What's Still Wrong With the Emerald Viewer

Every day, I get numerous hits to my past articles about the Emerald Viewers from Google, Yahoo, and Bing (it's interesting to me that people use Yahoo still to search, and Bing is getting more use). I would say some days, these hits are probably responsible for 20-30 percent of my traffic or more. People are plugging in the title like "What's Wrong With the Emerald Viewer?" or terms like "Emerald Viewer" and "bugs" and "problems" because they are consumers with concerns. The Emerald gang has chortled many a time that my coverage of concerns about their criminal past and current evasive handiwork is only giving them more hits and more customers. But...those consumers aren't all happy, and the surge in my blog hits is evidence of that. To be sure, some people come to read the articles from a hostile Emerald forum or blog, but those are specific links they click on. I believe many of the other hits are from people trying to find something about Emerald before they use it, or after they use it.

Emerald is trying to clean up its act -- they are claiming that they will register in the Third Party Viewer program, although of course they are subtly and not-so-subtly (who were the ones crashing the meeting?) making it known that they don't think this is a good policy and tacitly or not-so-tacitly complaining about the GPL issue along with the extremists. But somehow they apparently are working out a deal with LL -- they are to get a last name, "ModularSystems" and Fractured Crystal claims that when they get that name, they will "register in style". Some things may have slipped or will slip in this policy -- where once the Lindens seemed to require real-life names to be published on this list, now they seem to have backed off from that. I'm sorry, but if you make a viewer that accesses SL, given the history of criminality of these viewers, you need to step up and put your RL name and business address. If you are a mangina who can't bear to have the discovery of your gender deception and manipulation of the opposite sex outed, or just an employee of a large competitor of Linden Lab that doesn't want your status outed (more likely), then I guess you can't play, or you'll have to figure out which one of your little hive mind club can step up and greet the public while the rest of you remain in the shadows. At the very least, I hope the Lindens are demanding RL credentials to *them* as we would do to have payment on file. If they aren't demanding that much, they are truly chumps. It's astounding that I'd have to present my RL name and payment info to rent a sim, but people making viewers logging on to their servers and gathering data could get by with a fake avatar name. That better not be the case.

Emerald also removed their "outpost" in the "Woodbury University Campus" on Ravenglass for reasons unknown, but it hardly means they have ended their relationship with w-hat/b-tards/Woodbury/all w-hoods because they always made common cause and are intertwined. It's like the commissars told them to stop their subscription to the Daily Worker so they could "pass" better, and they did. It's an optical illusion by people very determined to be manipulated.

It's anyone's guess now whether Emerald has actually removed anything that abuses privacy in their quest for registration -- I'll bet they are going to keep these features because the Lindens haven't been clear in the TPV that these features violate the TOS:

o the ability to see people online even when they have hidden their status using the official viewer

o the ability to learn who has not given you map privileges (Prad has written an article about this, one of the few articles critical of Emerald beside mine) asking the question "Is the Emerald Viewer Anti-Privacy?" for which the answer is a decided: "Yes"; others have also posted on the forums about the privacy concerns.

o the ability to make oneself invisible (please don't tell me that this is about making shoes, or that your title can still be visible blah blah -- it's used to creep and that's all there is to it)

o the collecting of log-in data and other unspecified data that is then kept by the ModularSystems servers. We've heard endless apologia about this and also some hard questioning by experts like Angela Talamasca which haven't gotten answers.

o the ability to encrypt chat so that Linden Lab cannot determine if the TOS is being violated, and cannot follow up on abuse reports by other residents to see if the chat of those reported indicates evidence of TOS violations -- the Lindens originally said they would not permit chat-encryption on their servers and would not accept any viewers that did this and viewed it as a TOS offense, but then fell silent on this issue and we don't know where it stands now -- I frankly have to roll my eyes at a company that might still prosecute a complaint against me for pasting the chat of one irate tenant to another irate tenant because one of the parties ARs me, but which cannot prosecute real crime because the evidence is in encrypted chat.

