Permabanned??? Did Xaph get the Moe Linden Special?
by Alphaville Herald on 09/08/05 at 5:16 pm
Permabanned? Virtual Brutus, Xaphon Mendicant, in Happier Times
According to a number of reliable sources, Xaphon Mendicant has been either banned or permabanned for his role in the betrayal of the Space Monkey Corporation and the theft/liberation of its land in Jessie. Since his actions only involved using his privileges as a group officer to sell the group land to a friend, we are entirely unclear on what the TOS violation is, so it appears that the Lindens have invoked the “any reason and no reason” clause for banning him. We gather then, that the Lindens have taken their roles as game moderators to include punishing people who betray their friends. Hey, who needs Dante’s Inferno when you have a Linden handy? The Lindens have not moved to return the property. Yet. Whether they will or not is of course based entirely on some random variable in the X-drenched synapses of highly skilled computer programmer in Linden Lab and not at all on a clear set of policies, principles, or even a pattern of cluefulness.
nerferder
Aug 9th, 2005
Gee, maybe wait until you actually have more info until you accuse LL of favoritism?
Nah, that wouldn’t be dramatic enough.
Urizenus
Aug 9th, 2005
Favoritism? I wouldn’t know about that. The point is that their actions have outrun their policies. If that’s not correct, then we look forward to seeing a statement from the Lindens explaining precisely what the new policy is according to which you can be banned for shafting your friends.
It’s very simple.
Show. Us. The Policy.
Lance Mirabeau
Aug 9th, 2005
Fred Extroardinaire posted this to the forums:
Dear Fred Extraordinaire,
Linden Lab cannot verify, enforce, certify, examine, uphold or
adjudicate any oath, contract, deal, or agreement made by the residents
of Second Life. Furthermore, all officers of a group have equal
authority to sell or otherwise dispose of group land.”
Wow! Sounds like blatant HYPOCRISY to me!
TrannyPet Barmy
Aug 9th, 2005
Thieving, thats what for, are you totally stupid or what ?
tpbarmy
Xaphon Mendicant
Aug 9th, 2005
Hey, Uri. I love you.
Thanks for the support.
TrannyPet Barmy
Aug 9th, 2005
Why not ban King Fuck Wit himself to, Cyanide Leviathan ???
tpbarmy
Sweet Surface
Aug 9th, 2005
Hey– I’m with Uri on this one. A big company like LL should follow the Policies it writes– Not stray off and permaban unfairly.
Bytheway– If you’re FOR the return of Xaphon Mendicant, check out this petition created in hopes of him being unbanned:
http://www.petitiononline.com/opxaphon
Ardith Mifflin
Aug 9th, 2005
Perhaps they’ve decided that in-world violations of real-world law merit bannination? After all, this was theft. It doesn’t matter if he was authorized to sell the land. He did so without the approval or consent of those who actually owned it.
I don’t see why the specific policy matters, unless you’re a muckraking journalissimo who enshrines the scum of the land in order to titillate your readership.
Walker Spaight
Aug 9th, 2005
I don’t know if a court would agree with you, Ardith. The ToS doesn’t grant ownership in land on the Grid to SL residents. Residents are granted ownership in “any and all applicable copyright and/or other intellectual property rights with respect to any Content you create using the Service.”
The specific policy matters a lot, because as our lives move into online worlds like SL more and more, those policies are going to be key to what we’re able to do and how much freedom we have there.
Urizenus
Aug 9th, 2005
Yes, Xaph ripped off his buiness associates. On EVE Online that would be part of normal gameplay. What about in Second Life. Well, the Lindens tell us this:
“Linden Lab cannot verify, enforce, certify, examine, uphold or
adjudicate any oath, contract, deal, or agreement made by the residents of Second Life. Furthermore, all officers of a group have equal authority to sell or otherwise dispose of group land.”
Is that the policy or isn’t it? If it *is* the policy, then why the hell are they mucking around in this case, taking sides, seizing land, and banning people who believed what the Lindens *said* the policy was. If it *isn’t* the policy then (i) why on God’s green earth are the Lindens posting things like that and (ii) when o when are they going to tell us what the real policy is?
Sorry, I find the behavior of the Lindens here just outrageous.
