Oh! In Which We Find Where zfire Xue Has Appeared Before on This Blog!

Oh!

I knew that the name zFire Xue seemed familiar, but I couldn't place it and didn't bother to look it up until now -- by finding a report against me in Red Zone's "Neighbourhood Watch" filed by none other than zFire Xue himself lol.

zFire is in fact the hero of one of my blogs in the past, in June 2010, where I singled him out as a "person of concern" for his overly surly security methods when I asked him about a griefer in his group.

I called him "an educational security goon" and in researching him then, I even came up with that infamous website isellsl.cx which is now of course the subject of a 1,000 page thread at sluniverse.com

This is one of those chat logs from SL that people say you "shouldn't" publish.

This is one of those encounters that I think *does* deserve publication in the public interest because there is something "off" about the person which you can sense in SL.

I called it, and everyone jumped on me and said I was wrong. Ann Otoole even tells me that I need to study psychopaths more and read 30,000 pieces more of information.

This doesn't show up in Google unless you know to search with my name, possibly because it was Google-bombed.

Interesting, eh?

And now you have a little more help doing some research about where to find this guy in real life, maybe he's at this university or someone there knows something more about him: Robert E. Cook Honors College at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Doesn't sound very big.

But likely because he was one of 9 security goons in this group, he was recruited inworld. Note that as of June 2010, he said he was the creator of a system that outed alts and worked to stop copybotting.

 

Comments

[Prokofy Neva]

Oh, they were on to this college connection by p. 79 of the epic thread:

http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/general-sl-discussion/56364-redzone-epic-thread-part-deux-79.html

Well the relevant thing here is that this zFire, manager of security in this closed college sandbox group, invited a griefer using my RL name with the usual Woodbury props into his closed group.

[Prokofy Neva]

Gah, that epic Slun thread is like "idyot okhota za volkov"...

I dunno, I think unless I'm not fully informed here, people need to realize how hysterical they've gotten here.

zFire is not Lektor Hannibal. He's just a second-gen Russian kid or Americanized Russian kid who still has a healthy dose of violent Russian culture in his mind that he is acting out (Baba Yaga) and a propensity to behave like a secret police informant inherent in the DNA.

I think he's more rational and less psychopathological than people realize and they are becoming hysterical.

Again, those putting out the conspiracy and hysteria version of this stroy can't explain why it is that there has not yet been a single publication of an alt.

(Unless I missed something).

[Scylla Rhiadra]

I suppose that depends on what you mean by "publication" of an alt. There are many documented instances, including one to which I can attest first hand, of alt disclosure associated with RedZone, even if they are not coming directly from xFire himself.

Despite the excusable glee that has greeted the revelations that zFire may actually be even worse than we had thought, neither he, nor RedZone, have ever been the focus of this: it has always been about the right to privacy, and the security hole in SL. It will continue to be about those things now that zFire has been exposed.

[Prokofy Neva]

So again, Scylla, the people who bought this are to blame -- the mob is to blame -- and they are trying to pin their faults on this one scapegoat.

If zFire's customers used this to out alts, they bear responsibility for that. And indeed, it's that propensity to wish to out alts that he was able to find as a market demand.

I don't think the glee is excusable, as everyone who bought and used this device is to blame, and frankly they'll buy the next one, and the next one after that.

You can try to prettify it, but it's really about the quest for security uber alles, symbolized by the Pskye orb's banner ad in the Sluniverse.com forums. What dose Psyke do with all the information he gathers? He's been running security devices for 6 years or longer. He has tremendous power and loads of information, and yet he is never question because he's in the commuuuuuunity.

I guess I can't muster the 15 minutes of hate I'm supposed to muster every day for zFire, given that I see him as seizing on a market, and enabled by the crowd.

He himself has not outed the alts. So unless he has bunches of blackmail cases going that we don't know of, he isn't the monster claimed, he is merely someone who saw an opportunity in a market.

