Second Thoughts

Interview with GreenLantern Excelsior: "The "whistleblowers" are just doxing each other like a circular firing squad."

The latest Privacy Panic in SL instigated by the goons at Sluniverse.com has spawned an epic Summer Blockbuster thread over at Sluniverse.com Sharia Court -- as I mentioned -- and I don't feel that the Justice League United (JLU) got to tell their side of the story, in part because GreenLantern Excelsior, a leader, was suspended from the forums for "disclosure" or publishing real-life information (in this case, of the already-self-exposed RL information of Deadly Codec, who died of AIDs).

Publishing this interview is just a public service to add to the public discourse -- it's not an endorsement of vigilantism. I just think with all the dozens of Woodburies and related grieftards at SLun, and the constant spinning and distracting and deliberate hoaxes and active measures (propagandistic actions to shape public opinion), the JLU story needs to be told.

I see yet another tendentious story in the Herald, this time an interview with an RP leader of the sim Antiquity, who is disgruntled with the JLU because he thinks it is capturing information. It seems to me all that happened is that he was incited and whipped up to a frenzy by the Sluniverse.com gang, and to protect his community he felt he should "opt out" of the Phantom Zone anti-griefing system. Neither he nor the Herald nor anybody on Sluniverse.com has come up with any real case of privacy violation that I can tell, although perhaps this is yet to come.

Why did I pick GreenLantern instead of Kalel Venkman? Well, a long-time friend of mine happened to vouch for GL, and said he was decent. I don't know about Venkman and I figured he would not reply to my request.

INTERVIEW WITH GREENLANTERN EXCELSIOR

Prokofy Neva:  Can you start by saying in your own words in a line or two what you believe to be the JLU and its mission, your role in it, and what you believe to be the Wrong Hands and its mission. Who is behind the Wrong Hands?

GreenLantern Excelsior:  The Justice League Unlimited (JLU) provides mentoring to new residents, patrols unprotected Linden land and any private sims where we are invited, educates sim owners about security, and supports charity events. I am a JLU officer. My primary role is as a patrol and anti-griefer specialist, and I also enjoy helping new residents as a Mentor. The group The Wrong Hands (TWH) was formed to steal and publish the contents of JLU's wiki. The founder is JimK Korpov, and the original members (all banned or suspended) were Cam Mitchell, Doctor Yootz, Haruhi Thespian, Information Core, Mullet Handsohn, Robble Rubble, and Tux Winkler.

The group The Wrong Hands (TWH) was formed to steal and publish the contents of JLU's wiki. Their objective was achieved on January 10, 2010. They used a JLU applicant named Haruhi Thespian who, when given login information, copied the wiki and gave the contents to TWH, who published it. These days, the group appears to be dedicated to trolling JLU. It has a website that's perpetually under development, linked from Tux Winkler's website.

The original members of TWH  are all either banned or suspended now. Subsequent members were Code Slacker (banned), Codizzo Resident, Discostar Resident (deleted), geee spot, HogLogs Longspring (banned), Irate Resident (banned), kutchacokoff Resident (banned), Mullet Resident (banned), Pixeleen Mistral, Theta Darkward, VaginalSnot Bubble (banned), Xyz Wyx, and Zax Zero (left the group).

Prokofy Neva:  It seems that this latest round of the Wrong Hands scandal began with the Lindens' closure of the sims Revolution and Red Square and the permabanning of Tizzers' alt involved in those sims, Intlibber Brautigan, whose alt was Overbrain Unplugged, and others. That sequence of event tends to get overlooked. What is your understanding of why these sims were closed? What triggered these events in July?

GreenLantern Excelsior:  No one seems to know why Red Square and Revolution were deleted, but they were gone on July 19. At around that time, so were Atlas Saintlouis, Overbrain Unplugged, Rembrandt Flux, and Twinkie Swizzle [evidently the Tizzers alt--PN]. Rembrandt had hired Overbrain and Twinkie to build the Bronies sims of Bronyville and Derpy, which may be why those two sims were removed also.

Prokofy Neva:  What was the name of Tizzers' alt on that project? Why did the Lindens allow yet another very thinly-disguised version of the Woodbury gang into SL again in the first place? Why was Ryokashi allowed back into SL after being banned?

GreenLantern Excelsior:  Twinkie Swizzle, an alt of Tizzers, was the founder of the Bronies group (a My Little Pony fan club) and was also peripherally involved with TWH. Twinkie's account was removed on July 18. I don't know why LL can't keep the Woodbury members out of SL, but Woodbury does seem to be able to return at will, and they can't seem to stay in SL for very long without violating the Terms of Service. As I understand it, Ryokashi was suspended for age verification, and was having trouble producing the requested documentation. He finally came up with a birth certificate or something, so LL let him come back. I've been told that the only residents who were permabanned were Overbrain and Twinkie, and the rest are just suspended.

Prokofy Neva:  Do you believe that the saga incited now on Sluniverse.com in the thread about the JLU's IP tracking to be an effort to distract the public from the wrongdoing of these Woodbury/PN griefers and Wrong Hands itself? Do you believe that the hacking into the JLU data base called "Brainiac" and disclosure on various websites is in fact the main crime here and should be the main focus of the Lindens or even RL law-enforcers?

GreenLantern Excelsior:  I believe that the IP tracking issue on SLU was started by TWH to harass and troll JLU. The thread started out with a list of names and IP addresses that were said to come from JLU, but really came from another group of banned users who had been collecting that information. I believe the purpose of the thread was to get JLU removed from SL so the griefers and TWH can do whatever they want without worrying about organized opposition. So maybe the goal is not distraction from wrongdoing, but removing obstacles to wrongdoing. If it were my server being attacked, I would consider going to law enforcement with all the information I had.

Although a major focus of the SLU thread is how JLU used to keep private information in a password-protected wiki, not much is said about how that private information has been published in several places on the Internet by the hackers for everyone to see. If it's illegal to keep the information in private, it must be illegal to post it in public. Some of the SLU folks maintain that posting people's private information online after it's stolen from the wiki is a form of whistleblowing. I believe that is nothing but misdirection. The "whistleblowers" are just doxing each other like a circular firing squad.

Apparently the public revelation of real life information from the private JLU wiki has caused some problems. Pixeleen Mistral posted this on TheListSL's blog yesterday: "Thelistsl, can you please remove all your posts regarding rl info. Our site has gotten many reports for hosting the link to the thelistsl.blogspot.com."

Prokofy Neva:  What was the relationship of Tux Winkler to these sims and to Woodbury/b-tards or related griefing groups? You say that Tux Winkler may have been banned for IP tracking? Why would Tux Winkler be operating any kind of tracking scripts? For what organization? Kalel Venkman is quoted as saying that Tux "arranged" the hacking. Is this a significant change in his allegation, and if so, who did the actual hacking?

GreenLanter Excelsior:  I was told that Tux was not one of the major players in Red Square, Revolution, or Woodbury. Supposedly he and his friends just stayed in those Soviet sims to have fun. I only visited there a couple of times, and they didn't tell me their secrets, so I don't know the real answer.

Tux did maintain an extensive spyware network in Second Life, with tracking objects in many sims, placed there by several accomplices. I haven't heard that it was done as part of any organization. The objects may not have tracked IP addresses, just the locations of certain residents who were on his list. At one time, there were 26 sims containing probes, 9 sims where the probes had been removed, and 26 other sims that were shown on the website's tracking page. The information about who was online and where they were located was fed to Tux's website and displayed on a public page. It is my understanding that a Linden read an article about the spyware network on the Krypton Radio website , tested the items, and referred the matter to the governance team, at which point Tux lost his account. I have not heard that Tux was involved in the hacking of the JLU wiki. No one knows who did that.