Urizenus
Aug 9th, 2005
Oh and by the way, if it *is* a real world crime then call the damn police. If it is a violation of a real world contract, then get a lawyer and go to civil court. The Lindens aren’t the police, and have no business being the cops, the judge, the jury, and the executioner for real world grievances that fall outside of the terms of service and EULA.
unhygienix
Aug 9th, 2005
Originally by Ardith:
“It doesn’t matter if he was authorized to sell the land. He did so without the approval or consent of those who actually owned it.”
Huh? Last I checked, that’s what Authorized meant. “With the approval or consent of”. No one is arguing that Xaphon is a great or even halfway decent guy. Uri certainly doesn’t seem to be saying that he’s worthy of our respect or admiration. The problem here is twofold: insufficient land permission sets, and TOS enforcement that is arbitrary at worst, and opaque at best. If players are able to do jackass things while remaining on this side of the TOS, then either they should be left alone or the TOS changed; NOT punished for something which “would have been a TOS violation if we’d gotten around to it”, or “was something we were planning on changing anyway”.
Unfortunately, we don’t really know that this was the reason for his ban, because LL doesn’t discuss the details of those things. He could have been ousted from SL for other reasons entirely.
Originally by Ardith:
“…titillate…”
Hehehe. You said “titillate”. Hee. Hehehe.
Xaphon Mendicant
Aug 10th, 2005
Thank you all for your continued support. I am making efforts to contact Linden Lab by E-Mail exclusively, at least for this moment.
If you are willing to help, please sign and distribute the link to our petition, located at http://www.petitiononline.com/opxaphon. I truly appreciate any and all efforts made in my support.
I can agree that being banned on an undefined rule is unjust. Perhaps Nicole Linden is just mad at me for calling her “corrupt.”
One4th
Aug 10th, 2005
Everyone keeps saying this is a crime, technically this is a cooperate seizure and/or takeover. This has been done many times in REAL LIFE . Sometimes people are prosecuted but more often nothing happens because guess what . . . technically no crime was commited. He did what was in his abilities as a officer.
If insider trading wasn’t explicitly illigal, it would happen all the time. Further, it is wrong for any government body (or sudo-govenment computer programers) to punish someone for a policy that has NOT BEEN WRITTEN. True it was wrong, but from a legal standpoint morals have nothing to do with it.
If he was baned for somthing else than never mind this.
Neal Stewart
Aug 10th, 2005
I’m inclined to agree with what Uri, Walker and Unhygienix have commented so far.
As Unhygienix pointed out, Xaphon could have been ousted from SL for other reasons entirely. We don’t necessarily know the whole story. I understand that when you get perma-banned you’re informed which part of the TOS/CS you violated, eg ‘Community Stands: Assault’. But if Xaphon gets pinged with one of the broad ones like ‘Community Standards: Rules of Conduct’ – ‘inappropriate behavior’ – it’s perhaps not going to be all too enlightening.
Having said that, on the face of it it’s interesting just how many parallels there seem to be with this and the recent Eve online scam. Except that it’s apparent that Eve is much more of a traditional ‘game’ than SL is. Here the scammers and victims are more ‘users’ than ‘players’. This is all beside the point though. If Xaphon was banned or suspended for shafting his friends (I don’t know if he was), the issue is LL’s stated policy regarding contract-enforcment etc.
Ironically, as Unhygienix points out, part of the problem is how fat-fingered the group options are. There’s no way to set up realistic organizational hierarchies or varied and specific sets of responsibilities and privileges for different members/officers. There’s just an officer power pool and every now and then someone pees in the shallow end and/or drowns another officer.
So, improving group options may reduce the frequency of, or potential damage caused by, scams and contract violations. Nonetheless, LL’s in-world enforcement of the TOS/CS should be consistent with their stated hands-off policy regarding inter-resident contract-enforcement. Or vice versa.
seldon metropolitan
Aug 10th, 2005
As much as I don’t like the morality of what xaphon and crew did, there really needs to be more transparency and consistency in the application of punishments for TOS violations. As the population grows, its only going to get more difficult to maintain order in the right places, and regardless of the way its handled, there are going to be people accusing them of favoritism and abuse of power. They really need to cover their ass as much as possible with regard to this if they want to maintain the general respect of the populace. Their current policy seems to be more along the “we know we’re in the right, so it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks” and while that might fly now, as the population and therefore the rabble-rousing portion of that population both increase exponentially, its going to be harder and harder to maintian order without clearly defined polices with visible checks and balances regarding abuse of power.