What's interesting is that the dialogue I started questioning the Emerald Viewer has been continued by others, where it is often fiercely debated, but I'm always the one associated with the critique of Emerald and getting the griefing because of my visibility. What's less visible is that many people are asking questions, people who are even "happy consumers" of Emerald, about bugs and crashing but also about features that seem questionable, and challenging the double standard (that one often finds with the geek religion) whereby Emerald compromises other people's privacy, but tries to harden its own protections. As Itazura Radio says on Prad's blog:

The Emerald devs put in a feature to circumvent it for a reason too… because they think it’s a ‘cool’ feature and screw your privacy. Modular Systems likes to talk a lot about privacy, especially when defending things like OTR chat that encrypts your IMs so Linden Lab cannot read them (which is enabled in Emerald by default). That’s not surprising since many of their crew come from or are tied to the griefer ranks of Woodbury and naturally will defend to the death their right to hide any evidence against them from the eyes of LL.

Modular loves that more people are using their hacked viewer with all it’s features that give people the ability to do things they really shouldn’t. Just think how much of a boon OTR has been to everyone from casual griefers to copybotters to ageplayers. And how nice it is that you can make a new alt with a new spoofed IP and everything in a minute or two and go right back to what you were doing that got you banned in the first place.

Sure, you could always do those things before Emerald if you knew how. But most people didn’t. And with a viewer that gives you those tools at your fingertips now any old half-baked yahoo can do it. The more that do the more it strains the ability of LL to police the grid. More mayhem = good for griefers in general. You know those times when you make an abuse report and nothing happens? Do you know why? Because that kid who just told you he was 12 did so in an encrypted IM and LL can’t read it. Either that or they are too busy looking at the 100 other reports just like it they can’t do anything about for the same reason. Or they actually did ban him and he just made a new alt and even though your reported him again they can’t trace it back to the first one.

Note how savaged this person is, whom I don't know, and even accused of "sounding like Prokofy". Everthing he says there is legitimate, and yet even Prad has a fit and starts accusing him of Godwinism because he said that people letting the Emerald pass are like those who let the Nazis past. And indeed he is right. It's not about scale and magnitude, because Emerald is not the Nazis or the Soviets; but they are *like* them on their little scale in the methods they use, and those who let them pass are *like* those who let bad things pass in the name of other supposed social goods. It's a pattern and a dynamic, and it's ok to call it. You don't have to be railroaded into denouncing everything bad about the U.S., from Japanese internment camps to Larouche Obama Hitler posters, in being able to criticize Emerald, and criticize it for the pattern of criminality that it resembles, which isn't American, which has institutions that can and do resist bad things like Japanese internment eventually, and which has many people to denounce the Obama Hitler posters, unlike the situations of Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia or even Russia today, where the punishment for trying to exercise public oversight on bad behaviour can be jailing or death.

So there are the features that "everybody knows" are in Emerald, and which can be seen, and which do trouble people because they erode the social fabric by ripping privacy, and then there are the other "custom" features which they admit sometimes but don't acknowledge as a problem either.

This other, um, "suite of features," shall we say, but only find their way into "customized viewers" or "my own viewer for personal use" as Fractured might spin it. These include:

o the ability to copy items for which you do not have permissions, not just your own creations (the TPV says you can only copy your own items, this has provided endless fodder for edgecasing, but it's a good rule, and the Lindens should stand firm on this)

o the ability to track IPs and thus out alts

o the ability to crash other people's viewers

o god-mode stalking of people for whom you don't have map privileges

These three are supposedly "rogue viewers created with our code for which we have no responsibility" and "Neil is to blame" or whatever, but these needs further investigation, and the particular thugs making these claims like Lonely Bluebird aren't to be trusted.

As far as I'm concerned, there is absolutely nothing that these people can do to clean up their act because they have been persistently manipulative, aggressively criminalized and cynical, and persistently lied about what they are doing. They've made a series of alts to distract from mains, they have dubious behaviour and even documented abuse on those alts, and in  my experience, people who are deliberate and cynical griefers and TOS violators and rippers do not change. They merely morph. They may be good at that. I think the Lindens realize this.