Prokofy Neva:  Why was Atlas Saintlouis also banned, when ostensibly he was just a mafia overlord running the sims and not directly related to Woodbury/etc? How much is he involved in griefing?

GreenLantern Excelsior:  I don't know much about Atlas, other than his inworld character is an angry JLU opponent who enjoys using me as a verbal punching bag to take out his frustrations. He is said to be a former member of the Nicholas Mafia, and owner or financier of the former Red Square and Revolution sims.

Prokofy Neva:  What is your own description of the JLU's Brainiac? Are you in fact maintaining a data base on SL residents that you have documented as griefing, or who you believe to commit acts of griefing? How do you yourself justify both IP tracking, alt-linking and any other gathering of data on SL residents?

GreenLantern Excelsior:  Brainiac is a JLU database that associates resident names with reports written about them by JLU members. Reports can be entered and retrieved only from inworld. Most of those reports are about griefing events. The Brainiac wiki is a website containing articles about many different aspects of Second Life, including certain residents and groups. It can be accessed only from the Internet.

In my opinion, IP tracking, although allowed by LL is not useful, since IP addresses can be shared by different people. I think IP tracking should be avoided, because it crosses the line between SL and RL. I was in favor of alt detection when it was "legal," because if it were done accurately and used with confidentiality, it could slow or end the pattern of griefer harassment that some parcel owners have had to endure. Not everyone agreed, and some folks considered it an invasion of privacy, even though they were broadcasting their IP addresses every time they listened to a music stream in SL. The issue is academic now, because LL has made revealing alts in SL a ToS violation. As for gathering other data, as long as RL and SL are separate, I see nothing wrong with it. SL has even provided a way to keep your own personal notes in an avatar's profile, which is a LL-approved method of gathering data that only you can see.

Prokofy Neva:  Do you include real-life information in this data base? Does this information contain medical information, information on employment, families, etc.?  Is it maintained on a third-party website? How does it physically connect to Second Life?

GreenLantern Excelsior:  RL information is not included in the Brainiac database or in the Brainiac wiki. The Brainiac database is accessible only from SL, and the Brainiac wiki is accessible only from the Internet. There is no connection between the wiki and Second Life.

Prokofy Neva:  Do you believe that inworld griefing is justification for attempting to get the RL information of any individual in SL? Why don't you just leave it to the Lindens to handle abuse reports themselves? Do you see any civil rights implications related to this kind of spying on people? Or do you think its a necessity given the rampant griefing in SL? You have been widely quoted as defending McCarthy in that his methods were wrong but his cause was justified  -- could you elaborate on what exactly your position is?

GreenLantern Excelsior:  The original idea behind collecting RL information was that we could point out the bad guys to law enforcement authorities in case that was needed. Over time, I believe that members "caught the fever" to do research and find out more about Second Life residents, so other personal information was included in the wiki that had nothing to do with helping the authorities identify griefers. My personal opinion is that no one needs to gather RL information on SL residents. LL will contact law enforcement if there is criminal behavior in SL, and law enforcement will identify the perpetrators. I see no violations of civil rights or personal privacy, though, since the RL information was all available on the Internet through a simple Google search, or had been supplied to JLU members by the people involved. Currently there is no RL information contained in JLU's wiki. It's deleted, all gone, won't be back.

The world was a very different place in the late 40s and early 50s. The Soviet Union was engulfing eastern Europe, and China had become a Communist country. The threat of Communism was on everyone's minds in those days. Senator Joe McCarthy had evidence about Communist infiltrators in the US government, and his speeches on that subject caused a huge media response and resulted in Senate hearings. The final Senate report, written by Democrats, said that McCarthy's charges were "a fraud and a hoax," while Senate Republicans called the report a "brazen whitewash of treasonable conspiracy." McCarthy's strident style and frequent accusations irritated Democrats and the news media, and he was vilified in the press. McCarthy's tactics could never be implemented today, and viewed through the eyes of 21st century Americans, he was a "fearmonger." But the truth is that McCarthy was right. The US government had been monitoring communications between the Soviet Union and people in the US, and it turned out that there were Soviet spies in the US government, as McCarthy had alleged. McCarthy's reputation and career were destroyed by the liberal news media, and these days "everybody knows" he was a bad guy. He also happens to have been right.

Prokofy Neva:  There's some speculation that Phantom Zone isn't really tracking IPs, or at least not to match with alts, or that this task is sent to some other foil that is doing this, i.e. SL Police Department. What's really going on here? What is the relationship of Green Zone to Phantom Zone?

GreenLantern Excelsior:  Phantom Zone never did collect IP addresses. At one time, JLU considered working with the group **Police Department** (PD), who had a database of alts. There were prototype information retrieval devices that would show any articles written about the resident in question, and a list of "possible alts." Neither group programmed their security devices to automatically eject or ban residents due to this alt correlation. The response was planned to be an information display to show that two residents shared an IP address. Because the IP detection method produced too many false positives, JLU never implemented alt detection. The PD is no longer collecting and storing IP addresses. As for Green Zone, I know nothing about it other than some peripheral information about its purpose. As far as I know, it has no relation to Phantom Zone.

Prokofy Neva:  There are about a dozen very active complainers on this Sluniverse.com thread. What is their relationship to the Wrong Hands, why are they complaining, and do you believe them to be in fact just griefers covering their tracks? Have you now made this a hit list or an enemy list of these people as they claim, and do you plan to take this further?

GreenLantern Excelsior:  I reviewed 15 pages and counted 28 members in that thread who were vehemently anti-JLU. Nine of them could not be found in Search, and I know for a fact that four of those are either suspended or permabanned. Those four, along with one other who is not banned, were or are TWH members. The thread started with a false allegation that a list of resident names and IP addresses came from JLU's Phantom Zone. That was the original complaint, but once we proved that Phantom Zone was not the source of the list, the complainers dismissed that and said that they had moved on to other complaints, mostly associated with JLU storing RL information in our password protected wiki. I don't know all of the complainers, and although I know some of them are griefers, I can't say they all fit that description. JLU has not added their names to any kind of list, and I know of no action that will be taken as a result of the thread.

Prokofy Neva:  The meeting that a JLU member purported to have with Pete Linden and then leaked, which was published in Herald comments, seems to indicate a changed attitude of the Lindens to the JLU. Do you in fact believe that the Lindens once endorsed you, and in fact valued your vigilante work? Do you have reason to believe now that the Lindens will cut ties with you, if they had them in the first place? Why? Is this part of a new anti-griefing methodology or system that CEO Rod Linden is putting into place?

GreenLantern Excelsior:  First, please don't call us vigilantes. JLU is a Neighborhood Watch in Second Life. All we do is observe and report. Linden Lab takes any enforcement action that's necessary.

It's hard to say what the Lindens are thinking. I don't believe they ever "endorsed" anyone but the former Second Life Mentors group. We used to chat with a few of the Lindens now and then, but I think these days they are mostly too busy to get into long conversations. I recall a couple of years ago, after a Linden had worked hard to clean up some replicating cubes in the sandboxes, he dropped down to ground level for a while and we all made it a point to thank him. He thanked us for writing the Abuse Reports,and said that they would have more time to fix things like that if they didn't have to respond to so many personal arguments between residents. I've never been able to determine whether the Lindens recognize Abuse Reports from individual residents.

I don't believe that leaking the conversation with Pete Linden will help or hurt our relationship with LL. People have private conversations with Lindens all the time, so this is nothing new. It doesn't mean that JLU has some sort of special favors bestowed upon us. I'm sure that if we have legitimate information to convey in the future, the Lindens will listen to us just the same as they would listen to any other resident or group.

