Reply from Philip Linden on Graffiti Incident

On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 1:13 PM

Dear Philip,

I haven't spoken to you in awhile. How are you doing? I see you're hard at work on the Snowglobe.

I was sorry to miss SLCC but I had to boycott it due to the decision to have Ray Kurzweil as the keynote speaker. I find him morally reprehensible, so I take a stand where I can.

There's a claim everywhere now in the blogosphere that you authorized the Woodbury University "Party Bus" to pull up and park at the Linden Lab parking lot and also that you gave the go ahead for the gang there to put graffiti all over the walls of the LL building entrance in RL.

Is that true?

Also, there's a claim that Lindens participating in this authorized prank put up the tag BAN PROK with your consent.

Is that true?

Just thought I'd check. Of course, if for any reason you wanted to stop taking my tier and having me take care of hundreds of SL customers, you can always pull the "any reason or no" reason lever, nothing I can do about that.

But having some kind of sub rosa incitement like this merely whistles to griefers to come and harass me incessantly. I have dozens of them from Woodbury University deluging me with chat relay spam, harassing me and my tenants with obscene textures and self-replicating prims, and killing my AI sionChickens -- they even landed a submarine on my homestead and killed all my chickens and I couldn't ban or eject or remove their prims because they use the Emerald/Hacked-up Whatever viewer which evades estate bans and stuff.

This is all I have ever gotten out of opensourcing the viewer,

Cheers,

Prokofy

Hi Prok!  I just got back last night from a camping vacation (I left immediately after my talk at SLCC saturday morning), so I haven't heard or seen anything about this. I remember being asked by someone whether it would be OK to come by to visit the office with a bus, and I said it sounded fine but that going into the LL office wouldn't work because we couldn't give tours, etc.  Not really sure why anyone would even bother to ask - it's a public street.  I certainly didn't approve graphitti (or hear any mention of it).  From this picture it  looks like chalk - at least I certainly hope so!   It would never be OK for a Linden to  write something like 'Ban Prok', or for that matter anything desparaging about a resident. I wasn't there so have no idea whether any Lindens were there at the time.

I'm sorry that someone wrote that - not nice at all I agree.  As to folks using alternative viewers that 'evade estate bans' - that should not be possible, and if it is we need to fix it.  Can you send me more info on how to repro using that viewer to get around any sort of security stuff?  That isn't OK - server should be able to respect bans and the like regardless of viewer.

Philip

  

Dear Philip,

Thanks for your rapid reply.

You have to realize that the Woodbury University gang are heaping scorn and hatred on
anyone who questions this incident because they say it was completely authorized by you
and other Lindens.

See for example this blog comments
http://www.adric.us/2009/08/19/what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-your-idiots/
or on my blog:
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2009/08/ban-woodbury.html

I figured there was more to this story which is why I decided to ask. I totally
understand that you cannot really say no to someone asking to park a bus on a public
street or even in your parking lot, if you have one there, especially during the annual
meeting where you hosted residents.

You can see the culture of some of these woodbury/PN/4chan people, however, who are
hateful and nasty even to you in your opensource SL Dev list, where 20-something ignorant
thugs take swipes at someone of your stature and experience with breath-taking vulgarity.
Given that you have "benevolent dictator status" in your opensource movement,
I'm surprised you don't smite them. I'm actually myself not for smiting, I'm for due
process and the rule of law, but we don't have that in Second Life (yet).

I'm glad you think "it would never be ok" for a Linden to write something
disparaging about a resident. But of course, they do. It's a big place. There are
hundreds of staff people. They have uneven levels of training and experience and ethics.
You can't expect them to have read the Tao or even to understand what a Tao is if they've
been raised on the  Internet.

Take somebody like Rodney Linden, an anime comic cult hero beloved by the Woodbury goons
who thrive on anime and hentai as their culture. Rodney may not be captured on tape as
inciting or participating in griefing of me, but he is holding the cloak when he pals
around with Tizzy Teardrop and specifically comes to a sim where I'm working and makes
insolent comments. What's up with a Grip Reaper avatar with a giant scythe anyway? Is
this the image you want to project to the public? Worse, if Rodney Linden Fan Club is
filled with chicken-killers I've just spent days documenting as griefers, and I ask about
this in the group, and confront Rodney with having people like this in his group (where
he is the founder!), his ejection of me and forcing through a false TOS violation warning
with lightning speed makes me ask for an investigation of his and/or other Lindens
involved in giving a pass to griefers, or even inciting them.