You would think with a historical opportunity to start a business with what seems to be a very popular viewer and actually serve the public with something they demand on the Internet, that these people would be "scared straight" by the awesome responsibility -- and opportunity. But they won't be. Not only because they are incorrigible, but because of another very obvious reason:

There isn't a business model here, and that's why the criminality persists. You can't lure criminals into a life of straight business when you have no incentive, no money, no payoff, nothing. Nobody is going to pay for a viewer -- it's something they download free. Unless Emerald plans to push ads on to the log-in screen which will annoy people, they don't have a business plan. Maybe they think there's a market in t-shirts and mugs with green diamond logos -- I don't think so. Maybe they think they can have a "customized" viewer and do "consulting," the endless opensource mantra. But unless the customizing is criminality, they likely won't find people to buy it. One of their cadres, Skills Hak, seems to have started a landoffice business in selling an anti-griefing device that supposedly tracks the use of copybot -- the sort of copybots that Emerald itself made on other accounts. Great racket there -- make a problem, then "provide a solution" for it that costs a lot. People have complained that the Hak device tracks IPs and outs alts. Outing alts is everyone's dream in fighting back against griefers, but it does go against what is seen as an ethical norm of SL. I personally don't think that ethical norm applies when people commit crime persistently, using a bunch of throwaway alts, any more than you'd respect a fake driver's license.

Even with his landoffice business, Skills is unlikely to supply enough revenue to keep a half dozen coders and a website and a viewer coding operation in living wages and expense funds. It's just not viable. It will  never be viable. That's why TPVs are inherently suspect -- they have only one compensation: crime to gain illicit goods, or crime to gain power over other people (that's often enough in Second Life).

I got a somewhat cryptic email with a plea for hiding identity, an identity which wasn't meaningful anyway as it was a generic name. Like other letters I get that are trying to set me up, I have no idea if this letter is "the truth" or merely "deliberately false disinformation". When I have that problem, I usually err on the side of publishing the letter. If someone asks me not to reveal their identity, I can respect that -- unless, again, I can determine that the person has committed crime.

So make what you will of this tortured confession below, which I *think* means the following from this guy: "I'm an Emerald thug myself and have done some bad things of which I'm now ashamed and can expose other Emerald thugs who have done some bad things which they should be prosecuted for, but I'm afraid of telling everything I know and exposing myself because then I'll be prosecuted, too".

What can you say to a person like that?! Do the right thing, and stop being an asshole. Go to RL authorities like the FB or the appropriate authorities in your country, tell them what you know in exchange for immunity of prosecution. Usually you can get that. Sometimes you can't. Then suck it up. It's irresponsible not to tell the public of crime if you know about it, if it would harm people especially with serious offenses like identity theft, theft from bank accounts, theft of copyrighted material.

e-mail from source who requested anonymity:

Please, take what I am about to relate to you with a grain of salt. No more thought than a chain letter would bring forth. Doubt, deny, outright accuse it of misinformation. Still, I ask for a simple consideration: Please, whatever you do.. do not reveal this email address.

Now (please bear with me a moment longer) let's play a simple game of thought:

Say you are a technically-minded person who, in an hour of desperate frustration, followed the trail of someone who had done you wrong, criminally so.  Let's say that you are finally fed up with the antics of this individual, and in your rage commit yourself to similar criminal acts in your search. Let's presume, for a moment, it brought to light a literal bounty of information. Some evidence of scams, theft, misinformation, massive privacy issues, a few clearly outright illegal activities but mainly a long list of ethical concerns.

Ethical concerns. How would you deal with this? Having now yourself become the like, how could you possibly help to inform those who are affected?

It is an interesting dilemma. Perhaps difficult to imagine given the presumption that certain people would never follow a similar path in the first place. Yet if they would, and could.. what if they did?

Upon consideration the most I, myself, could come up with would be to hand everything I had off to several persons who themselves are tainted. Yet of course that is not enough, even perhaps a criminally unethical act itself- they would not believed if they did bring certain things to light. Perhaps if one were to inform someone who may think for themselves, who may be active enough to come by some legitimate proofs on their own. Perhaps someone motivated to start asking further questions and leap over the hurdle that may now be in front of them, however short it may be. Someone who would remain legally sound and yet while at first confronted with some ill-gained information put their noses to the ground and find yet more in a sound manner.

The question, of course, is whom?


Neil was brought public, his document spread around. A linden tipped off "fractured" that his email from the mailing list was the same on a facebook account. That is how they came upon the information needed to do such a thing.

Plenty more is to be had, for fractured/jcool, lonely bluebird/phox, and darling brody. Perhaps more.


