this group that is known for its violent incitement. Boycott both the RL and the SL variants -- there are many better ways to support Native Americans.

Good for Ordinal! And Cytherea tried to pull a really low stunt on Ordinal, issuing a DMCA takedown notice to Flickr over Ordinal's mere *reporting* of this ad-griefing, claiming it was somehow "misuse" of a company logo. Huh? That company logo already gets denigrated daily by being situated in an ad farm field with the land set to sell for extortionist prices.

Rik Riel took up the cause of reprinting this DMCA-able photo -- and so did Hamlet Linden, who usually sneers at protests he doesn't like, but this one was cool because it involved his own writer. There's even an SL forums drama thread, reports Rik.

When I can figure out which picture to post, I'll post it too, but following links gave me notices that I have to log on, and I don't like Flickr, I once tried to make an account and it lagged on me and never seemed to confirm full permissions and I gave up.

We held a demonstration tonight at Governor's Mansion --about 16 people were there, one enterprising fellow with a protest sign made to look like Umnik Hax's odious smiley face. Khamon Fate also showed up with enough spinning signs to pose as one of Cytherea's extortionist ad farms, though he had all generic textures.

I urged everyone to vote for VWR-4121 -- my JIRA proposal to enforce existing TOS language against spam and disturbance of the peace. That's just one idea how to fight the ad spam -- go to the JIRA and type in "ad farms" to see all the issues and the Meta issue and vote for whatever you can back.

There's some stirrings here and there that the Lindens are trying to figure out what to do about this, and maybe planning some kind of action. Hey, having whetted their appetites on banning ageplay, casinos, and banks, they're on a roll. Why not ad farms, which devalue land and prevent people from buying on the auction? The infestation of cutters and extorters is especially bad up in the northern growing tip of SL.

Some Lindens like Blue and Robin have actually solicited commentary and discussed the possibility of some kind of zoning, say, premium sims that you could buy on the mainland but be assured that you'd be free of ads.

I've made a proposal for how to do that here.

A sign of actual Linden turning around on this can be seen in Hamlet picking up the issue lately -- His Master's Voice and all that. He's done a story on Rik Riel; an artist with a clever way to comment against ugly red ban lines was fodder for one column; but of course, being around for awhile in SL, I know what Hamlet's real attitude is to bourgeous property owners and protesters. Yeah, it's helpful to remember how Hamlet covered the Bush Guy, sneering all the way that protest wasn't significant or coordinated, and of course, hinting that to protest the blighting Impeach Bush signs was somehow politically incorrect.

I think we'll be seeing more and more protest though, and Hamlet, like others who are cynical about Second Life "bourgeous" interest politics, will be forced to concede that the days of the Burning Man sort of nihilistic approach to the landscape are over. If you want to make some big burning tower of trash, do it on your own island, don't inflict the blight and the lag on your fellow residents on the Mainland. And certainly don't expect to hawk ad land for $9935 or $10,000 or $10,000 when it is not even worth $154 Lindens -- extortionist prices reveal the real motive for cutting up land and uglifying the landscape, trying to make people "buy back the view".

Comments

[Prokofy Neva]

I'm wondering out loud if either Hamlet or Rik Riel would have taken up the protest against Cytherea Eagle if they knew they were going to be tangling with a politically-correct Native American cause. Can't wait to find out.

I'm also thinking, re: Hamlet's reflections about gun-shy corporations fearing that every screenshot in SL is a lawsuit, that this is all about avatar rights again, either the world all belongs to LL (and they can all follow Hamlet's horrid example, crediting Linden Lab for screenshots (LA Times did the same today on the banking story), or they can credit the avatars. I think screenshots should credit avatars if somebody lifts them off a blog -- but this comes back to Anshe's illfated takedown effort against the Sydney Morning Herald and others who printed unflattering screenshots of her penising in SL. That was universally condemned, because it was viewed as a very good "fair use case" -- and fits in with all journalistic practice of taking pictures of newsworthy public events.

Surely the thing to do when you have a cunning and malicious actor like Cytherea Eagle is to overwhelm her low-life little system. I think we should all screenshot her ad farms and put up posters of it with protests on our land -- keep her busy filing ARs forever.

[Khamon Fate]

Considering that Linden Lab effectively locks the value of the linden by selling on the Lindex, capping the price of Mainland per square meter makes just as much sense. Combined with enforcement of the ToS concerning ad farms, they'd see extreme growth in resident-to-resident transfers due to guaranteed view and reasonable price anywhere they wished to move.

We used to move around quite a bit as projects were completed and people shuffled into new groups to start the implement the next innovative idea. Even blingy homemakers would migrate to beach or mountain or roadside or snow for a season, build and decorate, then pack up and choose another haunt. It was quite compelling to witness such a productive period before the virtual world (Mainland) became the dumping ground of children.

[Fleep]

This is certainly an issue that affects everyone who has property on the mainland and I've recently begun filing abuse reports for adult entertainment ad farms in the PG sims surrounding Chilbo. Ad farms are bad in general, but the sleazy adult ads with women in contorted positions in PG sims really get my goat.

[economic mip]

The story I have about ad farms goes back a few months. In September I complained that I kept running into slot machines (on Governor Linden Owned land) on one of the snow sims. The result was that the Lindens sent in their automated no gambling software, and got rid of EVERY object on the sim with scripts, textures, or lights in it (except ironically the slot machines) the few active residents of this sim did not complain, and about half sold for prices well above the normal snow price before the Lindens corrected the error two weeks later. I tell this for two reasons:
1. It shows that people are quite happy to have their neighbor's junk and these signs removed.
2. A similar automated system will likely go after ATMs today, so be alert.

[Ordinal Malaprop]

Thank you kindly for mentioning this. I have refrained from posting anything on my own Journal, as I had decided to wait for Yahoo/Flickr's confirmation of the exact details of the DMCA request - were it to have been so - and fill in my own counter-claim.

However, while they were very quick to respond saying "sorry for not informing you and we will find out what happened", they are apparently not so quick at finding out what happened, and thus I will have to both chase them a bit and also I think write my own post.

It is not so much the idea that Yahoo/Flickr have taken down my pictures that irritates me - it may have been done on a frivolous legal basis on the part of the original filer, Ms Eagle, but a company must comply if the right forms are filled in. I was not informed, though, as I should have been under the regulations, so that I could submit my own counter-notice and have the pictures put back up. I was left to find out by someone mentioning in passing that they couldn't find the pictures concerned.

Of course, this sort of inefficiency is nothing compared to the sheer gall of somebody both being an ad griefer in the first place (in fact, I noticed the particular location because of another forum thread where she said quite openly that she had made those ads particularly laggy to have a go at somebody who lived there) and then abusing what is already an easily-abused law to have criticism stifled.

Incidentally, the ads which caused the whole kerfuffle are I still believe still there, at Foxboro 103,48.

[Rheta Shan]

It’s high time the Lindens install some kind of zoning on the mainland. As a mainlander myself, I am surrounded by ad farms on my plot, and I cannot see how these would contribute anything to SL. This is simple spamming, if you ask me, and it does not deserve to go on any more than email spamming does.

@Ordinal : good luck with Flickr and the DCMA notice. That was a really low blow.

[Laetizia Coronet]

I'm with you on this and Fleep, if it's any consolation, I'll have a look around Chilbo, send some ARs if warranted and maybe get some fellow mentors to do the same.
Feel free to let me know of any other offensive ad farms. Stress on offensive - normal ad farms are of yet not a ToS violation.