You are always telling us to change, Philip. We're always supposed to adapt. We're
supposed not to get attached to our little shack on the frontier as New York City is
being built.

But what about you? Will you change? Will you drop these destructive, sandbox hacker
cultural tics and stop tacitly if not openly inciting griefing? The people in your Code
Cave are disgraceful. Arrogant, swaggering asses. Bullies on the JIRA, where they ban or
silence arbitrarily and only casually remove hack patches weeks after the fact.

The Woodbury group had their sim once confiscated by Linden Lab due to their constant
crashing and griefing, and in 2005 you expelled 30 w-hat griefers and closed Voted 5, the
b-tard group. Why do you let Woodbury back with Tizzers Foxchase (permabanned) in on an
obvious alt? These groups are all merged now (see Digital Woodburyhat). Woodbury
University in fact is a closed group, where only officers such as Tizzers can issue the
invitations. If he issues dozens of invitations to day-old alts that come and grief and
kill my chickens, that's complicit obviously, and no accidental "grief by
association". It's a conspiracy group used for comms and plans and reinforcement.
You need to break it up at its source. The issue is not that they will "come back
and make a new one" because they rely -- again -- on the branding, comms,
connections of the old groups you allow to persist.

The issue here isn't writing some graffiti which is easily washed off with water. The
issue is that is creates a climate of impunity. Do you know what that means? By being
photographed and replicated and appearing as if Lindens sanctioned this, it declares even
further open season me than I already suffer in SL. And that's exactly what has happened
as all the griefer groups have deluged me and my tenants with obscene and destructive
prims and textures and crashed sims and killed chickens all week -- with impunity.

As to the issue of the hacked viewer, I can't be expected personally to repro this
because I don't use this viewer and refuse to use the third-party viewers which time and
again have been used not only to steal content and go into god-mode to grief people, but
also to do things like force rental boxes to appear as if 90 days were paid if
"90" was set as a 0, i.e. don't use, function. This isn't a problem of forcing
rental box owners to get their scripts changed (that's how your "security"
expert the insolent Soft Linden sees it); it's a question of you taking a more proactive
attitude about crime-hardening and at the very least, making a trail of those who steal
and vandalize by requiring registration of 3rd party viewers.

I can only report the *outcome* of these viewers is that people are able to land and when
you try to eject/ban them, the option doesn't even appear on the pie chart. This isn't
due to lag or something -- that's a different effect. These are people who don't 'stick'
in the estate bans and who also can override no push/safe.

A JIRA has been started with already nearly 200 votes on people who experience this:

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-4632

Daily, the Concierge list is filled with people weeping with frustration that they cannot
get rid of griefers as the estate bans don't "stick".

The culprit here is Cryolife/Meercat which are hacks of Emerald (tho Emerald denies it,
you can track it down).

Philip, why don't you and Adam Zaius be done with this? Can't you see all the destruction
of theft and vandalism in the huge pile of support tickets and departures of SL?!

Make a black Second Life and a white Second Life. Buy OpenSims out and make that be the
black SL. Put all the hacked viewers you want on those sims and play with them all til
they crash and let people steal from each other. Make it as free and open as wild as your
heart desires. Then close up the viewer on the white SL and require only that one to be
used. And don't hook up the interoperability until you've wired down the content and
griefing problems, you are putting the cart before the horse in the AWG and OGP groups at
IETF.

Of course, I'd do it differently - I would have separation of powers, parliamentary
democracy, and the rule of law, but you aren't interested in doing that.

I'm forced to close up this sim now and make it group-only with a closed group, something
I've never, ever done in five years of being in SL, because I remain dedicated to the
principles of an open society on the mainland where anyone can join and set prims by
following a few simple rules, with the norm set at automatic registrational rather than
discretionary membership.