The solutions that people provide merely put more power in the hands of Lindens -- today, they may not bother to match alts that weren't registered with the same payment information but if they make the process automatic through some new feature that bans people by IP blindly without letting the user see the information, they will have more of a handle over this.

And no, I don't believe in facile Internet-based categories of personas or stages that one is "supposed" to go through with them. That is, sure, they popularize basic psychological truths. But they also over-dramatize and attempt to over-control a situation that is both more simple and more complex.

[Ann Otoole InSL]

yea prok you missed the reports of people quitting over this crap. And nobody is going to do your research for you. And you have done little research on this issue. Just painting it the way you usually do. You and the other page view google ad sense king are just trying to draw page views on a topic you could not care less about.

[Prokofy Neva]

Um, no, I don't need any Ad Sense, Ann, that's absurd, the amounts are trivial. I don't need page views, I run a blog as a passtime because I care about thinking out loud and analyzing the phenomena of virtual worlds. I think SL is always worth paying attention.

And sorry, no, I don't have the hours to spend that you have to read literally a thousand-page thread on sluniverse.com and stay riveted to morning and night sessions of Sharia Court assembling there to pass judgement on the "facts" and "evidence" about their latest obsession. It's not due process. There is no habeus corpus. There is no adversarial defense.

I don't have the frenzy about Red Zone because I don't fret about copybot all day -- my creations are minor. Nor do I have any burning need to see who is alting it up on me -- I don't have SL romances. Nor do I have an anonymous persona unlinked to RL that I live in fear of being outed.

So sorry if that makes it seem I don't "care," but maybe the problem is that others care too much.

As I've said: I'm full-square behind the idea of people's right to make anonymous accounts and pursue their identity as they wish. I've always loved the idea of making a persistent and accountable identity online with a reputation as a merchant or whatever without having it tied to RL. I think that's wonderful. I don't think the Lindens are necessarily the best stewards of that ideal, which they did more than any company to promote and protect, at least originally.

And sorry, "research" isn't reading more pop psych crap on the Internet.

Those who have the resources and connections can hire private detectives or reach the FBI appropriate about these kinds of cases in SL if they so desire.

[Ann Otoole InSL]

FBI and DHS is too busy groping the genitals of children in airports, train and bus stations to be worried about terrorists and cybercrime gangs. The federals got what they wanted. A police state. Now they get to fondle the genitals of children legally. They don't care about crime. Never did really.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

How can you suggest that zFire didn't out alts? Of course he did ... to everyone willing to shell out L$3999 for RedZone for the privilege of running background checks on people. That this was provided under the guise of an automated service, rather than via personal IM makes no difference whatsoever in practical terms.

I don't think there's a great deal of point in wasting 15 mins. a day hating zFire. He's a despicable individual, but, again, he's not really the problem: he's a symptom. That said, one of the things he's a symptom OF is this view of ethics- and responsibility-free capitalism you are endorsing. What, blame the guy who's SELLING the nuclear device to the terrorists? After all, he just saw a good business opportunity ...

I'm not in favour of absolving those who purchased this device with the clear intent of tracking and/or stalking alts. But a great many people were simply looking for a security system, and either didn't inquire too closely, or didn't think through the implications of systems like this. Most of those have already abandoned, or are now dropping RedZone.

zFire, on the other hand, knew exactly what he was doing, and understood very well the kind of exploitative uses to which he could put this. Not merely did he market on fear, aided by both a deliberate and gross exaggeration of the threat of copybotters and griefers, and calculated lies about the effectiveness of RedZone -- he also created a system that would secretly and unethically generate, as a "side product," data that he could monetize. He is a villain, pure and simple.

As for his customers -- well, they're a mixed lot. Some are victims, and some are would-be victimizers. I'll happily join you in apportioning to them their share of the blame for this debacle, while remembering that in many cases, perhaps even the majority, it was not malice but ignorance that motivated them. Caveat emptor does NOT absolve the scamster of responsibility for his actions.

