Griefing

There has been on ongoing discussion on new developments in the nature of griefing.  In mid December I wrote: From #SL Griefing to Extortion. Also, we have seen the DMCA case between Curio/Hush resolved… sort of. No one is overly happy with that outcome. Rod Humble said the Lab would be doing something to make griefers very unhappy. As of now he certainly has not done anything about griefer to make legitimate users happy.

Several Second Life bloggers have been covering events. Designing Worlds recently did a show on the topic. It aired and is now on the site: Designing Worlds discovers when griefing turns into extortion. 1 hr 8 min.

Kiff Clutterbuck and Dina Petty, the owners of Junkyard Blues, are in the show. Robert Galland, the owner of Galland Homes, a Member of the Second Life Bar Association, and real life attorney, gives a legal perspective on what has been happening.

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This article got way longer than I intended. Even after I went back and did a trim pass to reduce the size. But, I did not want to write another piece on griefing that didn’t place a new perspective on the subject. Griefing is advancing and getting more sophisticated and dangerous. I’ve pointed out those dangers and possible defenses. Also, anti-griefers are starting to become self-righteous griefers abusing others in the name of fighting griefers. It is a mess.

In RL we see the same mess with Pro-Life and Pro-Choice people. The idiots on one side kill doctors that perform abortions. The idiots on the other side try to force people with religious objections to pay for abortions. Both are insane and display disregard for their ‘stated’ principals. Getting the rational people on both sides to work it out is the only solution.

In recent months griefing has progressed to include extortion. Extortion is a RL crime. Griefing in Second Life™, particularly in the SL fashion industry, has been a part of the drama of SL. Griefing via extortion is probably only a new-to-some-of-us thing. The old song the Lab does nothing continues and is lame now as it always has been.

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Griefing is an ongoing problem in Second Life™. I am seeing a new round of user complaints regarding griefing. Most of the recent complaints I’ve seen involve free sandboxes. The most recent notable example is VooDoo’s complaint that I mention in: #SL Adult Content Problems.

About five days after my article posted a thread started on SLUniverse. See: LL looks like idiots when they can’t keep griefers out of thier own info hubs. The ‘colorful’ title pretty well says it all.

It is pointed out that Linden owned sandbox regions in the LEA Project are user moderated. Allowing users to moderate regions has possibilities. The use of user-moderators also has special problems. Darrius Gothy wrote a really good article on those problems back in 2011… (sounds like my grand dad). See: Griefing: User Sponsored Enforcement Groups.

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