Prokofy Neva:  It seems you have responded to a request from Joshua Nightshade to remove the entry about him in the Brainiac by deleting a page. Why was Joshua Nightshade in this database in the first place? He is not known to be an inworld griefer, although he has a history of stalking and harassing people on forums. Are you now going to enable anyone to request to be removed from your database? If so, doesn't that constitute an admission on your part that you were not engaging in ethical activity?

GreenLantern Excelsior:  Joshua Nightshade's page was removed from the Brainiac wiki, as was all other personal information. The reason it was there in the first place is that he forwarded some emails between him and the PN to a JLU member, who then created a page about Joshua and placed the email text there. The first time I heard it was gone was when Joshua posted about it on SLU. I don't know the JLU policy (if there is one) about removing people's pages from the wiki. I suspect that anyone wanting to know what's on their wiki page or wanting their page deleted will get a statement similar to "I can neither confirm nor deny that you have a page in the JLU wiki."

Prokofy Neva:  There's been a claim that Cummere Mayo has initiated some kind of law-enforcement inquiry about the JLU and Wrong Hands. Have you heard from any law-enforcers regarding this matter? Is it true as claimed that JLU leaders are in touch with the CIA or FBI or Scotland Yard?  Do you contact law-enforcers in RL with information you have gathered about alleged griefers in SL?

GreenLantern Excelsior:  Cummere Mayo has made many claims in that thread, but as far as I know, making claims is all that's happened. No law enforcement officers have visited JLU members at home, and the JLU wiki is still online. There has been some talk in the past about JLU making contact with different law enforcement agencies, but I don't know the current status.

Prokofy Neva:  Why aren't you or other JLU members answering any of the charges and complaints on Sluniverse.com or any other site?

GreenLantern Excelsior:  I posted many times in that SL Universe thread until I was suspended for "posting links to RL info" (I had posted a link to Deadly Codec's obituary, which revealed his real name, so it was real life info about someone who is no longer present in real life, which is a weak reason for a suspension). I have also been posting in the recent Alphaville Herald story that has my name in the title, and in another discussion thread on the Second Citizen board. Other JLU members have been participating in other discussions, notably Hewee Zetkin and ZenMondo Wormser. In my opinion, the reason we don't have more members talking in the discussion groups could be a mindset that "if we just ignore it, it will go away." To a certain extent, this is true. When the information releases taper off and JLU members haven't posted for a while in the SLU thread, the members there get distracted by shiny objects and lolcats and they rapidly lose focus on their objective. Now that the leaks are plugged and no more information will be released, that thread should grind to a halt in short order. I'm a big advocate of opposing public rumors and accusations, but I realize that not everyone enjoys arguing on the Internet, so I don't get upset when the rest of the members don't come charging into battle.

Prokofy Neva:  Tux Winkler has a signature quote on Sluniverse.com that claims that Soft Linden was involved in his banning and told others about it. Is this true?

GreenLantern Excelsior:  Soft Linden investigated a JLU report about spyware objects that were tracking residents on the grid. Later, he followed up with JLU to inform us that those responsible for the objects had been banned, and the objects had been removed. He didn't tell us any resident names who had been banned. Since most of the residents being tracked by the objects were JLU members, I believe it was nothing more than a courtesy notification. We found out later that Tux Winkler was gone from the grid.

Prokofy Neva:  On Sluniverse.com, people are reporting that members of the JLU are leaving, ostensibly because they don't wish to remain in your organization, given these practices involving harvesting IP data and maintaining files on people with SL and RL information. Is this the case?

GreenLantern Excelsior:  Two JLU members did resign recently. Tux posted in the SLU thread when he noticed the membership number had decreased. I didn't speak to the members about it, so I can't say exactly why they left. However, I don't believe they resigned due to any perceived ethical violations.

Prokofy Neva:  Add anything more if you have any further comments.

GreenLantern Excelsior:  Thank you for the interview. I want to insert a disclaimer here. I am not the official spokesman for any of the groups I've mentioned here, and any statements I've made are my personal opinions, not the official position of those groups. Any information I've discussed here has already been revealed elsewhere, so my part in the discussion has been to correlate the various pieces of information into something that makes sense. The official JLU position on the matter has been posted recently at Truth and Lies - the League Response.
 
Addendum:

GreenLantern Excelsior:  I told Deadly's sister that I was a friend of his from Second Life, and asked if she would say hello for me. She thanked me for the thought, but at that point Deadly was already too far gone for speech or hearing. As far as his sister ever knew, I was just Some Guy On The Internet who wanted to wish him well. Anyone who tries to make that into a harassment case is lying.

I swear (or affirm or aver) that I didn't read this entry until after I submitted my interview response. I agree with both commenters and with you. This is a great article.

 

 

Sluniverse Summer Privacy Panic Blockbuster, or the Griefers' Violin Concerto vs. the JLU

There's nothing I hate more than the Big Lie, and a series of little lies and deliberate disinformation measures rolling and rolling into a bigger ball and into the Big Lie.

And that's what is essentially happening here on this thread at Sluniverse that seems to be longer and more dramatic than the infamous RedZone/zfire Xue drama, but which hasn't had the culmination that the Sharia Court mullahs at Sluniverse would like to see -- heads rolling and people arrested in real life (as zfire Xue, a repeat offender, was in RL over his various cyber crimes).

It's an outrageous thing to watch on so many levels, not only because of the ridiculous distractions and dodges and lies being told about the true nature of griefing, but the way in which people on the forums are played like a violin -- hence my headline.

Basically, what happened in a nutshell is that the Lindens finally caught up with the *third* incarnation of the Woodbury University griefing group and its related intertwined and spinoff griefing groups the Patriotic Nigras (!) and b-tards -- all related to W-hat, of course. They removed their islands *yet again* -- this time Revolution and Red Square I think it was called, owned by a mafioso, Atlas Saintlouis (sometimes said to be an alt of Robble Rubble, a serial frequent-flyer griefer on Ravenglass).

The Lindens did this -- we are told, and here I am reporting on the version of the story of others -- because Tux Winkler, either a land group owner or related to the entire caper in some fashion, used tracking scripts to track...something -- IP addresses, merely SL log-ons and locations, this is debated -- for which he was banned -- or as he puts it, "put on indefinite administrative hold" (*snort*). The JIRA side-drama is instructive to understand the mechanics and the caper pulled off here.

He and a bunch of the other Tizzers Foxchase alts and other griefing frequent flyers were all removed yet again, and they all came running and squealing in faux indignation and outrage and this "injustice" to Sluniverse, where they basically rolled the joint. Robble Rubble and Tux Winkler basically installed themselves among the various naifs and cynics (Robble was new to them, they had never seen these people heckling others inworld so didn't believe there was anything wrong with them) and led a constant drumbeat of speculation about the Justice League United, the inworld RP gang who go around fighting griefers.

Now, we all get it that vigilante groups are awful, I have no use for them. I don't want or need them; I don't cooperate with them. They exist because the Lindens began Second Life by blowing it up constantly to make it, and persisted in that destructive and hedonistic mode, basically letting anybody do whatever, even crash sims because it was all "emergent behaviour" and "load-testing" and "interesting".

They weren't interested in making a civilization; so they didn't get one. The line in the Lord of the Flies about having fun til the grownups come to fetch us -- that about sums it up.

Even so -- as I argue against Avril's claims -- the Lindens *are* managing their servers. They banned griefers for a third time. That's the problem. That's why they are howling and trying to deflect attention to other things. Don't let them do that.