[Prokofy Neva]

He didn't out alts: pure and simple. He did not go on his blog, or to the Herald, or anywhere, and say Psst, I got a hot alt story for you. He himself did not violate the TOS.

He sold a device that was lawful under the TOS at the time he devised it; he even worked with Lindens to add the pop-out "opt out" that California Business Model devices always devise as a fall-back when confronted with their privacy-busting devices.

If he sold this device to other people that enabled them to view the master list, it's THEY who are responsible if THEY out alts. And did they? Perhaps there were a few incidents being hashed out now in the zillions of pages of Sharia Court at Sluniverse, but I haven't seen any major story.

Linking alts is something the conscious mind has to do. The machine making the bans and recording the information isn't violating the TOS *until you look at it, match it yourself, and consciously then go out it*.

It's very clever in that regard.

Meanwhile Skills Hak has the same data; there may be others with security empires like Psyke who have the same data (although those devices do not appear to be hooked up to a master website to collect data centrally -- it's not clear WHAT they are capable of because we *may not be told*); the Hippo Rentals system has exactly the same data and exactly the same capacity -- and it's just not getting the air time because they have simply been more subtle and slick about it.

Adam Zaius is the first grand empire builder in SL who had a master database of alts and password attempts and all the rest on his land empire website. I remember finding out when I attempted to rent on an alt that I was banned because he had banned my main account. So obviously he linked and banned alts. Like many others before and since.

I don't endorse ethics-free capitalism. I'm all for ethics-full capitalism. Most capitalism is forced to become ethical in order to keep customers. Most people in business learn the hard way and learn quickly that if they mistreat customers they don't make sales.

It looks to me that zFire was smart enough to accommodate quickly to Linden demands and customer demands in order to survive -- if his purpose was merely to capture a dbase and out it, he could have done that long ago if his purpose was merely psychopathic destruction. If his purpose is blackmail and he's capitalized on that, why is that an indictment of capitalism? In fact, the lawlessness of blackmail is far more likely to occur under communism because of its control of the press and free markets.

In fact, we are seeing the resilience of capitalism in SL, as ethics are being forced on businesses by the market's demand, and the market's free press, whether in the hypertrophied form of Sluniverse or the tabloid form of the Herald or even somebody's more thoughtful blog like Avril Korman's SearchEngineWatch page -- they are all functioning and making free enterprise work. Social demands for social responsibility on corporations work.

What you can't undo is that the social demand here was, in fact, for outing alts. Everybody wanted that weapons; everybody paid bunches for it. Until they saw that it eroded the community as a whole. Then they turned on it. Good!

Um, what are you suggesting, comrade? That everyone have to get a license from a committee you and your comrade cronies staff and clear on according to "revolutionary principles"?! That Linden Lab license every business on the grid after a presentation of valid RL ID -- and perhaps a deposit or fee?

Just as Red Zone's figures revealed people were still managing to log on with Emerald, I don't doubt that some people will keep Red Zone functioning. The Lindens didn't do a mass-deprecation out of the system. They may wait for individual abuse reports.

The Lindens CANNOT really justify removing a datamining devise when their entire platform's sellability depends on that function. They can only hope -- in true California Business Model fashion, which is technocommunism of the sort you can't seem to appreciate comes from the same playbook as your own -- that they will individually deal with a few cases, but not make any big precedent-setting policies.

I don't see any calculated lies about Red Zone. He hyped copybot -- but then, he hardly had to. It caught only 78,000 times out of 9 million times. There's your answer about the reality of copybot. Very minimal.

I don't at all agree that the majority are innocent fearful anti-copybot types. I think the majority were out-alting types.

But then, that's the difference between communists and capitalists. Communists pretend human nature is ideal -- that's how they can dream up schemes for making it malleable to this or that utopia. Capitalists recognize that human beings are flawed.

I'm still waiting to see what -- like Julian Assange, by the way! -- charges zFire is going to be actually brought up on.

1. He complied with Linden requests to change his product.
2. He did not out alts.
3. His device has been removed from the Marketplace.