I sincerely hope you find your own path. If not, please disregard this email as you would inconsequential spam.

***

Comments:

1. A Linden disclosed information from a resident's account? That's wrong. Lindens are not supposed to do that. I think it is in their book of ethics, such as it is (and it's not much), maybe even an employee manual, but certainly a rule of Linden Lab that they do not disclose resident information to other residents. What this claim here seems to say is that a Linden tipped off Fractured that Neil's email on a Linden mailing list (like opensource dev?) was the same as on his Facebook account (

2. If the Lindens wish to pursue the problem of rogue viewers causing theft and griefing, I think they should ask the FBI to deal with it, or some other appropriate RL authority (I think the FBI is the one that would investigate cross-border Internet crime). They shouldn't tip off one of the main thugs in Emerald to go after another worse thug. That's vigilantism, and that's wrong. Neil should not be getting a phone call at home from Lonely Bluebird (which he confessed and which Fractured claimed he was surprised at in the office meeting). He could reasonably get a phone call from a Linden I suppose, but what would be more proper is if Linden generated a former warning on their system that said he had been caught in copyright theft and whatever the offenses were, in violation of the TPV and TOS, and he had to cease or he could expect further disciplinary action, then suspend him for 30 days or whatever the protocol is. Or perhaps the offenses are bad enough for final permaban, in which case he needs to get due notice, not phone calls from thugs. I shouldn't have to explain this. If he persists on alts, and the Lindens cannot use all their magic MAC bans or whatever they have in their toolbox, they call the FBI. I'm not sure how seriously the FBI takes this, they may sort of wince and think, oh dear, pixelated pranks again? Or, oh dea, they cost somebody $17.52 in damages? I hope they don't do that when it reaches the massive abuses that do go on in SL that cost hundreds of dollars. But given that they have to fight terrorism and cybercrime involving millions of dollars drained from banks and such, this problem may go very far down on the list. And the FBI could just look at the Lab and say, "Why have you people opensourced your viewer and supported a gaggle of freaks to monkey with it? It's your problem."

3. On the other hand, if this guy can find really serious crimes in RL like theft of money and content in large sums of money and massive privacy invasion, say, of all users of Emerald in such fashion, then he should be reporting this to Lindens and RL authorities both.

4. There's also the possibility that he has not in fact found anything of that serious a nature, but is just some disgruntled troll who has had some falling out with one of his fellow thugs and is now trying to pin more on him out of spite (you see a lot of that in SL).

5. I personally don't have the technical skills or ability to follow trails like this, and it sounds like what is being said here is something like this: "To find out what I know, you, too, will have to violate ethics and laws to get the information". So I'm definitely not interested then.

Comments

[No]

No, you're not only associated with these discussions because you're visible. You're associated with these discussions because you're such a comic figure. It lets people attack you instead of the substance. You do the same harm here that you do to IP discussions: You act as a magnet for ridicule and take the position you endorse down with it.

If you got an editor or learned to express ideas without insult and hyperbole, you might stop poisoning both IP and viewer discussions. Make room for discussions about substance instead of ranting character assassinations, conspiracies, and Prokofy catch phrases. Maybe you would actually make a difference.

[Prokofy Neva]

Yet another expected drive-by anonymous fucktard comment.

You must have a valid SL or RL name to post here.

There's nothing "comic" about asking perfectly ordinary questions about legitimate privacy concerns. Emerald and Woodbury griefers have long since learned that they can deflect legitimate inquiry by trying to heckle and harass someone who asks these rightful questions, distract from their crimes, and get mileage by ridiculing, parodying, etc. What is sometimes called "the Saul Alinsky" tactics of relentless harassment and parodying.

I don't plan to "get an editor". This is my blog, and I do what I want on my blog. I'm not required to write pieces for USA Today here. I'm not paid to do so. I will not be changing anything I do. I am not "poisoning" any discussion but continuing to ask the rightful, legitimate questions that need to be asked about these *criminals* who have a long record of criminality which they merely exposed and made documentable by griefing me.

Gwyn has indeed engaged in deliberate character assassination, and I'm still trying to think up what the right punishment for her should be, given that I don't believe in putting in laws after the fact of an offense (i.e. introducing a "temp ban" on some posters here if they behave badly, something I've never done -- I wait until they actually incite or cause real damages and then I permaban).