So this current Griefscapade involves making claims that the JLU's infamous Brainiac data base has been hacked and leaked again by the Wrong Hands, which is Tux Winkler but just another PN/WU reincarnation (he vigorously denies they are related; of course they all are, they are constantly seen together inworld and have run griefing posses together; usually those that deny vigorously just ride shotgun and stand around and 'do nothing' so they can make this fake claim.)

Maybe it was hacked as in hacked with code, or maybe it was social-hacked, i.e. a member infiltrated and then began to leak out page by page so they wouldnt' be noticed. Like their grownup version WikiLeaks, TWH has been doling out things rather than dumping them -- and may not dump until they feel they are in danger of arrest or are giving up their infiltration.

So why do I say this is all a Big Lie?

Because what's happening is that an entire false impression is created from a Soviet-style "active measure," i.e. a propagandistic manipulation meant to change mass consciousness.

These griefers are riling people up to think their privacy is compromised by this database and that these superheroes should be banned from SL or even arrested in RL (!) for keeping files on people mixing RL and SL info. They are making it seem like these men in tights have "gone bad" and are now like Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney, keeping secret files and settling scores and breaking the law.

And not surprisingly, what we are seeing now is the Pavlovian response from some bloggers. Ciaran is saying the JLU's tights are around their ankles and they are in disgrace because...they have violated other people's privacy. Avril is also writing self-righteous copy about new privacy violations.

I really hate this snotty superior British leftism, I truly do. It's just such fucking *assholery*.

Because it's fake.

Yes, violating privacy is wrong. Yes, especially medical privacy.

But their case is a total propagandistic piece of bullshit. It's calculated to milk tears and incite hatred and outrage, but it's fake. TOTALLY FAKE. There is no privacy violation.

That's because the person involved himself linked his RL and SL names and publicized his AIDS condition in the mass media.

Remember Deadly Codec? The news is -- he's still dead, as they say about Lincoln. While he was alive and dying of AIDS -- we all learned of this not from JLU sleuthing but because he told us himself in copious amounts of text in newspapers, in an online local publication, and in a Youtube -- that he was ill with HIV. The youtube was in fact made in response to me -- and my doubting of the story. Why? Because Deadly was a PN griefer who had crashed sims and caused racist and ugly shitstorms in SL numerous times, including of me. He wrote that he enjoyed poking at me to get a rise out of me, it was fun. Part of their shtick was to rain down textures of a Jewish man at the wailing wall and then the word AIDS as if to say he was crying about AIDS, and AIDS panic was all over. This was part of their antisemitic crazy AIDS obsession -- from the meme "Pool's Out".

So naturally, if a person who has done THAT says he has AIDS in RL, you ask questions. You especially ask them if Deadly Codec (Joshua McCracken) has told an utterly flamboyant, dramatic story about falling in love with Pixeleen Mistral (Mark McCahill) online while chatting in SL, finding out she was a he in real life, then deciding therefore that he must be gay, and then going to gay clubs for a few weeks and contracting AIDS.

So the "horror" that Ciaran and Avril are writing about -- the *sole case that anyone has of any leaking of private data and medical information* is THAT CASE. THAT CASE WHICH IS BOGUS as you know.

Now, why isn't this coming out? Because Cristiano Midnight, owner and moderator of Sluniverse, is flying around in his own self-righteous white robes once again and banning people from publishing real-life information. No matter that *the guy himself* published his AIDS story and RL name and that JLU members would be linking to RL media that is already well in the public domain.

No matter that back in the day, Chris was hugely selective about this and was happy to have *my* RL information outed by the malicious Nolan Nash (now using the alt "Bing" on Slun). No matter that the guy is dead and it really is moot. Cristiano is now zealously -- and of course terribly opportunistically and politically! -- banning this now and that prevents the public from discussing WHAT IS REALLY GOING ON HERE -- which is not any massive invasion of privacy in fact or as a policy. (If you can really, trully, hand-on-heart come up with *a case* where the JLU has obtained illicit RL information from hacking, and not the public domain, i.e. from open sources where people openly talk about their RL/SL links, then by all means, come up with it.)

The confusion -- mental and moral -- comes from the fake wall of privacy that SL erects, where they say that even though we might "all know" about somebody in RL their RL is not fair game for SL. And I'm happy with that inside the confines of SL's servers. I should enjoy a SL and not be bombarded with pictures of myself from RL press, harassment memos about suffering from menopause, etc. etc.

People who are public figures -- and Joshua/Deadly was a very, VERY public figure who wrote a great deal and wrote tell-alls -- have to expect a lower level of protection. And it really is silly to be banning discussion of this person -- or banning links of his RL and SL on the forums at sluniverse.com just out of a slavish rectitude. Yes, there should be a rule that RL information should not be permitted -- people don't wish it there. But when a public figure has died, who linked these two things, that should be a ready exception. Geeky literalism once again hobbles the public discourse.

Another huge "outrage" going on is the "horror" that one of the JLU people contacted Deadly Codec's sister, which they could do *because they both had open and visible Facebook accounts* to see if in fact he was dying, and asked to be remembered to him.

Once you realize this wasn't an act of sleuthing or outing of privacy, but became possible because the guy outed himself, and once you see that it's ultimately a form of tribute to their RP of cops and robbers, you see it isn't a "horror". Yet it is being put out as a horrible, grave lapse of Internet manners -- and involves stalking, outing medical info, involving relatives, etc. etc.

Look, it may not be pleasant having a guy in tights from a game IM you because your brother was a griefer in a game they played, but then, that's not his fault, is it? If your brother was a griefer.

As you know, I myself called a funeral parlour to find out if Deadly had indeed died *because he was falsely reported as dead weeks before in fact he did die, so there was reason to suspect a hoax*.

That would not have been necessary if the "journalist" who was a pro-griefer journalism student had learned some basic reporting skills; you can't be a griefer for years and fool people and mislead them and lie to them and expect to be believed.

See, it's this lack of willingness to *take responsibility* and *be accountable for their actions* that is the real outrage -- like with the London riots that Ciaran probably also spins as something people only did because they were poor and lacked opportunities and evil MPs were all to blame because they padded their expense accounts. The MPs paid back their illgotten cash. We knew about this because the press did its job -- the press that many are busy savaging now. Did the rioters pay anything back?

Over and over again in this thread, I ask the simple questions:

Where is the case? What case do you have?

Tux Winkler makes the claim that one of the JLU called him at work in RL -- something he himself doesn't seem overly concerned about, and he continues to drop hints about his RL country, the nature of his business, etc. and knowing that in fact when you get somebody's IP address you *can* trace them to a place of employment if that's a work server, for example, perhaps someone really has outed him in RL.

I guess if you don't want that to happen, you shouldn't track other people and endlessly harass them in world and pretend that you aren't a griefer.

I think one of the chief reasons the JLU do fight the griefers so obsessively isn't so much because they grief, but because they lie about their griefing.

My approach to this is different. I don't want vigilantes, police, scripts, weapons, orbs. I just document griefing, report on it to the Lindens, write about it on my blog, and move on. Publicity is the best method. I have documented most of those people propagandizing in that thread as griefers, and I've put some of that into the thread.

Yet people like Avril and Ciaran, not to mention the hordes of people who show up at Sharia Court ill-informed or just tuning in, believe that this corrupt group of superheroes "has files on them". Or that the weakness of the "nothing to hide nothing to fear" argument in civil rights terms therefore trumps the actuality of documented griefing *which also violates civil rights*.

Here are the facts:

1. Tux Winkler, Kiddoh Korobase, Robble Rubble and others you see in that thread are permabanned. The JLU leaders like Kalel Venkman and GreenLantern Excelsior are not banned. That should give you a reality check: the Lindens ban for cause.