What is the reason this account has to be permabanned? Spleen? Cristiano's readers? Seriously. The rule of law is important. Just as people fear that prosecuting Assange harms freedom of the press, you have to ask what prosecuting zFire accomplishes if he did not out alts.

My bet is that if we see the Lindens make a scapegoat and ban him, which of course they can do on discretinary grounds, then they are doing that merely to temporarily placate the diva and JIRA mobs, in the hopes that the big guys in the datamining business who might buy or rent or use their platform will not see this as a bad precedent.

Freedom -- the free market, whatever its flaws -- is always a better way to manage things in a human community than having a few unaccountable comrades arbitrarily rule over everyone else by their lights.

Capitalism in the modern liberal society has to abide by the rule of law, and that's a good thing.

[Ann Otoole InSL]

his device has not been permanently removed from the marketplace.

He sold access to an alt identification service. So the guilt for outing alts goes to him and everyone that willingly deployed his surveillance devices.

He made enough money to buy protection. The other guy didn't.

The person behind CDS has known of the value of an alt identification service for over a year. The topic came up in a conversation. Perhaps that person is simply smarter about access and prices for access.

The main issue with redzone already migrated from alt identification to password harvesting and violation of real world laws against what he was and is still doing and how LL appears to be doing nothing about it. But nobody but LL knows what LL is doing about anything.

As for buyers of redzone? I need to sell my tin foil crown powered by magic voodoo crystals as a super sekret copybot and alt killer. All you have to do is wear it and the blinking all seeing eye will see all and do all. I have simply failed at capitalism 101.

As for current events the redzone site is now nothing but a back alley side show for amateur black hat crackers to play with and destroy it. After all zFire challenged the internet to hack him. They are. That is illegal too. But who cares?

Redzone buyers will buy anything with a fairey hope poster on it.

[Prokofy Neva]

Well, Ann, I totally agree that he has moved out of the world of alts of divas into the world of RL password cracking.

BUT your friend Linden Lab has no jurisdiction over third-party sites. Nor would you want them to have it. So if somebody is dumb enough to visit this site and put in log-on information and risk the very common error of mistakenly trying to sign on with their SL password -- must happen thousands of times a day -- then that's still not LL's problem. It's...um...the Internet Police's problem.

So, call the Internet Police. I have their number here...somewhere. Let me look.

But while I'm trying to find the number of the Internet Police, see if somebody is willing to file it in the state of Pennsylvania. Perhaps Bragg and some of these other lawyers who onlyb find time to fuss about their own payouts could work on a case like this given their, um, knowledge and experience with, um, websites that "convey offerings" *cough*.

Or find somebody willing to file a complaint with a state or federal authority who has the stamina to follow it through, it won't be easy.

Red Zone has been removed by the Lindens from the Marketplace at least twice, so if it's back, it's in violation of their policy if not the TOS.

I think if you sold a fairy crown that blinked randomly when it claimed to catch copybotters you could probably make a fortune, yes lol.

[Ann Otoole InSL]

Been giving it away for ages. https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Ann-Otooles-Tin-Foil-Crown/277520

Shoulda sold it eh? oh well.

[Darien Caldwell]

He may not have outed Alts himself, but he created a system with that purpose in mind.

"I built this A-Bomb, but I didn't drop it."

I think he still bears a lot of responsibility. He didn't *have* to make his system the way he did, or at all. But he made a conscious decision to do so.

[Prokofy Neva]

Because it sold better. The people who buy devices like this are the ones who create the market and bear even more responsibility than the maker, really. He wouldn't be able to cater to their low desires if they didn't exhibit them.

[Amanda Dallin]

There's plenty of blame to spread around Redzone and no doubt it was meant as an alt detector. Capitalism is not an excuse for unethical behavior. Saying the users of Redzone are more responsible than the maker (who also operated and controlled access to the database) is akin to saying a copybotter is more guilty than the maker of the copybot software. Both the Redzone customer and Zfire are responsible for their own actions.