There isn't any "conspiracy theory" in my probing questions about Emerald. Everyone with any analytical ability who isn't tainted by the opensource cultic take on this can see it.

I don't need to "make a difference". I need to write the truth as I see it.

[Stroker Serpentine]

Perhaps this email was not about Neil or Emerald Dev's..but Linden Lab violating their own privacy policy? Worth investigating.

And yes, it's the FBI Cybercrimes Division that investigates online theft, scams, Cyberbullying,Copyright and Trademark infringement in the U.S.

[twitter.com/TammyNowotny]

I actually post comments with the appropriate keywords just to get an RT @RedScareBot --- though the 'bot usually ignores me. The keywords are "Communist," "Commie," "Marxist," "Socialist," and "czar": and maybe a few variations thereof. I think it's leftist satire, not an attempt at intimidation.

[Prokofy Neva]

My sense is that it is about Emerald, not Linden's regular viewer, but the allegation is that a Linden leaked a connection of an e-mail -- rather, he didn't leak an unknown email out of an account, he "helped" by matching one email seen in one place external to LL with another place external to LL (I think that's how it worked). So, maybe he can slip in under the wire of technicality, but his aiding and abetting of the stalking and threatening even of a miscreant is troublesome. This is like the JLU. It's wrong.

Antonius Misfit, himself someone I have no time of day for, as he's one of those obnoxious opensource freaks, has a post up in which even he has to get a bit exercised at the criminality of a non-developing w-hat griefer, Wut Moorlord, being present at this meeting, and the crashing of the sims:

http://antoniusmisfit.blogspot.com/2010/04/updates-on-third-party-viewer-policy.html

"Update: Regarding Emerald, Prok has a new blog post up which connects almost all of the dots about these folks who, in all honesty, should have been perma-banned from the first TOS/CS violation they committed(feel free to skip her usual open source=evil BS, of course). What Prok misses, however, is the connection between Onyx and Gemini CDS. Yes, CDS will ban all copybot viewers detected, except Onyx since it's an Emerald "project". Combined with the TPV policy going into effect, the Emerald devs can run roughshod over SL with no one the wiser, with only the above choices left for SL residents."

I know about Gemini CDS from reading all the blogs and forums. But what more can be said about it? It's disgusting as I indicated. But what can you do about it if the Lindens are allowing it to pass? Just keep raising the issues, I guess.

As for the connection of that with Onyx, I didn't name the "customized" viewers that Emerald devs feel they can reserve for their "personal use" but that's exactly what I meant -- any and all viewers they make and use that in fact violate the TOS but which they get past the Lindens claiming "personal use" or "for testing" or whatever bullshit there is.

Antonius is putting an even more sinister spin on all this than I am (yet I'm the one called the conspiracy nut). He's saying that the Lindens are colluding with Emerald to put all the other devs out of business because Emerald is basically getting a wink and a nod to violate the TOS, but the others have to abide by it.

And that is on one level very convincing as a hypothesis, merely because we've seen this before: Cory Linden did not prosecute libsecondlife for reverse-engineering the client back when there was no opensourced client and that was definitely a TOS violation. That is, libsl got to keep playing it with tacit Linden approval and even some secret loving, but others might find themselves banned if they weren't "connected". We realize all that.

The question is whether the Lindens are really that nefarious. I don't think the current Lindens are.

[Steam Bunjie]

@Stroker Serpentine

The same FBI Cybercrimes Division that lets Kalel Venkman run riot, collecting RL/SL information and packing it into a harassment wiki for consumption by his little fascist group.

And I have told them but it's pretty much evident their useless and should not be invoked in a serious conversation.

There is no appropriate RL authority that will stand up for virtual word residents, unless you take someone directly to court.

And even then they are only deciding on your single case not anyone elses.

[twitter.com/iliveisl]

i like yahoo better, newer algorithm - but using multiple search yields wider results overall

[pefton]

you can see emails CLEAR TEXT in the mailing list, there's no linden magic involved.

[Snickers Snook]

I would think anyone who sends an email asking that you "do not disclose my email" is asking for their email to be disclosed and/or is pulling a goof. Anyone can make a throwaway account on Gmail or Hotmail to send an email to someone without giving away anything. Well maybe an IP address -- not sure about that but still. Certainly someone with high-level programming or hacking skills would figure out some way of hiding if they wanted to stay hidden.