Prokofy Neva
Aug 10th, 2005
The Lindens have now at least three times we’re aware intervened in the affairs of groups and seized land, at the behest of an officer or group of officers, against another officer or officers, taking one side they like in a dispute. It’s not important whether they take the “right” side, what’s important that there be a policy and a due process. And there is none.
Walker is right, we do not have private land ownership rights protected in SL as much as content-creators have their IP protected to the extent they do. This is why there may have to be war between sandboxers (creative-content kings) and settlers (land barons and the settlers they sell to). It may be time for war, and war on a big scale until “they get it”. They don’t now. The Lindens do not value land, that we can see, from the way they devalue it constantly, rolling it off the auction to barons and making sure only a few have it, and sell it at higher prices, and those that buy it, can’t keep it’s priced value because they are always griefed, lagged, uglified or outbaroned lol. It’s all pretty simple.
Still, it’s worth fighting for because private land ownership has been the bedrock of civilization for centuries. I don’t see SL, just because it’s a game and an inchoate metaverse, gets to overthrow those centuries of human experience. It still matters.
Due process is important, even in a game. The Lindens aren’t explaining what the TOS violation is. Being a dick? But is that a TOS violation?
The Lindens themselves created these hippie commune dope-smoking group land tools that make everybody pitch their land into a common pool, regardless of who pays the purchase price or the tier, so that anyone can steal it out from anyone else and resell it or keep it in another group. It’s a crystal-clear, text-book case of why communism ALWAYS AND EVERYWHERE leads to crime. We need to thank the Lindens for that sterling, speeded up lesson in why socialism and communism can’t work. Thanks. Now shut it down, and make real group tools that enable the protection of private property *by those who pay for it and pay tier on it*.
Next, create a disputes resolution system that can adjudicate contracts even at some really low-level of simply verifying whether a document is true and not forged or not. This seems doable.
I suspect the message from the Lindens is this: these are our servers. Do not fuck with us. Play nice and play the way we like with the people we like or lose your land. Fuck you very much.
Levi Anansi
Aug 10th, 2005
Honestly glad to see him gone. Cyanide probably didn’t get the oust due to not being an officer (at least I don’t think he was). Which means the initiating act had to be Xaphon. I know he has done this sort of thing at least twice now. The Lindens may know of more. If this is his way of playing the game than yes, it is ‘inappropriate behavior’ as it amounts to fraud.
Ciao Xaphon.
BTW. I bought Anshe’s parcel and gave it back to the Monks. If the Lindens come though with the rest, you accomplished nothing. Try again when you get another credit card =).
I am sure we have not heard the end of Old Xaphon.
montserrat
Aug 10th, 2005
“any reason and no reason” is my favorite reason of all.
i admire it profoundly. that should tell you right there
that there is something deeply wrong with it.
Prokofy Neva
Aug 10th, 2005
What’s very likely to happen with this story and other land-grab stories (about which I know nothing — note that Uri posted it) is that the people in the dispute are likely to be vigorously portrayed as assholes by those in the dispute. We’ll be treated to all kinds of sordid she-said/he-said kind of stories, tales of Avs Behaving Badly and all the rest.
But it doesn’t matter if the people in the stories are assholes, and deserve to die, and are wasted pieces of server space. There has to be due process, a publicly-explain policy, and a consistency of that policy when the Lindens intervene in group land. We’re not hearing that. We’re seeing that Lindens grab land, well, because it’s their servers. They pretend all this stuff about how it’s our world and our imagination and stuff, but it comes to naught in these cases. There is much hype in the media interviews by Phil in particular about “land ownership” and “land barons” but in fact, it’s absolutely worthless, even when you pay tier, when the Lindens come to seize it.
The characters and actions of those from whom the land is seized may not be above reproach. Maybe they are scumbags. Maybe the people flipping Abuse Reports on them are scumbags. But even scumbags must have recourse to fairness, impartiality, and a due process — otherwise the whole thing looks like it is just looks like a social Darwinist elitist Metaversal grab.