[Prokofy Neva]

Actually, I disagree that it was "meant as an alt detector". That feature was subordinate to its main purpose which was promising people an end to copybotters -- an end to visit from people using certain viewers that were known to be copybotting viewers (that's the only form of copybotting it can stop).

Evidence of this can be seen in the fact that back in June 2010 when I first ran into zFire, that was the shtick on his profile, when he was still relatively unknown. Going back several years, when he was just one gadget maker among zillions on SL Marketplace, he wasn't noticed. He has had this device out for awhile, selling it.

It reached a tipping point at a certain juncture a few weeks ago, and that's because a critical mass of merchants began using it mainly as an alt detector, and began to get upset. So that's why I point the finger at that. It's not to somehow exonerate the sleaziness of this sort of security-mongering and scraping in the first place.

But it's to squarely put the blame on the mob who allows it to continue, and will ensure it still continues in some other form some other way.

Nobody has claimed that "capitalism" gives an excuse for unethical behaviour. Indeed, liberal democratic societies with free enterprise in fact appreciate the rule of law for a lot of reasons, including the protection of property rights, and you can persuade merchants to abide by the law.

And frankly, there is more evidence than not that sleazy though he may be, zFire did this.

He has stuck with the same account for some years. He has complied with the Lindens' requests. He's adjusted to customer concerns (hysteria, really) and turned off the ability of anyone to buy it and see ALL alts of the entire system or the alts of the ones they scan.

It's not "akin" to saying a coypbotter is more guilty the maker of the copybotter viewer. It's pointing out where responsibility has to be squarely felt, and isn't being felt.

There is far, far too much shirking of this responsibility on to the backs of Linden Lab, claiming they must "do something".

Nobody imagines that they themselves must "do something" about their desire to out alts, in which they and their friends indulged.

I'm for personal responsibility.

[Ann Otoole InSL]

Hey prok to get clued in on what is really going on here you should google up michael stefan prime and look over his history. Yes that is him.

Draw your own conclusions about him and his russian connections.

Enjoy.

[Prokofy Neva]

Ann,

I'm well aware of the hysterical musings and Google sleuthing of the Sharia Court at Sluniverse.com The giddy biddies there even got themselves worked into a tizzy that zFire was going to commit suicide, and they were trying to figure out how to call the police in his

Others of them were trying to gage the stages of psychopath-codependency they may be involved in

I'm sorry, but I'm for getting the facts, not getting a lot of speculative bullshit that in fact makes it harder to get the facts.

I already read that "Mike Prime" stuff and saw the registered SL business. BTW, Prime is probably a fake name. "Prim" is the term in Russian for "to the 1st power" in math. Unless he shorted his name from something like Primakov when his family came to the U.S.

And yes, I see the wire fraud cases against Michael Stefan Prime.

Is that the father? Is it the same kid? In 2004 he'd have been very young if in 2010, he was in college, working in a college's sandbox group as the security goon, eh?

I mean, seriously. I think that you have to let law-enforcement with some notion of fact-getting and due process work at this and you guys playing amateur detectives are in fact busy creating a regimen for us that involves bunches of hysterics on Cristiano's forums being able to get whatever Linden connection of the month they have -- now it's Soft -- to just ban people and their products for whatever reason -- "because the community wants it". Already I've seen references to Rod Humble taking action not so much because of finding Red Zone in violation but "because the community was up in arms".

And you need to think carefully about living under that sort of regime.

This is why I opposed Benjamin Noble/Benjamin Duranske so vigorously. He was a crusading, swaggering coder-turned-lawyer who decided to make a big career splash with outing corrupt banking and pyramid scheme scams in SL.

Except...he's not the district attorney of our lives, he's just a guy with a big ego who was unemployed writing a book between jobs -- jobs that he changed every year before and after SL.

While everybody was prepared to nail Ginko and others to the wall and burn them at the stake, there was at times little to differentiate what they did for years in the form of a high-risk and high-yield investment opportunity of the sort that prevails even after Madoff, and legally, and an actual deliberate pyramid scheme. The stock market Shaun made originally even had Philip's blessing because it was cool and scripted and involved fun code.