[Marissa Mistwallow]

"I frankly have to roll my eyes at a company that... cannot prosecute real crime because the evidence is in encrypted chat."

Uh... don't use encryption then? Nobody is making you.

Encryption is an important feature for many people. Believe it or not, business people use second life for important things; business people who have competitors, and trade secrets, and strategies. Encrypted messaging is one of the features that might actually get IRL companies to consider SL as a platform (which LL most likely wants).

If *you* don't want people sending you encrypted messages, then turn encryption off. It's easy. They won't be able to send you an OTR message if you don't have OTR on.

[Prokofy Neva]

Marissa, all your indignant self-righteous posturing here is bogus. And your cynical eyerolling dickish "uh.....don't use encryption then?" is narrow-minded and typical of the geek forced-migration policy.

1. Businesses have a solution for keeping communications secret. It's called SLE, the SL enterprise edition that makes them able to control their own sim, on their own server, not connected to the SL grid.

2. Businesses that come on the main grid so they can get exposure to their brand or customers or whatever will have to weigh whether the encryption they need for R&D is something they should demand of an open platform.

3. They shouldn't; you shouldn't; the Lindens shouldn't condone it. Because businesses who need secret communications don't HAVE to be here; they have SLE or other options. The overwhelming majority of "use cases" for encryption are for griefers chatting and other TOS violators. Their insistence on secret communications hobbles the Lindens ability to fight their misdeeds and prosecute them effectively -- it sentences all of us to endless Woodbury griefing when the Lindens can't use server records and chat to make valid prosecutions.

If YOU can't submit to the simple rules of a relatively open society that enable the governing force to prosecute on the basis of chat, then go on OpenSim or go on SLE. You don't need to be here -- try a little bit of your OWN forced-migration medicine, cupcake.

Encrypted messaging will not get any businesses to consider SL. IF they consider SL, they can use SLE, where they are now driven, because most businesses don't need to harness themselves to 32,000 sims full of cybersexing blingtards and middleaged platonic friendship scripters listening to Grace McDunnough. They don't need it. In those off hours when they need to listen to Grace, they log on to SL. If they need to cook up secret inventions, they log on to their business sim. It's a few taps on the keyboard.

Want to live in a huge networked open environment? Live in it. Want to encrypt your chat? Live in the closed environent of the opensource orthodoxy of opensim. See how attractive it makes the society -- not! Like lack of commerce and IP protection was also not attractive.

[Marissa Mistwallow]

I didn't mean to offend, I'm sorry for my poor phrasing. My point is that encryption is a choice between *both* users using it, and nobody is forced to use OTR. Any two users could just as easily chat outside of second life, using encryption, so banning encryption from second life wouldn't actually do anything other than alienate some users.

I understand that you don't like to use encryption, and that's fine. But it's a very important technology on the Internet, used for a lot of things by a lot of people, so please don't make us all out to be griefers or criminals.

Someone's reason for using encryption could be as simple as, they are at a starbucks wifi hotspot, and don't want every other person at the hotspot to be able to snoop on their embarassing conversations. Or that they want to compete with Linden Lab (make the next xstreet or whatnot), and don't want to be overheard planning.

[Marissa Mistwallow]

Oh, I'd also like to note that encryption isn't actually against the rules anymore. LL removed that part from their TOS, likely for the business reasons I mentioned above (and most companies won't pay for a virtual world just for them... the whole point of using second life *is* to be on the grid)

[Prokofy Neva]

Yeah, um, I know that Marissa, but that doesn't mean it is right, that they have done the right thing -- they haven't. And they didn't do it for business reasons. Business doesn't need to be on the main grid demanding encryption; it can go on the SLE and pay more, or for that matter, go on opensim.

While one would think that the whole point of business is to be on the grid, that's not how many businesses look at it. They don't have the staff or the time or the money to invest in the tiny population and difficult focus groups with anonymous unreliable people, etc. It would be good if they did invest this, but we have seen some very big companies do it right, and spend lots on it, like the Australian telecom with The Pond and the Orange cell phone people, and Nissan, and they came and went. Even those who fell over backwards engaging with and coddling the inworld content providers couldn't justify sustaining it, it's too small, and doesn't hook up to anything readily. It's not a facebook group where you get 60,000 people instantly just for putting up a contest or a coupon.