2. The person who invoked a colleague who got a search warrant to examine the JLU database -- Cummere Mayo -- may have a rather concocted story but even if true, could involve RL police over-stepping their bounds, too.

3. The database isn't on "everyone". It isn't on the overwhelming majority of people on Sluniverse.com. It's on griefers reported for griefing.

4. Does that make it right to harm their privacy, just because they are griefing in a virtual world, and dig up RL info? No, of course not. But that hasn't happened. Not a single one of those griefers, except Tux Winkler to a tiny degree, claims a breach of privacy. That's because were they to make themselves into privacy victims, somebody -- those police? -- would need to see proof. And there isn't any. Except the "case" of Deadly Codec. More to the point, like the unfortunate maid in the DSK case, their own bad behaviour would then become the focus, and their claims of rights abuses would tend to wither on the vine.

4. Joshua Nightshade, who is a very troubled and broken person who stalked me for a long time and was banned from this blog, and who is the one who sent out the picture of my RL door (and claimed he was just being "helpful" and got it from a day-old alt of a griefer), asked to have his entry in this wiki removed, and it was removed. He doesn't grief inworld, but griefs on forums. He says they had his RL name (which of course, he gave out and linked years ago) and other RL information. How? Who knows?

But this, too, isn't a case that constitutes a smoking gun proving that the JLU scrapes data about RL, links it with SL, and pipes it for use into SL (which would be a TOS violation and grounds for banning).

It isn't a crime to gather info on people in SL. It's done by thousands of groups and hundreds of thousands of individuals. Everyone keeps score. The back of every avatar has a section called NOTES for you to fill in, and they can't see what you write. People griefed frequently keep records. That's ok. That is not against the TOS.

It's also not a crime to out an alt or a RL name outside the LL servers. It's the biggest RP sport of the world, in fact, to engage in this witch-hunting. But RL police would have to have more to hang their hat on -- proof that a minor was involved, for example. Or medical info. But they don't. It's bullshit.

We don't know if the JLU folks were piping back into SL this wiki stuff on an operational basis -- but maybe they didn't have to, if they had their outworld groups and connections on Skype, etc.

Perhaps because they are working so hard at it to distract from their own dirty deeds (ADirty Deed, Robble Robble?), perhaps because they unabashedly use any hack or exploit they need to, the Wrong Hands will "come up with something" about the JLU. Perhaps they will "get them banned" in the eternal SL game. I don't see it happening, actually, because there just isn't enough evidence. But it may.

Given that Cristiano has locked GreenLantern Excelsior out of his forums for "linking RL info" and given that Kalel apparently has decided not to endure the heckling there, the JLU is not telling their side of the story. In one respect, they aren't going to have sympathy given that they are a vigilante group, and the SLintelligentsia is basically against such groups (even while the ordinary gridizen may rely on them or join them to be part of the fun or not even know about them.)

I asked GreenLantern for an interview, and at first he agreed and took some questions via email, but then he said that JLU has decided not to make any statements now and that there might be some "changes" in the group.

Does the JLU have "a lot of explaining to do" and "owe it to the public to apologize"?

Oh, I dunno. Explain what? That they don't keep files on "everybody" but only on griefers? That these files really don't have any RL info because it's hard to get? That the case of Deadly Codec is hardly a privacy-buster because he was so public in the RL mass media himself and on Youtube? That Tux tracked people and had to expect he'd get some retaliation? Turnabout is fair play sort of thing?

Ciaran harrumphs about the idea that some would exonerate tracking of people *if* they are griefers or suspects (terrorists?) and says "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" is an invalid argument. But while we can all recognize the abuses that can come when vigilantes do this, that doesn't distract from the other piece of it: that they were tracking people who were in fact were guilty and documented as griefing and something's got to be done about that.

THAT piece of the civil rights equation keeps getting lost. The Sluniverse.com mob -- people who don't log into SL or log on to their little islands or stores or whatever and never see the world -- they tend to minimize griefing HORRIBLY. They just don't get. But my civil rights, so to speak, regarding the enjoyment of Second Life count, too. And what is tracked here is *true* and is in fact something I've documented myself, and I don't want these griefers harming me and my tenants. Blather on as you will about civil rights and privacy -- what about me and my tenants? And everyone else's?

The Lindens removed these people from SL *for cause*. THREE TIMES. They are distracting from that bald fact with bald lies.

If there were cases like this, one might be concerned:

o an innocent girlfriend of a griefer -- say Tuxette, if she isn't just his female alt (which seems more than likely) -- is tracked, documented and linked to RL, even though she has nothing to do with griefing

o if someone literally just in the same sandbox or store where griefers were attacking winds up in the list and tracked to real life

o if people who merely had funny names were tracked

But...those aren't the cases anyone is coming up with. If these vigilantes were the ruthless privacy-busters everyone says, we'd see lots and lots of cases. We'd see huge dossiers just on people like Cristiano, who do not grief whatsoever inworld -- just because they associate with or give a pass to griefers. We'd see the leaks that would make this point.

Where are the leaks? As not only Ann Otoole has pointed out (who has made some of the most level-headed comments throughout this drama, as usual) but even Tux himself.

They are slowing or even denying there is a leak because they may have realized they have "gone too far". Or because more to the point, they don't have the goods. And they get more value -- as always! -- making people fear a leak than actually having a leak.

Arvil claims the JLU are "tapdancing" around the SL TOS and RL laws. Oh? Where? Because they sent a FB message to a dying man's sister that they could know about because he himself linked and publicized his story?  There isn't a court in the land that would take that bogus case. This is a country where people are allowed to demonstrate across the street from soldiers' funerals and say they died as God's punishment for legalizing gays (!). Sad, but true, and necessary to maintain free speech.

Does the JLU track IP addresses and match them to out alts? They seem to get the down-low about alts all the time, but more often than not because people like Cam blurt them out in chat, calling a new alt by his old name.

And as I've pointed out in the thread several times, what JLU has been reportedly doing is no more than what Ban-Link created by Travis Lambert did -- and that was used and approved by this same bunch of oldbies at Sluniverse.com because they loved Travis and loved the Shelter. See, it's about being an outsider, not an insider.

I'm not saying anything that some of the very Sluniverse.com types themselves don't privately think, but I've been subjected to the most foul and vulgar harassment on that thread and of course, posting of my RL pictures (the very ones I posted to help young Josh Piper learn some basic respect for private property) -- in the mistaken "hyprokisy" gambit that always ensues from my common-sense posts.

Look, they don't have a case. Sharia Slun has huffed and puffed with 7,000 posts plus now, and it has not produced a case. There is such a basic concept of habeus corpus. Even Cummere Mayo, who is playing cop on this show and invoking RL cops, says that the victims have to come forward.

And there are no victims.

In the end, Ciaran gloats and Avril squirms and twists when confronted on her blog with the fact that she's been played like a violin as has Sluniverse.com -- with the sourcing for all this drama all in griefer blogs. She keeps struggling to say there is still more mystery to come out regarding the IPs, but then finally devolves to saying "but the Lindens are to blame".

This is mere surrogate battling. The Lab is not really the problem, the griefers are. They are the ones who grief. The Lab tries to keep up. The Lab could do some more things. We will disagree on what these things should be. I'd want it to be a triple-transparent police blotter -- all major incidents, publishing all names, of griefers, abuse reporters, and prosecuting Lindens. Absolutely. Like real life.

The Lindens are likely to be merely adding to...tools. To them, griefing is just a tool-problem. Think up a script, like a Psyke orb to bounce people to kingdom come. Or think up a way to remove the view of griefers. Or remove the view of yourself so they can't see you (the new parcel feature).

And they are likely to evade the hard work of governance again in the customer-service state (as Ed Castronova calls it in his book about the flight to the virtual world).