I'm for due process. And for adversarial defense. I'm not for packs of junkyard dogs such as get started on Second Life forums for deciding just for me or anyone.

Duranske did not have the facts of these people's alleged schemes; and none of you really have them about Red Zone either. Perhaps even the Lindens don't.

If you really care about this, Ann, call the FBI.

[Prokofy Neva]

BTW, the world is only just beginning to get a glimpse of the criminality of Russia and the post-Soviet system that it never really had before because this great evil stayed inside the Soviet borders.

Now there are tens of thousands of Russians and post-Soviets all over the U.S. and increasingly being nabbed in various sophisticated crime schemes. Crime is the norm, and crime is the result directly of the ideology of communism, and that communist criminality is also found in various Silicon Valley companies. There are vast hordes of Russian programmers who are utterly cynical about morality and the law in place in all these companies and reinforce the entire California Business Model.

People like me who have been describing these things for years always sound like kooks with tinfoil hats on -- until they don't.

But having dealt with this sort of deep and complex criminality for my whole adult life, I can only stress how important it is a) not to become like them in fighting them and b) using due process, the rule of law, and basic human rights concepts all the while, as that will ultimately be what kills them off.

If you aren't scrupulous about due process, finding facts, looking at each piece of evidence with a critical mind, you will always lose with them because they are extremely cunning.

[Prokofy Neva]

Again, let me point out another thing about this I already pointed out in June 2010 when I first encountered zFire.

The reason I even uncovered zFire is because an alt using my RL name as a first name with a new last name in a day-old alt attacked the Sutherland Dam with the usual ferocity. It was always the same people doing that.

One of them was Hazim Gazov and his various manifestations. He either is separate from Tizzers Foxchase, a couple with Tizzers, or they share the account, or maybe they are even the same person, one of them being an elaborate staging of an alternate identity online with RL pictures different etc. (this is common).

That person running the fake alt with my RL name, who might or might not be Hazim (but could be, or related to Woodbury/Tizzers etc) shows up in zFire's group.

It's an invite-only group at the time. His lie about it being an open group was easily proved by displaying its inworld status at that time which was "not open enrollment".

As he was online and the other 8 security goons at the time weren't, chances are very high that zFire invited that alt (Hazim/Tizzers/whatever) into the group.

Now, why are these people related? It's not just chance, because this alt doesn't need an open university sandbox, he already has the Woodbury one, or for that matter, Ahern. The chances of him finding an obscure Pennsylvania college's sandbox on the grid just randomly that one time are very slim.

So they knew each other, and it was some kind of relationship. These new griefer alts always rely on other people to hold their stashes for them of all their outfits, griefing objects, etc. as they go through their throw-away accounts.

Some of these people are cut-aways, that is, they never, never grief themselves so that they can go on effectively playing that "mule" role.

When I confronted zFire about why he invited this known alt of a griefer who had clearly made the alt and clearly stocked up on his griefer stash from somebody else in that day of his existence, he pleaded ignorance. I was hardly convinced.

Now, Hazim is professing to know the RL address of this Mike Prime and implying he knows more:

http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/general-sl-discussion/56364-redzone-2-electric-boogaloo-195.html

Now why is that?

I don't believe for a minute that he is "out of the loop".

As Uri always has said, "In the hall of mirror that is the interwebs, we may never know."

But now Sharia Court is convinced they've got their man. Maybe they do.

Again, think of the consequences of having all products in SL having to be registered and vetted because of the community hysteria over one guy who has not been proved guilty for *this* in a court of law.

Trials in an independent judiciary do not look at past offenses to determine guilt over the current charge.

[Doo]

... Kook with a tin foil hat says what?