The encrytption struggle as you well know, except you're not being honest here, is about the deal with Emerald. The Lindens probably said, "Ok, stop your copying and griefing, and we'll let you have encryption as long as you don't get up to any real trouble with it." They figured they'd give it away, then try to police it with the language in the TPV. Good luck with that.

What happened is that the Lindens got muscled on this. Badly.

[Sean Williams]

Encryption is a double edged sword, like any security technology. It can be used to help those who need it, be they the average Joe or someone more important. It can also be used by the wrong people.

As can all security technologies.

There are computer viruses out there that can encrypt all of your documents and other files, then direct you to a web page demanding payment for the encryption key.

Other viruses make use of a function found on all modern PCs: fdisk, which utterly reformats your hard disk.

Still others wear the mask of being an Anti Virus or other helpful program when in reality they are anything but.

Yes, there are people who wish these functions do not exist. Many of them are average users with no need of such functions. Many more are the ones who are often thwarted by such functions.

Could encryption within second Life be used by griefers? Yes - it could. It can also be used by others who wish to keep their private conversations private.

Big business is not the only type that can benefit from encrypted IM conversations: Club owners, rental agents etc could all benefit.

IMs are not as secure as anyone would have you believe - they are just as open to interception as any other form of communication.

If the issue you have is with the fact such encryption "prevents" Linden Lab from gaining a log file of each conversation - allow me to enlighten you on a few things.

It would be utter child's play for Linden Lab to defeat such a measure as it is their servers the messages travel on. The first way is to retool the client and/or server program to save an identical copy of the log that already goes to your hard drive - on their server.

The second is to embed a specialized keylogger into the instant messenger section of their program that is triggered when an IM has focus.

Making it a ToS offense to remove either of these alterations would cover current third Party Client programs.

Alternately, one of the "deals" made between the Emerald Developers and Linden Lab might just have included the "keys" to the encryption system or a permanent key for the Linden Servers to allow them to record the IMs. This is far more likely as those I have talked to that use Emerald have said that offline IMs no longer appear garbled to them.

Offline IMs as you well know are a part of the Linden server system and thus would appear garbled if the Lindens themselves did not have a key.

Funny that .... simple logic is all it takes to figure out that there is no problem with encrypted IMs whatsoever.

[Marissa Mistwallow]

It's very disingenuous of you to claim to know where I'm coming from. In fact, I care far more about the encryption technology than the software that included it. I started using OTR long before it was in Emerald, (before there *was* Emerald).

[KT Furman]

@Sean Williams:
Does that simple logic account for one of the emerald developers harassing another resident and bragging that because they believed said resident was using OTR, that LL wouldn't be able to prove anything? That happened.

"Offline IMs as you well know are a part of the Linden server system and thus would appear garbled if the Lindens themselves did not have a key."

Not necessarily. Did this change in behavior happen at the same time the compliant version of Emerald was rolled out? If so, did you consider that the client may be checking the online status of the recipient and sending the message unencrypted if the user is offline?

@Prokofy: I agree with you for the most part but I go a step further on the CDS/Onyx bit. I believe CDS is actually functioning as a part of Onyx.

It's not that wild of an accusation. Fractured Crystal has admitted his private viewer uses a "network of sims" to help it identify alts while harassing a club owner via IM. We already know that CDS harvests avatar names, UUIDs, etc through it's connection to bogus media streams.

I'd bet on Onyx piggybacking on that network of CDS equipped sims in order to scrape data related to which avatars connected from what IP addresses and when. Why do your own dirty work when you can get people to pay to do it for you?

[Air Jordan 15]

Thanks for posting, I really enjoyed your most recent post. I think you should post more often, you obviously have natural ability for blogging!

[Danger Mouse]

@Steam Bunjie, you sound like somebody the JLU busted, LOL. Doesn't it seem strange to you that the only people who complain about the JLU are the ones who've gotten caught and banned?

As far as the rest of this stuff goes, I don't see ANY white hats here. Everybody involved in the Modular Systems meltdown, either inside or outside, seems to have blood on their hands.