I’m reminded of the celebrated Neal Cassady character in “On the Road,” who once explained to Jack Kerouac how the world works. “It’s all a big grab from Washington to Moscow.”
TraumaFox
Aug 10th, 2005
“Any reason and no reason” is there for cases like this. Not only does it give the Lindens absolute authority over SL regardless of what’s defined in the TOS or not, it’s also there to cover morality issues that can’t truly be defined by the TOS.
Just because the TOS doesn’t explicity state that “users who take group land and sell it without the group’s consent will be banned”, doesn’t mean it’s right and justifiable. If there weren’t any laws against murder, that wouldn’t make killing everyone in sight a morally just thing to do.
All you people with this retarded petition are saying, “Hey, it’s okay to do whatever horribly immoral things you want in SL, as long as the TOS lets it slide.” I hope that every person who signs this petition has all of their land stolen from them, to see how it feels. The Lindens took action against a user at their own discretion based on whatever reasons they have, and they have the right to do it. Who the hell do you people think you are to disrespect that authority? Sure, it’s a community-driven game, the Lindens aren’t perfect, and everyone has their protests, but you all forget that you aren’t entitled to any freedoms in SL.
I’m not trying to defend the Spacemonkeys either, because they were obviously not too bright to just make everyone officers. However, just because they made a mistake doesn’t mean Xaphon is a faultless saint who should be able to get away with it. If you accidentally leave your keys in your unlocked car, and your car gets stolen, no court is going to say, “Sorry, you left your keys in the car, you lose.” In that light, yes, both parties screwed up, but I guess the Lindens believed that Xepher’s deliberately taking advantage of a loophole was worse than the Spacemonkey’s mistake. That’s their decision to make, no one else’s, and nobody here has a right to appeal.
Ardith Mifflin
Aug 10th, 2005
Urizenus, the problem with the laissez faire approach which you advocate is that it threatens to destabilize the world. If people cannot be confident that their land will not be stolen, then they need to act. In the short term, this means presenting a strong disciplinary front. In the long term, it means reforming the group and land policy, as the prime nuisance has previously suggested. If they do nothing, then you risk seeing an increase in despicable pieces of shit stealing land more frequently.
As for the defense of Xaphon: a CEO of a major corporation can not just sell a company jet and pocket the proceeds. Even if we pretend for a second that this was some glorious and majestic corporate takeover of a rival corporation, then the proceeds of that takeover were inappropriately liquidated and embezzled. Either way you cut it, he’s a worthless twit. Good riddance.
Kyran Nyak
Aug 10th, 2005
bwhahahaha, i heared he just did something stupid. bet his account got a review, had quiete a list and got the boot. lindens have feelins 2 so im not saying that this hasnt got anything to do with the landheist but they seemingly got a reason other than the theft itself. so… buh bye Xaphon/Nero.
indy Grommet
Aug 10th, 2005
Jesus Tittyf*ckin’ Christ. What we need here is a more Libertarian way of things lol. The Lindens just need to realize that things that happen in SL may make them uncomfortable, but they need to have enough self-control not to intervene. Personally, I would _LOVE_ it if they were able to finally stop intervening on issues like this, so that we could go on doing anything we wanted (within 1st-life-worldly legal limits and TOS limits). People role-play mafias. This sort of thing, betrayals and things, should be more common among those groups. Maybe we just need a way to get a sort of “checks and balances” system in place on the Lindens. Anyone have any ideas? Oh, and my SL Name (and E-mail) are no longer in use, so don’t bother tryin’ to contact me. =/
seldon metropolitan
Aug 11th, 2005
I have to say that the phrase “Jesus Tittyf*ckin’ Christ” made my day.
Fred Extraordinaire
Aug 11th, 2005
The lindens reserve the right to ban you at anytime they want bcause its THEIR game, they made it they own all the copyrights to it and it’s engine and can remove any disruptive griefer if they see fit. possibly the shear ammount of abuse report spacemonkeys sent the lindens to make sure this wasnt ignored was enough to ban him, or maybe the reply i sent with a link to your sweet little article praising these theives. uri..you should know better.
Furthermore the TOS is not a bill of rights, you have no rights as a citizen of second-life and lindens can do wahtever the fuck they want to you.
pwnt.
^_^