Second Life has been used by hands-on big-time thugs in Anonymous who hack RL sites like Visa or PayPal to prototype -- this has been admitted. So RL law-enforcement will show up sooner or later. And what will interest them will be rather the thuggish griefers who lie about their griefing and crash sims and themselves harvest data rather than those fighting them.

Of course, to remain civilized, you "can't become like them". But...you don't become like them when you do due diligence, repel their lies and distractions, and abuse report and ban them. What you do then is prevent them from undermining freedoms for everyone -- which is also about civil rights, quite frankly.

 

 

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Grendel Grumbles -- Is it Tier Fatigue or Loss of Linden Institutional Memory?

I always marvel how easy it is to give Linden Lab a black eye when people write stories like this one by Prim Perfect on their blogs -- if they get in Google News. It seems Grendel is downsizing and cutting their sims in half, which means the imaginative wandering areas for their customers to play on have been axed -- and apparently it's all over bad customer service from the Labbies.

I had to take a minute to remember what Grendel's was -- I don't think I've ever gone to their store, like lots of people, especially new people. Or maybe once, when I was a newbie. That's because what they sell are non-human avatars, and that's just not my thing. Oh, I don't have anything against dragons and dragon-flies and wood sprites -- it all sounds cool, and maybe someday when I retire I will try this. I sometimes dream of becoming a dragon and hatching dragon eggs and flying around SL breathing fire. But then, I already do that. Plus, there's a guy who sells a giant flying dragon at a store in Maryport who rents from me called Dragon Drive. So whenever I have a hankering to do dragons, I just go over and sit on top of the dragon atop his store, and he breathes flames.

So it's all great, it's all grand, but...what's up?

I feel like no one ever asks enough -- or the right -- questions when they blog about these things. What's really "up"? Is mesh a threat to this long-time prim business? That's hard to imagine, because Flea Bussy is a professional artist. No? Or maybe an amateur who got really good at what he does, but mesh is just a bridge too far? That's happening all over.

They only charge $25 for a dragonfly avatar and $100 for others -- that's just too low. That is, they have a theory of volume sales which *might* work in a world where those 16,000 sign-ups really all came to your store every day -- or a lot of them. But do they? They could double these prices and still be extremely cheap, given that people pay $3000 or $5000 or more for their human avatars. Maybe the clientele for non-human avatars tends to be less wealthy in SL terms -- it's a certain demographic. But even so, $50 for that gorgeous dragonfly get-up would be a steal, and we all know it. If they doubled those prices, they might make tier.

And is that the issue, really? Tier is a grind -- that's $600 US a month for those two sims at today's prices unless they were grandfathered, in which case it's $400, but still, that's a lot of dragonfly avatars to sell to make tier. We're told "money is not at issue" and they make a profit above the tier, but one has to ask: is it getting too hard? Is the profit not enough? Are you getting tired? Are you getting *resentful* for constantly telling yourself and the world that you "do it for the creativity" and "don't do it for the money?" Because that's stupid. It's ok to do it for the money, which sustains you, and enables you to be creative. It's hard to be creative and be poor and starving. This is a very deeply embedded meme in SL -- the starving altruistic artist who is Tragically Misunderstood and Can't Meet Tier because he is for open source, freebies, helping the commuuuuunity etc. etc. And that's why people with less quality but who at least charge for it do better. Think about it.

Linden Lab gives Grendel a leg up -- they are listed in Destination and if I'm not mistaken, some of their stuff is even in the Library.

The specifics are extremely vague about the customer service lacking. They often are in these cases.

We're told that they tried to call Concierge (they are presumably Concierge customers with 4 sims) and got no answer or got answers but no action. They even got Rod Linden on it via Twitter, but his ordering of a fix lasted only 3 days, and then they said "we can't call the CEO when we can't move on our sim."

Well, how many times did you really call? Did you keep a log? I do. Did you really try for months?

Most likely what happened is that their high-traffic heavy-used sims with all kinds of sprite bling on it got grouped on one of those 4-sim set-ups with other strangers who had some hugely laggy club on it, and their performance took a hit.

This happens to some of my sims regularly, and I call them up and I say "Please take my sim off the quad with Club Lagg and put me on a different one". My homestead acts up with that occasionally. Or I have to come and reset it -- I don't make resetting a routine as some people do daily, which I can't believe is good for the sim. I only reset if I have problems and that's worked very, very well for me. I wonder if the constant resetting people do is part of their problem. I have an island and a homestead with lots of pets and anims and they behave pretty well because I constantly watch their collissions and their scripts daily and remove trouble-makers that are in the high numbers. These numbers and objects change dynamically -- you can't assume if you saw only 19 script measurement thingies in the morning and thought it was low that it won't be 298 two hours later. The other day, tenants told me they couldn't move for 15 minutes -- they were understandably mad. But then it went away, for reasons unknown even before a reset. I kept checking -- nothing on the sim causing problems. Just a bad sim day.

But if you are running a busy store I can imagine that one day of 15 minutes of non movement or even 24 hours of non-movement is too big a loss. I totally understand with a rentals sim it can be different -- your customers are willing to fly away for a few minutes while you fix it, or if it just doesn't work they go do something else and come back later -- but a store with that problem just lost sales.

Even so, I have to wonder: were you really persistent with this? Did you really try multiple times? Were you trying to do this on a weekend when it wasn't going to work? And so on.

Customer service is uneven. It gets better when the Lindens make a big conscientious spurt, then falls apart again.

Lately, here's what I find happening with it in recent months:

o You access the website chat, and they simply never answer. At all. Not with a holding answer -- no answer at al.

o They answer the chat, but then they give some non-answer or tell you to file a ticket -- they outright tell you that they cannot come inworld now.

o So you file a ticket, but then they do something funny -- they wait 24 or 48 hours, and then simply close the ticket and tell you that if you are still having problems, to re-open the ticket. This is a really funny gimmick. It must enable them to show oodles of "done" tickets, but the reality is...they never worked on it. I had this happen a few times and sort of marvelled at it.

Example: I had some idiotic particle spewing on the deck at Alston -- it was annoying a new tenant who moved into a stall and annoying everybody -- pink fairies flying all over. I turned on transparent and particle beams (which I've never known to work), I maxed out particles past 4096 to try to capture their source. I looked all over. Went into "simple" mode in case it was stuck in the build. Took of water and surface patch. Pushed the terraforming down. Looked all over hell's half acre two days running -- couldn't find the damn thing. I've heard particles can keep spewing if their original generator is removed from the world -- not sure that still happens but supposedly it did in the early days of SL. "Kill particle" doesn't work, however unless the script is inside the object.

So I asked Concierge -- sometimes they will make a house call. The people answering weren't Lindens but those outsourced people. They wouldn't come inworld. They told me to file a ticket. Two days later, they closed it asking me to reopen if the problem persisted. Hilarious because...they did nothing to solve the problem and it still obviously existed. I reopened, and two days later a veteran Linden wrote that she had found the poofer -- it was a poofer, not a particle generator, but even so, I was surprised I couldn't find the damn thing with "highlight transparent" -- it was probably tiny and my graphics card isn't good enough. She solved the problem and I thanked her -- but it took a "real Linden" and one experienced in scouting out those damn things.

So yea, it took a week and multiple calls to get rid of a nuisance I didn't create but somebody just randomly created, I don't think a griefer. But that would never make me sell my sim or blog about the vagaries of customer service. I usually have to call CS about once a week -- a sim reset, encroachment, some annoyance on Linden Land or trapped between Linden and my land, etc. etc.