But due to the wild content theft and vandalism of all those using opensource, I'm forced
to conclude, as I have from the beginning, that opensource=closed society.

It's hardly open, as it brings about its opposite rapidly, and not surprising, given the
fierce tribal nature of the groups in the movement.

best,

Prokofy

Comments

[VBMeister Young]

You realize that opensource has actually sped up the process of LL finding and fixing a lot of bugs and memory leaks in the client right?

[Prokofy Neva]

*bursts out laughing*

Er, no, dear, but I do realize that's one of the earnestly-held fictions of the opensource cult.

[Tossthis]

so like in other words....

Prok: rant, whine, cry, bitch, moan, fabricate
Phil: dance, obscure, cajole, offer sympathy.

*yawns*

[Mahala Roviana]

*Falls over laughing*

[Kovino Firehawk]

So wait, last time I checked, anytime someone does something wrong around Rodney, he backhands them just as hard as he would anyone else, regardless of groups they are in. No one around him or friends with him is above any standard. Also, what right did you have last night to pop into his group and cause trouble?

That and why am I suddenly banned from Belarus? Do you have any video, visual, or audio proof of me slaying and or staying there for a large ammount of time? Or any proof of me rezzing any sort of objects what so ever there?

"I'm surprised you don't smite them. I'm actually myself not for smiting, I'm for due
process and the rule of law, but we don't have that in Second Life (yet)." So does that mean your for equality and treating people with respect regardless unless proven that they are a problem?

[Ann Otoole]

Rosedale and M are obviously trying to retain plausible deniability about the problem of these third party viewers.

LL needs to allow third party code enter via snowglobe. All other "open source" viewers need to be restricted to a test grid where the coders can unit test and then submit the code to snowglobe.

I won't hold my breath. But LL can look at the real numbers and see there is something to the statement that the 60,000+ ripper viewers in use are erasing the economy. Probably something LL wants to happen so they can eliminate the L$ currency, get rid of UGC, and have only their crap skilled h4x0r buddies sell stolen hulk models in SL to their corporate client, assuming one exists.

[simone]

Wow, what a horrible reply. Jesus. Does Philip really think we're stupid enough to believe that his employees don't know what's happening on their own property? Encouraging a mindset where *anyone* making money legitimately for Linden Lab is publicly torn down is unacceptable and just plain childish. A lot of people have not picked sides in these squabbles, and see the lazy reaction by LL, the lack of care paid to professionalism under each and every circumstance as just another instance of why we as customers should be looking to spend our money elsewhere. We're really tired, Philip. We've gone past minor irritation. Prok's always been loud-mouthed, opinionated, and isn't right every time. And only in some mindsets is being these things considered 'wrong' in the first place. Nonetheless, she continues to support you with her dollars, with her efforts despite every time you've turned a blind eye, despite every infantile comment whispered to 'friends online', people at professional conferences, and not in her hearing, and for that, you at least OWE her the respect you'd give a total stranger. Unless of course the money of paying and reliable customers isn't really valued anymore at LL.

[melponeme_k]

Recently Blizzard had their Blizzcon expo. In their new Starcraft game, they will supposedly open it up and allow gamers to tailor fit the game and create their own missions.

In answer to a question from an amateur map/mission developer about UGC missions and ownership, the devs stated that they were looking into methods to lock down and prevent theft of IP. So that everyone will know who the real and original creators were for the missions. It probably won't be 100% successful, but this company is making the effort.

Interesting. And this in a walled environment.

The "FREE" thing is only prevalent in extreme quarters it seems.

[stian]

Nice to see our favourite nutcase is still undermedicated and going strong.

[Mercedes Zepp]

I think what Prok has painstakingly done is gone through lists of popular "griefing" groups and banned names. I have never been to belarus before and i tried to slip in just to take a look around and i am banned also.

[Adric Antfarm]

Since she is more than able to defend herself let's put “Ban Prok” aside for one moment, who added the name of a griefer group which itself contains a derogatory term for African Americans?

Are they aware this group’s web page is filled with countless hate messages to gays, African Americans, and other groups?

