Tonya and I see some things differently and she sometimes corrects what I write about the Firestorm Viewer. I appreciate the corrections. I’ve NEVER caught Tonya misleading or BS’ing me. Jessica is about as upfront and standup a person as one could hope to meet. I recommend taking them at their word.
Just Secondlife – Patience Is Overrated
At the last Third Party Developers’ meeting Jessica and others were talking about the difficulty of protecting the Firestorm name from those building copybot versions of the viewer. Basically, it is impossible. It is surprising how many will pick up and pass along slander and libel without a second thought.
- Then there is the SL Forum thread: Rumors about mass bannings and sim deletion? In this thread we get the claim the moderators are removing posts regarding the bans. zOMG!!! It’s gotta be a conspiracy! Well, Lindal Kidd filed a JIRA BUG- BUG-7298 – Answers Forum loses posts. Whirly Fizzel added to it. So, we can discard that claim. You do notice who makes these claims so you can know who not to believe in the future? Right? …yeah, well sometimes I do, depends…
Some of the other ‘out there’ claims show rumor and deduction has led some to decide the reason for the bans is California laws on bestiality. The California law was looked up by and thanks to Mona Eberhardt.
Penal Code 286.5 PC prohibits sexually assaulting an animal for the purpose of arousing or gratifying your sexual desire.
Comment: Also known as “bestiality” or “zoophilia”, the sexual “assault” of an animal doesn’t actually have to be what we typically think of as an assault. This means that the conduct doesn’t have to be forced or violent, as any sexual contact with an animal is sufficient to trigger criminal charges.
Sexually abusing an animal is a misdemeanor, subjecting you to a maximum of six months in a county jail and a maximum $1,000 fine.
I find this a way dubious reason for the Lab to take action. ISP’s, Communication Companies, and other hosting services are generally held harmless from what their users/subscribers do or post. The Obama/Democrat idea of Net Neutrality is changing that. It provides more control over what is said on the Internet and that will likely translate into is what we can do with the Internet. But, those issues are still in court. So, I can’t see this being a cause.
Also, virtual ‘anything’ is outside the scope of almost all written laws. Consider. The defense attorney claims there was no such animal and requires the prosecutor produce the animal and show it is the animal in question… a show what was abused challenge…
Or think of trying to prosecute the creator of Sylvester the Cat for assault on Tweetie Pie… Who is it that is the victim of these virtual assaults? Can you be prosecuted for imagining you beat someone up, drawing a cartoon of it? Well… if you have radical Muslims around, yes, but that is another issue. How is a virtual world different than the tools used to make cartoons? Not vary… do we prosecute pencil and crayon makers for what people draw using those tools?
The people that bought into the line of thinking it was California law that triggered the Lab’s bannings probably aren’t deep thinkers or they have been exposed to too much anti-free-speech propaganda. If they had gone down the path of a pornography problem, they would have made more sense.
Forging through the posts we arrive with the information the bans are related to images posted on products in the Marketplace. Another track is that there were age play issues. Also, there is a good probability a vigilante campaign precipitated the bannings.
Additional page links below…
Is that how you interpret Net Neutrality? Last I checked it had the exact opposite intentions.
Wake up and look at how it is being used. It was sold using ‘good intentions’ as marketing. Those of us digging deeper see what is happening. Just today: Washington Examiner: FEC decision would end witch hunt of Drudge. Without Net Neutrality there wasn’t even the possibility of such a witch hunt. It was all and only First Amendment freedom of speech. Net Neutrality preempted that and thus the Freedom of Speech lawsuit in progress now.
This is another reason a strict Constitutionalist is need for the American Supreme Court. Progressive judges are allowing the removal of Freedom of Speech in numerous places and over riding existing rights.
While the FEC currently looks to be exempting aggregator sites like Drudge, they are proceeding with looking to control other news sites creating original content.
You need a better source of news…
This PURGE makes no sense…..Though, based on other evidence, I don’t think it is over content….
There have been other recent bans that have been under the radar, one that comes to mind that was permanently suspended was found after appeal to be due to irregular activities with lindens earned inside SL, moving large sums of lindens between accounts.
It is suspected that the bans were over selling of lindens privately outside lindex. Remember sl makes a good amount of money off the sl exchanges, plus there is government pressure for proper taxation for money taken out of sl. The thing is, not many will actually own up publicly to their actual violation… so take that into account.
none the less…What this has done is made anyone who has put many years into sl, and has created content or grown some biasness is now in fear of getting a random permanent ban with no explanation and little recourse.
these cases we are not talking about greifers, or Thieves, we are talking bout long term content creators. High profile persons who participate in the sl community.
Just the fact this was done and no public word from sl, and these persons having no explanation as to why they were banned just highlights how much sl has lost touch with its actual user base. Though the lack of explanation to those banned doen’t not surprise me.
I have gone thought he appeal process myself. I had the unfortunate experience of having my account suspended for several days. after which I got access back… I did follow up with an appeal, even though I had access back, as there was no explanation as to why I was suspended other then I violated a tos. In that the responses I got back on appeal were extremely vague, referring to violations in which I had no knowledge of. There were no specifics, just that I had violated a rule, with no explanation of exactly what it was that I did.
It took months to get details and Linden Labs was not very forthcoming what the details, they just assumed I knew why I was suspended. Frankly, I think the persons replying to my case actually had no idea why I was suspended.
As it turns out, the violation was actually a false report on something the person handling the violation did not fully understand.
If those banned int he purge broke some TOS, and did receive warnings. The way sl communicates there would be no way for them to know what it is that they were actualy doing wrong. It is a system that’s set up to not correct the problem.
The strange thing I have noticed is that SL hasn’t taken down the stores these animators have. if it is there content, they why is it still being sold on MP
SL would be best served putting out a pubic statement on recent rash of high profile bans, This is a public relations nightmare for sl, Word has gotten out. Most regular users of sl know someone who was effected.
Personally, having grown my own little business in sl, i am defiantly exploring my options. and as someone else pointed out, this isn’t doing sl any good for promoting their new platform. if were going to change platfoms, then why go with a company that treats there members this way.
We have past experiences of vigilantes and griefers targeting people to cause them problems. We have experiences of businesses falsely attacking their competition and some of those cases have made it to RL courts.We also know we have griefers, pedophiles, thieves, and others that should be expelled. Mix in the people and computer system dealing with these people in what must be a depressing job… I’m surprised SL survives.
With the amount of Drama Skills Hak created releasing a fake CopyBot prevention system CDS, and Data Mining, I am glad this person got banned, they ruined my life, and life of my friends many years ago getting falsely banned for using Neil Life, when using Emerald Viewer, Refused to remove bans, So basically I did end up copybotting, and I never got banned for it I created accounts for the sole purpose to get revenge on many merchants running CDS…
Today if I ever got banned again for any reason by any network ban system that is supposed to prevent Copybotting I will do it again, and I do have the ability to clone full meshes, re-upload to SL and give it out as freebies, as well as use false information and payment info and there is nothing anyone could do about it…
Simple Answer, I respect Merchants, I spend thousands / hundreds of Dollars, but my Group of people will not put up with Evil People in SL and anyone who is warned to cease actions and refuses.
Its Great Linden Lab Banned Skills Hak for this reason, and Zfire Xue, Now they need to ban Ash Qin for re-listing the stupid thing on the marketplace.
You have a really questionable ethics.