Mainland has more troubles of this nature -- but they are more eminently fixable. Islands can be a more complex and permanent headache, I realize. But...could you document what is really going on? Did you get all the colliders, script time-eaters etc off the sim? One would assume that. Did you get the Lindens to put your sim on another set-up? I just don't feel there's enough information here.

What I do think is missing is Jack Linden. Jack, when he ran Concierge, had an eye for those kind of "special situations". He would understand instantly that Grendels was, well, Grendels, popular for a certain demographic, great for newbies, a "things to do" extraordinaire such as the Lindens should be loving up extensively -- by their lights, which of course aren't mine.

So is lack of institutional memory the problem  here?

It's like Rod saying in puzzlement "What's a Community Gateway?" I have to blog about this when I have more time -- I almost don't know where to start on that one. Saffia has tackled this already and I will hunt for the link later -- I recall reading her history of this and finding a lot to disagree with, but at least it represented one perspective on an institution that somehow now has dropped out fo the institutional memory.

I guess I'd like to know two things now about Linden Lab (other than the route of catching Rod on Twitter).

1. Who is really in charge of customer service now? I don't mean "marketing" or "product management". I mean the actual boots-on-the-ground CS as in "Concierge" where you answer complaints from customers with more than one sim. I heard someone named Ceasar Linden is coming in to do this, but his name isn't in the People List, even if you spell it Caesar. ??

As I've noted before, Concierge should take on massive griefing incidents as a form of customer service and not force us into the ridiculous AR queue.

2. For that matter, who is in charge of Governance? The old Harry Linden job. Of course, the Lindens merged governance into the rest of CS. We saw this happening where formerly Concierge-only Lindens would suddenly show up to remove grief prims wedged between Linden and resident land, etc. The Lindens don't seem to want to give out this person's name, because they then become a constant target for both griefing and recruitment to various factions. But I really think that Linden would show their maturity if they publicized this person's name, his job description, and made it clear that he will not tolerate bullshit from griefers, and will not be joining any factions nor even making little courtesy calls and pep talks "for the community" as Plexus was said to do for the JLU.

3. And who is in charge of Community? You know, like Blondin or Blue or whatever. We now have these "Content Lindens". I tried writing to a few listed whom I had never heard of before although they had birth dates of a few years ago. I violated Hamlet ne Linden Au's protocol and wrote them notecards because I wasn't going to guess their emails and I think notecards are perfectly adequate most times with Lindens. I didn't hear back except for the one called Gez Linden in charge of pets. I was thrilled that the Lindens take the breedables seriously enough to put an entire Linden on this -- well, they realize it's a money-maker. Gez quickly returned my card with an IM and said he was not just pets but *games* -- and I said, well, pets *are* a game with the rares, but he meant like games like Numbaskulla or whatever that thing was called everybody was always enthusing about.

So while Grendels aren't pets exactly, they are a game. Did they try contacting Gez Linden?

I'd be happier if the Lindens weren't divided by theme (i.e. Esbee is in RP, this one is in something else, that one is in arts, etc.) but were conscious of actual communities as they exist, and were the "go-to" Linden for a variety of communities. For example, Blondin was in charge of Bay City, Nautilus and Zindra. That kept him busy enough, but he would also "do" for Resident Infohubs and other generic Mainland community issues. There were also some others related to do this like Keira or Maggie (Maggie was the one who was enormously patient and helpful in getting Notre Dame Cathedral back together).

But why not say "X Linden" is in charge of Mainland communities, "Y Linden" is in charge of island rentals of more than 30 sims" -- or something like that? Geographical rather than thematic representation, if you will.

Yes, they continue to think like a software company with products and content and not like a government. I'm not appreciating this authoritarian executive power as a government, but if they are managing people in this size of a community writ large, they should think more like the customer service state. That means geography, size, language, etc. as constituent definition, not things like "art" or "pets". Not everybody is an artist; not everybody is a breedable creator.

To recite the eternal SL lament: "What about the people with no talent?"

In short, while there may be "lessons to learn" for LL on this, I don't think you teach them by tiering down. There's always another guy to buy the island, in the imitable words of Kenny Linden!

But there are also lessons to learn for the residents. *Make your case better*. I'm not hearing that the case was made in the best way. I'm suspecting that possibly other emotional issues were at stake -- mesh, tier, customer shortfalls -- and that this got papered over with a real but overblown CS drama.

 

 

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Entitlement-Happy Kids

I've posted a few pictures of this idiot who bought the land next to me in Carlisle, but I was too busy to find the chat log. Now I have it.

It really is one for the annals. This entitlement-happy freak first contacted me with a demand that I sell him my land *after* he built a huge dock and ships over it (!!!). "Your land is under my shop," he tells me (!) and "it's killing the rezzers for my boats." Then he asks to buy it!

Oh, really?!

Imagine -- not *first* asking if someone can sell you land, but *first* building over it, because your parcel is "funny shaped" or there "seems like a sliver of the other guy's land that really should be yours."

He then adds that even though his prims are on my land (!) the root prims are on his land so it won't count -- therefore...it's ok.

Say, what happened to that new feature the Lindens were putting in where people couldn't do this anymore?!

You find this attitude a lot in SL, as people subjectively feel like a parcel they didn't buy, which isn't theirs, "fits" with their land somehow because of past erratic parceling by Lindens or land barons or sellers.

So I first have to disabuse him of the notion that he gets to *first build, then demand a sale*.

When I get a person like this, I relentlessly push back as I realize they know no boundaries and haven't been properly brought up, and have been raised on the Internet (i.e. the equivalent of having been brought up in a barn in our time.)

Next, when I object to this behaviour, this loon then pouts and demands that we "be adults here" and "talk like adults".

Erm, adult behaviour would involve not building on people's land and then asking you to sell it, nor encroaching on their land, nor demanding anything about them to change to accommodate you in this fashion "just because".

He removed part of his build, but I came and still found encroachment, AR'd him to the Lindens, and then Lindens removed a board. I then put up all my giant megaprims with my "Be Back Soon" picture from Wired (the article about griefers), and a giant smiley face, so his customers can look at uglies just like mine do.

There is no objective reason to build skyscrapers on a bucolic peninsula in a lakes region of SL with nothing but rural sort of builds all around you. It's just e-peen fuck-you hedonism stuff.

He made them even bigger and uglier to "teach me a lesson".

Here's the dialogue:

 