How long did Linden allow this to stay up? Did Linden approve the chalk drawing in advance (we have two stories), did they find out during, did they attempt to stop it? If not approved, how did they fail to notice a crowd of people outside their entrance drawing for what had to be a good amount of time.

[Prokofy Neva]

yes, indeed, Adric, that's quite the question.

But some of the ethics-challenged Lindens don't think it's racist, they think it's funny.

[VBMeister Young]

Psst. The PN hate Woodbury and have been recently crashing their sims repeatedly. Just thought you should know.

[annoyed prim]

According to the publically posted invites on sluniverse.com, the partybus / 'chalk' incident happened on a SATURDAY, during SLCC... you know - when the office is CLOSED.

Prok & Aldric are so clueless when it comes to the facts.

[Prokofy Neva]

Why would that matter? They claim they were authorized to do this. By whom? which Linden authorized them to put racist and hate slogans on the LL building?

See, you can't claim you were authorized to do it, and then, when it appears to be what it is -- racist and hate-filled -- to claim you have no responsibility.

More lies, more distraction.

[annoyed prim]

you create all this drama so you can cry that you are being abused. It's the worst kind of attention seeking, not unlike the behavior of those with Munchausen syndrome.

If these people you've assaulted didn't dislike you before you went off on them, then it's certainly reasonable for them to dislike you now.

You create your enemies, first in your head, and then in reality by attacking innocent people.

there is no conspiracy prok, there is just you, and you need profesional help.

You have a problem, a serious psychological problem, you need help. For your sake, I hope you find it.

It's very possible you do have Munchausen syndrome, and if so, you need to be admitted for treatment.

[Adric Antfarm]

Annoyed Prim is likely right looking at this batch of pictures with meta. Canon PowerShot SD1200 IS taken @ 12:39am August 15 which is a freaky hour to be out in San Francisco, but clearly when Linden is not in the office.

Is a weird a bunch of people with bar wristbands and cameras to be outside Linden HQ at that hour, but I've honestly been stranger places and done worst things in that situation which leads me to believe some lightweights got liquored up which combined with mob logic to create "art".

Prok was only one of the crazy tags. "Unban Elf Ming" "Winter & Filthy". "Robo Lives"... 12 year old crew or adults drunk as them.

They might not even have total recall.

[Adric Antfarm]

I've narrowed it down.

http://www.adric.us/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/profile2322a.jpg

[Prokofy Neva]

Building their alibis are you, Adric?

They're adults, not kids.

[Adric Antfarm]

Just saying that alcohol has a way of making things happen that ought not. Marriages, etc. Does it make it right? Of course not.

Having seen this first batch in the morning we can now be sure Linden was not around and there isn't anyone they can hold accountable. As for the doers, they are unlikely to do anything but giggle like schoolgirls.

Not that we are even sure they are the ones. Lots of people take 100s of pictures with happy faces then pick just a few where they just cut out the head.

You could keep hammering this, but it's pretty well dug in the mud now. No one is going to move at this point.

[Prokofy Neva]

No, Adric, you're wrong.

If this were just some midnight drunken prank against the LL building with the graffiti against me by Woodbury and whomever else, who could care? That's the kind of stupid thing they'd do. Only LL could care about their building and how it looked. The fact that "nobody is there" doesn't mean anything. It's still vandalism.

But that's not what they said the story was about. They said that Philip *gave them permission*. They said Lindens knew about it *and joined in*. They said it was deliberate that my name was put there, and that Lindens were involved.

So, sorry, it's no longer a prank or art work when that happens, because the consequences are open season on me, and I do not like that one bit, and I will fight back, and I think a company that becomes corrupt in this way (if this is what happened) should be fought.

[Horace]

Prok did you post this to show off the fact that Philip responded to your email? It's looking that way.

[Blahnon]

"and I think a company that becomes corrupt in this way (if this is what happened) should be fought."

It's a free market, so stop whining, become an adult, and just cancel your accounts with Linden Lab.

Seriously, your expectation that you have some kind of control over Linden Lab or feel you are owed some entitlement is pretty pathetic.

This is very much what having an entitlement culture leads to, people like Prok.