[Prokofy Neva]

And BTW, Ann, note what also happens in this very long marathon session of Sluniverse.com Sharia Court: the privacy of a suspect is violated even though at first the Sharia court judges conceded (earlier in the thread) that even if they have suspicions about someone in SL, they should not out them on a forums (because that could subject them to revenge and harm).

Notice how they jettison all those considerations, and Cristiano drops his rule about not publishing people's real-life data (which he wasn't very scrupulous about for me, either, back in the day).

Now, this may seem like "an airtight case," but these are just amateurs hysterically amped up with the drama and fun of playing detective on an Internet forum, not professionals.

And I can testify what these same people do to you when they have the story *wrong* from hearsay and innuendo.

The whole reason that I lost my privacy, and the right to keep my avatar name separate from my real-life name is that *many of these same people* thought I had "committed a crime in real life".

They began by not liking my criticism of the favouritism they enjoyed from the Lindens -- favouritism above all illustrated in 2005 by their absolute impunity from moderation on the forums, despite their gross, nasty, obscene posts and insular and aggressively protective clannishness.

I was right to criticize that for sure, and they hounded me.

They Google-sleuthed and Google-witch-hunted and came up with this person with a similar RL name as mine, a journalist in Milwaukee so they thought they "had me" -- and this person was accused of plagiarism for some article about bikinis. This journalist was absolutely unrelated to me in any way.

But they all hounded me, told Lindens about this, posted innuendos about this on the forums, and used it to justify outing not only my gender but the link to my RL name and place and job. That's pretty foul, as you can admit.

They did this because they had sleuthed on the Internet and also scanned everyone and everything they could scan to "try to come up with something". People who change their genders are hated and mistrusted in particular.

To this day, there are still people who harass me with this false story -- Soft Linden being the latest example, accusing me falsely of plagiarism on Twitter. What a fucking asshole.

So, again, be careful what you wish for by applauding this sort of mob justice. You never know when they might come for you.

[Ann Otoole InSL]

zFire and his crew are all missing from Secondlife. The redzone store was dismantled by LL. The authorities took his illegal pet raccoon away irl.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

None of this is mob justice. This is the rule of law: LL has actually applied its ToS. The SLU threads were instrumental, but in the final analysis, it was not pitchforks and torches that got rid of zFire, it was his own hubris, and his continued and very public flouting of LL's rules and community standards.

[Prokofy Neva]

Gosh, Ann. They blew in the racoon? That was mean.

Honestly, you people are impossible.

Of course it's mob justice.

None of you have the facts, and Soft Linden is hardly the person to impartially apply the law here, either.

When LL doesn't apply the TOS starting last year (we know that this Red Zone was around at least in June 2010 when I caught sight of the ad for it), when it waits weeks to apply it, one has to wonder whether it is applying the TOS, or responding to mob justice. And no, I'm afraid I won't accept the theory that they had to string him along while the FBI investigated, but if this is indeed a case for the courts, then I'm sure we'll see a news story about it from someone more competent than Pixeleen, who can't make up his minder whether he's trying to channel Samuel Pepys or Hunter Thompson and can't seem to write without sounding like he has a stick up his ass.

When we can hear what wire fraud or computer fraud or whatever it is that is involved is really at stake, that will be helpful to put into perspective all that forums sleuthing.

If there isn't any court case, then I will continue to wonder about all this. There's a lot of circumstantial evidence, but also a lot of assholes and giddy schoolgirls on Sluniverse.

I guess I'm not surprised to see Vasilisa Shilova still in the people list, and not surprised that she's in the closed Berkman Center group. Interesting, that.

Vasilisa is the name of a character in a famous Russian fairy tale. It's not really a modern name so I'd be surprised if that was a real name. It's also possible that Vasilisa is him. He could have that elaborate a psychotic life or maybe is just good at creating bluffs.

Who profits? that's always the question one must ask in SL. And here they are:

Psyke, maker of security orbs, who will help win back business lost to Red Zone by her constant intervention in the epic Red Zone thread.

Soft Linden, appearing to be the "hero of the hour"

Linden Lab, if they move to a registered merchants system.