[2011/08/10 11:54]  Josh Piper: (Saved Wed Aug 10 08:26:02 2011) Hey you have a  128 sqm sliver of land  in carlisle   that is under my shop  any possibilities  of me getting that from you ? its  killing one of my rezzers for my  boats   let me know what we can do :)
[2011/08/10 11:55]  Prokofy Neva: "We" can do nothing. It's my land, and you need to remove your shop from it.
[2011/08/10 11:55]  Second Life: User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.
[2011/08/10 19:01]  Josh Piper: (Saved Wed Aug 10 20:50:22 2011) Alrighty :(  i dont have  my root prims over your land so it wont count on your prims :) Just  was wondering  thats all Thanks for the reply Prokofy :) No need to be  rude im very easy going  :)
[2011/08/10 19:01]  Josh Piper: (Saved Wed Aug 10 20:52:21 2011) Also it says to join your goup to rez prims maybe if i  do that would be ok ?
[2011/08/10 19:01]  Josh Piper: (Saved Wed Aug 10 20:54:42 2011) Why would you put up ban lines on that land ?  thats just not really nice  i will build around your land  but  could you please take away the ban lines "?"
[2011/08/10 19:10]  Prokofy Neva: What an *ass* you are. You don't have root prims and therefore just because it doesn't "count" it's ok??? Are you frigging out of your m ind??? If you build is on my land in any way, shape or form, it will be abuse-reported to the Lindens, and removed immediately by them, so take it off if you want to avoid an abuse report.
[2011/08/10 19:10]  Second Life: User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.
[2011/08/10 19:10]  Prokofy Neva: I'll be as rude AS I goddamn well please because your high-handed attitude toward MY property has got to change PRONTO.
[2011/08/10 19:10]  Second Life: User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.
[2011/08/10 19:11]  Prokofy Neva: Um, my group is open for the convenience of tenants. Not for asses to use to rez prims on land they don't pay rent for. You are banned from all my land in that area -- full stop.
[2011/08/10 19:11]  Second Life: User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.
[2011/08/10 21:54]  Josh Piper: wow   i dont know why your being so mean bud  all i did was ask about  buying the land you dont have to be  so mean to me  I am human just like you  And  i was in contact with Linden labs today about this they told me you have every right to  ban anyone for any reason you want  from any of your land and i agree  I was more just wanting to talk    like adults about this  Anywho no hard fealings  You must not be having a good day  I really hope you dont treat your customers or cliets  like this because its not really nice  its hurtfull
[2011/08/11 0:22]  Josh Piper: (Saved Thu Aug 11 00:58:02 2011) isee your point after reading the  notecard about  view obsruction and i can see why your upset  I  bought this land or am buying  under the fact it is  cheap  43 k for the land is peanuts  If my skyscraper is   in your view i can happly take it down
[2011/08/11 0:22]  Josh Piper: (Saved Thu Aug 11 00:58:12 2011) I dont want o be a bad neightbor seriously  im not about that
[2011/08/11 0:22]  Josh Piper: (Saved Thu Aug 11 00:58:25 2011) i like to  keep good relations with everyone
[2011/08/11 0:22]  Josh Piper: (Saved Thu Aug 11 00:58:41 2011) If there is something you want me to do  and it wont effect anything i will be more than happy to do it  :)
[2011/08/11 0:22]  Josh Piper: (Saved Thu Aug 11 01:04:37 2011) Also   when you said What an *ass* I am   If you think im being an ass your mistaken If i were an d*ass* i would  add  your tenants and anyone  that  i can see  in the goup your land is deeded to to my  no access list    that would be an *ass* move  i will not stoop so low but i really would like to   talk like Adults and  caring  ones  im easy to get along with
[2011/08/11 0:26]  Prokofy Neva: Number one, stop making references to your non-existent good will and adult status -- you have none. You're a kid. And  a grasping entitlement-happy nit. Number two, you deface the view with everything you do, but there's nothing we can do about that under the TOS. What you will NOT be doing is building on my land, and you've been AR'd. You will remain in the ban list, and you will go on MUTE. You need to learn about 6 lessons in the ways of the world and other people's property and cut down your own arrogance and cockiness by about 90 percent. Good bye.

Next, I happened to be flying by and his worker -- who I thought he was a bot because he sits there for hours -- IM'd me like spam and hustled the boats. He did that faux-polite shtick that kids do about being happy to get customer feedback when I told him he was banned and could go fuck himself. This is the worker who earns $50/Lindens an hour (!) for working as a sales clerk/guard on Josh's boat store.

He also has a creepy kid named BamBam who also earns $50 Lindens an hour to sell the boats. Creepy!

Next thing I know, the land is for sale, but at a high price -- the old "let's see if we can make Prokofy buy us out" trick. No sale.

Then some swaggering e-peen comes along with a funny name -- Bull Hui. "Hui" of course is the Russian word for "cock" and is a swear-word. The Lindens either didn't know or didn't care when they put that name in the list.

The following ensues:

2011/08/17 19:21]  Bull Hui: Excuse me
[2011/08/17 19:22]  Bull Hui: Buddy
[2011/08/17 19:22]  Prokofy Neva: I'm not your buddy. And do you realize what your name means in Russian?
[2011/08/17 19:22]  Bull Hui: I honestly dont care
[2011/08/17 19:22]  Bull Hui: me and u need to talk
[2011/08/17 19:22]  Prokofy Neva: er, no we don't, poshol na khui big guy
[2011/08/17 19:23]  Bull Hui: Listen hotshot
[2011/08/17 19:23]  Prokofy Neva: If you are related to that fucking asshole Josh Piper, you can join the ban list and kiss my ass
[2011/08/17 19:23]  Bull Hui: no
[2011/08/17 19:23]  Bull Hui: buddy
[2011/08/17 19:23]  Bull Hui: we are gunna talk like normal people here
[2011/08/17 19:23]  Prokofy Neva: then which asshole are YOU related to here?
[2011/08/17 19:23]  Prokofy Neva: No, I don't talk to thugs like yourself
[2011/08/17 19:23]  Bull Hui: im not related to anyone
[2011/08/17 19:23]  Bull Hui: im not a thug
[2011/08/17 19:23]  Bull Hui: listen to me asshole
[2011/08/17 19:24]  Bull Hui: I served in the United States Army for 5 years
[2011/08/17 19:24]  Bull Hui: so ur gunna shut the fuck up
[2011/08/17 19:24]  Bull Hui: and give me some respect
[2011/08/17 19:24]  Bull Hui: Now
[2011/08/17 19:24]  Prokofy Neva: so what? YOU are going to shut the fuck up big boy
[2011/08/17 19:24]  Prokofy Neva: AND get an AR for harassment
[2011/08/17 19:24]  Bull Hui: i dont give a rats ass what you have between josh
[2011/08/17 19:24]  Prokofy Neva: AND nobody believes you because people lie all the time on here
[2011/08/17 19:24]  Prokofy Neva: well he has not begun to see the half of it
[2011/08/17 19:24]  Prokofy Neva: so fuck all, all of yez
[2011/08/17 19:24]  Bull Hui: no
[2011/08/17 19:24]  Bull Hui: listen here
[2011/08/17 19:24]  Bull Hui: get off ur high horse
[2011/08/17 19:24]  Bull Hui: This is the mainland
[2011/08/17 19:24]  Prokofy Neva: FUCK OFF FUCKFACE
[2011/08/17 19:24]  Bull Hui: we own a company
[2011/08/17 19:25]  Prokofy Neva: YOU OWN PIXELS ON THE INTERNET YOU IDIOT
[2011/08/17 19:25]  Prokofy Neva: SO FUCK OFF
[2011/08/17 19:25]  Bull Hui: we aint doin a damn thing to bother u
[2011/08/17 19:25]  Bull Hui: u want us gone
[2011/08/17 19:25]  Bull Hui: BUY US OUT
[2011/08/17 19:25]  Bull Hui: Lands for sale
[2011/08/17 19:25]  Bull Hui: BUY US THE FU
[2011/08/17 19:25]  Prokofy Neva: mute
[2011/08/17 19:25]  Bull Hui: FUCK OUT

 

What amazes me is when people who have encroached on your land, put up a huge skyscraper and giant war ships near your bucolic fairy grove say that we should "talk like adults" or "speak like normal people here".

Freaks like this understand one thing: force. And pushback. And they get it from me.

Eventually, these assholes will move on. Or they won't, and will stay for five years and be assholes. They are banned and eat red lines, and they will continue to be regularly disparaged for ruining the view.

The land was for sale for $9/m for a long time and didn't get bought. Then it went down to $5/m. I thought that was a price that would still induce good neighbours, people who value land and surroundings, but it was too high for me to buy it -- and a lot of tier to take on with some iffy views on the other side (there's also some people playing Hobo Grunge Edupunk etc on a lot here, although they don't really impinge on the view that much.)

Ah, Second Life...

Grief Build from Zara Xorbun

Grief Build from Zara Xorbun Doesn't like group liabilities or landlord's objections to her bitching about them. Visit Patagonia (212, 186, 67)

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